It is quite pathetic that neither panAfricanism nor Ubuntu, and their attendant alluring ideals that I am well schooled in, could prevent me from thinking about my compatriots in South Africa as the CAN 2nd Quarter Final football match between Super Eagles (who were truly super for the night) and the BafanaBafana boys slowly 'gallops' to an end.
In fact, rather than been mad at the center referee for granting that scurvy goal, I was momentarily happy that the tension would ease, somehow, somewhere in the South of Africa. This is not my Africa; not the Africa envisioned by our authentic and ideologically grounded leaders, like Nkrumah, Azikiwe, Nyerere (I am restrained from adding Awolowo because many political gladiators brandishing the 'Awoist' clan affiliation today are morons and unrepentant homolooters), etc
We fought colonialism together; we gave South African freedom fighters all the support we could including reciting antiapatheid songs in primary and secondary schools. We offered scholarships and housed South African leaders. We lodged and supported moves and motions at the international level to free South Africa from the chains of the Apartheid, the colonial masters. We were brothers then!
In fact, I could remember that a distant cousin, a human right activist was glued unrepentantly to the transistor radio awaiting news and calls for protest or gatherings to discuss 'freedom of fellow Africans', ''our brothers''. Sarafina was promoted here, in Nigeria, as choice movie in cinemas deliberately to echo that need for freedom. Every morning we were forced to recite the line : 'Apartheid is a crime against humanity; Africa must be free'' on the school assembly ground. Fond memories these are.
I was jolted to consciousness with a shout of 'goal'! Ekong has done the needful or is it the needless? Nigeria has won the tension soaked quarter final football match against South Africa. Would this be an undoing or another excuse to unleash 'brotherly terror' on another brother? Would Nigerians in Johannesburg pub be able to shout 'goal!' as I am able to, here at the +233 Jazz and Grills Bar in Accra?
I want to be an African in the true sense of the word! I love to, and would be happy to, share a table and palmwine with brothers and be free to do so, like true brothers should. Oh!I am worried! I am bothered! Would my sons, Damola and Dapo, be able to and be comfortable to transverse African countries as I managed to do without being bogged by the memories of 'brothers 'macheteing'/butchering and burning fellow brothers', for whatever reasons?
Mine were memories of brothers fighting for and with brothers side by sides for freedom; what will those of my sons be?
Oh! Africa! Oh! Brothers! Away with xenophobia, time for African rebirth!
Uhuru where art thou?
Ire o!
Adeyemi J Ademowo, a sociocultural analyst and development anthropologist, AHP postdoctoral Fellow-in-residence at IIAS Ghana, works with Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti
Pictures:
Helion.co. UK and Doctors Report. Com
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