Africa is Burning

I wanted to write about music and probably bore you with how I have been avoiding it even though I know it helps me heal. But that will be a story for another day it seems.

Today, let me stray away from the emotions and walk myself somewhere I never really venture as a scribe, politics.

If you are like me, you have already rolled your eyes while letting out a sigh that stays low until a moment like this. Politics for me is a dirty game. One that can make you rich overnight where I come from or cost you your own life.

As I write this, Ugandan Presidential Candidate Robert Kyagulanyi populary known as Bobi Wine is being charged with endangering the same lives he is fighting for. The charge was 'an act of spreading covid19!'.

Welcome to Africa....

This being the most sensible charge that a whole judge would come up with to massage the ego of a selfish 74 year old fool. Bobi's arrest, over heavens know what, birthed radical protests in the capital and has since left 37 dead. Souls whom Ugandan Security Minister, a coward by the name of Elly Tumwine agreed with the rogue Police Force deserved to die.

Tumwine was even quoted by BBC Africa telling the same citizens he's in charge of protecting that the police had a right to kill them when asked about the unfortunate heroic deaths. He sealed it with encouraging his men -the police now- to arrest anyone defying their beloved president. This has lead to hundreds of unwarranted arrests.

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Their current president (Yoweri Kaguta Museveni) is a murderous dictator who has ruled the landlocked nation for 24 long miserable years. Though his reign was happily welcomed back in 96 when he helped end a military rule, his grip on power just like his friend from the South -the late Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe- dutifully instilled fear among Ugandans. And with good reason... Mugabe single-handedly broke Zimbabwe.

But.

This thirty eight year old singer namely Bobi Wine has been 'inciting' the Ugandan youth for a few solid years now. He alone has chosen this path of speaking out against this African colonialist. This hasn't been letting the old man sleep as denial has him sunk in a fantasy where he rules forever. No one is supposed to defy him.

No one!

But a revolution is threatening to erupt and he can't believe that his untouchability is eroding away.

Crossing over to the bordering Democratic Republic of Congo and a humanity crisis blooms like a wildflower in October. Children as young as seven can be seen on trending videos undergoing forced child labour (barefoot and in the rain) so giant mobile phone companies like Apple can top these consumer end charts with worthy hardware. Nothing much can be done to redress the situation thanks to a corrupt government and hungry citizens.

I am disgusted at what greed has solely achieved.

I am disgusted by all of it.

Another troubled country over (Cameroon) and we land into Nigeria. This one has been up in smoke for a while now. On the night of my birthday, the #EndSARS vigil for change was raided by the same lot they were up in arms over and sprayed with state bullets at the cover of darkness. Bodies of young Nigerians sprawled across the streets of Lekki covered with their green and white flag which they had used as shields when bullets rained on them to mark how intolerable their demands for social justice were.

The fierce movement crossed the bridge that dawn to become the #LekkiMassarce and Buhari the warmonger had a whole Governor blaming bad spirits and such. Imagine that!

Like I said at the beginning of this rant, welcome to Africa.

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Libya has been going through chaos since Gaddafi's death on 20th October 2011. My birthday again, smh. This January's airstrike on a military academy in its capital Tripoli that left at least 17 students dead acted as a reminder of a civil war that has been smoldering for decades.

Speaking of civil wars, one is looming in Ethiopia as we speak. Tensions between a man who won a Nobel Peace prize as recently as 2019 and forces loyal to the northernmost Region of Ethiopia namely Tigray have boiled over and the hapless Ethiopians living in that region plus their counterparts across the Eritrean border are dying for it.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the peace prize after 'successfully ending a two decade war' between Ethiopia and Eritrea. With his Oromo background, he made enemies with corrupt Tigray officials whilst trying to cleanse his administration and now he is dealing with their retaliation with censored bloodshed.

Tigray is armed (they have their own army of course...sigh) and so is the Prime Minister. I will leave you to fill in the blanks who is doing the dying and the living with fear.

It is suspected that Abiy Ahmed also assassinated a popular ethnic Oromo figure Haacaaluu Hundeessaa at the beginning of this last July a week after he criticised his slip into dictatorship on a widely watched Oromo TV channel.

Close to 250 lives were lost during protests that followed his death and Ethiopia (and Africa in general) mourned and continued to fester in corruption.

Spewed from my recent reads!

Sigh. To be continued...