PLEASE WAKE UP!! - Writes Mr Patrick Ndangoh, a political prisoner, from his jail cell in Kondengui.
WE AFRICANS ARE THE ONLY PEOPLES WHO JOYFULLY RUSH BACK TO THE LANDS AND HOMES OF THOSE WHO ENSLAVED US! It has NEVER happened in recorded history that a people who fought so hard to be freed from slavery, and slavery has existed over the millennia, have suddenly turned around and in most cases auctioned EVERYTHING to return into the hands of those who enslaved them. In every case, paying to be admitted, through applications' fees for the disjointed "privilege" of that new enslavement.
Less than two generations after our freedoms we have not hunkered down to build the immense wealth our enslavers came looking to loot. Whole cities and especially villages have been stripped bare of their peoples as they have all stormed to the lands and homes of the people who enslaved them.
I grew up in Bamenda in the midst of my mother, my father, my step mothers and frequently spent holidays with my grand mother, and my mothers grandmother until I was of the age to go out into the world. Today in that same village there is almost nobody left. I mean literally. Everyone is either in Boston or in some other place beside home.
Trust me, brothers and sisters, there is a need to go and acquire the skills we need. There is an even bigger imperative to return after that to build this home our parents and forebears sacrificed so much to get back from foreign looters. They came for wealth. They saw the wealth. They fought hard to keep the wealth. When it became too expensive both financially and in human cost to keep fighting they retreated. They didn't give up. They retreated. Unfortunately we have been blindfolded that they are gone. In a strange and self-intoxicating way we are paying to follow them.
It is not in their interest to fight for this land for you and I. It is in our interest to fight for it. Existence abhors a vacuum. As you leave it it must be occupied. When the critical mass shall be reached a war shall not be necessary. It will just be for the taking. Why do you think the Chinese want to come before the rest. The last time they were left out. This time they are wiser. Believe me China has enough people to repopulate all of Africa if it has to. And it is strategically hoping to.
Right now Africa has more than $500 trillion US dollars worth of discovered resources. 500 trillion dollars worth in today's value. Not to mention that which is still to be discovered. With that kind of value each and every continent will gladly exchange places with Africa. Do not be fooled that we are disease ridden. YOU AND I ARE THE DISEASES they see. We are making it so easy to just be disposed of. And they shall.
In every time and age the trade of slavery had been facilitated by some of the same people whose brothers and sisters had been sold into it. The same people whose children are going to be the slaves. These times are no exceptional. Just different. They make it look like it is your free will. That at the prime of your working life you forsake everything. That in retirement you auction off everything to migrate to a land you never thought was necessary to migrate to when you were young and strong. That you call your children who went to acquire foreign vital skills and admonish them. Even begging them NEVER TO RETURN. THAT THERE IS NOTHING HERE FOR YOU. Yet those to whose countries you are fleeing to are gradually but certainly buying off the "farms" and assets you are " selling". Some of them we call 'leaders'. Others we call foreign lenders who give these leaders "loans" they know can never be repaid.
There is nothing wrong in fighting for liberty. It is a right that can only be gotten through a fight. Liberty once gotten shall only be maintained when those whose knees are to be on your neck know you shall put your knee on their necks too when you struggle and get up.
Today in Africa the majority of those to whom a miniscule access to power was given enjoy instead to stay almost forever in foreign hotels. They dress exclusively in foreign attires to mimic the masters. They kill their own people with reckless disregard as commissioned undertakers for the foreigners whom our forebears chased away. They are bound to exist. The onus is on us. You and I to make sure they lose that appetite, for the consequences shall be mutually annihilating both to them and us. The response is not in running away.
Africans were displayed in zoos across Europe and it made it easier to kill as many tens of millions as possible. With zero guilt. The Chinese display portraits of Africans in museums as monkeys and chimps today very psychologically strategic so that when the time comes it will not be difficult to cross the line of once more branding them beasts to be exterminated without the slightest guilt.
WAKE UP!!!