DRAMA OF TWO AFRICANS IN HYDE PARK Part 6

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 6

The Man from the Gold Coast responded. “There are men and women in my country ready and willing to die than to continue to be humiliated this way, if in dying they can achieve freedom for our people. I am so happy to have met you, my Jamaican brother-with-no-name. May all your dreams which are now mine, come true.”

The Jamaican responded. “Yes, may all our dreams and those we haven’t articulated or yet thought of come true. It’s up to us. We can do it anyway. We can make them come true. Whatever man has done, man can do. Men who are in earnest are not afraid of consequences.”

“I am whirl-winded away by your conviction and your eloquence. However, I can't help but think of how much power they have and how they want to keep things as they are. The only change they will countenance is one that makes them still have dominion over us. They will kill us all rather than let us go. I am afraid that I am still afraid. You have to be there to see what they have done and are doing to our continent. It’s incredible. They will not allow us to do what we have to do to be free. They will use every force and trick they can muster to keep us in this condition of dependency.”

The Jamaican man with no name, fixed a penetratingly quelling glare on his companion.

“And who is asking them to leave? Who is going to them to ask them to set us free? We shall be free and that no one can prevent regardless of how much power they may have. When the time comes for them to move out, they will have no choice. They are not invincible. They are mere flesh and blood men with wicked, racist agendas. There is already a revolutionary wind blowing over Africa." 

"My continental brother, if you listen carefully now you will hear and feel it. It’s not as loud as a trumpet but it is loud enough for those who need to hear it. It will grow stronger and stronger and the enemy will be not only deafened by it but will also be incapable of standing against its force. It will be blowing from the black man’s direction, in his favour, so it will not deafen him and its force, instead of incapacitating him, will strengthen him. Africans with visions of a brighter tomorrow for our beloved continent will arise from among you, from where you least expect them, and take these dream-sounds and translate them into realistic actions that should have been long ago. Have no fear for the powerful weapons of the enemy. None of them can mow down and keep down a principle based on righteousness.”

“You really seem able to see into the future. You are a prophet aren’t you?”

“Some call me Moses and there is an ironical twist to that name. Some will even say I am John the Baptist. It matters not what men call me as long as they identify me as a terror to those who seek to deny my race our God-given right to develop to the best of our ability.”

“Can you predict other significant events affecting our future?”

Malcolm X

Martin Luther King Jr.

“I can see committed Africans at home and abroad rising up and stating our case and acting for our cause. In the West one will be assassinated for seeking separation from the white race and another for his dream of integration with them. 

Nelson Mandela

On the continent, one, the Black Pimpernel, will confuse his attackers so much that they will condemn him to life imprisonment and throw away the keys to his cell. Then, after many years he will be lifted out like Joseph in Egypt to take care of business. People, the world over, will literally worship him so much so that he will be regarded as the most popular man in the world. On the other hand, there are may, not only from his own people, but globally, who will think that he took care of business more for his jailers than for his own people.

Julius Nyerere

HIM Haile Selassie

Another will insist that there is an absolute need for Africans to keep the hegemony of the African spirit in Africa. Another will insist that the peoples of Africa will not allow even one inch of African soil to remain in the hands of the colonialists."

"And yet another will acquire independence for his nation and will devote a great part of his energies to the unification of Africa.  He will eat, sleep and live absolutely for African unity. He will proclaim that the liberation of any one African country will be meaningless without the emancipation of the others. His words will be cited for years to come by sayers of his words but not doers because Africans will not heed. In other words, to their own detriment, they will be hearers of his words but not practitioners of them. They will continue with their meaningless freedom. He will insist to his dying day from the country that received him in exile, that Africa must unite under African socialism or perish which most likely is what caused him to be deposed."

Patrice Lumumba

"Another will fight valiantly and eventually be betrayed by his own people, inhumanly beaten, killed, his corpse chopped up and burnt in a vat of acid while his local and Western-alien enemies rejoiced. So many of our people will stand up, rise up in different places in different times, in different ways with the same message of freedom for Africa. So many will suffer and die in the awesome struggle for our rights and for justice for our people universally. It is the confidence, conviction, commitment and action of many men and women of this persuasion who will cause us to be free people one day.”

“But when? Can you see when?”

“No one knows when the hour of Africa’s redemption cometh. It is in the wind. It is coming.  One day, like a storm it will be here. When that day comes, all Africa will stand together. Any sane man, race or nation that desires freedom must first of all think in terms of blood. Why, even the Heavenly Father tells us that without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sins. Then how in the name of God, with history before us, do we expect to redeem Africa without preparing ourselves, some of us to die?” Throwing out his hands in puzzlement, he continued.  “As I said before, let me repeat, men who are in earnest are not afraid of consequences.”

“With the Almighty by our side, we can do it.” The Gold Coast man asserted thoughtfully.

“Yes, yes. Our struggle has God Almighty, the God of Africa, as its leader. He is the shield upon our right and on our left hand so why should we be afraid of anyone? They can kill the person but they cannot stop the truly, righteous idea that has already taken root. Others like me have planted the seeds of rebellion deep in the souls of our people, too deep for the enemy to uproot them. It is for others to water and nurture these little vulnerable seedlings so that they will come to fruition and in this way we will never be short of revolutionaries for Africa, for the road is long and the course is rough but we shall overcome.”

“Tell me, with due respect, why are you doing all this for us? Why don’t you confine your efforts to your people over on your side? No offence intended of course.”

“None taken. My friend, in my line of work there is no insult or betrayal that has not already and will not continue to come my way. I have been attacked for being black. I have been called ugly and there have been several other negative criticisms of my intelligence, my educational background and my person, not to mention my integrity from members of my own race who should know better. I smile and move on or give as good as I get." 

"I will now answer your question. I am doing this not for any specific side but for all Africans wherever they happen to be. Everyone who knows my opinions and philosophy will tell you that I believe in the black man’s repatriation to Africa because I believe that the rightful home of all black people is the continent of Africa. Unfortunately, the white man did not treat the seller of Africans any better than the sold or better said, the commodity, so we are, as I said, in the same leaky boat. You, the seller, and me, the commodity. I am an African and even though I have to struggle to get my African identity recognised in the West I will accept no alternative. The West is but a temporary base, a place of forced exile for us. Africa is where we belong."

"Do many of you Africans in the West think the way you do about Africa?"

"Don’t make the mistake of believing that Africans in the West all think this way. Many of our people are still brainwashed into thinking that Africa is a land of jungles infested with snakes, a land where tigers and lions stalk the streets. They think of it as a place where man eats man, where all babies are pot-bellied, where adults and children walk about as naked as the day they were born.  They have been programmed to think that it is a large country of primitive tribes, where there is no civilisation as we know it in the West. There are more who do not know of Timbuktu except as the most undesirable far-flung place and who do not know of Benin, Ethiopia, the Ashantis and Chaka."

"I believe you. Africa has been painted that negatively and more." 

"There are others who see it as an idyllic Paradise, which is just as erroneous a picture as the other is. These people have no intention of repatriating because the former are scared stiff and the latter, since they see it as a heavenly paradise and know that they can only get to the heavenly paradise if they die, won't want to go there since they don't want to die! I don’t want you to go away with false illusions that all African descendants of African slaves in the West are panting to repatriate. My friend in your lifetime you may never even come across more than a handful of repatriates!”

“Why are you fighting so hard to promote repatriation if you don’t think that many will undertake it?”

To be continued

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