Dearly beloved young people, at such a crucial time when talks of cultural renaissance are paramount, it is a null and void effort for one to ever attempt this bewildering subject with a narrow appreciation of their own cultural stance.
Culture is an artefact collectively crafted by social actors in a bid to have one identity. It seems for the past thirty years we have managed to make it our culture to have reasons why while others are developing, we manage to shrink our economies, create more wars than the whole world combined, and send the educated elite into political exile and we have practically made it our culture to be treated as a dictionary and case study for backwardness and poverty.
Some may choose to say I am just a social commentator who doesn’t have her facts right and define culture as that essence that makes up a society; the axioms, norms and values set by the community, still it seems we have made it our norm to blame the Sahara desert for its inhospitable climate yet most of us do not live there and apparently, those who do like the Egyptians are doing so well, we continue to blame the tropical climate for its negative effects on our health and say nothing about its overwhelming positives like medicinal plants and beautiful springs. We have accustomed ourselves to blaming ‘unfair global trade’ yet we refuse to make it pour norm to create attractive tradable goods, we start our own wars and expect the United Nations to take prompt action, we blame the slave trade and colonialism yet non of African youths ever tasted what it was like during those times. Really it is about time we say goodbye to this culture of having baseless reasons.
Ladies and gentlemen the time for dilly-dallying, dining and wining with the devil has to end now. This, NOW, is the time to say goodbye to the irrelevant reasons that have been used to decorate our failures but accept that we live in a global village that has people of different identities. It is because of this diversity that our levels of development will always be different.
Many have justified this by saying culture is a result of the happenings that take place in life but still I don’t understand, If it has become your culture to blame civil wars, then how do you compare your experience with that of Vietnam which saw a series of worst civil wars but now is one of the best coffee producers coming second to Brazil. If your culture is that of blaming bad weather then how are you going to compare your fate with that of Arabs living in a desolated desert of Dubai, a thriving metropolis of global trade, if your culture blames your poverty on living far away from navigable waters, then how do you explain that landlocked Botswana is doing so well yet ideally located Somalia is teetering at the brink of self-destruction. Honestly we need to see a cultural revolution that will bring an end to all this for no reason shall be enough to cover up for our failure.
It is now the time for us to accept this could be just as good as fighting a losing battle as we may forever be identified as the poor failures, it is not the identity we want to be viewed as weak social actors who are to always want to mimic those they deem as superior, but we want a culture that will make us proud of being who we are. Martin Luther King Junior once said that “like a woman carries a child in her belly for nine months, we must carry our vision every minute of our everyday in life.” Our vision is to see us identified as prosperous Africa, our vision is to see Africans saying today we accept that culture is dynamic and let ourselves witness the fruits of this dynamism by letting our culture change to the one that allows us not see the developed as oppressors but as potential development partners, and indeed we will prosper. I believe that one day I will stand here and say ‘congratulations Africa for you have dealt a sterling blow to poverty by saying goodbye to this culture of sugar-coating your failures.’ Till then ...remember we live in a world with young people who have diverse cultural identities, don’t let yours be the worst.
By Hlengiwe Nyathi
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