... My Conscious is clear!

What has been said of me is true. I offer no arguments nor dispute to the simple facts, but they hardly begin to cover the scope of my true crimes. Honor requires more than admition, so I offer a full confession and the whole truth. For far too long I have failed to recognize my own hypocrisy, I ignored my own cowardice conveniently hiding behind a position of political compromise, and for what? To retain the meager wealth and rank than men desire. So I come before you a condemned man for having finally stood up to injustice. My shame and regret is that I failed to do so before it arrived in my own court.

We supply the armies, we build the roads, and we employ the nation. Still we remain silent while our coffers are emptied and our freedoms eroded. There will be times where we are powerless to injustice but there must never be a time where we fail to protest. This being, known as individualism is a cancer growing and the only proper thing to do is to cut it out. You all know what I speak of. Each one of you has been the recipient of the evils of this cancer. But my words are not in judgment of my fellow noble men, they are a warning. I urge you to consider what you are doing for we are helping this cancer to forge the very chains that bind us….which brings me to the confession of my true crime so that i may redeem my honor.

I write this from the congested human settlements across Africa, from the great Universities and flourishing suburbs of this great continent, from its dirt poverty and from conscious stricken wealth. But I write. I write because I have a concern for the moral health of our nations and because we all have to see through the superficial glory and glitter of our society. We need to read the writing on the wall because we have seen nations wade in the balance of history and found to be wanting. I write because I see this as a dark hour in the affairs of men, traditionally the “idealists”.

What happens to a dream deferred? It leads to bewildering frustrations and corroding bitterness. I came to this realization one day while working in Uganda when I was booed by some young men and women. I went home that evening with an ugly feeling, selfishly I thought of my sufferings and sacrifices over the past years and as to why they would boo one so close to them? But as I lay awake thinking, I finally came to myself and I could not for the life of me have less than patience and understanding for those young men and women. For years, myself and others like me have held out radiant promises of progress. I preached to them about my person experiences and lectured to them about the not too distant day when they will have freedom here and now. That day, their hopes had soared. They were booing because I had urged them to have faith in people who had too often proved to be unfaithful. They were now hostile because they were watching the dream that they had so readily accepted turn into a frightening nightmare.

The collision cause was set. The most meager of foreign aid for international development is crushed in the surge of reaction. Unemployment rages but the bi-partisan response is rhetoric rather than a serious poverty alleviation program among the majority mass – the youth. On some positions; cowardice as the question is it safe? expediency asks the question is it politics? Vanity asks the question is it popular?

My crime is that my conscious did not ask the question if it is right and my morals did not question my conscious as to why it did not ask that question!