DRAMA OF TWO AFRICANS IN HYDE PARK Part 3

Drama of two Africans in Hyde Park  

by Nzinga Nzinga

When African from the East meets African from the West, ole fiah tick easy fi ketch!

(It is easy to ignite old fire sticks.)

♪♪ I want you beside me all of the time…

Holding hands together… All in the same boat. Rocking on the same road…We got to get together. ♪♪

-- Bob Marley…Satisfy My Soul

 Part 3 

“You said that we have the same enemy," said the Gold Coast man. "I take it that you mean that all black people of the African race are beset by the same enemy regardless of where in the world they are. That theory is not held among the people with whom I associate but I am amazed that we never saw the truth of it before.”

“It’s not just that the black man encounters the enemy wherever he is that makes it so terrible, but that when these colonisers, who in divers ways proved themselves to be the enemies, control our continent, they automatically control all black people, all 400 million of us. If the family house is under siege by robbers, then all the children are affected because they too are under siege.”


“I get the point. So anyhow we take it, black people are under attack,” conceded the Gold Coast man.

“Precisely. We know the enemy better than you do because we live cheek by jowl with him and have learnt his ways. You people really have to chase those crazy bald heads not only out of your corn, out of your mines, out of your cocoa but also out of your continent before you become totally subjugated and an endangered species. Surely you don't want to suffer the fate of the American Indians, the Aborigines of Australia and the Maoris of New Zealand. Already Smuts speaks from his squatter position In S. Africa as if Africa belongs to Europeans.”

“We write up petitions for our people to sign etc.”

“Petitions? Do you realize what you are saying, man? Do you understand the meaning of petition, man?”

“I think I do. It’s a written request or supplication, er, er an appeal signed by many people appealing to the relevant authority to give heed unto a particular cause”.

“Don't go all euphemistic on me, man. Let's call a spade a spade. When you go to your self-appointed masters with a petition, with a paper signed by your people asking them for your independence, what you are doing in realty is begging, I repeat begging, humbling yourself and bending your knees to them in prayerful supplication. Man they are not gods. They are mere mortals and not even honourable ones at that. They are morally bankrupt. They are men with evil and vile agendas, intents and purposes. They have no mercy, no pity. Are these the men to whom you plan to plead your case?”

“We want peace.”

“You don't want the kind of peace you are now suffering. Yes, I say suffering because it is not a functional peace that you think you are now enjoying. Absence of war does not mean peace. You don't want that kind of peace.”

“Enlighten me, my brother.”

“That kind of peace is an illusion. That is false peace. It is dysfunctional because it gives you a false of sense of security and blinds you to the actual situation, engendering inaction. What you want is equal rights and justice. How can you obtain that when they think you are inferior to them? Yes, you can have what you consider peace without equal rights and justice as you do now. However with equal rights and justice, real peace must obtain.”

“You are right, of course, but what else can we do? We have no power.”

“You have no power? Then take it. These people are on your continent. It is not for you to go begging to the white man to pack his bags and go. It’s not for you to ask England, France, Italy, Belgium, Portugal or Spain why they are illegally occupying your lands. All you have to do is command them: ‘Get out of here!’ We over on this side will come over to the motherland and help you as much as we can, in spite of the fact that the enemy is always watching us. We are coming home after a long vacation and are giving notice to the tenant to clear out. If he doesn't, there is such a thing as forcible ejection, eviction, expulsion or whatever.” The dynamo told the man from Africa.

“I am touched by your offer of help. Are you implying that you are all going to repatriate to our continent?”

“How can you ask me that? Do you really think anyone with the modicum of intelligence could expect that all the Negroes outside of Africa should all repatriate to the motherland? There is no question of wholesale repatriation. So many people are prone to misunderstand and to misrepresent my opinion on repatriation. I am not preaching any doctrines to ask all the Negroes abroad to leave for Africa. The majority of us may remain here, but we must send our scientists, our mechanics, and our artisans, and let them build railroads, let them build the great educational and other institutions necessary. You need strong, functional institutions. Together we can defeat the enemy, even though, as I said, they are always watching us.”

“You are correct about the enemy always watching you outside of the continent as well as us on the inside. The enemy of African liberty and independence is not only eating up all our corn but also presumes to make all our decisions for us. Their treatment of us is so disrespectful; no tongue can adequately relate it.”

“No one can govern another’s house as well as himself. Africa is the legitimate, moral and righteous home of all black people and it is our duty to rouse every black person at home and abroad to a consciousness of himself as an African.”

“I agree, but we are both in a tricky position, a particularly disadvantageous one. Can you who are also powerless in the instruments of liberation and independence really help us?”

“Don't be discouraged by that. Go to 11Cor. 12:9 and read how God comforted St. Paul when he was being buffeted about by a thorn in his side:  

‘My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.’

We are buffeted about, on and off our continent by the white race but we shall be made stronger and stronger by the hand of the Almighty in this our crisis, because ours is a righteous cause. As long as we find ways of working together, always conscious of one another over here and over there, we can achieve liberty, independence, self-reliance, unity and control of our destiny. The main thing is for us to get organised. Keep separated and we will be exploited, robbed and killed as has been happening. Get organised and you will compel the world to respect you. We are organising in the West, some to keep us in the same insidious and inequitable position under the white man’s governance and others to remove us from under that alien yoke and to improve and develop our race. Some of us will help you.”

“The distance between us is so forbidding.” The Gold Coast man sounded a dismal note.

“For hundreds of years Africans had been making the crossing across the Atlantic from Africa to the West under the most adverse conditions to serve their enemies. It is the same distance from the West to our African continent. It is time for us to shift and change directions in more ways than one and make the crossings of our people from the West outward serve our own continent and our own race. Moreover, the only distance between us is a physical one. Our one bloodline, our one God, our one aim and our one Destiny link us closely together. We are closely linked, connected and bound also by our common ideas." 

The eloquent non-continental continued. "Ideas do not need a passport or a visa. Ideas are not limited by territorial boundaries. Ideas can go where man cannot go. An idea can revolutionise a whole way of life. The colonialists cannot kill our ideas even if they kill some of us as they have done and will continue to do till kingdom come:

♪♪Many more of us will have to suffer. Many more of us will have to die.♪♪

And we know why. We suffer and die so that the exploiters’ status quo can be maintained by any means necessary. We must by any means necessary, change their status quo because it affects us adversely. We must aim for African liberty and unity. Let us aim for success and not be discouraged by the remarks and actions of those of our people who are harbingers of failure. Let us not recognise or admit to failure before we have exhausted all means.”

“Point well taken but we have no recognisable men of big affairs. Scholars we have some, but as for diplomats, heads of states, international figures, we have none of these besides Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and the Liberian Head of State.”

“Have no fear. ‘Up from Slavery’, that incisive work by Booker T. Washington has made a great impact on my life. After I read it, I asked myself, ‘Where is the black man’s government? Where is (sic) his king and his kingdom? Where is his president, his country, and ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of big affairs? I could not find them and then I declared, ‘I will help you make them.’ Ah! You look shocked. You, like so many others think that I am too arrogant, don’t you? White racism breeds arrogant black men. Our race needs arrogant black men, if we are to overthrow this alien rule of tyranny of white racists”, he said laughing heartily. The Continental African joined in.

To be continued

All the images were taken from the Internet and I claim no copyright.