By Belayneh Abate
As you, the African rulers, look wealthier than the leaders of prosperous nations at the annual African Union meeting, Africans are falling like dry leaves suffering from corona virus, other preventable communicable diseases, starvation, ethnic conflicts, crime against humanity and genocides.
The heinous African Rulers! I don’t have to say dears because you are not the dears of Africans; neither do I need to say leaders precisely because you are not leaders. If I must address you by name, I would rather say the monstrous dictators.
As usual, you are enjoying your annual vacation in Addis Ababa while your people are suffering from endless massacre, displacement, starvation and preventable diseases.
Are you here to promote the interests of Africa or to promote your interests? Are you here to solve Africa’s health problems or to discuss for the best health care providers in the West for you and your families? Are you here to solve Africa’s economic and social problems or to search for the Western and Eastern banks where you can store the money you robbed? Are you here to talk about freedom of speech or to lobby “human right activities” and hypocrite Western diplomats that accuse you of heinous crimes, not because they care about your African victims, but to make you loyal puppet rulers?
Do you think you represent Africans? Alas representation! Let’s forget the phony representation and talk about your attires. Look at your ties! Nice ties; aren’t they? Who purchased them for you? Look at your suits! Marvelous! Where did you get them from? What do the labels scratching the back of your chunky necks read? I am sure, the labels do not pronounce made in Abuja, Kinshasa, Lagos, Addis Ababa or Nairobi; do they? While considering yourselves as “African leaders” you are promoting the commodities of France, Italy, Great Britain, USA and others, and you are proud of it; Aren’t you? Look at your shirts! They are unequivocally classical; aren’t they? Allah wua Kiber! Look at your shoes! Astoundingly archetypal and shimmering! How much you shelled out for these distinctive shoes? Who paid for these luxurious outfits?
What percent of the people, you disgracefully claim to represent, wear these types of ties, suits, shirts and shoes like you do? Representation by definition is symbolizing the whole. In other words, representatives are samples of the whole. Do you really consider yourselves as samples of the whole Africa?
I request each of you to look at each other for one moment. I believe you observed pumpkin cheeks, chunky necks and distended bellies; Didn’t you? I also demand that you compare the pictures you had before assuming your power with the current ones. May I ask what you regularly put in your plates in the palaces you luxuriously live in? Is it interfering in your personal life if we want to know the beverages you enjoy, the couches you park yourselves on and the beds you snooze in? What portions of the people in your tyrannical rule obtain access to one meal and a glass of water in a day? Do not some family members eat dinner in a shift every day because no enough food for the family? What portion of your general population is homeless? What proportions of the African infants, the young and the elderly die from man-made starvation?
Unlike your mind, your flesh looks healthy; doesn’t it? Where do you get your quality health care services? Ehi… that is right! Even when you have temporary indigestion from gulping down too much, you dash to Europe, America, and Israel by chartered airplanes; don’t you? On the other hand, what portion of African population has access to the minimum health care services even once in 25 years? What fraction of African population dies from communicable diseases, which basically are turned to history and locked up in museum in western countries? What segments of African population still utilize stone-age technologies to farm, communicate and travel?
Despite this colossal lifestyle discrepancy between you and ordinary Africans, you still think you represent destitute Africans; don’t you? O lord! Even those of you who came from East Africa are raising your hands to profess that you represent your people! I shall say at this juncture that your conscience plates are either congenitally absent or surgically removed.
Please close your eyes and review your administrations in silence. Do not your ministers, congressmen, senators, and managers serve like water pipes that do not leak or rust whatever corrosive material you pass through them? Do not they convey your unholy orders and commands unaltered as long as you feed them? Do not you invest substantial amount of your budget to spy your own people? Do not you bridle your people like horses and mules? Do not you place your peoples under nonstop restraining orders to deprive them of using their sense organs and processing brains? Do not most of you beg on behalf of your people and exploit the baloney you received from West and East to strengthen your dictatorial powers?
Who owns the mass media? Will your mass media speak the truth ever? Do people believe even the date and the time portrayed at the bottom of your TV screen? Are not your people suffering from suppurative chronic ear infections because of your eternal lies and irksome voices? Are not your people sick of watching you acting like experts in economics, engineering, agriculture, public health, medicine, journalism, and other professions while you, in fact, employ your muscles as solitary organs of thinking? Don’t you hound, silence, or put experts in exile if they don’t agree with your callous and precarious behaviors?
Do you mind looking at your own hands at this moment, please? Aha! Your decorated wrists and fingers with diamond and gold trinkets look soft and clean! However, are your hands unsoiled and shiny as they appear in this bogusly garnished China- made African Union hall? How many of you have hands doused with blood? How many of you eliminated even your own colleagues and comrades, during your journeys and ascensions towards power? How often you direct your soldiers to kill your fellow Africans for no apparent reason? How many of you wreak ethnic fracas to stay in power? How often you coerce your flunky judges to rule in favor of your chair? How many million innocent people die, languish in jails, and suffer from torture under your wicked rules? How many children live under orphanage because you wiped out their parents? How many parents shed tears as we speak because you executed, arrested, and locked up their children? Do people elect robbers, butchers, and murderers? Do you still assume that you represent Africans? Shame on you!
I wish we had the opportunity to discuss concepts and ideas that foster development and annihilate misery in Africa. Unfortunately, however; most of you, who fly to Addis Ababa every February carry skulls engorged with lusts of power and material treasure. Sorry dictators for wasting your WHISKY and STEAK time. Enjoy the Africans’ flesh and blood until you face the final call known as death-a natural conqueror that cannot be embezzled, tortured or exterminated unlike your African victims.
With best disregards,
Belayneh Abate
The writer can be reached at abatebelai@yahoo.com
This organization, The AU, has had its own ups and downs since it was inaugurated in 1963. I remember how it uplifted my moral then thinking that I am somebody in the face of those who looked down to people like me and the rest of my African brothers and sisters. It had become a launching pad and safe haven for those who were struggling to throw away the yoke of colonialism and apartheid. It gave those who were thinking to stay around are colonial rulers a serious 2nd thought. It is has its own bad part when it became a den of dictators for several decades. But slowly things started to look up when more and more countries chose the democratic ways of governance. But still it is seen a bastion of smooth operator smart alecks and leaders with well honed sticky fingers. Some of them seem to even think they are creators of their own people. Some even thought they had the power to heal patient from deadly diseases like HIV!!! So the making of AU has been a work-in-progress for 5 decades now. It is maturing and there is no other alternative. None at this point!!! This decision by the leaders of its members to hold their summit in Addis/Finfine shows AU’s maturity. Buhari is in the audience y’all! Kagame, Kenyatta, Senegal, Mali etc., etc., are in the house y’all!!! This is when the EU’s in all are busy hauling their citizens away from ‘besieged’ Addis/Finfine. My African brothers and sisters will never turn their faces away from their jewel, that gem of the colored. Never!!! Ok republic day dreaming bigots! Go and jump in the lake and never come up!!!!