Mutumwa Mawere

NO SOCIETY can ever be greater than the sum of the actions of its citizens. The end of each calendar year is like a birthday of a natural person that provides an opportunity to take stock and reflect on past achievements and challenges of the future.

Indeed, when we say many happy returns, we are celebrating life and its renewal because, like water, life makes a difference that cannot be reduced to any monetary value. The quality of life of any people is causally linked to human action and not inaction. It would be unreasonable to wish many happy returns to a dead person or a person who makes no difference to the lives of people.

Hope and faith is all we have as mortal beings, but in both, possibilities and opportunities exist to advance the cause of human civilisation in a manner that defines history and leaves a legacy for future generations.
As Africans, we remain challenged by not only our colonial legacy but by our own inadequacies. For how can we explain that in this year of the Lord, Ghana celebrated its golden jubilee and yet the last 50 years do not show the kind of progress that "uhuru" promised?

With 53 sovereign states, Africa has all it needs to advance its own agenda and it is important for all Africans, however we choose to define who is an African, to seriously and honestly reflect not only the rights that African citizenship confers on them but the obligations to the continent. What is our purpose and have we discharged what this continent expects from us?

The colonial experience provided us with an opportunity to develop a consensus on what we did not want to see in Africa. It spurred our brilliant minds to invest in pain and suffering as a vehicle to change the status quo ante that condemned the majority to an inferior standard of living and political disenfranchisement. That investment created heroes and heroines among us but it also should have challenged us to critically examine why Europeans were so determined to exclude native Africans from governance issues and whether, in fact, the past 50 years have helped the African cause or undermined it.

Each New Year allows people to make resolutions and yet the end of the year rarely is used to reflect on the past. Rather, it is used for different purposes than what it was meant to be.

In engaging in the decolonisation struggle, Africans made a conscious decision that an exclusive Africa is not the kind of Africa that should be allowed to exist. In making this decision, it cannot be said that Africans expected someone to invest in the change they wanted to see in post-colonial Africa.

How much thought did our founding fathers apply to post colonial architectural and foundational issues? Any house that is built on sand will suffer an inevitable fall, compelling any rational builder to think about the foundation. How secure is post-colonial Africa? Whose responsibility is it to make Africa work?

We all can engage in mental gymnastics with no salvation in sight. When I look back at 2007, I cannot help but remember how Nigerians after 47 years of independence handled their own transition. The controversial elections and the manner in which the incumbent President manipulated the process to exclude his own deputy demonstrate our maturity as a people in addressing the leadership challenges that all African states face. Sierra Leone handled its own transition in its own way.

At the party level, we began the year unsure whether President Mugabe would prevail and there was no expectation that Jacob Zuma would end up as the President of the ANC. Many expected Zuma to face the same fate as his Nigerian counterpart but we now know that it is possible for an African ruling party to make choices that are contrary to its leader.

As I write this article, Africa awaits the Kenyan election results and what is significant is that the incumbent President is fighting for his political life. His cabinet colleagues have been tsunamied out of power without resorting to the Pakistan way of resolving political differences.

We have a cause to celebrate and as we look to 2008, we have to be encouraged that the days of exclusive politics are numbered.
Exclusivity in politics can only end if citizens invest in change. Most African leaders believe in elections and surprisingly, citizens who purport to be angry at the lack of change in African politics are the very culprits that do not participate in electoral politics. If Zuma's supporters did not register as ANC members and proceed to organise themselves institutionally to have a voice, it is common cause that no change of guard would have taken place.

Many of us who pretend that we have the interests of the continent at heart have been missing in action. Isn't it funny that often the loudest in the room is the weakest? Africa's armchair revolutionaries often do not participate in electoral politics and yet they expect see a democratic Africa. Through the ballot, many careers have been terminated notwithstanding the fact that many African leaders still believe that a free and fair election must be rigged.

The only power people who do not have power have is the power to organise. As political consumers we have rarely shown the organisation that was displayed by Zuma's supporters in unseating an incumbent President. In the economic sphere, the last 50 years of post colonial experience has exposed how economically fragile we are, notwithstanding the fact that we purport to be in control of our destinies.

Will 2008 be any different from 2007? Only our actions will answer this question. It is irresponsible for anyone to be angry at something they can do something about and yet we choose to do nothing. We have retreated to the comfort zone of the blame game and naturally, the white world becomes a football for bad leaders while citizens reduce themselves to robots.
The real owners of the African story should be its citizens. However, the future of Africa continues to be on the agenda of non-Africans while we become experts at pursuing our own personal interests in the belief that it is not our responsibility. Our abdication and nihilistic acceptance that we are a helpless lot allows men and women of badwill to undermine our collective interests.

This time next year, we must be able to say that we have made efforts at making ourselves the agents of change that we want to see. We have done it before and there is no reason to believe that we cannot rise to the challenge. A brighter tomorrow is only possible if we do something about it today.