A call to African Unity.......

Have you ever imagined the/a United States of Africa? What about a free Africa, a free African people, a united African people? I have been searching the corridors of my mind to see the origins of my imagination of a United African village, nation, state, continent and people. Perhaps it is my inexperience or the tiredness of my spirit that clouds my vision. But I am lost. What must, should, can, will a free Africa be like? Though my imagination runs wild and my preoccupation with Freedom and Unity has sent me places, I am still without an answer. And the fact that my parents named me Lwangunuko-meaning Freedom, does not help either. Ah, perhaps that is where I must start my quest- at the doorstep of my name and identity. But, my middle name only speaks about a state of being untied. And that does not seem to fully encompass the aspirations of my imagination. So, I am sitting here, still wondering what exactly it is that African people want. Perhaps it is not even right to ask what African people want as if we are just one or a small group, when in fact we represent so many needs, aspirations, wants, and more.

For so long I have heard people talk about a United Africa in a physical sense of countries joined together, doing business together, perhaps speaking the same language, perhaps not under the yoke of neocolonialism and perhaps... I have always tried to imagine a scenario that is presented by a physical unification of the continent. And I am beginning to think of it in the context of a union between people. The Africa that many talk of is like the purely physical union of male and female. It can produce life, misery, and nothing whatsoever. The Africa that is missing is a spiritual Africa where freedom is a right and a responsibility, where unity is more that the fact that we are black or that you my broda and sister. It is a unity that transcends economics, politics, but rather lays the ground for these to thrive. It is a unity based on values, not merely geographic boundaries that are meaningless without the necessary spiritual infrastructure to mend them together.

It does not matter how much money, AID or no AID that we receive from whomever or the dollars that we get in loans, grants, ransom, pledges. We need to ask ourselves whether we are cultivating the values that will bring us to freedom. Freedom, not just from hunger, nakedness, and peril, but freedom of spirit. Lwangunuko.