Friday, June 27, 2008

Help from ‘Abroad’- Making beggars or leaders

Sub-Saharan Africa is daily in the news. Horrendous statistics and terrible pictures are reeled out everyday to describe the ‘diagnosed backwardness and depravity’ in this region.

‘Help’ is coming from everywhere and ‘relief’ seems to be in the air.

While i am particularly not against ‘help’ as it sometimes could be the push or prod individuals or authorities in this region needs to open them up to empowerment and improvement, i am unsettled as to whether this ‘help’ will not institutionalize a sense of dependency and helplessness and utterly wipe out every iota of responsibility and creativity in the inhabitants of this region.

Already there is a huge increase in fatalistic mentality and a generation whose exclusive focus and competence is how to develop ‘help’ letters, is now growing. Men and women who are satisfied with being given fishes and never wanting to learn the art and science of fishing. They abhor responsibility, creativity and sacrifice and daily thinks that everything good only comes from ‘abroad’.

I dare say that every human, regardless of where he/she lives; in Africa, Asia, America, Europe has the inert capability to be a problem solver and there is no exclusivity of wisdom or capability in a particular region or people of the world.

SSA, as it is abbreviated, is now increasingly being driven by beggar’s mentality and not leaders’ mentality.

With the axiom, ‘Leaders take responsibility, beggars avoid responsibility’, i wish to elaborately stress that leaders not beggars are the future of this region and that men and women who beg are not fit to live.

‘Help’ where given should be channeled to raising leaders and individuals who wants to be leaders should be weary of begging.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

The Walls are Broken

The eventual victory of Senator Barack Obama as the Presidential flag bearer of the Democratic Party in the upcoming elections in the United States brought two distinct messages among others to note:

(1) the age-long, elaborately perpetuated ideological conjunction and myth that being black or coming from certain unpopular background is disadvantageous and limiting, is erroneous and unfounded.

(2) the end has come to the division of humanity along the line of skin colour and pigment.

I dare to say that man’s greatest enemy to greatness is his mind. Success knows no ‘melanin or keratin’ (skin pigments responsible for skin colours). There are no superhuman or subhuman. We all create our world with the permission we give to negative or positive happenings around us into our mind and our life.

I challenge all seemingly-disadvantaged folks everywhere - Blacks, Hispanics, Caucasians etc to crave for knowledge and excellence and it will not matter where they come from or what their past looked like. They are to resist every iota of subjugation and devaluation and press on to achieve their dream because the walls are broken.