When the world, especially the Western world speaks of Africa, the tendency is to speak in disparaging terms of disasters, and the impossibility of change. They speak in condescending platitudes of millions dead in civil wars, millions dying of Aids and millions of refugees [who does the counting?]. It is as if Africa were one incurable festering sore.

Yet Africa is the birthplace of humankind; the builder of pyramids; a resource-rich continent of astonishing diversity, peopled with humans who have endured atrocities, imperialism, colonialism, the loss of over 100 million of its people in the transatlantic slave trade, ongoing exploitation and marginalization.

Africa was divided up by European Powers in the Scramble for Africa in the 1890s. Entire indigenous nations were decimated and destroyed, the cases of the Herero and San people being among the most salient. Africans were driven off from their land to make way for illegal European farms and settlements. In 1896, white settlers invaded what is today Zimbabwe, drove the Ndebele off their land and hanged those who resisted this move [Mugabe’s taking back of these stolen lands is merely the righting of a grievous wrong, no matter the circumstances of that seizure].

On March 1st 1896, King Menelik of Ethiopia defeated a 20,000-man Italian army sent to colonize the kingdom, killing 6000, putting the rest to flight at Adowa and capturing 2000 prisoners. The surviving Italians retreated to Eritrea, then an Ethiopian province, and sowed the seeds of dissension which resulted in today’s division of Ethiopia from its traditional province. In our time, guerilla armies defeated the NATO and US-armed Portuguese armies of Dictator Salazar in three territories, Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique.

King Leopold of Belgium seized the Congo and decimated the population by 10 million to feed his greed for land and rubber plantations. In Tanganyika [Tanzania], the Germans stamped out the Maji-Maji land revolts, hanging members of the resistance in their hundreds. The Portuguese and French were no different. In Kenya, the British demonized the peasant Mau Mau rebellion, smearing it as a tribal uprising, instead of the genuine anti-colonial precursor that it really was. So successful was British disinformation that today, some Kenyans shun ‘Mau-Mau’ as a mere African regression into tribal barbarity and refuse to accord its heroic leaders the recognition they deserve as fighters for African dignity and freedom.

Despite overwhelming odds, Africans have resisted and repeatedly reaffirmed African dignity and identity. 500 years after the first enslaved Africans were brought to Brazil, forcibly Christianized and stripped of their names and culture, their religious beliefs outlawed, African religion has resurfaced. The Candomble religion sued in court to practice their faith and today there are over 5000 temples to this African religion in Brazil.

African religious beliefs pervade Cuba, the West Indies and Latin America. The martial art of capoeira, indigenous to Angola, has experienced a resurgence with schools both in Brazil and Angola. Resistance, revival and reaffirmation indicate that Africans seek reattachment to that psyche and spirit of Africanness which was brutally ripped out by slave trade and the subsequent depredations of colonialism and imperialism. The question of African continental unification is not a question for debate or analysis but for instant action. Some Africans refuse to believe in the possibility and inevitability of the United States of Africa or the One African Republic. The naysayers claim that Africa is too big, too diverse, has too many languages to become one United State. What they decline to acknowledge is that with one African political, military, economic and legislative entity, the foreign exploitation of Africa will become less manageable than it is now- for the relationship between Africa and the rest of the world has always been one of the exploiter and exploited.

The African Liberation War has never ceased. Africa is not truly free despite flags and national anthems and UN seats. How can Africa be free when Europeans and Americans tell Africans who they must elect to chair the AU; insist on economically unequal trade patterns; reduce the Continent to begging through aid programs which create dependency and force foreign armies and bases on the Continent in the name of fighting spurious ‘wars on terror?’

At the most recent AU summit, the forces of ‘gradualism’ prevailed [egged on by ‘advisers’ from Europe and America] indicating that 100 years from now they will still say Africa is not ready for unification. But who among African leaders has asked the people their opinion? Are they afraid that the answer will force them to action? People took up arms against the Portuguese and the ‘Rhodesians’ and the apartheid racists without hesitation and self-doubt which seem to characterize today’s leaders.

Africa desperately needs a Cultural Revolution. One African government will harness the more than 900 million Africans who are willing, led by leaders who are neither hesitant nor timid. A thing becomes a reality by doing, not by waiting and hoping. The people of Africa may seem docile, long-suffering but so did the Kulaks in Russia before 1917. Africans must learn as they build instead of waiting for ideal conditions or Western approval. Yes, there will be mistakes, blunders but once the goal is set, each step forward will become easier. Africa has to unite. It is a question of survival!