Pan-Africanist crusaders promise us a raw deal

Pan-Africanism has got many crusaders in Africa in general and Uganda in particular. But no serious fruits are forth coming. In reference to how pan-Africanists always project themselves as though they are working hard to salvage the African land, it leaves a lot to be desired when you see what goes on in Africa.

For whichever they see as taking the Black man backwards, they complain about it and only settle as though someone is going to appear and provide solutions. They highlight problems, but never provide with solutions.
For example, they always complain about the type of education system the colonialists left us, saying it is bad. They forget that the White man was doing what he did deliberately because he wanted clerks, and interpreters to make his work of dominating Africa easier.

For all the short comings in Uganda’s education system, it is because the pan-Africanists only posture. Our education system has failed to produce competent people that can deliver progress to Uganda. This is not because learners are bad, but what they learn mainly emphasises distinctions and first class diplomas and degrees.

President Museveni, who has pan-Africanism as one of the pillars for which he says his party stands, has not done enough to improve our education system. When Prof Kodri of Makerere University championed the making of a car, instead of calling for huge investment in science, he was appointed a minister. Is that an investment in science?

The high level of corruption in the country where every project that is worked on is either under probe while many completed ones exhibit shoddy work is cause for worry. We still borrow and misappropriate money from the people we say are bad. What an irony! The self professed pan-Africanists in leadership positions have continued to drive in fuel guzzlers when those they represent can hardly eat two meals a day.

Before the emergence of our so-called pan-Africanists, meals were easy to get and hospitals had medicines. The pan-Africanists might have built a number of health centres but only a few of them are stocked with drugs.
Recently, when the US President abused Africans, the good pan-Africanist leaders never convened to ask themselves why the good US president abused them. That is the challenges facing our pan-Africanists, who are allegedly on the frontline pursuing good for Africa. Instead of looking for solutions to our challenges, they think of confronting those who are open enough to tell them that they have problems.

The same remarks were made by former US president Barack Obama when he addressed youth leaders in South Africa, only that Obama was diplomatic to say that Africa is referred to in the Western world as a huge chunk of land on the world map. Trump was better for he recognised that there were people in Africa though not very useful.
We are portrayed like that because our leaders do not mind the plight of their people who are facing abject poverty.

Of recent, in the Pearl of Africa, there has emerged a project of employment abroad. Many companies have been licensed to take Ugandans abroad for work. This is a disaster because we are sending away our productive labour to the Middle East and else where.
The wars that have plagued Africa are not because we are short of pan-Africanists, but it is because we are short of pan-Africanists who believe in what they say.

Some of our leaders have said they told former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere to keep out of a Ugandan war when they were fighting Obote and that is why they managed to defeat Obote. Had Nyerere fought on the side of Obote, his friend, the war against Obote would have been lost. Nyerere had shown the potential to win a war when helped in flashing out Idi Amini.

Some of the African leaders even take pride in getting involved in wars in other African countries where fellow Africans shoot at other Africans who feel that their countries are being ruled the wrong way. Other African armies are in Somalia protecting a weak government that cannot stand on its own without peace keepers.

The question is, why don’t we withdraw and give the Somalis a chance to sort themselves out? In south Sudan, gun fire is yet to subside as members the different communities shoot at each other.
Finally, it is the United Nations under the leadership of the people whom we call a spoilers trying to call for peace in the war-torn country. All this leaves Africa and Africans in a big mess.
[email protected]