Kwame Nkrumah

No African country is independent! I will say this over a thousand times with confidence. Africa has not gained its true independence; slavery and apartheid are still on-going in a more dangerous manner than ever, since it’s now totally a mental dependence.

We are not independent if we don’t have control over our minds.

Our forefathers fought for the lands for us to have the independence to free our minds so it is our mandate to toil and fight for the liberation of our minds and till this is achieved, we have wasted the toils of our founding fathers.

All Africans have a common challenge; mental slavery, a deep form of slavery which has ebbed the dignity and confidence of Africans in Africa entirely and has cleansed our noble virtue of love for ourselves and culture.

A deep form of slavery which has conferred on us extreme animosity towards one another (A perfect example is what is happening in South Africa now; blacks fighting blacks?

 A deep form of slavery which has wiped our course for building a virtuous Africa to a continent filled with selfish and greedy beings; no one values what is noble anymore.

The ramification of this mental slavery has led to Africa not being able to develop itself. We are blinded to our true identity and that is why we are being exploited daily.

 We walk with fake identity, conceive our dear Africa as accursed and thus easily manipulated and resort to adversity driven with much animosity.

Imagine a continent where a myriad of its population believes it has failed and the rest could not care less, a continent where majority suspects another as an enemy, a continent where we fail to honour our forefathers.

We brand it evil to pay homage and to bless our roots yet we find it perfectly right to honour the founding fathers of other foreign nation. What else is this, if not an evidence of pure mental slavery? It’s an evidence of a continent with no identity! A flower that curses it roots dies!

We are the flowers (children) of the main tree (Africa) and we persistently rain curses on the tree and it roots − how can such a tree (continent) ever flourish?

Africa is not poor in resources; Africa is not a poor continent but with all of its rich resources, Africans are poor in thinking, poor in feeling towards each other, actions and reasoning because we were suppressed, abused and reduced; just to make us feel inferior.

 But hopes are not lost; the identification of the problem is a great sign of hope. We seem not to know our true history which is repudiating our sense of identity.

Waking up to our history will be our first indication of victory. The true history of Africa must be taught, the true history of our forefathers must be shared, truth must be told to revive our dignity; our sense of pride.

Historians should share with us our true nature and identity; we are no inferior beings, we are virtuous beings, we are warriors, we are the future!

Where have all our divine cultures gone to? It’s been branded evil and uncivilized. Tell us the truth about ourselves and our culture else we will perish.

This is what we need in our school curriculums, these are the stories we should feed ourselves with! We need a sense of identity else we will be “wiped out completely” and remain “poor” forever in reasoning, actions and feelings which is dreadful with devastating implications.

It is said that, a people without culture has no sense of identity; no pride, no confidence and practically empty.  Let’s work at identifying what makes us Africans beyond colour, skin and border.

Instead of demarcating lands to brand nationals, we must demarcate a thinking clad in virtues as justifications for citizenry.

The essence of our divine culture should reflect in our thinking and abilities.

To escape poverty we have to embrace each other and Africa entirely, it needs a joint effort, we must come together.

It is said that, “life is a war but family is an army”. We need to wake up as a family to win this form of mental slavery.

Kwame Nkrumah predicted this when he said “Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa.”

Think about this and tell me what this mean to you. To me, “Total” liberation of Africa goes beyond liberation of the lands; it is wholly achieved when the minds of all Africans are restored to wholeness; the mind of dignity and power.

Till this sense of wholeness is achieved amongst Blacks, we forever will hate and fight each other. What is happening in South Africa is a call to every African to wake up to the real challenges of Africa, to recover the power of the glorious past to dismantle mental slavery and apartheid.

This is not a call to breed hatred towards one other else we worsen our state. We can’t heal ourselves (Africa) by hating but by finding solutions to our challenges.

Hating will weaken us in our already weakened state and till we truly rise as one people and identify our common challenge, we can never escape this mental slavery.

Remember, the mental will precede the physical.

Source: Flora Maclean