By Frank O'Collins (April 2007)
 
  Cry mother Africa, for your children weep. Not for hunger nor war, but for the lack of courage in the face of tyranny.
  
  Courage is nothing if not tested. Silence against desperate men, who cling both to power and to life, only emboldens them and gives their rotten souls new life.
  
  For Colonialism did not leave Africa with the last of the troops of the Empires. It remains alive and well in the hearts of selfish men and women, who govern the hope and dreams of their people like the very slave traders that cursed and imprisoned their own ancestors.
  
  For Colonialism is an idea, a terrible concept- that upon seizing power under whatever pretext, the resources, the wealth and the souls of a nation may be subverted for personal pleasure and gain.
  
  Colonialism was never about colour- about those born of white, black or any other skin. It was and has always been how men and women who know better, who given the hopes of their people and ancestors choose to save or destroy their lands.
  
  The new masters  
  Now it is the pioneers and heroes that have become the new slave masters. They now protect one another, their power, their legacy like the European empires of older times.
  
  They refuse to acknowledge the destruction of Zimbabwe. They refuse to speak out publicly against the evil of Mugabe- a man intent of taking a whole country to the grave with him.
  
  Mugabe has etched himself in the history of Africa as the very worst of the Colonial minds, worse even than the most barbaric of European conquests.
  
  How long will nations such as South Africa stand silently by while a wholly corrupted and sick man and his regime take a whole nation of people back to the stone age and starvation?
  
  How long will the African Union fear its own future by accommodating the atrocities of Dafur, Somalia and Zimbabwe.
  
  The Sudan has secured itself in infamy as both a nation wholly run to the mind of Colonialists and despots, that defile the very name of Muhammad, of Allah and everything that Islam represents every day it continues to murder innocent people for profit, for land and for pleasure.
  
  How long will the good men of the Sudan sit on their hands and claim to be good Muslims. Their inaction shows they have no right to claim such a title. They are a disgrace in the eyes of Allah and humanity. For they support a regime of grave robbers, a regime of fools drunk in their own self importance and untouchability.
  
  Sadly, these regimes are not the first, nor possibly the last to rise from the crippled state boundaries that divide Africa without regard for tribe, landmark, nor history.
  
  Africa is not cursed, but crippled by morally inept and weak leadership. Africa is not doomed, but for leaders who seek to behave like slave masters to their own people, for a short life of luxury and an eternity of damnation.
  
  For what is life if it is not lived?
 
  Today, Africans stand in many places as free men and women on paper, but in their fearful hearts they remain as slaves to their fears and greed, to a system that continues to place a low price on the value of human dignity.
  
  This then is the challenge. Shall Zimbabwe, shall Sudan be the last, or just the latest? Shall Africans continue to hide and run away as cowards or is this the time for change?
  
  Steel may cut the flesh, bullets may smash our brains, but nothing can destroy an idea if people are willing to give their life for it.
  
  For every good person willing to die for freedom, for the final end of Colonialism in Africa, ten thousand gain self respect and the fire to also make a stand.
  
  Only fear is the real enemy.
  
  No matter how much terror a despicable person may inflict, their reign cannot withstand the power of justice when men and women stand and say enough.
  
  The educated of Africa must choose, whether to continue to behave like the slave masters, who treated their ancestors the same way they treat their fellow citizens today, or to show some moral courage and reform the African Union?
  
  Nothing is forever, no curse is unable to be broken. Even the worst crimes can be forgiven. For the sake of mother Africa, let us see the end to the mindset that allows dictators to continue to exist with impunity. Let the light of hope shine through every town, every city. Free at last, thank God, thank Allah, we are free at last.
  
     
     
     

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