Racism In Africa: The burden of a continent

By all sorts of names, we are being ridiculed. They call us the 'Dark Continent', they paint us as the 'White man's burden'. And as if these were not enough to bleed the African soul, they call our land 'The Whiteman's Graveyard'. These inimical viewpoints of Africa has been a lingering plague, that has hung over us like a cloud. Only the Heavens knew what the European poet, Rudyard Kipling had in mind, when he called the African 'Half child, Half devil'. The Continent might be in chaos, but we are nothing close to what they make us look like. Is it not an irony of the highest order, that a Dark Continent will produce the likes of Nelson Mandela, Camara Laye, Chinua Achebe, Kwame Nkurumah, Chimanda Adiche, Kofi Annan, and the endless list of men and women that has been a beacon of light to not just their nations, but to the world at large. Having said that, necessity beckons on Africans to help salvage this battered image by getting it right. We will continue to be potrayed as such, when President Gbagbo has refused to heed to the voice of the electorate in Ivory Coast, when Tunisia has made themselves a beehive of political rest. This is the future. Enough is Enough!