I saw people—beautiful people—who walked proud and free. I saw happy people living in a place of many colours, many shades, many languages, many cultures, and many faiths. And yet the differences didn’t seem to matter. Just like a flower garden that acquires its beauty from the variety of its colours, the diversity of the people added to the beauty of Africa.
I dreamt that being African had nothing to do with colour or language; it had everything to do with where you lived and where your loyalty lay. The life of Africa pulsed in your heart. That’s what really mattered.
They said: “You can have this piece”;
“He can take this area”;
“I’ll have that part”.
“We’ll move our armies in and enforce it”.
They defined boundaries and put up beacons. They fenced borders, and defined races. They issued identity cards. They even dictated how African people should worship God. They created hatred. They bought and sold the land that God had given to the people. They sowed dissension. They planted nationalism. They nurtured hatred. Africa harvested the results.
They forced the people to conform to their ways, as if their way was the only right way. Africa was plunged into servitude and misery. Tragically, in the process, they turned Africans against other Africans.
But there was always a hope—a hope that one day, some day, a new dawn would break over Africa. A new day would come when, once again, all the people of Africa could walk proud and free, and embrace one another without noticing our superficial differences—our colour, our language, and our culture. We would live once again in diversity, but with respect for one another.
And, fleetingly, it didn’t matter what your passport said your nationality was.
And then I thought that I woke up. But what had really happened was that I had left the dream and I had gone into the nightmare of the present, where because of what was done in the division of Africa, people now hate one another just because they come from the other side of a line that foreigners drew on a map. People kill each other because they are now seen as “foreigners”.
It seems that, in the end, colonialism has won. It has turned Africans against Africans.
Unfortunately, I don’t seem able awake from the nightmare.
Hosi katekisa Afrika!