The days of the starving children and armed militia roaming the red soil seemed to have passed,The coverage of Africa turning to different angles,It is a puzzle on the minds of many; whether to celebrate or hide their smug satisfaction.Celebrations and trumpets, the united tongue understood,A declaration had been loudly passed across; the days of colonization had ended and the Dark Continent was back in the hands of her own.The belief was that we would handle just fine. We are the generation of ‘hope’ and that is exactly what we held onto.Lands so torn by guns held by teenagers and filled with limbless children begun to rise up.The images not so grim but coloured to show winding tarmac roads and glass-paned skyscrapers,The Babylon tower was being built.The bricks still red hot; the faith was palpable, you could reach out and grab a handful.The hunger to join the world was so strong; human nature even stronger. We all wanted to be ahead of the rest; we all had our reasons to be the way we were. We had a right to be corrupt.It was no longer a matter of colour, or of who stomped on whom, It was simply ‘one man for himself’The tale metamorphosized;The unspoken truth was that it was a flash forward back to square one. A step back into starved children and armed militia.Denied the fruit of the ancestor’s labour, freedom was back to being a privilege,Sinking deep; our fingers turned to point; we hated that we couldn’t find who to dump the blame on.But we were the culprits. Greed, fear and jealousy twisting us back into the dark pit.Oh, red soils, hold on to the ‘hope’! Those days will come to us, rolling to us like a crashing wave, Your generosity will be worshipped; your rains, something our children will sing about,We shall learn the difference between ‘Constructive criticism’ and ‘Being rebellious’Education will not be schools; we shall learn to be open minded, to love evolution and appreciate revolution,We shall not be defined as a third world continent; our grandeur much deeper than that,You will once again be known as the ‘Motherland of all’
