We build up walls based on filial loyalties, tribe, region, religion, place of birth, and any other trivial excuse we can find. These divisions lead to fatal conclusions many times.

What do you make of the resent xenophobic killings that took place in South Africa? How can you explain it? What suffices as an explanation for men and women making a spectacle of a dying Zimbabwean?

This sort of thing has been replicated through out Africa; from pre and post- civil war Nigeria, Idi Amin’s Uganda, Sierra Leone, Congo, Rwanda, and many more instances. Currently, we hear of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, and the continuing genocide in Darfur. Politicians are still debating whether or not to call the Darfur debacle a genocide.

It is as though the rest of the world has effectively fenced of Africa; allowing the foolish fighting and killing to continue. Those who come close enough hold their noses take the resources they need and an return to their continents with tell of fierce political repression, poverty, disease, and death. We then turn and blame Europeans for treating us like half humans in their countries. I do not like to be treated with contempt in any foreign land but the truth is that we, as Africans, supply the fuel for the perceptions of the rest of the world towards us by acting the part.

I would like to envision a new generation of Africans: Africans who will not carry the baggage of their ancestors; Africans who will abandon the old fables that divide us so deeply. Man has landed a space craft on mars. The world is not waiting for Africa.