Conversation with Brainiacs on leadership in Africa!

History teaches us that unity is strength, and cautions us to submerge and overcome our differences in the quest for common goals, to strive, with all our combined strength, for the path to true African
brotherhood and unity.
Haile Selassie

• I don't know if there is anything like the African brotherhood! Our kids succeed abroad not on our soil! The present is showing us that single mindedness, creation of tribalism is the order of the day that has kept us in the ghetto!

Thousands of years ago, civilizations flourished in Africa which suffer not at all by comparison with those of other continents. In those centuries, Africans were politically free and economically independent. Their social patterns were their own and their cultures truly indigenous.

Haile Selassie

• What happened that we lost all that political freedom and economical independence? Considering that we gave in our independence for colonialism we pretty much surrendered our identity! It is scattered all over the world! We have traded our kids and with it went their talents.

An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans.
Haile Selassie

• Maybe but it will also evoke hate and self loathing if a projection to the future isn't made!
• In a song a word "creating space" caught my mind as regards the topic of racism. How does one create the space for those who feel extricated due to colour? Well I don't think physical space is what is needed! Education of the ignorant on both side's is what is needed! Space in the brain! If all Africans or Latinos are stupid then the whites also! The whites then seem to be wining in facts/deeds! What have the rest got to show for the colour that they represent? China seems not to be complaining they are invading territories with labels such as "Made in China"

I look at an ant and I see myself: a native South African, endowed by nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the weight of a racism that crushes my spirit.
Miriam Makeba

• Dear Miriam, maybe then your generation had to deal with racism, today we are dealing with self loathing passed on by your generation for enduring through it and giving into the perception of inadequacy!

A genocide in Africa has not received the same attention that genocide in Europe or genocide in Turkey or genocide in other part of the world. There is still this kind of basic discrimination against the African people and the African problems.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali

• What I say sometimes could be a spirit dampener but the right heart will be stirred into good! Your choice if you want to be grieved by this! Africans killing Africans isn't news to anyone because it affects no one else, in fact if Africans were relevant to others as a people probably it would be of news! The less Africans in Africa the more space and easier for the rest of the world to harvest natural resources including using us as slaves! We have and still are making it easier for the rest of the world to dismiss us! As Africans we are irrelevant to ourselves why should we be important to others?! Hitler killing Jews? Thats a 911 fact! That's international news because it affected everyone! Jews care for their own! Countries that have no relevance are just manure to the earth! Luke 12:35 should be appropriate to this: the part of Watchfulness: Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning.

My dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he's always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination.

Cornel West

• Dear Cornel, if you knew what it takes to be white in a black mans skin or black in a white mans skin you would know that the mind and heart it takes to survive between racism and ignorance at the same time and not be labeled and marred by it makes people like us ruthless! The grace that it takes for the Mixed kids not to hate the world and cling to your own kind like the coloureds did of South Africa is the glow many are intimidated by!
• I can understand the pain of black people both in Africa and America, including the Asians and Latinos but I refuse to pity anyone more than is required. An acknowledgement of sacrifices may be necessary but no further as it breeds self loathing. Living in the memory of the horible experiences only is risky as it can impair vision, best is to ensure that the benefits that came from the elders is spread wide and further.
• As Madea's character said "it ain't what they call you but what you answer to"! I could add "I will make them call me by my chosen name and recognise me through the image I project"! Muhammed Ali style! Leaders are given for a reason, they pave the way for others by being the dart board!