Editor,

RE: "Why they want you to ‘get over colonialism’” (The New Times, February 15).

All of them hold very extravagant commemoration of their victories in the 1914-18 and 1939-45 wars. Why would they do that I wonder; why not just forget and move on, especially when they ask us to forget our own terrible losses a bare two decades ago in which some of them were active perpetrators while the others just looked on unconcernedly?

Given their inglorious roles in both colonialism and subsequent widespread crimes on our continent, in general and Rwanda in particular, one wonders whence they get the gall to ask us to forget and to move on, especially that such selective memory loss is intended to benefit only themselves.

Mwene Kalinda

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After a bare three centuries, we, ourselves, are begging them to enslave us again: thousands are drowning each year in the Mediterranean trying to join the master of their fathers.

The so-called leaders of ours are wandering the globe restless, from west-to-east, to impress them to come and exploit us at home, while the illiterate mass is busy planting tea, coffee and flowers to soothe the gustative buds and the olfactory senses of the masters on London, Amsterdam and New York, while their kids remain undernourished and stunted, parents struggling hard to buy them secondhand clothes from those former masters of ours.

Our politics and our destiny as a people are designed by and deployed from the master king’s chair in London, Paris and New York, but the implemented and enforced at home by our ruthless rulers...

We have traded our "ubuntu” approach to life and adopted the master’s elitist philosophy, have quickly abandoned our culture which, for millennia, has helped us to survive in this hostile world.

That is why you see genocides happening (and more are bound to happen, if we don’t define/determine our identity and place in this changing world).

I think the problem lies on our hand not in the master’s. If you doubt any just only check on how African countries are hurdled in regional grouping—EAC, SADEC, ECOWAS, COMESA, ECCAS, UMA, UEMOA, CEPEGL, IGAD, CEDEAO, IOC, CEEAC, CEMAC...

Ruterandongonzi