THE AUDACITY OF HOPE : SELF-RELIANCE FOR A BETTER AFRICA

By KABS KANU

Africa must set up her own governance and financial institutions as preached by patriachs and black nationalist leaders like Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere, Sekou Toure, Amilcar Cabral, Thomas Sankara , Samora Machel, etc. etc.

THIS is a dream that could be achieved if our African leaders put their acts together. Africa can set up its own World Bank and IMF, which would lend impoverished African countries money on very favorable terms . Interests generated from these loans would make the institutions viable and successful. Africa is too rich not to be able to put her resources together to accomplish these goals.

I do not understand how a lending institution can describe as REFORMS measures that would bring excruciating hardship and poverty on the people and make them and their children go to bed hungry. You ask yourself over and over whether these so-called reforms are really meant to help countries solve their economic problems or destabilize Africa further and provoke chaos that would lead to excessive loss of lives and humanitarian disasters.

Who are you here to help ? The poor ? What happens when African governments remove subsidies on rice and fuel and impose heavy taxes on luxury goods, retrench workers and send able-bodied young people into early and involuntary retirement ?

You do not save somebody from drowning by sending him a heavy anchor that will further draw him down into the sea. . That is not trying to save. It is premeditated murder. You are nothing but a killer when you throw an anchor to save a drowning man. Send him floating devices, like a raft and a life jacket. Then he will know you are trying to save his life.

Sometimes, those who profess to be your saviors are the very ones behind the gun.

Cantankerous , evil and unpatriotic Sierra Leoneans rejoicing at these developments because their political parties are not in power are the last word in skulduggery and stupidity. Their mentality is redolent of the puppetry that mental slavery perpetuates on people who do not think beyond their noses. When these lending institutions damage, destabilize your country and create chaos , who suffers? Is it not your fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers. cousins, townmates etc who are already struggling to survive ? The Government officials you want to spite by rejoicing over their trials with neocolonoalist Western institutions might not suffer the hardships created by conditionalities because they have money. You must not be dumb enough not to know this. But some of these dumb social media patriots do not love their people. They love only their political parties. And they want to rule Sierra Leone ?

The Creoles have a favourite saying : “YOU THINK YOU DO ME,” which translated means that the traps that people often set for others end up affecting them, contrary to their plans. Should your poor and innocent people suffer just to satiate your blood enmity for a ruling government ? Shame on you.

I think African countries should go back and resurrect the philosophies once espoused by our nationalists of blessed memory. Africa can stand on its own feet, in spite of the unfair trade and economic practices perpetrated by the West and some European countries to keep our continent impoverished and dependent on them. We can set up our own governance and lending institutions. It is not a dream beyond us, given all our abundant natural and human resources.

TO BE CONTINUED

DISCLAIMER

The views expressed in this article are entirely mine and do not in any way represent the perspectives of government or any entity I might be connected with.

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