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Towards a new African citizen
Albert Gumbo
January 18, 2008

There are no conspiracies for the African people. Only tragedies. If John F Kennedy had been assassinated in an African country, there would have been no conspiracy but probably hundreds of thousands lying dead, viciously hacked down by their own. The conspiracies will not stop, so they hardly matter. What matters is how Africans perceive themselves. It is time to stop being victims whether in Somalia or Kenya.

The African man and woman in the street must begin to understand, know and believe that they are masters of their destiny. We must become actors in our affairs if we are going to stop the cycle of violence that continues to make a mockery of and an embarrassment to all Africans worldwide. It matters not, that there are conflicts elsewhere on the planet. Africa cannot afford it-s conflicts. How are we going to move on?

I am calling for an Africa-wide citizens- movement: Citizens of the renaissance. Citizens of the renaissance are African people who will start this evolutionary revolution by teaching each our people to demand no less than a bare minimum. What is the bare minimum? A few every day examples come to mind:

• I pay my rates and I, I therefore, demand that the municipality empties the dust bin outside my house.
• I pay school fees and I, I therefore demand that the schoolteacher turns up, teaches my child and marks his work.
• I pay taxes and I, I therefore demand that the government builds roads, schools, hospitals and delivers clean drinking water to me.

These are bare minimums that the citizen of the renaissance must take for granted to the point where the Minister of Energy will have to go on state television to explain away and apologise for a power cut that lasts more than half an hour. A power cut that lasts half an hour must outrage the citizenry to such an extent that it makes headline news in the national press and the evening prime time news. That is the standard that the New African must take for granted if we are to be taken for granted no longer by those who lead us. Any power cut that extends in to an hour must provoke howls of outrage in letters to the editor. To accept any less is to say to those who lead politically that it is ok for them to fail to deliver. The renaissance citizen will abhor the very idea that potholes, power cuts and the absence of clean drinking water are his lot and so be it!

In any society there are deviants. In the case of reports of rape, wife battery, child abuse, nepotism, corruption and a whole host of crimes that go against the norms and values of any society, the citizen of the renaissance must mobilise and march in the street, escorted by law enforcement agents to demonstrate their displeasure and anger at such behaviour. It must be automatic. In France for instance, when a Jewish grave is desecrated by skinheads, thousands of people, including political leaders, march in the streets to show their disapproval. The holocaust was just as traumatic for the Jews as was the slave trade for the black man. Despite your opinion and mine on their politics, the Jews refused to be victims for the rest of their destiny and they actively nurture the painful memory of the holocaust to keep focused on the need for a nation of their own. The African talks of conspiracies. Get on with it! Our leaders take advantage of us because we tend to be fatalistic, leaving it all to divine intervention and fate. Well, divine intervention and fate are at the beck and call of those who take control. The citizen of the renaissance must become an activist and leave fate to fate.

At a leadership level, both corporate and political but especially civic, we are looking for a new leader. That leader is one who is going to actively encourage the citizen to rebel against them should they trample underfoot the constitution, corporate governance ethics or whatever rules apply, that they have sworn or are mandated to protect. Our leaders must insist on and implement civics education as part of the curriculum from primary school to university level, teaching concepts ranging from the separation of powers, human rights to philosophy. It is the kind of knowledge that will set our people thinking and knowing that state violence is unacceptable, that every human being has a right to disagree without being violent and that we can defend the right for others to disagree with us. Our people will live on clear principle and abhor violence, corruption and any form of abuse. There is the timeless dictum, "I may not agree with you but I will defend your right to disagree with me." The citizen of the renaissance will take a stand for the protection of minority groups all over the continent and reject hate speech and calls for genocide. We are demanding the kind of leader who will live for a sense of a positive sustainable legacy for their country and by extension for this continent. There is more to be gained for us all when we all win than when we tear each other apart in a vicious rat race to amass more wealth than the other at the expense of the people. The harvest is what is happening to Kenya today and unless we act, will happen elsewhere. We are not rats.

We need our intellectuals to focus on driving the next big African idea, the next big breakthrough in technology as Nokia has done for Finland, Volvo and, yes, ABBA for Sweden, Toyota for Japan and human capital for Singapore, instead of dwelling on conspiracy theories to prove that a black man invented the traffic light or why Africans must remain in a cycle of poverty and violence. We have the power of choice and it is by focussing on the right choices that we will turn the corner that will allow Africa to begin to taxi and then take off. We can and will then become the leaders in solar energy technology, herbal medicines, the next big blue pill, diamond processing, crocodile skin hand bags, oil and intellectual property among hundreds of endeavours of life that we know we can excel in if only we make the right choices. It is not just the current events in Kenya that have prompted me to write. We have been a mess for along time and we have actively participated in the mud fight, conspiracy or not, slavery or not, colonialism or not. We must choose, here and now, to take control of our destiny as a continent and as a people with all the myriad of races of people who consider themselves African. When that happens, there will be no more horror stories of machete wielding Africans hacking each other to death at the whim of a strong man or two because the people will guard their citizenship role and sense of legacy.

This is a call to like-minded citizens of the renaissance to embrace a new standard, a new expectation and a new set of values for Africa. We cannot afford anything less. The answer is in our minds and we can hold our heads up high on a continental level.

Life rewards action. Let-s act.

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