By Pearson Mbendera.
Harare, Zimbabwe. (News of The South) -I remember reading the motivational book, Who Moved My Cheese and I was blown away.
It was simple, to the point, and unlike many motivational books written out there, it didn’t glorify the writer in anyway, making him look like he had all the answers having used them in his life. Instead, it was written like a novel, telling a fictionalized version of the real world people live in. It was like a fictional parable, a fictional story with an earthly meaning.
By considering how lagging behind Africa is, I realized the story resonated to us as a continent too, how we hav been running around the maze, trying hard to figure things out for ourselves, to no avail, and being so content with the little we have had that we haven’t been cognizant of the changing trends out there.
The colonial era saw a lot of change happening in Africa and to Africans. Our colonizers put in place a system of doing things that wasn’t something we were familiar with. In a lot of ways, they ensured that we would be dependent on them for the rest of our lives, and at the very least, we would live their kind of life not the one we had been accustomed to. They changed everything about us, from the basic things we were good at like agriculture, to the governing systems, education, religion and just about anything, and their influence still persist today.
The Africa we won back from our former colonial masters wasn’t the same Africa we had lost, it was a different one, our cheese had been moved, and now, many years after the whole of Africa has been independent, we are still trying to figure our way through the maze, apparently, we haven’t had much success in that regard.
We tried to hang on to some other things like our cultural beliefs, but we are slowly drifting away from that, embracing the western culture, the western way of doing things. And with that in mind, lacking even authenticity and originality in the very things that makes us Africans, we have failed ourselves.
I guess there was a lot we didn’t know while we were fighting for independence. We believed we were going to win it, that did motivate the people, and we did win it, but it didn’t turn out to be the promised land we thought it would be, we still have to fight for it. But the fight is different now, its no longer about guns and bullets, and it doesn’t require the guerrilla tactics that we used to win the war.
Independence was supposed to be some kind of an end point. Once liberated, we were supposed to build our lives around that, as a free people. That was our cheese, and getting that independence, and governing ourselves, was something that was supposed to set us for life. We would have what the colonizers had all this time, and it would have been lovely, but it didn’t happen like that, someone moved our cheese.
In reality, no one moved our cheese, the game was changed completely. It wasn’t about getting the black African as the head of state, that meant nothing. There are more than one way of ruling someone, even without being the one on the official chart, with powers and authority to enact laws. And we are a living proof of that, dancing to the tune others have composed.
We have been in a maze, looking for something, but not what everyone else was looking for. We wanted the continent to be ours, we wanted to be independent, in some way we are independent, but what has that really gotten us. Freedom, is still an elusive concept to the African continent.
In this labyrinth that we call the world, with global politics, finance and economics headed by super powers who keep a lot of secrets to themselves, and keeping a lot of people, mostly Africans in the dark, its easier getting lost. And we have been lost. The ugly thing is, for the most part, we think we are on the right path.
I guess the question isn’t about who moved our cheese, because that way, it implies we had some to begin with, or we were entitled to some. The right question is, what is our cheese, if we figure that out, we just might find our way through this maze, otherwise,we will just run around looking for something that is not there, and pass that aimless wandering spirit to our children. Its time we do things right, adapt to the situation and conquer the world. Lets find new cheese, redefine our goals, set ourselves on a different path. The one we are on, hasn’t worked out well for us.
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