Think of a hungry kid asking his mother if she could stop cooking. Would his request be that of despair that the dish took so long time that he gave up waiting. Or, could that be out of brilliance that he had a better idea of feeding himself something raw? Either way, surely, what made the kid interfere and talk about cooking is the pressure from his empty belly. The need to eat made him ask. What if he was an adult, a capable person? He would have acted instead of asking.
A story I read about an old woman asking her son: “But when will this independence cease?” made me stop reading and think out of wonder. I stopped just at her question mark and asked my self: “how can an old woman, who probably have experienced colonialism, ask about ‘independence ceasing’?
Independence is what Africans had being awaiting. The people of Africa longed for independence since the first moment foreigners stepped in to their free and independent native lands. All through the colonial period up to the last moment the colonizers left, what the people of Africa were crying for was nothing but independence.
In those days, independence meant freedom. Free to farm your land, free to milk your herds, and free to work and not be enslaved. It meant becoming free from any form of dictates by outsiders. In short, it meant becoming the master of your own affairs. But at the same time independence meant struggle. It meant killing and being killed. It was a fight to remove the oppressors. As the evils of colonialism affected the whole population, the burden of becoming independent too, was equally shared. After a bitter experience, as luck would have it, many African countries gained ‘independence’.
However, the independence was a challenge. The newly independent people had yet to be freed from hunger, ignorance and diseases. They have to take the responsibility of building their economies and that of shaping the socio-political trends of their countries. Thus independence was not a single event of removing the oppressors. It is a process of also removing all the negative legacies they left. Independence is a complicated, endless process. If this process fails to show any potential for genuine freedom then, hungry kids and old men and women who can’t act to bring about change, have to just ask when will the ‘independence’ cease so that they can relieve their mind from the ridiculous expectations.
“In the African villages, people ask: ‘are the blacks still capable of building their own countries? Do we still have the spirit, the intelligence, and energy enough to build our countries? Or, are we actually under the famous curse of Hum in the Bible? There is one story of an old woman asking her young son: ‘but when is this independence going to cease?’ as if independence were the reason to our misfortune …” runs an article by professor Ka Mana from Zaire. For many Africans the ‘independence’ they expected proved direct reverse to their expectations. The ignorance, diseases and famine continued, in some cases even worsened, after independence. Civil wars and ethnic cleansing accompanied the ‘independence’. So, what is wrong for one to ask, or even pray, for this kind of ‘independence’ to end?
Such prayers emanate from despair. African independence has being manipulated to serve the interest of others where the people are condemned to suffer. One’s independence ceases to exist the moment he/she compromises at its expense. Therefore, at this historical juncture where we are celebrating the 16th anniversary of our independence, the old woman’s story conveys a huge message. A massage reminding us to think of how and when do people cease to be independent.
Due to the plain fact that we have endured the bitter pain of being suppressed, when our fate used to be, arbitrarily, decided to satisfy the needs of others, no one in the world can tell the right meaning of independence more than the people of Eritrea. And for the obvious reason that we pay the most precious thing we can afford to maintain it, one can hardly have the power to force, or the talent to persuade, us compromise at the expense of our freedom.
However, since this couldn’t guarantee absoluteness, we need to always be curious. We should not be victims of the maneuvering of those who always dream to promote their interests at the expense others. Many people erroneously mix up the concept of independence with isolation. In contemporary era of globalization, not a single country can make it alone. This is the era of cooperation and interdependency for mutual benefit. Meanwhile, the global system is structured in such a way that only the fittest can survive. This highly competitive nature of the international system however, makes the inevitable interdependency risky. The more dependent a country is the less powerful it becomes, leaving the validity of its freedom at the mercy of others.
Taking for granted the fact that the sacred force that assured our victory over the powerful enemies was our unity; we need to remain united forever. Indeed our only tool to overcome obstacles, and our most valuable resource to achieve prosperity is our unity. We must make sure that our ‘independence’ is the one that people work hard to guarantee its perpetuity rather than asking about it demise. Our hard work, diligence and commitment towards our goal of building a united prosperous nation should shield our freedom. Failing to do so and leaving crack s for a spoil to inter and spread in the society, will make us join the African story and wallow in the streams of famine, ignorance, civil wars and much more ill fates.
