For a long time, a cloud of doom has hovered and cast a shadow under which our people have lived in colossal fear and uncertainty. Our young people have grown up with a self-defeatist philosophy of life.

We have co-habited with an unscrupulous concubine called “Trodden down self-esteem” that has greatly impaired the sense of self-worth and value and in effect, left us stranded in the cold ashes of our former blaze.

We have for long resigned to living in hopelessness while the rest of the world thrives in utter prosperity plundered from our own abundance of natural resources.

The rich are oblivious of a people dwelling in the darkness of the light of their own continent, “the dark continent” as to many known.

War, hunger, disease and poverty have won Africa our motherland recognition on the lowest rung of the International status ladder. We have caught (occasionally) the merciful attention of the genuinely religious and socially guilty mass conscience, to win ourselves crumbs of Humanitarian concerns (just enough to sustain our state of misery and empower our fate!)

Our Children have graced International television Networks with gruesome-grotesque images of disease, hunger and death-stricken faces!

Mothers who give suckle to these our noble children, have had (In uncountable documentaries) to bear International ridicule as their milk-drained-wrinkled breasts, hanging dangerously like withered flowers off the stems of their flesh-starved chests, are flashed across television screens!

Taking advantage of this international display of our mothers’ tattered glory, many an NGO in the guise of charity, have rapidly grown greenhouse plantations of wealth on our Mothers’ nakedness and shame!

Our Fathers (about most of whom little is known) have not featured much in our upbringing as they have at battlefronts of war, prison riots, bars and not to mention fists over women!

As a result, our village rivers have carried more human flesh than fresh water to quench the thirst of withering crops in gardens. Rwanda’s genocide bears witness of this. Angola and Liberia (to mention but a few), in pseudo-pride, carry the flag of war mongering high up the ranks of political greed.

Littered allover our continent, are rebel leaders with profiles of demonstrated records of chilling achievements, which run the gamut, featuring amputees, rape victims, orphans, widows and widowers.

The savages to the rank and file of rebel movements have contributed enormously to our people’s untold suffering. Dictators have also killed subjects with only as much restraint as expected of a hyena prowling corpses on a battlefield.

In the strife for gain, the cancer of greed has rotted the moral fabric of our society, sparing not even they that fetch fat salaries to the disdain of the tax payer, while street kids become a norm and are thieves by necessity.

When efforts at explanations fail, such things cause agitation to one’s soul; to find vent for expression to the haunting question – WHY?

Someone has immensely betrayed our motherland and drugged our people with an intoxicating dose of accusations that have further stashed us away into the turbulent cycle of confusion, mistrust, strife and conflict.

We have slipped further from the light of the matter and for a long time been groping in the darkness of self-justification and appeasement. We have sunk so deep that the bottom can not contain the weight of our darkness any longer!

But wait; is there HOPE for us? Yes, there is HOPE!!

Just like other races, we were conceived in a blaze of passion and born through a curious process of pleasure and pain. All of us are products of probability in the dynamics of human biology, which only nature could have influenced.

God saw you and me as black people – none could have seen us better! In feeling inferior due to the melanin in our skin, we fault nature’s creative genius and concept of diversity.

Rather than find morbid contentment in blaming our present woes to our past, we should instead rise to the occasion of the moment and take our place among the world’s peoples.

Some may assert that we shall not make it; that we are simply polishing brass on a sinking ship.
And shall we believe that? NO!! NO!!

We have a future! We have hope!
We remember that all is not utterly lost,
That all could not have been totally lost,
That all can never be completely lost from a people of culture, of a deeply rooted history as rich as ours is!

As families sit by born fires and recite proverbs, the fountain of our wisdom, our music and remember:
That our forefathers were kings and our young men Chiefs:
That we were born of a Royal birth;
That our Mothers were sisters to the Queen and princesses!
That deeply seated is an untapped heritage.

Right there and then,
A spirit of brotherhood,
Of love,
Of harmony
Of oneness and Simplicity
Was rekindled in the silence of our fears!

At first we were afraid of this new sweeping of the wind until we realized that by the force of wind, our lungs are filled and so we breathe!
We now clearly know that we are a people of purpose
And of value to the Human Race!

This is the awakening of the spirit;
Of the spirit that once freely expressed its progress with the boldness of a hunting lion and the swiftness of a gazelle,
Of the spirit that resiliently stood against all odds in its strength of unity

That spirit that silently and firmly anchors in its throne of pride and self-worth. This spirit of character and an intrinsic mechanism of self-preservation. It is this spirit that empowers the resurrection of our identity. With this spirit, we shall contend with all frontiers retarding our progress and development. We shall rid ourselves of fear.
We shall conquer self-pity and the abominable virus of low self-esteem (for these are foreign to our very nature and were implanted in us by perpetuators of racism).

In our song of togetherness, work we shall, to restore this spirit of Africa in every Brother and Sister and those in support of our noble cause! Within this “Spirit Of Africa Restoration” age, we shall SOAR once again: to the pride of our ancestors, of our History!!

Africa lives (in you)!

Spirit of Africa, Do you have it?!

Author: Kawesa Richard
Edited by: Kyosimire Fredrick & Jerry Komagum

Spirit of Africa project is an effort to sensitize the masses through Music & fashion about the need to unite in love, harmony and self -expression so as to realize social, political and economic development in the East African Region and Africa as a whole.