TheStoryOfMyBecoming

I weep for my beloved country. For my own inadequacy, my ignorance.
I weep because I’m flawed. We all are, yet we judge those who came before us, who-flawed as they were -didn’t let their flaws be a hindrance. They gave our land all they had.
So I weep because we judge too harshly. Never taking the time to understand them or to walk a mile in their shoes.
I weep because of our amnesia. How quickly we’ve forgotten Mandela’s ‘It is an ideal for which I am prepared to die‘ or Mbeki’s ‘ And I know that none dare challenge me when I say -I am an African‘.
Our fighting has no limits. Our fingers find new victims everyday to point blame at for our situations.

We don’t remember them as individuals, as human beings who were flawed. We’ve packaged them nicely into ideals. Yet they were human, they were flawed. Some of us remember only their flaws. We see them only for their erring. Others of us remember them as saints, as glossed up versions of who they were.                                                     They were neither saints nor villains. They were human.But human as they were, they gave this land,this continent, their everything. Contrary to how we are, they put this country first. Never concerned about knowing those they sacrificed for personally,they were content with having brothers and sisters through merely being African.

We ought to celebrate them.                                                                                                   In spite of their imperfections, they were heroes. They still are….