Letters to African Leaders

Dear African Leaders,

Even though we expect it sometimes, you really don’t do shit for us and that is apparent in our current realities all across the continent. If you did, there wouldn’t be such a high rate of illiteracy on the Continent. Y’all would be ashamed that 27% of the world’s most illiterate people are found in sub-Saharan Africa. There won’t be over 60% of school going kids between the ages of 15 -17 out of school if you cared. We wouldn’t be producing thousands of college graduates and not creating enough jobs to absorb them, if at all you were interested in our betterment. There’s a whole freaking unemployment crisis plaguing the damn continent, but do you care at all? It’s apparent that the answer is a resounding no because if it were not, y’all wouldn’t be spending millions of taxpayers money on educating your children outside the Continent when the quality of education on the Continent is extremely abysmal. Evidently,  because y’all really don’t care, y’all don’t do shit about any of this.

If you did, there wouldn’t be so much corruption on this Continent. Your greed won’t lead you to continuously steal from the Continent at such a massive rate. You wouldn’t sign bogus concession agreements at the detriment of the masses. You wouldn’t use our natural resources as trade-offs with foreigners who fill your pockets with billions of dollars. If you were content with the salaries we pay you, you wouldn’t allow your oversized pot bellies and greed to drive all your old, out of touch selves to accept billions in bribes at the disadvantage of the entire Continent. You would know that if you curbed illicit financial flow out of the continent, you could save us over 89 billion dollars annually -money that you could potentially invest in education and human capacity building. Again, you apparently don’t really care so you don’t do shit about any of this.

If you did, you would declare rape and sexual gender based violence an emergency and do everything in your power to abolish it. Every 3 hours, a woman is murdered in South Africa; young girls are being raped and murdered in Nigeria; over 4000 Kenyan schoolgoing girls were impregnated during the lockdown with relatives and police officers being their alleged perpetrators; over 600 cases of rape were reported in Liberia, so much so that the youth people staged a massive protest that strongarmed the government into declaring rape a national emergency;   Namibia is protesting against SGBV, and rape, plus many more that I can’t even begin to pen down. Africa is freaking bleeding and there is nothing being done about it.

However, when I think about it, this insane culture of rape and violence is really reinforced by y’all.  Your despicable, appalling, vile, misogynistic, entitled selves are even the main ones who show that it is okay to feel entitled to a woman’s body (or a man’s body) and that it is okay to act, even violently, out of your entitlement. 

Sometimes I wonder, “who are these people?” “how did we elect them?” Then I realize that you prey on our vulnerabilities all the time. Y’all use our poverty to keep us at your beck and call. Y’all use our illiteracy and lack of quality education to manipulate us into making ignorant decisions. Y’all use catchy political phrases and slogans to entice us to sacrifice our votes for your baseless platforms. Y’all stir up hate amongst us. Y’all make us fight one another. Y’all make us kill one another and we naively do these things under the false impression that y’all mean well for us. But time after time, we are disappointed, we are betrayed, we are let down. We are brutalized and killed by the ones who are supposed to protect us. We are marginalized by the ones we hail. We are betrayed by the ones we trust. Y’all don’t even stand up for us, when we need it the most. Y’all watch us get brutalized and killed and all y’all do is tweet. A fucking tweet! Y’all have subjected the well-being of millions of Africans to one hundred and forty characters, but this isn’t strange as this has been our experience for decades.

But… this generation is resilient. This generation is strong. This generation is powerful. This generation is determined. We won’t be compromised. The hope of Africa lies with us. We will not get tired. We will not be deterred. We will not dodge the bullets and our deaths will not be in vain. We will speak out. We will write. We will have dialogues. We will present petitions. We will protest. We will march -not for the ones who consistently oppress us but for justice and equality. We will demand our rights. We will stand up to the oppressors. We will regain our sovereignty. We will regain our freedom, come hell or high water. We are prepared to do whatever it takes. We will give our blood, our sweat and our tears. We will form a critical mass. We will be the change that we have so long desired.

We are coming with full force and if you all have any iota of sense left, you would know well enough to get the fuck out of our way. 

Disrespectfully, 

An Angry African