Moving Towards Complete Independence

What is the best way to move forward? What is it that we need to do to free ourselves from the shackles of imperialism? How can we move our crippled, paralyzed political and economic systems from the hold of the colonizers? Should we adopt their models of development? Do we have our own models that we can follow? Do we know enough of our history to judge from what our ancestors did before the coming of the invaders? If we know our history, can what they did be applicable in today's world? Can it be modified to fit this lifetime? What can we do to move towards complete independence as an African people?
I take great pride and joy in being African. I am not swayed by petty issues that keep us fumbling in the mud pit rather than finding a way out. We squabble about issues that have nothing to do with our future success but which keep us pre-occupied to notice our overall condition of imprisonment.
We need to move towards unity. We can accomplish all we need to if we were working hand-in-hand as brothers and sisters that we are. Our differences are like those of flowers. If you put them together you make a beautiful bouquet. More beautiful and appeasing. To become a bouquet, we need to realize that our differences are what makes us beautiful and strong. The looks and beliefs of others are not a threat to us, they complement us. We are not competitors, we are collaborators. The master will push onto us the competitors tag in order to keep us pre-occupied with petty issues that further erode our already collapsed sense of unity.
What do we need to do to become one? In an ideal situation I would rather we got rid of divisions inspired by outside forces, such as religious affiliations, political parties, and political borders. I have the strongest misgivings about these three because they have done more to shed African blood than any other differences.
Religion. It's necessary for most of us. I am a spiritual person. I believe in God. I see his miracles in my life all the time. But which God is this that I serve and looks out for me? What does he look like? Did my people not have a God before the invaders arrived? Did this God come with the Arabs or with the Europeans? If these people brought their God, does their God condone the acts they inflicted upon our motherland? Does God really say kill all those that do not believe in him? Why then did he create them? Or did someone else create men? If God kills and his arch foe, Satan, kills what is the difference between them? If God hates those that don't believe in him, why doesn't he stop creating them? Afterall, he knows everything including how those people's future beliefs will be, right? Could there possibly be another idea about a God that we ought to be worshiping? A God that does not seek to conquer with the edge of a sword? Which God did my ancestors worship before the coming of the invaders?
My grandfather was a pastor and a missionary all over the Democratic Republic of Congo. My great-grandfather was one of three Rwandans who helped establish Seventh-day Adventist missions in Rwanda. I was raised in the church and learned to read by reading the Bible. I have strong roots in the God of the Bible. However, the God I read about in the Bible is nothing like the God that I see people talking about today. So, I know these people push the book on us without reading it themselves. In reality, the God of the African, the Jew, the Christian, and the Muslim is one God. It is the God that created us all, the God that is one and undivided. Why, then, do our ideas of who he is divide us and shed our blood? Why can't we just stand up and realize ourselves as his children and throw out those burdens that we need to carry to differentiate ourselves from our siblings? Does it matter if you are wearing a green coat and I'm wearing a brown one? Do we differ on the air that we breathe? Is your brain made from a different substance than mine? How about your bones? Aren't we all humans?
The second issue is that of political powers. I am against political parties because their concept is lost upon us Africans as they are not our invention. We have no respect for the concept and we look to take advantage of them to further divide ourselves. It is no secret that rulers will establish or infiltrate opposition parties to their own ends.
The future of Africa lies in a unified Africa whose rulers are after the good of their people as a whole and not just for a segment of the population. We need to do away with political parties, they are not our concept, they do not work in our communities, they polarize, they divide, they are against our nature.
As for political borders, I have talked against them many times in the past. Not even one African was at the Berlin roundtable. Not one. Why do we all, then, follow those boundaries as if they were God-given? We never needed them in the past, not blindly drawn borders that failed to take into consideration the culture and peoples of the land they divided. We had our own way, a way that can work even today.
We need to stop doing things the invaders' way, we need to do them our way. Only by doing them the way of the African will Africa have thrown of the chains of the oppressor.