Insight Africa

I never attempted to court destiny, knowing her nature she would eventually make her way over to me. She takes time out of her busy schedule to send me a message once in awhile, I read it and place it in the usual pile. This last letter came after a few months of a severed connection; she said without freedom everything else is just fruitless ambition. I sent back a candid reply. Telling her, every morning I am squeezing lumps of coal trying to birth diamonds to finance the pressures of a revolution. If it wasn’t for my wife’s wisdom, refining the raggedness of my vision, I would be lost in indignation. Her time gives my thoughts a private scene for reflection, her presence in itself is like completely different location.   Lock and key, that which is priceless was always meant to be hers, inescapable my inner emotions she stirs. Essential is her affection, water and oxygen they come after her smile. She walks on my left denying even my shadow any legroom; only a queen...

In the run up to the end of 2013, the continent of Africa saw a significant rise in the number of conflicts claiming lives, displacing thousands of people and destroying property. Most if not all of these clashes were identified as having been founded on either ethnic or religious tensions. At least in the theme the world media has been propagating, this might seem to be the paradigm. Yet for those like me who tend to conscientiously follow the happenings of the African continent and the world at large, there seems to be another dimension that is going unnoticed or deliberately underreported. From Central Republic of Africa, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, and South Sudan all we hear is how tribalism or religion is causing a rift between people within the same borders: people who for centuries lived side by side in peace, might I add. The former colonialists with their own economic and social failures are ever ready to play the role of saviours and none more daring than the French, the...