Africa will survive coronavirus – PLO Lumumba

Fellow Africans, we are between the rock and the hard place. The continent and the world has been victimized by a virus we now know as Coronavirus or COVID-19. What the one familiar to us are now dancing on the tongues of everyone.The sophisticated and the unsophisticated.

The continent of Africa is shutdown. Shutdown from Capetown in South Africa to Tunis in Tunisia. Shutdown from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia to Dakar in Senegal. Shutdown in Nairobi, Kenya to Kinshasa in Zaire. Shutdown from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso to Nouakchott in Mauritania.

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Africa is shutdown, shutdown that her young boys and girls can no longer go to school. Shutdown that her planes can no longer fly to distance landing. Shutdown that she is in the valley of the shadows of death.

But this mother continent has demonstrated not once not twice that she can survive calamities. Is it not true that we survived Slavery? Is it not true that we survived Colonization? Is it not true that we survived Neo-colonialism? Is it not true that we went through Ebola? Is it not true that smallpox visited us? Is it not true that we are survivors?

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We will survive again! If we work together, we will survive,because we are survivors.
We have our young men and women, our trade professionals in the forefront, doing what they can and must in order to liberate the continent from the clutches of Corona.They will succeed.But we too have a duty to obey the dictats that are being issued to us that appear to compromise our liberties but are necessary for our better days for our personal good.

This continent now has a time to reflect, to ask ourselves fundamental questions. Those who have the honors and privilege of serving the continent as politicians must now ask; ‘What do we do to our health sector now and for the future? Must we not in the coming days and future ensure that we allocate resources to our hospitals, allocate resources to our research scientists, allocate resources where resources will be used for the general good for this generation and generations yet to be known.

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Fellow Africans, we live in times when lies go round the world seven times before truth rises from our belts. These are times where we must exercise discretion. We must give meaning to the words of James Russell Lowell when he said “Truth forever on the scaffold. Wrong forever on the throne.But that scaffold seized the future and behind the dim unknown in the shadow lies God or standing God, watching over his own.

We are not alone. But we must also do what we can and must. Africa must now pull herself by her bootstrap. Africa must use this opportunity to prepare herself because history has demonstrated not once not twice that it’s only those who buy the lottery tickets who win.

Africa must now prepare herself to ensure that she can survive that only can strive that her people can survive. We can do it, we must do it. It is our young men and women who are the backbones of this continent.

So, I look forward to the day, wherever we are in Niamey in Niger, in Bamako in Mali,in Banjul in the Gambia, or in Luanda in Angola or Libreville in Gabon or wherever we are in Benin or in South Sudan.

The time is now for us to make a solemn vow that post-corona, we will do things differently; that post-corona, we will be more compassionate; that post-corona, we will only do that which is good and right. That post-corona, we will have new thinking, that post-corona we will have a new African man and a new African woman whose only claim to fame will be to do that thing which is good and right. We can and must do it for the sake of Mother Africa!

Source: PLO Lumumba Ghana Chapter