Sometimes beautiful, sometimes excruciatingly ugly, let us pause for a
moment on the face of contemporary African youth. In my last text, I tried to
start a reflection on the youth variable in the development of Africa. A
well-known variable of senior politicians, but unfortunately poorly used and
for purposes not always Catholic. In this text I want to try to go deeper into
my diagnosis of contemporary African youth. I'll make the effort to be accurate
(it's not very safe in fact) and clear, but hey, I’ll try I’ve said.
On the other side, the term '' African youth '' is not
pronounced without certain images: violence, poverty, migrants, but also
virility, strength, manpower and else. It was quickly done to judge and say
that it is only stigmatization just as we always thought that "emotion is
negro as the reason Hellene". We agree that these two thoughts do not receive
all the agreements. In other words, there is a part of truth and a part of
error in these statements. I explain, it is true that these images are of
stigma just as the emotion is Negro as the reason Hellene. But it is also a
mistake to think that the African youth is nothing else good than as described
by these associated images or words, just as it is true to argue that the
reason is negro as the emotion Hellene. In clear, just as reason and emotion
mingle to base the man’s essence, whether black or Greek, in this same way, the
beautiful and the ugly, the useful and the harmful, peace and violence mingle
in the African youth to define it as youth, as any youth of the human species.
Only the
social, cultural and even material conditions emerge according to the epoch
such characteristic at the expense of others. If we understand each other well,
I do not want to have a political speech, but I am just doing some analysis and
I am trying to base them because. However, as I am human, they will necessarily
be tainted by emotions. The African youth has no physiological and intellectual
difference with other youths from other continents. What differs from these are
the conditions in which our youth emerges, although this variable is not really
heavy in the balance. Some say that the problem of African youth comes from
poor management by the elders, others argue that it is the whites, others, and
the less enlightened and unfortunately the most numerous, think that this is of
a certain curse of Noah, referring thus to the biblical text of Genesis. I say
that the problem of African youth comes from itself, from its ability to want
to be dynamic or not. I am retorted that the will is not lacking and that the
political conditions compel, either.
But the living being by essence is a being that adapts
to the realities of its environment. I agree that in a context of permanent war
and corruption, things are no longer the same. But usually it is the young
people who take the guns, they will tell me that we force them, I want to
believe it, but the human determination is by essence freedom and deliberate
choice. I mean that when you make a fan club or a support movement for a
political leader instead of doing it for the nation, there is a problem. We
young Africans tend to give Senghor reason when he claims that emotion is
Negro. I repeat, no one is releasing anyone. It is the people, together who
choose the destiny of the Nation, of the Republic. It is, therefore, in my
foolish sense to claim to support the ideals of an individual or a political
party. At most, we support the ideals of the Republic as proposed by this or
that, and in this case, it does not seem to be the movement of young people for
this or that but simply movement of young people for the nation, without
alluding to any leitmotif of political party. The real power in democracy is in
the demos, the people, the vote by being the channel of expression. In short,
the idea is to say that we young people are guilty of our own misery when we
give our hands to cut and our voices to extinguish to an individual and not to
the nation. The real power is in our hands and in our voices. In any case in
democracy it's like that.
I do not want to apologise for youth power, but it is
true that the youth have a power of which it is not always aware. It plays
the candid when to the blind she confides in politicians who sometimes also
young, but who far from fulfilling the promises they make, fill their pockets.
But what we want is to replace the money he gives us to convince others to vote
for him. I remember that in the last presidential elections in Ivory Coast,
some of the union members who were in this case campaign manager invited us to
meetings to '' buy '' our votes for 5000 CFA francs (about 8 euros). Not only
is it ridiculous, but this two-speed democracy produces elected officials who
fill their pockets. What do we want? They're business people. The money ejected
must return with profits without bearing. So we have to review our ways, our
habits, our values if we want to see things get better. It is true that we are
not hardened to the practice of democracy. We are sometimes completely out of
the country. Perhaps this is all that we call poor "it is the Whites"
or "it is the politicians". But we could already start by being
rigorous with ourselves. You surely tell me that I am a beautiful speaker,
either, let's look at the reality in phase.
It is enough to see youth activism during the election
period and we will understand. Perhaps the African democratic model must be
revisited, perhaps the context of poverty plays a lot in the decay of our
morals and in our taste for easy gain. But let us reassure ourselves, we are
the only ones to be hungry, or to be poor. But we are the only ones who turn
into ridicule when the elections are approaching. We become real beings of
emotions at the expense of reason. And that has to change. On the other side,
even if people are just as alienated, given the amount of intox they swallow by
the media and seen as they format their minds to carry the choice of vote
towards such rather than such, by ridiculous polls, TV shows all prepared in
order to dispossess them of their critical mind. But at the time of the vote,
he makes an objective choice, based on his acceptance of the ideas of such or
the rejection of the ideology of the other. It is seldom that the young
Frenchman, for example, says to himself: "Given the amount of money he has
given me, I have an interest in what he earns." Clearly, the young person
on the other side votes by civic duty as a citizen, but we, we also vote by
duty, but by duty of recognition, as beneficiaries. This is a first level of
our discomfort. A level of empowerment and objectivity. I do not say freedom,
because that is not what is at stake. It would not be fair to say that African
youth lack freedom.
The youth is
free, but prefers, or rather chooses freely to be dependent, slaves. By
refusing to suffer the minimum to reap greater happiness, it closes the door to
its flourishing and annihilates its true appeal. The discomfort would have been
even deeper if all the young Africans had their hands tied. But fortunately,
that is not the case. Fortunately, our youth started waking up. Apart from this
ugly mine, it manages to display a good mine that gives more hope. With the
advent of information and communication technologies there is an explosion of
freedom of expression. The most enlightened young people, those who have done
some studies, arrive, by these means, to awaken the consciousness of their
pairs, they manage to transcend the ethnic, tribal, national and even continental
borders to convey to others young people the awakening of consciousness
necessary for a change of mentality, behaviour and situation. These young
people also know the real danger inherent in democracy as applied by our
leaders, the need to remain oneself, the need for African youth to have a true
leader who puts it in line with itself, its history and with its true role for
the community.
Several platforms have been created to promote the
sharing of experience, the sponsorship of young leaders from here and elsewhere
to multiply the good works. These are initiatives to be encouraged. It is this
face of African youth that we want to see glow more. Moreover, we must hope
that our great disdain for injustice and the shame that we sometimes experience
the elders does not mix into an unconditional and radical hatred of the
ancients and farther away all that is ancient, traditional. Indeed, it is
that gives our youth its exceptional touch and its true charm. This tendency to
fight for change without denying traditional cultural values and without being
a generation of revolt and hatred. It is the face that some youth of certain
continents show that in the hatred of political management to end up feeding a
hatred for people of a certain age (advanced) and leaving all that is
traditional, religion, habits and Practices of the past. We must keep our feet
steeped in tradition while striving to make our beautiful face reign over the
odious and impose it on the whole world as the true identity of African youth.
An optimistic youth, both modern and traditional, who use the inventions of the
contemporaneity to stave off the fate of its technical and political retardation
in today's world.
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