Uganda; the Eritrean dream.

I know so little about Eritrea, I just know that it borders Ethiopia and Djibouti.The reason perhaps is that no private media is allowed to operate. The country has only one Political Party which has banned existence of any other party.

Simple things like simcards are a luxury as you have to apply to have it. Most of the government critics are jailed and some never heard of. Whenever the sports teams travel abroad, that’s their get out of jail card,they find means of escaping. As I write this, five members of the ladies national team have escaped from the team in Jinja, Eastern Uganda because, that is heaven to them.

Liberty is key, being in a place where you are restricted, you escape at every little freedom. To understand Eritrea, watch the Aljazeera interview with Aferweki to get a view of how things are. A quick one, to the reader, do you know any one on social media from Eritrea? The country is special,I doubt whether there is internet! This is not the first time the national team is escaping when in Uganda and one can understand.

I have interacted with many young Africans who think that change of Presidents is key to things being better and my answer is always, no and here’s why . I do armchair commentary and will take you to the southern district of RSA in our country of Africa to explain my point. The explanation was at the time people wanted Zuma to leave presidency.

They had said president Jacob Zuma was the main problem in the ANC. Strangely, less than 5 years ago they were saying president Mbeki was the main problem in the ANC. They removed him but the problem remained and like a cancer, continued to fester. Now they were at it again, saying that if president Zuma (the new problem that was once the solution in the not-do-distant past) was removed then the problems in the ANC would be gone.

One scientist called Albert Einstein defined madness as follows:
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” A One Mwene , an insignificant somebody, says that for as long as we define the problem as individuals and fail to employ proper politics with regards to the socio-economic and political realities of Africa, then we are going to be calling for a change of face for years to come.

We sit in countries with a car that has broken down, its engine completely compromised. But we continue to insist that the problem is not with the car but rather, with the driver. So we change drivers, we put the best of them and the worst of them at the control seat, but this car still refuses to move an inch. But we insist still: “Bring a different driver!” And against still, this car is just not moving. What does this tell us? It tells us that the car needs a new engine and it needs service.

In essence, it was not a new ANC president that was a solution, it was a new ANC, one that is cleansed of the worst elements that have characterised it since the dawn of the new dispensation. Whether that ANC could be salvaged from the ruins of this ANC or whether the ANC is so rotten that an alternative is necessary, is an important point to reflect on.

All I know (and like I said, I am a nobody so my view might not be significant) is that the narrative that seeks to suggest that the ANC’s problem would be solved if president Zuma stepped down, is a false narrative. It is what I call a Titanic Mentality: re-arranging the furniture in a ship that is sailing on turbulent waters rather than re-directing the ship to the calmer part of the ocean. What Africa needs is political hygiene and this is going to cleanse us and we won’t have people running away from their countries.