Why am I not proud that my hair is kinky, my skin dark and my nose wide?
Why do I believe that to be beautiful I must be thin, light skinned and have wavy hair?
Why do I not speak your language with pride, why can I no longer speak your mother tongue?
Why do I no longer sing your songs with pride, listen to your stories and enjoy your rich and natural foods?
Africa Why?
Why does my community no longer raise me any more, why is my brother not my keeper, why?
Why does my brother fight me, fight his brother, his community and his fellow Africans?
Why am I scared of my sister, my brother, my neighbour, my community, my king?
Why don’t our ancestors guide us, solve our problems, and mediate in our conflicts anymore?
Africa Why?
Africa why do others eat your food when your children are dying of starvation?
Why do your children suffer so much when you are the richest continent on this earth?
Why do you allow your children to die in numbers of disease, starvation, war and crime?
Why are your children homeless, living in shacks with no running water or proper sanitation?
Africa Why?
Why do your children not know how to respect you, to treat the ones who have raised them? Africa why are your children being taught ubuntu when you are the cradle of mankind?
Why do your children show anger by destroying those very things that will benefit them tomorrow?
Why have your children become a lawless society who does not believe that you can lead them?
Why have you allowed us to destroy, to give away, to sell and to barter your land and your resources?
Africa Why?
Africa, thousands of your children die at sea every year trying to run away from you? Why?
Why do I no longer hear songs of joy, ululating, drums of peace and maracas, instead I hear only hooters, guns, my angry brothers and sisters and my fighting community.
Why do I not know what it means to be African?
Why am I not proud to be African?
Africa why?
Oh Africa what have we done? Oh mother Africa how do you continue to sleep when your children need you?
Bring back Patrice Lumumba, Steve Biko, Mbuya Nehanda, Julius Nyerere, Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkrumah and Haile Selassi.
Bring back Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu and all those greats who truly understood what it’s meant to be African.
Africa why did they have to die?
Africa Why?
