All I can say is Yes, Yes, Yes maybe change will finally come to Africa. While I am far from someone who condones violence of any kind  & would rather fall on the side of peaceful negotiations as apposed to the shedding of blood or loss of human life- I have come to realize that sometimes we are given no choice by dictators & oppressors than to fight with everything we have for the chances & opportunities that we should have been rightfully given, but are continuously denied by those who have lost the basic human feeling of not wanting to see another human being suffer, as our dreams of life, liberty, shelter, nourishment & the pursuit of happiness are contiously deferred.

The uproar & protests by the citzens of Tunisia & Egypt  is something Black Africa should pay close attention to because we keep showing the world that Black Africa is not capable of  fighting our own battles for freedom without outsiders telling us what to do & how it should be done. Africans have been saying how they are sick & tired of being sick & tired for so long, but election after election it’s always the same song-leaders who refuse to do right by their people, leaders consumed with so much greed & corruption that they can’t even see past their own needs to remotely pretend to care about the citizens that they are there to serve, leaders who are put in place to serve the interests of our former colonizers & desires to reap more & more profits at the behest of neocolonialism, and some leaders who just refuse to give up their chosen or stolen seat in public office no matter what the people want.

The world continuously sees & hears about African nations & people fighting & killing one another, poor Africans who need charity as little as a penny a day to survive & just a continent that seems to know nothing but filth, squalor, poverty, tribalism & war while fat cat leaders live in more opulence that can easily outdo the best of “lifestyles of the rich & famous” & “Cribs” -the type of lifestyles that westerners can never even imagine as they send their penny a day to feed African orphans. The story that they are not told is how their nations aid & abet these fat cat African leaders by funding or conveniently looking the other way as they continue to strip their citizens of their God given human & civil rights of life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness.

As Ivorians sit by & await the business as usual model by UN & foreign entities to determine their fate, Tunisians & Egyptians have taken their destiny & fate into their own hands & are exposing foreign entities who called themselves friends in times of convenience as they sat by & aided & abetted the disastrous conditions that the citizens of nations like Tunisia & Egypt have now had to come together & fight against in order to attain true freedom in pursuit of any kind of happiness in their sovereign homelands.

“When Egypt had parliamentary elections only two months ago, they were completely rigged. The party of President Hosni Mubarak left the opposition with only 3 percent of the seats. Imagine that. And the American government said that it was “dismayed.” Well, frankly, I was dismayed that all it could say is that it was dismayed. The word was hardly adequate to express the way the Egyptian people felt.Then, as protests built in the streets of Egypt following the overthrow of Tunisia’s dictator, I heard Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s assessment that the government in Egypt is “stable” and “looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people”. I was flabbergasted—and I was puzzled. What did she mean by stable, and at what price? Is it the stability of 29 years of “emergency” laws, a president with imperial power for 30 years, a parliament that is almost a mockery, a judiciary that is not independent? Is that what you call stability? I am sure not. And I am positive that it is not the standard you apply to other countries. What we see in Egypt is pseudo-stability, because real stability only comes with a democratically elected government. If you would like to know why the United States does not have credibility in the Middle East, that is precisely the answer. People were absolutely disappointed in the way you reacted to Egypt’s last election. You reaffirmed their belief that you are applying a double standard for your friends, and siding with an authoritarian regime just because you think it represents your interests. We are staring at social disintegration, economic stagnation, political repression, and we do not hear anything from you, the Americans, or for that matter from the Europeans. So when you say the Egyptian government is looking for ways to respond to the needs of the Egyptian people, I feel like saying, “Well, it’s too late!” …Of course, you in the West have been sold the idea that the only options in the Arab world are between authoritarian regimes and Islamic jihadists. That’s obviously bogus. If we are talking about Egypt, there is a whole rainbow variety of people who are secular, liberal, market-oriented, and if you give them a chance they will organize themselves to elect a government that is modern and moderate. They want desperately to catch up with the rest of the world…” READ MORE

Africans need to stop doing the bidding of leaders who have never served their true interests as citizens yet call on them when in need by using tribal & political divisions to fight their battles against their own brothers & sisters who share the same struggle & fight for life, liberty, shelter, nourishment & the pursuit of  happiness that have been long ignored by these same leaders who have been living lavishly as they watch their citizens live in squalor & abject poverty. If the new era Nkrumah, Lumumba, Kenyatta, Sankara & Biko is found amongst our Arab brothers & sisters then so be it because it is time that we joined together as one Africa because the Africa that those great men of vision & leadership wanted , fough & lost their lives for was a United States of Africa – Unified without any color, tribal or religious division. We must not forget that before those Black African revolutionary visionaries, there was an Arab African revolutionary from Egypt by the name of  Gamal Abdel Nasser who led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 & set the stage for both the Arab & African world’s fight against imperialism & paved the way for the man who would set off the wind of change for Africa’s freedom & call for a United States of Africa with an Egyptian first lady by his side. I as an African stand with my fellow African brothers & sisters in Tunisia & Egypt because as Dr. Kwame Nkrumah said:

“I made it quite clear that from now on – today – we must change our attitudes, our minds, we must realise that from now on, we are no more a colonial but a free and independent people..That New African is ready to fight his own battles and show that after all, the black man AFRICAN is capable of managing his own affairs. We are going to demonstrate to the world, to the other nations, that we are prepared to lay our own foundation.Our own African identity. We are going to create our own African personality and identity. It’s the only way that we can show the world that we are ready for own battles. We have awakened. Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa. We will not sleep anymore. Today, from now on, there is a New African in the world..Freedom is not something that one people can bestow on another as a gift. Thy claim it as their own and none can keep it from them. We face neither East nor West: We Face Forward!!!

All Africans can learn a thing or two from what is going down in Egypt & Tunisia because the final outcome will bring about a new era wind of change & determine the future of Africa!  We should all come together as global Africans to put forth affirmations of goodness & greatness for Africa’s future because we have all collectively suffered for far too long. As we look to future Africa, all I can think of is Bob Marley’s prophetic words- “how good & how pleasant it would be before God & man to see the unification of all Africans…I’ll tell you who we are under the sun…Africa Unite for the benefit of your people“! If Africa Burns, We All Burn With It..so it is time that we stop being renters of our sovereignty, our natural resources & of our nations…It is time that we behave as the owners that we are & take it upon ourselves to fix the cracks in our foundation because If Africa Burns…We all Burn With It! FORWARD EVER, BACKWARD NEVER…AFRICA RISE!

Tunisa Photo Credit: Tano Designs

Dear Presidents/Prime Ministers,

On behalf of the poor people of Africa, I send you this protest letter. We are angry. Yes we the people are very angry. We have endured your ill conceived, hash and austere economic and social policies for quite too long. We have watched silently to see you and your cronies enjoy while we the masses continue to suffer. We have no jobs, no income, no savings and have no place to lay our heads while you and your selected few live in mansions at the expense of the very poor you are refusing to take care of. You have consistently ignored all our cry for help even though you know our plights very well.

Are you not appalled by the scale of poverty and the living condition of the people? Are you not appalled to see children selling on the street instead of being in the classroom? Are you not appalled to see children sleeping rough on the streets of our capital cities and scavenging for food while you and you cronies frequent between five star hotels? Don’t you care about the dignity of the people you claim to be serving? For years you have asked us to sacrifice and even today we are still sacrificing, but anytime we look at you and your circle of friends we see that you are in a different suit, in a different four wheel drive, in a different hotel, and in a company of ladies, surrounded by bodyguards. How many more years should we continue to sacrifice and tighten our belts why you and your cronies enjoy from our sweat? We cannot continue any longer. No we cannot.

We are tired of all of you who call yourself leaders of the people. We are tired of the dictatorships, media censorship, torture, force imprisonment, wars and the instabilities. We are tired of being refugees. We are tired of seeing our children die of common preventable diseases. We are tired of sharing water from the same source with animals, water infested with bacteria and viruses. We are tired of lack of access to education, health, energy, food, medicines, shelter and clothing. We are tired of having to work with cutlasses and hoes in this 21st century. We are tired of having to rely on nature to plant our crops. We are tired of having to plant without fertilizers. We are tired of having to use 18th century seeds that yield next to nothing. We are tired of having to endure poverty, starvation, diseases, humiliation, torture, oppression, in your hands.

Above all, we are tired of your excesses. We are tired of your corrupt practices and the looting of the treasuries. Your foreign bank accounts are swollen with hundreds of millions of dollars, pounds and Euros while hundreds of millions of people live on one dollar a day.

We are tired of you using our money to procure arms for your own protection while children go to school barefooted and on empty stomach; while hospitals are without essential medicines; while factories are folding up for lack of electricity; and while harvested crops remain in the bush for lack of good roads. We are tired of all your inactions, the wait and see and the do nothing approaches to problem solving.

There are many of you that we have not chosen or asked to lead us yet are carrying themselves as our leaders. Such people we demand should retire and allow elections to take place. We demand an end to torture in Egypt and starvation in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. We demand an end to the dictatorial rule in Libya, Egypt, Cameroon, Gabon, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Uganda and the Gambia. We demand an end to the instabilities in DR. Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Northern Uganda, Chad and Madagascar. We demand an end to the genocide in Darfur and the killing of innocent children, women and civilians.

We demand an end to the official corruption and graft in Nigeria, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Angola, DR. Congo, Chad, South Africa and Guinea. We demand an end to the eroding of democratic values in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Egypt, Mauritania, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and Gabon. We demand an end to the use of the continent as a hub for cocaine shipment to Europe.

We demand better public services now. We demand better education, health, transport and telecommunication infrastructures now. We demand affordable housing now. We demand irrigation facilities, tractors, equipment and improved seeds for our farmers now. You’ve asked us to tighten our belts while you have loosened yours. This cannot go on any more. We are starving to death while you are developing protruding bellies. You are having lavish birthday parties when cholera and starvation is threatening us.

We demand a share in the revenue from the sale of oil, gas, gold, diamond, timber, cocoa, coffee, coltan, manganese, copper, bauxite and tin ore. We demand a say in the way your governments are run; a say in the way you and your ministers are selected. We demand a say in the way you spend our money; and a say in the way contracts are awarded. It is not going to be business as usual anymore. We demand change now. We demand probity and accountability now. We demand political action to solve the numerous problems facing we the people.

Look at the world around you. Don’t you see or hear what is going in Asia, Latin America, Europe and North America? Can’t you see that you and your people are being left behind? When you meet with your colleagues in Africa or sit in your offices, how many of the things you see or use are made here in Africa? Aren’t you ashamed that after ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years in power your people still use hoes and cutlasses for farming, tools their forefathers used before they were colonised? Aren’t you ashamed that after all these years of independence your people cannot feed themselves; cannot read and write; rely on handouts from Europe and America; and the youth are in a hurry to leave the continent for you? Can’t you see?

Well, a word to the wise is enough but remember that you can fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time but you cannot fool all the people all the time. We are watching.

By Lord Aikins Adusei
(On behalf of the People of Africa)
Source: Lord Aikins Adusei 

http://www.modernghana.com/news/204728/1/a-protest-letter-to-the-governments-and-politician.html