Africa Must Wake Up

Watching the news last night, my major New Year's Resolution gave me a nudge in the gut. I've been following coverage of the upcoming election in Sudan as closely as possible lately, and of course it's because I was just in Juba last month. And since the other major story from the African continent these days is the Presidential stand-off in Cote D'Ivoire, I've also started watching developments there a bit more closely than I might have, say, a few year ago.

Now, my number one New Year's Resolution for 2011 is to reclaim my voice. To say what I mean and mean what I say. I expect those of you who may have followed this blog over the past few years might be a bit confused, because I certainly haven't been a shrinking violet about my life, fears, neuroses and challenges. (And if I was having sex, I wouldn't hesitate to talk about that, either.) But for a lot of reasons, I've kept most of my opinions about life on the African continent to myself.

Now, Miss Eloise didn't raise no fool, so don't expect me to go rogue, or anything. I mean, I'm well aware that I could get the knock on the door in the middle of the night, or have the wheels on my taxi shot out before being dragged off somewhere, if I started getting too opinionated. After all, I am a visitor on foreign soil, and a female one at that. These Kenyan dudes don't play that, 'yo? So, tempered with all the love and respect I can offer, what I wanna say at this particular moment in time is,

"Africa must wake up, the sleeping sons of Jacob. For what tomorrow may bring, may a better day come, Yesterday we were kings, can you tell me young ones -- Who are we today? "

Actually, I stole those words from one of my favorite albums of recent years, "Distant Relatives" by Nas and Damien Marley. There's so much wisdom on that joint, it's almost like food. It's from two Diaspora brothers and their artistic colleagues who, in my opinion, absolutely nailed the demons plaguing the African continent. Tribalism, greed, poverty, every lyric tells the story. Just like the picture above.

It reminds me of some the criticisms of Black America during the Civil Rights Era Riots. In every major American city, whenever some injustice against black folks went down, we starting burning and looting our own shit. Wasn't no riotin' in Beverly Hills; we just burned down Compton, and shook our fists at the TV cameras. Oh sure, there was a lot of positive activism, and lots of "insider" political and intellectual advocacy, but much of what led the news was the brick throwing and flames.

As a kid, I didn't get it, and 40 years later, watching scenes of rioting and looting and shouting at the Al Jazeera and CNN cameras, I still don't get it. Because when I watch these mostly young, male, "ain't got a pot to piss in, nor a window to throw it out of" Africans shouting threats and taunts in support of some guy who's barricaded inside a palace using cutlery that costs more than what that same young man will make in an ENTIRE YEAR, I wind up concluding that kid THINKS he's awake! He thinks he's doing something, making a statement, taking a stand. He thinks he's expressing power and might, especially when that guy in the mansion hands him the equivalent of five US dollars and a machete and tells him to go kill the "enemy."

That young man, who has been stripped of every other type of legitimate power, or identity, or even basic human dignity due to outrageous and obscene squalor and deprivation, feels mighty when the lens is pointed at him. But he is in a deep coma. He is a puppet dangling on the end of a string held by a man who's 3 times his age and has nothing but utter contempt for him. A man who wouldn't even stop to help if his presidential motorcade accidentally knocked him down. An old man who has drained the coffers and the lifeblood of their mutual homeland, and views him with the same disgust as a sewer rat, could not give a f--k whether he and everybody like him died of starvation tomorrow as long as his own children get to live in palatial splendor, and he gets his medical care in Geneva.

THAT'S what Nas and Damien Marley mean in those lyrics. Young and old, male and female, the majority of people living in unquiet desperation on the African continent need to wake up. "Wake the F--K up!!!" I wouldn't even pretend to suggest I know who should be running things where I am, or in Cote D'Ivoire, or in any of the 52 African countries. But as a brown-skinned woman who lived through a tumultuous era where people like me came out on the other side with some basic measure of rights, I can tell you that things will never change as long as people allow the few to so cruelly exploit the many.

And they'll never change while you're walking around with your eyes wide shut.