| There goes Africa’s chance to become important |
|
|
| Written by Daniel Steinmann | ||||
Page 1 of 2
What motivates us to keep supporting a man that is killing our mothers and fathers, our sisters and brothers, and most importantly, our children? This dark side of our African psyche has always amazed me. It keeps reappearing whenever we face our biggest threats, and it inevitably destroys us, our communities and our family structures. It also baffles the non-African outside world, leading to all sorts of opinions why we are often seen as lost human beings on a lost continent, too big for us to manage.
It is as if public opinion in the civilised world
expects us to fail. “What can you expect from Africa or from Africans?”
I am often asked when dealing with critical investors, or even neutral
analysts. And the sad part is that, as much as I try to defend my heritage and my continent, our critics always come up with another example of how we inexplicably manage to botch the simplest thing. How is it possible that almost half of the Zimbabwean population can go to war against the other half, their own brethren, and not feel remorse or even realise what they are doing to their own people? I think I have been asked this question a hundred times the past two months. And the other popular question, hitting closer to home is always: “How can your government keep supporting a criminal who has absolute zero recognition in the eyes of the rest of humanity?” I do not think events in Zimbabwe will have much of an impact on Namibia except for the fact that we are slowly, but very surely, undermining our hard-won credibility with other governments who are or should be very important to us. What we do or say is rather insignificant in steering events in Zimbabwe, but our silence drops us automatically into the Mbeki court. And that is where we are damaging our international image and our esteem with our other neighbours on the African continent. |
||||
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|