Our Dear Ghana: We mourn with you over thawed dreams as stars slipped through our fingers. Carried away by powerful currents of cheats through our chequered history. We mourn, stopped by white hands. Our dreams dipped and within a split second history was frozen between bars.
Replay the scene and it all becomes all too familiar.The pain and loss, stab like the thousand daggers buried in our history, the same cheats, the same cheating white hands.
The same white hands have grappled and tried to choke the African dream, as shackled slaves trudged through deep African jungles. The same white hands shoved and lashed out. The same white hands fingered the trigger and at gun point, stole our ancient genealogical thrones ; those white hands raped our wild cocoa, palm oil and groundnut plantations. The same hands held the whips that fed their industrial revolution on the furrowed backs of our sweat and blood. Caucasian or South American in their hands our story is the same .
The same white hands signed and vowed independence. But with the same white hand stole the freedom of our great grand children, drowned in the womb in debt. They seduced our ignorance with sugar coated lollipops from MEMBERS ONLY "PARIS CLUB".
From America, to England, England to France, France to Germany, China to Uruguay ,Yes Uruguay! Our chequered autobiography is the same. Like an unending yarn playing back the years of shroud and lies.The cheating and the plunder of our innocence goes on. Always at knife edge. Always at the point when the African breathes in to exhale and take flight; each and every time on our precipice. Each and every time the same white hands snuffs ,the same white hands smother our dreams.This is the unending merry go round of our broken record.
Over and over again the record pin jumps over the crack in our collective lives as Africans. Therefore our song never embraces its last note. Our story is the same complete cracked crackle.The same white hands spin this unending tragedy over and over again. From our history to our governments, to our modern institutions,the same white hands dictate the games of our African lives.They handle the ball of our socio political life.They blow the whistle for foreign aid.They offer us a once in a lifetime opportunity. And they say leap. Leap because your whole life depends on this. And so we leaped. And we leaped and hit the bar, the bar they built, the bar that chants, "This is how far the African will ever go".
Broken and defrauded, this is our story, a thousand years rolled into a split second. It doesn't matter if the ball crossed the line. Win or lose, this is our parable.Today we mourn on our own Robben Island. But one day freedom shall come, and like Mandela we will rule the world.
Take heart our black stars. Like Spartans you lost this battle, but you won the war.The war over prejudice, the war over caucasian stereotypical commentaries of the laid back, clueless black African man. Today you displayed Spartan gladiatorial courage, aggression, strategy, passion and honour. You made us so proud, you gave us a glimpse of the new Black African in the 21st Century. And for this the black continent is grateful to you.
Thank You Ghana once again, for leading the way.
Written by Ata Ikidddeh
UK (Essex)
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