Rebirth: “I am because I am free; I am free because I am”

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

WHY AND HOW DOES a state exist to dominate, exploit, and, in cases such as Nigeria, Rwanda, the Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for instance, embark on a mission to destroy some of its constituent nations or peoples? 15 million Africans have been murdered in the genocides in these foursome states and in other wars elsewhere in Africa between 1966 and 2016. As most people know, the states that Europe created in Africa, in the aftermath of its leaders’ infamous November 1884-February 1885 Berlin-conquest conference, cannot lead African peoples to the reconstructive changes they deeply yearn for after the tragic history of centuries of conquest and occupation.

Create own state now

Such changes were and never are the mission of these states but instruments to expropriate and despoil Africa by the conquest in perpetuity. This is the “curse” of Berlin. But, thankfully, just as in Berlin, states are not a gift from the gods but relationships painstakingly formulated and constructed by groups of human beings on planet earth to pursue aspirations and interests envisioned and articulated by these same human beings. For the Igbo, Darfuri, and all other peoples presently besieged by the haematophagous monster of a state emplaced, the message on the unfurled banner for their freedom march couldn’t be more confident and focused: “I am because I am free; I am free because I am”. Create your own state today. This right is inalienable. Now is the time!

Challege to the genocidists of Africa: Break up the barrel & blade for the slaughter 
Let Africa’s constituent peoples or nations unleash at once a dazzling contest of creativity and progress, a continuing mutual bombardment, sharing, and transformation of ideas and streams of possibilities, akin to what the world has seen in south and southeast Asia and elsewhere in the world in the past 40 years – not the “Berlin-state”-programmed seasons of 50 years of mass murdering, pillaging, nihilism, particularly in the genocidist lairs called Nigeria, the Sudan... “Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch, too. If one says no to the other, let their wing break”.

Most surely, now is the time to embark on this rebirth, this beginning for peoples in Africa.

(The New York Contemporary Five plays “Sound barrier” [personnel: Archie Shepp, tenor saxophone; Don Cherry, pocket trumpet; John Tchicai, alto saxophone; Don Moore, bass; JC Moses, drums; recorded: live, Jazzhus Montmarte, Copenhagen, Denmark, 15 November 1963])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe