There's No Africa Without Us

We did not choose Africa. It chose us. There's no Africa without us. For a while we thought the Berlin Conference would change us, but nothing changed us, not even the colonial rituals you brought, not even the whole Era of Apartheid, and the plunder of our wealth. We gave everything and asked nothing in return. We are cheap and very undemanding. We are a well behaved and disciplined people, with our lies and our smiles and stories about our lives. We did not know the meaning of gods that men look like them despite appearances. To learn about the world, to discover the one we were deprived of, we opened our innocence. After so many prophecies sweating and breathless and confused our scattered souls are frozen. Did you ever realize at all what was happening to us? You will find us again between the heart and mind, where disgraced we'll dance together again, but to a song you and us would never choose to hear, in the name of something new and feel our fate in what we cannot know. This is our Africa. And we are present, the end or beginning of humanity feeding with the dead, with you surrounding us composing our world We are it: it is us whose beauty wavers with us violated beyond all imagining whose old wounds are scarred on our skulls whose democracy lies in griefs and sorrows clothed in institutionalized despair we are perpetually reinventing time. It is your turn now, your turn to follow us. There's no Africa without us.