Wise Nkrumah, Leaves Behind “Unwise Children”

You were so wise and the Black continent adored you for that. Finding yourself in the company of other wise colleagues in the other parts of Africa, you had only one vision for Africa: to move the continent from one that has been colonized to a free land with properties. Julius Nyerere was doing equally well in Tanzania, Nelson Mandela for South Africa, Patrice Lumumba for Sr Congo, and all the brothers on the other side of Africa were driven by their wisdom and were moving the continent to a better place.

Soon, you all had to respect nature. It was time for you to individually join our African ancestors. As William Shakespeare will say, your performance on the stage came to an end you bowed in honor to your audience. Sickness and old age got in the scene and you all had to leave us. But then we were sure of a continuation of your legacies through the children you left behind. Soon did we realize that they were all ‘unwise’; they never had any trace of you in them. Your blood is not what run through them all.

Your children at the helm of affairs are all moved with such apathy. They are cruel, selfish, money launderers, criminals and sometimes just useless. They have deliberately destroyed everything you did in Tanzania, Morocco, Dr Congo Togo, Benin, Kenya, Algeria, Uganda, Ghana, etc. This, to some of us is like a deliberate and conscious efforts made to wipe memories of you people from our heads. But they lie! We have read from books about the great things you did. By the fireside, your achievements were retold. We look around and there no traces.

Today, political affiliations have separated people of the same colour and have turned them into enemies. We consciously work to oppose our own bright future. Oh! How poor are we today! Did Nyerere die with all his wisdom? Is there a pot we need to locate to find the wisdom of Mandela? Where can we find the sense in uniting ourselves as one, if not at a continental level, at country level? We are the assassinators of our development! But we the youths of today don’t want to walk on the path our parents are taking, and that is why we need you.

We await your visit in our dreams, where we hope to sit by the fireside and re-listen to your wise ways. Visit us once more, Nyerere and we shall not forsake that chance. Speak in the language you all sounded, “our independence is useless until all Africa Unite”. Speak these words to us once more. And while we await that you appear by the fireside, and have assumed your seats to impact onto us wisdom, we will cloth ourselves in ashes and mourn our bad ways.

Shortly have we known that we were unwise though you were wise. And we no longer presume that coming from a lineage of wise people will automatically make us become wise. We await your visit wise ones. I am one of your great grandchildren; Emmanuel Graham Nyameke.