The global efforts being made to help Africa are welcome and must be embraced by every person keen to see an end to the continent’s pathetic tale of hunger, disease and crippling poverty.
I hail British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa, Chancellor Gordon Brown’s untiring efforts to lobby for debt cancellation for poor countries and musician Bob Geldof’s Live 8 concerts to sensitise the rich countries on the plight of Africa.
It is also hats off to the millions who responded to the Live 8 call and poured out their pockets and hearts to the crusade.
In Africa, we understand and communicate better with song, dance and drumbeats. We sing when we are hungry, sick, bereaved and even when life smiles on us. This is why when the world sings in our name, we understand its honesty and sing along.
But we do not sing for money; when music is played and drums are beaten to bring us money, we worry. This is because we know money is evil — at least in Africa. When our hungry children hear music, they remember it is sleeping time and go to bed. But if they learnt that music means money, they would stay awake and wait for food.
Yet in this continent, money is rare; everyone hears about it but hardly sees it.
We know it comes from far away lands in form of aid, debt, grants and donations. But our leaders taught us a long time ago that money is evil. They taught us that money is the root cause of wars, diseases and poverty. They said if money came to our kraals and abodes, singing would no longer make our children sleep and it would not bring us enough food.
Therefore, our leaders taught us that the best place to put the money was in their pockets. They added that once their pockets were full, they would send the rest for safekeeping in far away banks. That is why we hear about money but never see it.
But with more of us getting enlightened, we have realised that money is not so evil after all. We need to build schools, hospitals, roads and access clean water. But when we asked our leaders to put the money, that is rightfully ours, into these uses, they incited us against one other.
This is why our continent is ravaged by war, killings, destruction and rapes.
And that is why we worry when we hear Blair, George W Bush, Geldof and other well meaning people talk about money coming to us. We don’t want more wars and killings. Thank you for your generosity, but please don’t give our leaders more money.
Empower the masses instead. Put money directly into projects that can be supervised by people from your lands. Let it build schools for our children to get good education. Build hospitals and equip them to ensure our people get quality healthcare.
We need to send our products to international markets so that we can sustain our businesses and become self-reliant. We therefore need good roads, ports and airports.
We do not want money because our leaders will pocket it.
For now, we are content to sing and beat drums to stay happy. Sirs, empower us, the people, not our leaders.
Bashir Goth
Abu Dhabi, UAE
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