african scholastics journal

Frederick Kwesi Great Agboletey

Stockholm, Sweden

Discernible Error

The Confusion That Is Us

A figment of the collective imagination, an illusive shadow that walks the fringes of reality, like the shadow retreating with the dawn, mirroring the dawning of a new day. Yet not the awaited arrival of things bright and beautiful. The light that dispels the fear of darkness, he was not of the darkness, he was a shadow of the darkness, an entity that found meaning and description not in the light, but that signified the creeping dawn. He was an isolated reality whose existence was denied in one instance and sought after with feverish despair to be snuffed out like the soft flames of a candle, the next. He was the voice of a thousand thoughts; struggling to find expression, he embodied the idealistic and realistic musings of fleeting thoughts in the buzz of frenzied action. He ruminated the thoughts of the masses. Giving voice to the million silent shouts of despair among wandering and wondering minds. He strode with the stride of a wounded tiger; the undisplaced, yet mature anger gave him the cocky stance of a floating fly dragon, yet he was humility personified. His wildness had been tamed to docile civility by the sublime processes of socialisation. But his anger was a self-consuming desire seeking direction of appeal. The case had been presented, not once, but it has become a tedium that has lost the novelty appeal of structured conveyance, the first time around. Yet like the mantra of a vestal virgin, the song repeated again, is better than the one just about being completed.

 

Another day dawns, the light comes very early, as early as two a.m. the brief darkness begins to unfold and the horizon beyond the glass window panes assumes darker shades of varied yellow, reminders of spectacular sunsets in shades of orange. The summer light, this part of the world, is an abundant overplay of clarity, lighting and heating in a seeming overcompensation for the prolonged darkness of winter, enough to light, at times even the darkest of souls.

 

He is a moving ball of distorted emotions on the downside of life. Uncoordinated rage criss-crosses his fragile emotional zone in non-specific lashes of overlapping multivariegated shades of off-colour red, filling him, way up with unresolved emotional differences, that he has only barely began to appreciate, least of all understand. Over thirty years of age, brimming with visions and ideas, unfulfilled, with yesterdays lingering despairs clawing tenaciously into today's sorrow.

 

From some infrequently accessed grey brain region, suddenly there spreads unto the memory screen, scenes of a small tropical island, dry and rocky. Its white houses, seemingly bleached by the ocean waters lapping its scrawny shores. The graves in its cemetery had the look of something well cared for, but that could benefit from major maintenance works. Like the neatly painted houses in the poorer sections of town, carefully held together only by the invisible bonds of hopes nurtured by hearts bleached of sorrow. Structures lighted from some extreme artistic viewpoint, delighting in the higher, brighter shades of primary colours; the best effort only seems to accentuate the extremities of poverty. The people, on that little island, they sang sad sweet songs, cracked the big rocks that littered the shores into small collections of gravels; the task was pursued by many of the people who lived there, on that little island, with a consciousness and attention that exceeded the requirements of the task. It was a task pursued with the avid determination of desperation. The meaningfulness bequeathed the task cried of the need for definition, a definition of not what it is that they are doing, rather what their purpose to life was, is and going to be. On that lonely place, out of time and place, it was a place where they sought to give life more than a passing glance, before retreating to the approaching darkness, where perhaps they will find something that gives peace.

 

He remembered the assistant headmaster of the famous secondary school he attended in Cape Coast, Mr Bart, reflecting on his path through life "... most of you boys are overeager to be science students, yes, in my days it was no different, the competition was tough, and eventually, I was also one of the chosen few...that was many years ago and hundreds of gallons of coffee and countable hours of sleep. Today, I am an assistant headmaster while some of those who we thought were dunderheads are today heading 'big organizations' and doing well in politics. Maybe if I had also studied political science at the university I could very well be an important government official today, and not just an assistant head . . ."

 

Words uttered expansively, captured with vivid clarity by subtle processes in a far away place and recalled with vivid clarity these many years later and in so far away a place. Yet still, he may have overlooked a few things in his favour, by dint of being a teacher in a boys school, he occupied a hill top bungalow and inspired great fear in a thousand boys every passing day of the academic year, not only as a result of his enormous bulk, but he was quick to use the cane in his chemistry class and outside on undisciplined boys, and 'boy!’ could he lay it on right'. To aspire to be a politician, that certainly is 'crank' thinking. What haven't politicians done in undoing all? In their insanity, and cowardly pursuit of personal underachievement, they have ruined the vibrancy of potentials waiting to find realisation and destroyed the hopes of many a generation.

 

Threshing in some deep dead end labouring task and being the ultimate purveyor of the hand-me-downs of overlords. Yes, certainly, some, almost all, but there are a few who bring the light into the darkness, the purest of the souls, these, are the ones who give unto us the joy of pride and the identity of a people. They must be sought for, defined and appreciated.

 

The bane of self-imposed ruthlessness, pathetically described as leaders, in recent times have sent some in search of economic security in far and foreign places. African governments are busy despoiling their own societies. The colonial legacy of artificially unnatural, seemingly inconsiderate and haphazard splitting of a whole continent by a few buccaneers, whiling away time over whisky, pretentiously assuming laconic attitudes of discoverers has had lasting repercussions both positive and negative. (Only heaven knows what they had discovered anyway. Probably, they discovered that others live their own sustainable lives in their own societies. Inarguably, however the doctrine of Christianity and accessing God through Christ Jesus, has been one of the most profound and farthest reaching benefit of contact with these intrepid adventurers).  On the whole, the prevailing negations have been massive inadequacy of leadership capabilities to effectively manage the transformational transition actuated by this cross-cultural contact.  It is only in the paucity of consideration when issues are examined through the tinted lens of dissatisfaction that proper perspicuity is enabled. In reflective consideration it would seem that the grouping of previously independent tribes into the constraining boundaries of nation states probably serves some good purpose. Possibly the different tribes could muster their resources in their newly defined configurations, employing in the process their worthy, under exploited intellectual potential to build great nations. But nation building is not by any means a job lightly taken or pretentiously assumed. It is a commitment that demands committed commitment. For as the prophet Isaiah echoed the Supreme Architect Himself with resonating - resonance through space, time dimensions - inquiry, "Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment?" For this ancient landmass peopled with cultures as old as the rocks, the birthing process seems an unending contraction that gripped the mother to be at the crack of dawn, leaving the piercing shrill hanging in sustained pain, reverberating through the years, and making the children cringe with unknown emotions.   So far, in most instances Africa's artificial nation states are too busy self-destructing, attempting without much success to assert everything, but the expected appropriate self-direction to define meaning within changed contexts. The fight to find definitive emergence is only a continuation of a process of necessary equilibration that the advent of colonialism to the African continent perpetuated. That contact was an indication of weighty matters in the higher trans-physical realms of time, change and universal divergence and convergence. The cycle had gone full circle and closure had been attained, adverted by the advent of the adventurers. With that there has been activated a transitional transformational shift, up and into the beginning of another level of the infiniteuos spiral.

 

It is more natural, to imagine a successful Ashanti nation state, a strong Hutu enclave, a free Tutsi nation, a dominant Bantu state, just like it was before colonial influence came and distorted it all. However the dominant issue that is most relevant is how existing society sorts out the rubbles of the "tower of colonial Babel" and rise from the ashes of being latecomers and rise to the task of uplifting the crumbling spirits of a continent in despair. The desperation of mayhem teaches crucial lessons of survival and brings to the fore the vultures and the hunters that rid society of the verminious thrash of a disembowelled and chaotic society tearing apart at the seams, desperately seeking to hold itself together. The ominous undeterred recrafting powers of nature and the elements, grander in scale and immolatingly unresponsive to the puny irrelevance of humans self assumed grandeur of relevance and import, petty assumptions easily cast aside in the maelstroms of supercilious seemingly ungainly onslaught, even by the very earth.

 

As some struggle to come to terms with the thinly veiled circus like scenario enacting itself and exacting human costs in terms of the unfulfilled dreams of whole generations. The pride of identity and of central belief that it was not for want of ability to pursue a course for the general well being, as it is a lack of the opportunity to express the sought for expectations on the larger social scale that has engendered hopelessness in the midst of hope and has led some to give vent to wild theorising to explicate the profound regression of a whole race and from this vacuous speculative basis sling wild intemperate attempted pot-shots of suggestive wisdom seeking a redefinition of reality, in misplaced adamant constructs of fault ridden surety. For certainty, in refusal to reconsider there is but one surety, unlimited despair.

 

As separate groupings migrated south, they lost the finesse of their past greatness in the vast savannas and mighty forests, they retrogressed to primitive states and primary existence, but their societies were well organised, so they survived, they adapted and were too some extent in control of their environment. Change came in the guise of just a few desperate 'fellas' in search of adventure and gold. The latter invaders of the crumbling Black empire of ancient kingdoms. They came, they saw already well-organised societies and they traded. "Ayevu" means crafty dog. The men of past knew what the stranger had in mind but all the combined forces of their local gods were no match for the bold cunningness of the leaders of the strangers, they moved in slowly, craftily and before the tent owner knew what was going on the camel was calling the shots. Hundreds of years later and several millions of the best of its human resources depleted in slavery and confused relocation to distant lands where the search for self-discovery and recovery is a manifest reality manipulated by the craftiness of the strange wayfarers. Blinded by the parochial visions of tribal survival that successfully sold of the best of tribal foes and in greed, kin. Lost and bewildered, confused and betrayed. Only they, themselves as a people, understand the deep undertones of the bewailing cries of mourning, death and disaster that have struck the family homestead. War and great turbulence has devastated the tranquillity, yet after burying their dead, they must gather again and remend the tattered garment of a dispersed and distraught humanity. Dorning black mourning clothes, they forsake their primary economic activity of farming herding and hunting, for a while, and 'sit in ash, dressed in sack clothes'. The garments of sorrow had wearing durability and withstood harsh wear. Then when tired of mourning, the wise elders respond to their collective hunger pangs and say 'its enough, let us all up and restructure the fabric of meaningful existence'. But before rebuilding the scattered fragments of dishevelled existence. Satiate the primitive urge to revenge, to self-destruct, out of the ashes of the ruins, piece together meaningful creative activity that adds meaning and purpose. The day comes when the made believe barriers are cast aside. Overlook the artificial boundaries; discard them from the margin of imagination. Of mind and the marginalisation of the land when the Ashanti kingdom of strongmen wise in their wisdom and the knowledge of the strangers shall span the south-western tip of Nigeria through the middle of Dahomey across the hills of mid Volta and the tips of the northern savannah into the sweltering rain forests of Cote D'Ivoire. The King of Buganda will rise in spirit of brotherhood and the mighty women, probably the men too, of Shona will reach out to link the chain of brotherhood completing the link with descendants of the Zulu. Out of these smouldering ruins of despair shall rise a great union, men will salute men with respect, and women will tell the tale of the improbable to their yet unborn children.

 

The tiny shards of sheds, frail palm fronds and plastic sheets and other materials, cling with frightening frailty to the black soils a little further up the beach. The seashore is a veritable latrine where the waves roll the droppings of the dwellers unto and back into the coastal waters. Here easing oneself on the beach was not in any sense unusual, it is the expected way of fulfilling that human function. The boats, the nets, the children, the pigs and goats, the women and the men are fused in an obnoxiously disgusting travesty of all that is normal in a sordid existence of desperate poverty, on these dirty beaches. In their poverty they had desecrated natures purity in a perverse manner that is intensely difficult to acknowledge and inexcusably unacceptable, yet in the acceptance of it they compromise. One wades through putrid and soggy grounds through houses in the sun where darkness has taken a tenacious hold. Here and there are the remnants of some palm oil dish sacrificed to some clay and earth idol grinning hideously. Here dwellings comprise of two rooms or single rooms built to enfold a compound of sorts where privacy is meaningless and gossip thrives like the children enshrouded in caking layers of salt and dirt. Stomach's bloated and heads seemingly larger than normal because of their under nourishment, these children at first glance seem to multiply and emerge at random from women who seem to thrive on child birthing. First appearances could not be more deceptive. Beneath the seemingly useless despondency of failure, is a well-ordered system of grieving anger against a society that has failed its habitats. The society is a reality sui generis, a dark overwhelming depressive entity that cowered obedience to its invincible dictates. Here are nurtured dreams, born out of dread of the suffocating material poverty and obvious doom, the fear that triggers survival response instigated fear to escape the dread. From such humble beginnings emerge every now and then some desperate soul with a drive, the power of the individual will propels a desire that ejects enough force to break from the encircling grips of futility and despair. For the most part the desire is born of education that enables a vision of an alternative, a feasibly favourable alternative. Where awareness and literal ability fleeces away the depressing darkness of ignorance and opens the windows of faded hope to some illusionary deceptiveness of "new worlds" within the known world, a half baked offering of unappetising outwardly pleasing fare that quickly pales in the self revelatory light to engender profoundly depressing meaninglessness of foggily defined new realities. A subtle ill-defined process that by its very nature is annoyingly depressing. The avidity with which these emergent ones clad themselves in white clothing seems to be a blaring declaration of the overt expression of their internal fight to quench the nightmare of childhoods spent tottering on the edge of despair and crippling poverty. Worse than poverty is the general acceptance of that which is obviously despicable and unacceptable. They live within it, but they will not acquiesce to its cannibalistic thriving. They have seen the figment of society's dreadful animosity that consumes its core constituents, locked into and engulfing those within its confinements to its slow degrading annihilate consumptive greed of never sufficing hunger. Those who are awakened to the reality of disparity within which they exist are seemingly amazed at the acceptance and the lack of desire to effect change even on a small scale. The awakening is the light cast on the sea of vermin us loathing, it is only the beginning, and the light lifts off the darkness that shields the horror. Revealed fully to be appreciated in the glaring light is the moving river of unimaginable horrific realisation. There are images that are scarred on the edges of sane minds in times deprived of reality in a world and people that define reality in excruciatingly non-realistic terms.  In an enigmatic setting and time, often it is not unseal to wonder despairingly whether clarity of what is appropriate and self-redemptive, is not in a sense abnormality when everyone behaves so outrageously normal in their monotonic travesty of meaningful existence. Traditional authorities are the guardians of customs that enslave the soul and chain the body unto corruption. The chiefs hold on to outdated customs and irrelevancies in the face of arresting problems of daily existence crying for solution. It is a holding on, that in its tenaciousness reveals the truth that they have nothing else to offer, no matter how much they may desire for a viable alternative. Viability is indistinctive from the sustainability of the self, first, and foremost, the individual must be in existence and find self definitive grounding that is meaningful, to be able to be potent harbingers of change. Traditional authority is a fast eroding terrain of nonviability in a rough ocean bridling with alternatives that are elusive yet persistent. People are choking their desire to let out their screams of desperation and in their last acts of meaningful and sane behaviour choke to ghostly existence of shadowy lives of futility. Here the young people do not hold their elderly in contempt for failing to be conduits through which youthful desires are realised as acts of self-accomplishment. These young ones have a discernment that is astound perspicuous. They have discerned with shameful clarity that the elders no longer have any solutions to problems that they can no longer comprehend and have no realistic setting to enable solubility. Thus, have they resigned themselves to dissolve into the rising miasma of coagulating and congealing mass emotion of pent up frustration that is an outcome of their irrelevancy as mentors and architects of their children's future. These young ones have redefined the existing reality, they do not point at their mother's birthplace with their left fingers, they seek with a certain studiousness’ to forget the locations of their birthplace. There is a beguiling remorseless intensity with which delusion is cloaked with charming disdain under sheer and extreme ambitious drive, to not necessarily flee but to satisfy the hunger for a change that is so obvious yet so far out of reach. Fleeing to return; since success can best be celebrated twice; at the moment of victorious attainment and later at the more settled sedate stage of adulation, where the individual eccentricity finds mass expression in a collective gesture of celebration on the eve of crowning glory (in the pits of despair, where the homestead with its tradition that suffocates, now liberates).  They have set their face into the sun and seek for self-fulfilment in the shadows of others achievement, striving to find their location in well-mapped environs. Those who have arrived only discover on arriving that the journey has only begun. The transition zones are multi layered slices of clean cut phases of lateral movements within and without, up or down depending on the swaying currents taking hold at the minimal individual level and the uncontrollable societal denomination. The vague and ambiguous barriers are intended to thwart and frustrate, driving one to acts of desperation and yet stranger acts of enforced survival against the prevailing dominance. It is indeed a long seemingly hopeless stride against the emptiness that curtails and quenches. A desperate blindfolded determined mindlessness that enables a pleasant stroll through the venomenous snake pit. The alter ego redefiners are the rebels, who rebel against everything that their elders acknowledged as acceptable, they fill the void of vacuous empty listlessness with acts designed with a determination to arouse the angst of all into the unrelieving despair that the advent of things that arouse desires that cannot be satisfied on a whole scale level engender. These are the noise some pestilence intruding from the edge and setting all on edge. They fornicate with the proclivity and intensity of hormone drenched bulls, seeking as it were to burn their frustration in welting fluids of insatiate desires. They steal and plunder with unstoppable zeal, arrogating to themselves in terms that are self derived the joy of the hunt. They generate emotions bordering on social disintegration among forbears who have lost themselves in a hazy perplexity; insecurity that devolves to primal instincts of self-preservation and of the little that can be secured. They have elevated drunkenness and outward overt expressive volatility of physicality with an aim of destructive pulverism into an act form. They thrash and remodify with an acute zeal of creative destruction of a finely acute and intense nature. They are shadows that merge and unify with the deepening darkness, melting and unifying in acts of wanton consumptiveness under the cover of darkness. They are the indicators of a sickness that eats with an offensive and sustained tenacious grasp into the fabrics of a disentangling meaninglessness. There is no looking back, of appreciation of tasks accomplished, victory is not savoured in the aftermath of accomplishment, it is a despairing onward remodelling effort, a total work over, the results of which are not certain, but the very act of doing, in a morbid sense is satisfying and slowly mortifying. The sneering contentment of evil when reality creates a vacuum of appropriateness in the absence or deliberate withdrawal of good.

 

A few determined souls have gone in search of the light of knowledge. They sought to dispel the gloom of overwhelming despair. The givers of the light are content not to give the light to those who dwell in darkness. So the fire is raised and burns ever brighter and stronger, those who seek the light are misled, and seek to light their torch at the shadow of the fire. Some get too close to the fire and are singed. These are the ones who suffer severe damage, only those who have the eyes can see their scars, but the pain is evident for all who care enough to share. Some return disoriented and confused. The torch they lit is hidden in the inner recesses of their chambers, they mount an altar of selfish pride in their madness and live in the light of the fire they lit, out of place and out of touch with those who live in the darkness. The words of wisdom says no one lights a lamp and hides it under a bushel, words that sparkle of guiding wisdom, foolishly bypassing the arrogantly despairing. Light dwells with light and darkness with darkness. The search continues. The heat of the fire is inviting in the cold of the land of the great fire, some succumb to the weakness of the flesh and forget the greater goal and the larger mass of their people waiting for the light to set ablaze the pile of firewood gathered with great toil, to dispel the gloom of the all pervading darkness. So they stay, failing in their duty, " you who fail hearken yea to the cry of the people and forget not the judgement before the ancestors and the Creator" No one blames another, no not yet, the day will come, then atonement and understanding will generate forgiveness. For now, it is very true some do return; their flaming torches held high and bright, stupidity, ignorance and inwardness characterize the darkness. The touch of wisdom cannot be appreciated; it is quenched with great rapidity and finality. Some torches burn ever so bright in the presence of the great fire, they stay, begrudgingly a space is created for them. Some have come, back to the homestead twisted, contorted, distorted, disjointed out of sync and rhythm, reality can hardly define their strangeness. These ones are the calamities, empty shells, with a head full of inapplicable knowledge, tormented by the very fire they had gone to seek succour from. Hatred beyond reason has wormed its way into them, first they seek, they ask, they try to find reasons where there are no meanings, where answers confuse the questioner, its better not to know the answers if there are, souls in torment, they lose the very essence of life. Seeking direction when there is no place to go, so the search continues.  'The spider has silver skins and in its whiteness is reputed to have great wisdom; he tricks all the big and the strong of the jungle and makes them dance to his tune. When he is tired of them he sets them one against the other and his raucous laughter rings across the jungle with foreboding clarity'.

 

The era of mad men and visionless leaders. The era of the shortsighted visionary preceded them.  For the astute observer it is not surprising that the leaders who led Africa to independence dovetailed themselves and their "new countries" into resounding cataclysmic failure. They were battling two forces, primarily, the internal insatiate desire for never ending power. Secondarily, the pandering to external forces, which forces are potent manipulators with a focused self centred interest, a hard core devoid of humane padding, projectiles projecting outward, with a single intent, to hurt, ever so intensely. So from the depths of the jungle and the never ending plains these princely class marched into the domain of the lion, they were wiremen, they succumbed to the denigration of the spiritual self, but they had immense inner strength, beyond the wildest imagination of their mentors and masters. The lived to tell the tale, they mastered the masters craft and confidently threw the masters out of the workshop. Only this time the battleground was the "discovered" land of the primitive tribes of the lower Niger, Basuto land, and any of a myriad of despicable names that the strangers will apply to assuage their senses of humour, romance and perpetuate the culture of inferiority. Africa was only discovered in the imagination of reckless adventurers, in reality Africa was a phenomenon waiting to happen. It was not an issue meant to be corrected and redefined within the context of inapplicable perspectives. There was a way that had ceased to be sustainable, the emergence of new and more accommodating replacements in tune with the requirements of the time, is hedged in by discomfiting circumstances from within and without. The old ways had sustained the tribes for so long, there was a need for change; the strangers only came to fulfil the predictions of old. When they came they were actors acting a script that they could not comprehend. The sailors and their leaders were in a sense escaping the suffocating environments of societies that needed release from the rule of a tyrant minority. They were also the source of renewal in a bizarre sense as they themselves sought for release from the frightening damnation of societies carving and consuming with avaricious ugliness their own children; a wild, prolonged social carnivorous exhibitionism of intensely disgusting cannibalistic orgy of tyrannical rulers, devising ever more refined processes to scorn their societies.

 

The societies labelled as primitive were well organised and disciplined. The "they", could at best live as strangers and purvey their treachery and destruction. To survive, for hundreds of years they stayed cooped in their castles and fortresses, making the occasional foray, expensive in terms of human lives. To survive you had to understand the land, the dynamics that propel its inhabitants and submit to their laws, once they managed that with a few intrepid extremists, they had began the conquest. The oracles had long foretold the advent of the strange men from the boiling waters, the oracles had divined the rise of the falling ones from obscurity, and the oracles had foretold their own demise and disappearance.

 

The tribal heads were strong men and powerful rulers. Their descendants had to prove they were worthy to sit in the stead of the mighty men they were heirs to. They were men who hungered to rule; their laws were in conformity with the times, humane and intolerant of disobedience. The disobedient loser paid a painful price of humiliation and ultimately death.

 

Tokor Atorlia, literally translates as the fifth lagoon. The chief of Anlo migrated with his people from Notsie, rebelling against the wickedness of Chief Agorkoli, who had migrated with his people from the wetlands of Nigeria, where the rest of the people who had descended from the land of the Pharaoh's had settled. The story remains in bits and pieces, but there is a story.... The Awormefia of Anlo had decreed that all disobedient youth who broke the laws of the community should be buried neck deep in the mud at the banks of the lagoon. The executioners came at dawn and in the darkness preceding another day, the brave and the stupid  shrieking there silent fights of desperation were hauled away, on a one way journey of no return. They were taken and buried neck deep in the marshy grooves surrounding the lagoon where the ravens pecked their eyes out and they rotted  to death." 

 

"The eye that mocks a father,

that scorns obedience to a mother,

will be pecked out by the ravens of the

valley,

will be eaten by the vultures." Proverbs 30.          

 

"The god of the shrine requested a human sacrifice every year until the perfect sacrifice was found. So every year some innocent stranger lost his soul in rites of great secrecy. That was until one unlucky soul from a far place strayed too far from known terrains. They built a clay idol around him and even to this day the shrine speaks fluent Portuguese and the Hunor easily interprets it."

 

Men by their nature, deliver the best performances of their lives in the most trying circumstances. So the daily heroes enact the greatest acts of survival in the most desperate of circumstances. The spirit of a man takes a beating, the pain is stored in, it takes a rub, the anger is stored in, the reservoirs are slowly building up, pressure mounts, till, unrelieved, boiling point is reached, desperation and the primeval responses are activated, a life and death struggle in depths and dimensions varied, ensues. Therein are revealed the true individual personalities, there are men born to carry the burden of humanity, others simply create the burdens for others to bear, some men must fight for self-redemption enabling the finding of the real self. Others just seem to be intransigent passengers on a journey they never desired and would help in no way ease the rite of passage; they drift monotonously to the embracing darkness and numbness, never experiencing the thrill of the ride. These are the ones resigned to die. The truly great pay the price of self-sacrifice, it is a price they accept with humility, to such as these, it is enough to overcome the obstacles and pass the reward that is beneficial to the rest of humanity. These are the ones possessed of great inner strength and fortitude. They have the strategic minds of born warriors and the patience of a digesting python. They will smoulder in their rage over time and situation that will break the will of lesser men. They anticipate and precipitate, and when the moment is right, they descend upon the lesser beings with awesome destruction and reconstruction, of such, were the first round of emergent leaders. They were not descendants of the powerful tribal rulers, but they had one thing in common, the desire for self-determination and reorientation to changing circumstances. They bided their time, studied in the great learning centres of the emergent civilization, when the preparatory period was over, they came, liberators of the minds and rediscoverers of the will and hopes of their people. They were driven, impelled by maniacal zeal to rebuild and restore. First, they had accomplished the initial task as nature had destined, the remainder of the task was yet to be defined, you could only achieve so much in a generation, that which had taken six centuries to distort cannot be restored in a brief lifespan. Correction can only be effected in the presence of recognition of an error, the error has yet to be diagnosed in the confabulating mixture of unresolved differences of what is to be measured in the absence of a measure defining instrument, of a defining morality of what was, is to be, is now, and what should be. No matter how much or how insignificant the accomplishment it was only the start. The greater task ahead had only found definition in the mind of dreamers who walked the edge of the beaten paths, well beyond the known and safe places.

 

There were the traditional rulers and there were the successful traders, they all recognised that the future will be defined in terms of those who master the defining values of the adventing culture. The strangers knew that they had limited time to lord it over the rich sources of needed raw materials. A mutually accepted experiment to create a new individual for different reasons led to education, western education. Traditional man did not need five thousand years to evolve a literate culture, the evolution manifested in perfect mastery of the language, mannerisms and adaptation to the new culture. Enlightment is the literates’ redemption of what was buried under the decaying lumpiness of clumsy forcefulness, when gentility is akin to the pusillanimous whining of insignificant cowards. There were those among the many who took education further, as far as far was possible, in situ, who saw the reality revealed in a vision of rejection, progress was equivocated in profound rejection of traditional values, the weighty acquisition of borrowed cultural artefacts touted with vain and vague relevance. Education became an apparel of forceful acquisitiveness of individual grandiose rather than a tool for evolving practical solutions to daunting problems. The children of the master class were deliberate and wanted to delay the change a little longer, just long enough to have perfected the despicable slave-master attitude of the strangers. Who, themselves, having smarted under subjugation in their own lands could not hold back on their desire to cunningly institute the same practices among their hosts, but not before they had effectively weakened the continent with their divisive antics and turned neighbours against each other, supplying the means that effectively deployed perpetual self-annihilation into a self sustaining spiral that has gripped the tribes in a sustained destructive gory disregard of life, making the task of subjugation easier. The sustained anger of the sojourners lacked the patience to tolerate that irrationality, they came back and spoke, the message was clear. The forces of self destruction that created mayhem all over were inevitable, the leaders loved power and wanted to keep it, they had never lived such power before, but power self destructs the holder and those upon whom it is exercised. The leaders had been through the fire, and the suffering had provided them the energy that pushes the weakest of men to the peak of endurance and achievement, a life defining force is unleashed within the darkness of cranial regions that must find let before it self destructs those that are possessed of such immense power, it must be unleashed. That inner energy accomplished independence, the trap had been set by unwary men, which angered the beast they could not contend with. The new leaders of the monstrosity of tightly constrained incongruity of intolerance that passed for the new nation states came into inheritance of the pittance that was the leftover of the exploitation of the mass of the landmass. The exploitation is an afterthought of an incomprehensible dilemma. They not only had ready money, blood money, that bounded into obscurity, but predictably to play by the rules of the enslavement and the enslaving position, this time mental; of economics and trade, the western way. The chips had fallen in place for the mentors. The educated African, passively acculturated and weaned, knew only one way to play the tune, the way of his master. They were pretenders to freewill and independence, for try what they will, they were doing what they were trained to do. To lead their people and harness the resources of the land to accentuate the survival of the 'master'. They were closely watched... They started with fiery enthusiasm to imitate and equivocate the only thing, the one way, they knew. They made believe they were liberators, but the real liberators were yet to come. Liberation was a mind process circumnavigated with precise adroitness and harnessed for disciplined control to benefit the colonialist, be they missionaries or representatives of the 'empire'. The matching of intellectual development with material improvement as indicators of a changed status, which rankled at the mind state, was a powerful controlling process that had barely been understood. In its dynamic multiplicity, some of its portent capabilities had escaped the harbingers of civilisation. It often is evident that the awesome ability to gain access and manipulate whole societies through the beguiling and passive mind manipulation, was only barely breached by the French colonialists who in their inability to comprehend the awesome wholeness of a dimension of human nature and the potentialities therein only poked at the surface and let passed an opportunity, fleetingly flirting with its shadowy elusiveness. It is a lesson that modern governing processes have not approximated as they preoccupy themselves with the barbaric aggresiveness of obtaining obedience through physical oppression, an act that activates a mind state of rebellious disobedience. To fully acquire the power of servile governance, one needs to revert power back to the individual members of society, who in their individuality lack cohesive strength to impact the larger mass and must by a consenting contract of wilful submission surround trust to an individual. Leadership by providing the podium of uniform authority, that expresses the common desire, thus wields the awesome acceptable rule of the conceding power. This is barely the beginning of the governing process. The nature of the possible expression of that power is the basis for qualifying the success or otherwise of the governing process.

 

The first line of leaders had to fail, for in their failure they provided the needed focal point for the diversity of tribes in socio-cultural transition to rally and acknowledge the unarguable requirement of the unity of all. The former separation that enabled identity of the tribes, the rallying calls of faintly distinguished former values that needed nurturing and spread to others, were broken and the artificial new boundary lines brought together what would otherwise have been inconceivable, to come into being. But for some the mourning had not yet started, the residues of ancient anger and unresolved differences would have to find expression through bloodletting of the most heinous kind. It is all a necessary part of the cleansing that heralds healing of the whole, soon the mourning will begin in earnest and then the rebuilding.

 

The liberators were driven souls with mega egos and low intellect. They were the vagabonds of other times. This time round they held onto and wielded power, and that power spoke audibly, spitting fire and wrecking destruction. Fear strode along with them, they were not used to such power, neither had they even slept nor dreamt the dreams of grandiose delusional disillusion from which those they overthrew were awakening. The violence that punctuates bad governing is an indication of a disassociation between the assumed view of leadership and the reality of leadership. The job of assuming responsibility for society's welfare and coalescing the disparity of individual aspirations and providing the flexible but uniform platform that enables a sated state of pleasant social interaction, is hardly conceived in terms of rabid display of force. It is a subtle, but deep engagement of the social psyche in a sustained multi directional probe to attain ever-higher levels of human attainments. To energise and tune the variety of independents will struggling to find emergence in a tangle of negatively opposing forces, requires a mental agility and a highly developed skill at social manoeuvrability. Destructive force and dishonesty are definitely not accredited variables in the variety of required characteristics of good governance. It hardly comes as a surprise when the military men were exposed as cheap imitators of poorly understood complexities, dwindling over time in a mess of ever tightening loops of erratically flung outlandish policies that made a mockery of civility. That these human compendium of irascible usurpers had no good intentions in their driving mind states is easily discerned, they established governing bodies of confused 'buddies' whose idea of the governing process began and ended in materialistic realisations, first for the self, then for close relations, maybe for their tribes and the state, well just the food chest to be raided at the midnight hour. They had cliques of uneducated condoning tribal monstrosities in uniform and mufti that perpetrate a prevailing overhanging atmosphere of barely restrained chaos, under which the people wilt in frustration and denial of basic essentialities that define meaningful existence. Is it any wonder that government has evolved to be seen as an entity of suppressive terror destined to torment the individual and to be joined as a gravy wagon of petty thieves and usurpers of the common good.

 

               "Now you rich people weep and wail

          because of the misery that is coming

         upon you.

         Your wealth has rotted,

          and moths have eaten your clothes.

         Your gold and silver are corroded.

         Their corrosion will testify against you

         and eat your flesh like fire.

         You have hoarded wealth in the last days.

         look! The wages you failed to pay

         the workmen who mowed your fields

         are crying against you.

        The cry of the harvesters have reached

        the ears of the Lord Almighty.

       You have lived on earth in luxury and self              indulgence.

               You have fattened yourselves in the day of    slaughter.

               You have condemned and murdered innocent              men,

               Who were not opposing you."  James 5:5&6.

 

Human life is so short, yet in this brief period of individual existence, men have crafted cruelty of devious diversity, making each one life one prolonged unending refined torment. A roller coaster existence of meaningless highs and lows in a placidity of turbid nonfulfillment. The life lived and the collective enduring mind, sustained in one prolonged sustained note of excruciating high pitchedness; sounds so disturbing! There are many things that need to be done or desired, aspired to, to be achieved, but the wishes are washed up at the graveyard.  Dreams belong to the sane, yet a few mad men seek to live the dreams they had not conjured, these are the deranged that become the heroes of their days. There are those who look back, to ascertain what little had been achieved and how much more could have been done. A man wants to do so many things, he aspires to want to rebuild society, to take control of lesser beings, unite them into an impregnable force to push beyond the barriers that imprison them into a perpetual cycle of miserable existence, untying them from the chains of misery that maintain a strangle hold and sap life out of unborn hopes. Using the energy generated, his dream will build for them a better place where men and women live in dignity. Such a man has many problems, he is like a bottle of honey in the open, opened, the flies will come, disgusting, filthy and breeding disease, the bees will come with a sting so sharp, painful and a big after swell, the big bad bear comes along and gulps all of them together down its big black throat.

 

Isaiah, the prophet (may have) echoed the times: -

 

Woe to those who make unjust laws,

to those who issue oppressive

decrees,

to deprive the poor of their rights

and withhold justice from the oppressed

of my people,

making widows their prey

and robbing the fatherless.

What will you do on the day of reckoning,

when disaster comes from afar?

To whom will you run for help?

Where will you leave your riches?

Nothing will remain but to cringe among

the captives

or fall among the slain.

Isaiah 10:1-4

 

After accumulating the unjust wealth of greed, building the secured nest in the midst of the suffering masses, the wars of ravaging poverty, brutally maul the collective, and all without exemption cower in fear. In fear of what? The twelve year old brandishing a weapon of destruction and burning a stiff of whiff? The denied that were not even worth a spit a few quiet weeks back? Yet no one learns. No peace can be had in the midst of the unfulfilled desires of others. Yet, even, when those desires are contorted into mockeries of decency, what is to be fulfilled?

 

Some had seen the light beyond the gloom, the starlight in the wide black night sky, a glimmer of hope and a catalyst of illusions and the fantasy of dreams that curl the brittle dry lips into faint smiles. A few in desperation, in search of meaning had looked up and seen the little lights. These ones, they are fed up, tired and disgusted with the stench that is beneath, on the ground, they arrogate to themselves wise ness. They have climbed the backs of the doddering unaccomplished and taken a whiff of the freshness that is above the common ground, they like it and do not want to live in the stench on the ground, not anymore. So they stretch their necks ever further, breathing the sweet scented air, standing on the back of those suffocating in the stench beneath. Life on the ground is beastly, but even the beasts can forage in the pristine purity of natures beauty undefiled. Men have created filth in the untainted beauty of nature. Men have taken that which is clean, freely given, giving joy, they have substituted dirt, hatred that melts others with one look, and turned existence into a meaningless menagerie. People are choked, choking to death with the filthiness of inner city slush. It poisons the very air they breathe, its corruption is overwhelming and its stains resist cleansing. Young people, desperate and dangerous, seek for meaning and direction in this madhouse melee. The old look on, worn out, feeble and confused, they have lost their sense of direction, in places where there is nowhere to go. The old wisdom of the ancient, have nothing to give in terms of the concrete realisation of significant dimensions of the social, physical and idealistic expectations defined by intrusive externalities, not any longer; even before they could hand it out, the young have stolen and discarded whatever the elders had to give without permission or right. Who can afford the luxury of theorising about the insignificant when people perish in want in the midst of unbounded and limitless possibilities due to ignorance? Yet the dream continues, the dreamers awake and only then does the madness of living begin. It is their intense desires born of frustration in systems that do not adequately approximate individual expectations in time and place that engenders a search at one level, to realise what is adequately most satisfying, and at another level, leads to an obsessive futile search for the means to gratify their intense cravings. Some look beyond the now, the constricted limitations, despairing not at the bleakness of the landscape, rather are apprehensive of the fertility of the filth and filthiness that in its quirky corruptibility has layered all and all things with suffocating and progressively tenuous rank fetidity, tainting all within the grasp of its awesome modifiable embrace. Yet, people in close proximity never seeking to understand, mocking the misfortunes of others, wishing everyone to fail like them, pretending to have heroes in a world that is beyond them, in which they live.

 

Keta; little town by the sea. The sand, everywhere, not a single rock on those beaches for miles and miles, it was only the pale yellowish matured bamboo coloured sand. The ever lulling splash of the surf pounding the shore, the stiff breeze and the salt on your tongue and the smell of it tingling your nostrils. The early years of innocence when you could just remember all the little details of life and the activities going on around you the carefree joy of innocent childhood. To all intents and purposes, grandpa must have been the epitome of motivated ambition. In his latter years, well after he had broken the chord of despair that held the family in a suffocating tenuous embrace of ancient rites and primitive traditions realised within the traditional occupation of fishing. He emphatically decried every thing that identified the people in the village. He was insistently intolerant of noise and brash behaviour in any form. His huge mansion painted in a brilliant white, the white wash regularly redone to maintain that pristine purity of cleanliness was a very quite place. A spoon dropped in the female quarters of this huge sprawling edifice of human accomplishment was a catalyst to an irksome irritation that vented itself not only against the dimwit who disturbed the carefully cultivated peace. There were always one houseboy or another who came to live in the little boys room at the end of the garden that fronted the inner outer court. The houseboys maintained and kept house, doing all kinds of chores. Grandpa was of medium height. His normal dressing style was a standard immaculate white and British khaki trouser, and solid, ground-crunching buffalo skin shoes. He was a head teacher famed for his disciplinary intolerance to his pupils. And at his funeral many accomplished men and women who had risen from the little villages and towns lining the Atlantic coast of this section of West Africa to positions of commendable achievement at the national level, retrospectively acknowledged the benefits that his severe canning and hard expectations benefited their individual drive for success. He saw in education a great opening and took to schooling with a fervency that surpassed all the expectations of his father, the great fisherman and local chieftain had thought. After the missionary education at the primary and middle school level. He proceeded to teachers training college. Later on in life he got into trading, engaging in an import trade activity, selling British wares and opening a bookshop that was famous along the coast. He was thrifty with his money and loved the companionship of the ladies of the town. The distinguishing characteristics of grandpa was less the eccentricities that defined his daily existence or the marvellous beauty of architectural imagination that he realised and relished in, it was that, he was a little man with a hard driving motivation to snap the cords of brutish existence and find another form of solace. He grew to despise the gross mannerisms of the fishing folk and their brash ways. His attendance at their traditional rites was to wane into non-participation, a replacement process it would seem. He became head teacher, church elder and town councillor. It was a setting where ones approximation to British mannerisms or whatever interpretation it had assumed here, was the realistic assessment of ones status. The traditional society endowed the elders with great positional responsibility and accorded great respect. This blended very well with the highlighted civilised conduct of this educated dandies and church fathers. In this new phase of small town evolvement, the ability to read and record information assumed such importance (that an educated elite, who held a teaching post was for a generation accorded greater acknowledgement than his equal in material riches), since it blended very well with the traditional ways of holding court and making land acquisitions verifiable. The teachers, like my grandpa, became men of social significance and made their presence felt at every level of society. Education and Christianity were the two greatest enlightens, that was in sync with traditional society's search for a breakthrough into a new phase of social organisation and found ready acceptance in many quarters. In his self-realisation, he played against the times and exigencies and won a flush. His crowning glory of self-achievement was his house and his children. In those early years of the 'new era', the children of the teacher, were to all become accomplished academicians, who attended the great universities of Western and Eastern Europe. They defined the times in their persevering nature. They triumphed against the odds and the improbabilities, albeit grandpa's money made a difference. In later years the sea erosion along this portion of the Atlantic coast took away all the great mansions of Keta and broke the hearts and spirits of many a daring settler in this little town. It was the end of an era. There were the children who took away with them the quaint memory of this beautiful little town and its twisted heroes.

 

Sometimes, watching nature, deliberating on its extreme but unified diversity of miasmic expletive calculability, it is not unnatural to conceive of humans as the height of creation perfected. Within human species are displayed varying levels of intellectual capacity. In all its diversity are clear streams of generalised commonality. Human intellect is spread broadly from extremely intelligent to the downright stupid. At both ends of the spectrum of intellectual capacity there are only the exceptional few. The larger majority of mankind are bunched in the middle. It’s within this middle class that the worst and the best of human nature abound.  In this grouping lies growth of all societies in response to the peculiar demands of their extenuating circumstances. So it is that he forerunners of creative scientific growth the few who think beyond the general populace in conjunction with good leaders, using as their base the knowledge of different civilizations and the intrepidness inspired no doubt by hunger insatiable for the yet unattainable set out to expand the horizon of feasible knowledge. That growth being attained in minute stages with its apparently unbelievable out ward manifestation of its results. But each widely acclaimed discovery, that the mass of the populace applauds, is attained over trying times and suddenly when perfection of that particular bit of knowledge is eminent it, it explodes in a myriad of cross products; that presently accentuate the gaps in knowledge.

That emphasis of difference is not per se the natural consequence of progress be it scientific or otherwise....

Traditional man had attained equilibrium in dynamism. They had attained a unity with nature and their environment. They had attained a form of self-sustainability that was truncated and stolidly grounded, yet non generative. The traditional societies operated at the pertaining level of physical reality and spirituality.  To the spiritual leaders have been entrusted down the generations the limitations that passed for secrets wrapped in the deceptive cloaks of religion and magic that enabled accessing the power of nature. That power was enormous in its revelation. Awesome in the destruction that it could wrought, if handled improperly. But to those to whom its responsibility has been entrusted, it is assumed, that such a source of strength need to be used to benefit the general well being in all its fearsome capability.

 

The ancestors are the factual realisms of departed wise men whose presence lingers on in their attainments and the wisdom of their words. That good deeds must be condoned and great individual attainments may outlive transient existence, the wise ones enshrouded the lessons of the past in the guise of spiritual garments of proverbial existence of the departed in a spiritual realm that is close to the living. Subtle, yet gripping effect on restless humanity.

 

Traditional society had all the rudiments of modern industrial society, but somewhere between the transition from a basically tilling society to the grandiose pretensions of modern industrial society. The essential human factors inherent in traditional society were deliberately discarded in a rush to acquire the excessive consumptive materialistic mentality that glorified the emergent civilisation. Traditional society demanded honesty from its members; roguery was not compromised in any form. The chiefs held their responsibility and honour above wealth. The punishment for default was severe and instant. With civilization, whatever it meant, came unbridled acquisition of criminal proportions. Civil servants and factory workers plundered state resources not only with impunity but also with aggressiveness remarkable in its intensity; everybody stole from the national government and from each other, conducted themselves in a manner designed individually and collectively to destroy the shaky foundations of assumed nationhood. Workers through selfish manipulation, bribery and corruption of enormous proportions, made it not only frustrating for their own people, outside the bureaucratic system to deal with government offices; but after walking the tightrope of bureaucratic inefficiency and corruptible influences, the aftertaste was bitter, repulsive and detestable. The question demands an answer. One that few bothered to ask, was, what is and was the responsible element accountable for a situation where persons from recently traditional systems who wouldn't dare to steal a cob of corn in another persons farm, plunder with ease and no self consciousness the collective wealth of nations. There seemed to be not only a total refusal to accept the new form of governance that colonialism imposed, but also in their bid to introduce western values and elements of governance to African societies the European deliberately botched the job. Consequently central government imposed the rule of the weak over the strong in a system that was only barely understood by the majority of the populace. Enforced by national armies with the cowering influence of that pervasive underpinning of human barbarity, armaments. The natural reaction was individual rejection, manifesting in tangible acts of deliberate misconduct, unconsciously directed at total destruction of the false system.

Visualized, it is like a stick forced down, through the throat into the stomach of an unwilling subject, the physiological reaction is an intense and immediate rejection characterised by violent retching, vomiting and excessive salivation, stomach muscles contracting spasmodically to regurgitate the offensive object. The stick may be forced to stay in place, but the efforts at spewing it out are uncontrollable and stop at death of the subject or spewing out of the distasteful object.

For a people who lived their life in daily contentment with nature mastering its vagaries and uncertainties, traditional man was a highly disciplined and socially oriented individual. In-group hunts each individual had a carefully orchestrated role to play, but each individual had a responsibility towards the group and its members. With the hunt in sight, a faltering away from one's role could result in another's death, so you learn to cover for your brother and hold the group together, worse than death is the label of cowardice and laziness that could result from misconduct, a label that sticks to a family, is abhorred and despicable; in essence laziness and cowardice were not aspects of traditional societies. Like the old ones say, 'snakes breed in the farm of the lazy man'

. Yet under national governments workers prided themselves in the guile with which they absolved themselves of their official responsibilities.

 

Traditional man was the epitome of human kindness in non-warring times; a stranger, no matter where he was or who he was received a refreshing bowl of cool water. They believed that the gods at times assume human nature and tested humans. Not to incur their wrath and receive only the blessings, they bring, you learnt to be kind to strangers. Society was structured to be supportive through mutual acts of supportive cooperation.

 

Nationalist governments were the vestiges of colonial exploitation and the dislike of foreign exploitation and denigration of long cherished values carried over from colonialism and stuck to central government with incredible accretion. On the other side of the issue it is much easier to brand some as lazy and inconsistent and then create conditions that perpetuate the realization of this foible than to credit them with resilience and strength that built the superpower of this eras civilization. A power is only super in comparison to another, lesser power.

On the whole the fragmentation that occasioned imposed nationhood had a dual effect, basically it interfered in no small way with traditional organizations of statehood and civil responsibilities.

 

On the other hand life continued pretty much the same, a large number of the people still dwell close to nature, taming it and compromising with it pretty much as their forebears had. They worked, using simple tools, depended on the goodwill of Onyame-Almighty God- to water their crops, hard work yielded bountiful harvests in some places, the harvest is stored using old and trusted approaches of storage. In hamlets and villages, old ways and traditional rites still held strongly. A man is born, grows and becomes initiated to the ways of the capable, marries, procreates, supports his family and if he lives well and works hard he dies and becomes an ancestor. The basic framework of life as it is in all human societies with but slight variations.

 

After independence, the imposed, national governments were attempting to fashion a meaningful system of herding together the disorganised flock of cultural disparities that constituted their contrived nations. Cultures develop in some sense as an attempt for a people to come to terms with their unique circumstances in specific localities. The influences that shape the emergent culture vary across human emotions to unique unvarying situational locations, with the spiritual demands of religious beliefs. Thus while two separately identifiable groups may inhabit the same locations, the disparities in their belief systems and expected behaviour patterns may be all, but similar.

Colonial legacy of a fragmented continent, artificially broken up, engineered to self destruct-Africa had to heal itself, like one struck by a strong fever, when you survive the first attack you develop some amount of immunity, consequently the fever may strike again and it always does and again, each time increases your chances of survival and yet may be the one that takes you across the chasm.

The first round of post-colonial African leaders had the primary task of solidifying their leadership base, this task some of them accomplished in a manner that left unresolved differences for later settlement. Differences that will be the bane of these countries ranging from nepotism to tribal wars, settling issues as only men know how to; by their strength. Overlapping this issue was the quest for modernisation. Selective modernisation one could safely suggest. Without doubt the defining material expression of the civilization of the present era. However sight must not be lost of the fact that it is the conglomeration of all the past civilizations that manifests itself under the guise of present day civilization. The mannerisms of the epochs of this civilisation was adequate only if it satisfied the fulfilment of a need, in this case the need was the incorporation of valued western technological knowledge in diverse forms to ease and sometimes complicate the conventional ways of life that African societies had evolved. The issue remains to be resolved exactly what the traditional societies in the jungles and savannahs were up to, till they got in touch with the potpourri of advanced and continually progressive advancing technology. It is if course obvious that the state of development of a people is to a reasonably large extent a response to the constraining demands of their existing circumstances. The demands for facilities that enhance survival in difficult and trying circumstances have no doubt been a driving force in human adaptation and inventiveness. Traditional societies had well organised social systems that sustained them in their forest settlements and grasslands, society was not a chaotic mayhem of ostensibly wild semi humans. They had evolved in a sense the rudiments of a monetary system, buying and selling with cowries as a means of exchange long before the dramatic outcome of the sublime cultural clash. Nevertheless the extent of uniformity of cultural evolution was as varied as individual intellectual capacity in any human setting, thus some tribes were more "cultured than others". However, though some intrepid adventurers may at some time had inculcated some elements of traditional culture to the dominant western civilization, the combined wealth of all previous human advancement that had congealed into present day civilization, the fact remains that on the whole the continent and its people were progressing at their own pace, a pace, which compared to the extenuating events that directed human progress in the harsh conditions and cold lands elsewhere, was indeed slow, much too slower, as Africans were to realise. Traditional man detected the fierce hunger for acquisition on the face of the early seamen, they knew from nature where all of life's lessons are compiled, for those who can, to appreciate that the weary travellers were wily customers and their intellect not to be underestimated. They are only now awakening to the folly of underestimating that intellect, the hunger that sent men across unknown seas, the mind power that takes control with the sole purpose of acquisition and species survival as primary objectives. In nature it is a survival of the strongest of the species, it is also the ability of the weak to outwit the strong that balances the food chain in nature. Yet, if the lion had its way, its survival may be determined by the intensity of its hunger and not the ability of the hunted to reproduce to feed it. Yet, one can only effectively conclude on that issue if he were a lion.  In a strange way it is at times not inconceivable to conjecture that creation was a systematic progressive attempt at creating the finest and perfect living creature systems. Such strange conjectures can easily be obviated by the ease and preparedness of all cultures, in varied manners, to make the developmental jump mentally to learn and to a reasonable extent approximate the dominant culture and civilization.

The difficulty lay in how to bring the majority of the people to accept and in the process discard some of their old and valued ways and integrate meaningfully the alien values of so called modernity. The social and evolutionary jump of the natives may have to a reasonably large extent made their ways of living much easier much too early. The associated problems are not fully defined and the solutions are not being worked out. Nevertheless, events of today indicate that it was inevitable that the culture that closed distances and revealed the most hidden lands be the dominant culture, the culture to which all must adapt to survive. The world as defined by that culture was not going to wait for Africa's sheltered natives neither was it going to overlook them. To enhance their survival they had to exploit the less civilized, civilized as defined by their standards. The continent and its people were of use only in terms of how they could be exploited and as later events were to prove and as history indicates, if that meant total annihilation, so be it. In which sense men and lions are not too far apart. In some sense the colonization of Africa was a rapacious intrusion that disrupted life and organised and evolving systems in so drastic and abrupt a manner that the continent is still in a state of shocked unawareness, the resulting mess all too often resemble men awakening from a hard fall dumbly reaching out to find reality by grasping the air.

 

Sitting back and reflecting, it all opens up like an onion peeling to reveal its inner core. - It stings- the typical African village is clean, women get up at dawn and swept the in and outside of their homes. Communal labour was enthusiastically participated in. The larger part of most African cities is a haven of filth, open sewers, rubbish mountains and haphazardly built tenements. They are places where people are rushing or rusting into nothingness. A reflection of the mess of colonial legacy, its aftermath. The capital towns and cities were and still are places where people for the most part migrated temporarily, to engage in some form of wage paying labour. Their settlements were transit camps haphazardly put up. These people intended to acquire some money and after awhile return to their home villages where life was meaningful. The migrant quarters have become towns, filthy towns, giant slums where the national governments administer in true jungle style. They rule in a manner not identifiable with any of the previously existing types of ruler ship on the continent. Their rule is as perverse as the system that instituted it. It is not totally obtuse thinking, even in an abnormal mental state to think of it as a handover from one group of usurpers to another- a master brigand handing over, perpetuating the system of discordant values that denigrates the essential pride of human nature, to his apprentice burglars- the twist in the situation however is that the apprentice, coup mongering burglars are sons of the land, with the daughters presently, only lurking in the shadows. The need to provide decent housing for all the people and in the process, beautifying the settlements, like all things this side of the world, has assumed the nature of selective prestige, limited to a section of society while the rest of the people remain embittered observers and non participants of the common good. The dynamic nature of social evolution implies that people are content with mud huts so long as that is the normal and accepted habitat. When much more appealing, but nevertheless, serving the same purpose infrastructure is introduced, then everyone will seek the more appealing, it is just the way humans are. An overlooked situation and one that requires attention is the need for the leaders to upgrade African societies to live up to the demands of their necessary social jump. The simple lives of the traditional society is in a rapid state of fusing and evolving dictated by forces not emergent from the environment in which change is necessitated by extenuating realities of group survival rather than as the luxurious afterthought of relaxed well-being. The innermost core of the onion is a softer version of the matured outer shell.

 

The system of economy that post colonial Africa inherited was a 'feeder' and 'dependent economy' on one hand and a mismanaged internal economy that had barely begun to find expressive definitiveness. The consequent mismanagement was and is a natural consequence of ineptitude on the part of the leadership who in their incomprehensiveness of their role requirements were seeking to find direction along a precipice in a snowstorm. It was a pathetic beginning and a winding road of sorrows and distress. The feeder economy was oriented to feed the growth of modern industrial requirements for raw materials at the cheapest, morally possible price. There was little consideration given the source regions of those raw materials so long as they satisfied the needs of the acquisitors/inquisitors. The scenario is not very different from the industrial depletion of the environments in the developed nations themselves. A selfish individualistic perpetuation of greed and total disregard for others and the earth. How can you knock the head of one in whose mouth your fingers are stuck? On the reverse side, the surplus productions from the consuming centres were directed to African markets at exorbitant prices. The game like nature of the whole international trade denigrates human values. The seafarers came to Africa, institute their values and money economy, then they return to base and begin sucking away all the usable resources... beyond this of course the game gets out of hand as the uncontrollable factors supersede the deterministic nature of the game. In any case the economic system thus instituted, perpetuated and did fixate the Africans to more than necessary dependence on the overflow of their colonialists. The most dangerous consequence of this is that it slowed and virtually brought to a halt self assertive discovery and inventiveness on the continent. Africans became absorbed observers, wrapped up, like children at a cartoon cinema, glaring at the latest mechanical and electronic invention emerging from the west and latter the east. They concentrated on the acquisition and not the invention and development of the things that add value to life. It seems like

 The pressures of change had not fired the drive to seek for means of enhancing the group survival by the introduction of improved technology evolving from within the group. On the offside is the reality of being sucked into acquiescent acceptance of the easy availability of what others have made available. Thus Africans take pride in import substitution industries and one rarely hears of any `cutting edge´ technological industries. The lack of directive leadership only widens the gap between consumptive desirables and what is productively realisable. A situation that implies that the few Africans, who are the geniuses or plain madmen, who are a cut above the norm, driven, by whatever forces them to seek and exert to discover, to bring into realisation their dreams, can only do so outside the continent to a large extent. Yet the potentials are locked up in the villages and die undiscovered. Independence implies the need for breakaway from this destructive dependency. It implies more than the importation of machinery to sustain import substitution. It requires creative adaptation that takes advantage of the base of existing and available knowledge to evolve a self-sustaining scientific and industrial development on the continent and for its people. The chains of mental slavery that binds to accepting without shame that which is easily acquired and bonding must be identified and loosened. The culture of dependency is one of the most difficult issues Africa must contend with. The bulk of Africa's potential lies buried in the contrivances of western instigated dependency. The consumption of technology developed in the west is a necessary luxury for those who can afford it, so be it. But it should not hamper initiative for the continent to create the supporting environment to improve on that knowledge base; it is of critical importance for Africa's scholars to continually take advantage of the accumulated civilization of humanity and project from that standpoint into the future.  The acquisition of knowledge merely to apply to technology created elsewhere and non-sustainable in the African environment is merely a stopgap measure, eventually the African like the Asiatic must be technologically independent, the deception of growth that imprisons, chaining to the trough of feed boxes, the free spirit of humanity locked in the prolonged struggle to rediscover the trifled independency of existence exchanged.  The pioneers of national rule had clearly identified the importance of education structured along western values, adapted to their localities and environs, the second round of usurpers and criminals who raped their own people with avarice, saw in education a threat to their dictatorships, these brought to a halt and ultimately reversal the seeds of missionary education and national government strive to educate every child to the highest attainable level possible for the individual. After all these years, most of Africa still contends with the unrealism of lack of education of children. The denial of structured articulation of formal knowledge hampers the contribution citizens to the formal institutions of nation states and denies the individual, the fullest existence as a human being productively engaged in contributing to their society. The negative consequences of these are already reverberating all over the continent, armies of uneducated youth are fighting to find meaning in a society which values education and yet has inadequate structures to educate its citizens. Nevertheless it is comforting to note that Africa per se in terms of individual abilities has risen to the challenge of modern education with alacrity, demonstrating its ability to come to terms with its standards and at times excel in trying circumstances. Much as individuals will expound racial superiority and differences, the emergent reality is that there are only cultural differences. There is only one world inhabited by different people, sometimes the difference existing between persons living one door away from another supersede the differences that are reputed to exist between races and colours. It could not be possible for any group from this world to justify its superiority before an alien culture from another world, if they exist, if they could not use their superiority to better the needs of their less fortunate neighbours and be puffed up with pride at their achievements, never.

In reality, in some sense the situation of the majority of Africa's people is not very different from the masses of the poor who were revolutionary awakened, to assert their self-discovery some seventy years ago in some parts of Asia. That others had overcome worse situations and shortcomings to develop their societies, gives room for hope.

Africa's artificial boundaries have in no small way proven to be an impediment to the continents rapid transition to a technological and scientific age, apart from its economic ramifications. The colonialists by craftily putting within large geographic configurations people with different perspectives on social organisation have in the short run hindered smoothened growth while at the same instance made it possible for the required early dissolution of cultural differences that will have hampered continental unity.

 

Reflecting in the coolness of the strange calm of dawn, the quiet preceding the mornings rush of whooshing sound of traffic streaming, screaming in the tense early morning rush to the same unglorified desk job. Muddled minds of the early morning work shift. Unthawed minds, heavy with the unshed thoughts of a new day. One does admit that there is always a middle ground in almost all situations, in revisiting negative dominance, slavery and colonialism, the emotions aroused often give rise to polarisation of views, nevertheless Africa south of the Sahara owes conditional gratitude to foreign influence which delved beyond parochial interests and brought enlightenment as defined from the view point of emergent western culture, however it is also the case that negative attitudes have created wide gaps, meaninglessness defined in terms of pigmentation. But there is a need to acknowledge that human nature, oft times exults over others demise as an acknowledgment of its achievement, it is within this light that such expressions of superiority must be acknowledged. It is critical that overt efforts be made and admittedly have been made and continues to be made to refocus the mind set, on people being God's creation in diversity. In other ways it is worth considering what will the world be like 200 years from now? Based on current trends it will be polarised along too many lines for the comfortability of the underdogs and the deprived, the critical question worth pursuing from this standpoint, is what of Africa and its people?

 

Africa and Africans stand in the best position to determine their own fixture in the evolving human race. For the better part of a quarter century, rather than assuaging the wounds of 500 years of rapacious and traumatic destabilisation, Africa, splintered into meaningless chunks had to face the question of who determines what! Men who will not have had the guts of disgracing village committee meetings were suddenly thrown into leading a desperate continent seeking for meaning in a uniquely, peculiarly disquieting situation. The truth remains; unambiguously that, the fates and outcomes of all the continents offspring’s are irrevocably and inextricably linked to the end of that desperate search for location, identity and a resetting of the course for projection into a meaningful future.

 

The new Africa is an Africa that needs to be gripped in a mental revolution, the days of metallic, cutlass rattling, physical, non-sensitive revolutions occasioned by gun totting imitators to leadership is over, in its stead must emerge and is emerging the matured mind search that seeks for self discovery from within, mapping it to external sources and emerging with a comprehensively simple but far reaching agenda of a unitary continental growth. Growth that places the least of the people at its focus, the focus of which is the total identity based on a need to discard self centred individual well-being and to reach all the way beneath the quagmire of social injustice and discover the refined beauty of development that does not perpetuate underdevelopment to accentuate individual greed.

 

African needs to compose it reacquire the self-confidence to determine its own agenda this time not from the perspective of external adventurers nor in contradiction to any viewpoint, but from defective leadership principles and inappropriately conjectured governing principles from within. The hunger for self-recognition from external sources is too deeply ingrained and inconsequential to the required growth and attainment needs of the people, the release from the constraint of inner emerging unresolved inadequacies. The only recognition worth cultivating is one that derives from the self, the recognition that ingratiates, generating pride in self-achievement; external recognition is secondary and an inconsequential addendum.

 

The times indeed do not call for lamentations over the past, but the past must be evoked with solemnity if the pains of the present are to crystallise and break into freshness, wounds that have barely begun healing. The existing circumstances are the only guide to an undefined future; the future is inscribed in the map of the past. But a map defines an existing reality, discarding the map does not invalidate the superseding finality that found representation in some idealistic realisation of true states. If that discourse has anything to tell, the tale is in us, wherein lie our best hopes?

 

Let Sanity Prevail

 

Wondering in the nether regions of qualified sanity, with great effort and seriousness, postulating on the end solution and debating it ad nauseum. Down to reality, it all comes, to offer the lassitude of the tedium and drown the self with the boredom.

Poisoning the body of the deliberating minds with bitter coffee, that gives the kick to kick-start this tired old engine. The exhaust of bloody expurturation is a constant reminder at the end of the day of a body complaining against misuse.  Yet, the body exults in the momentary pleasure of the expanded nervous ejections that the coffee occasions. Strong men weakened by the exigencies of the times that confront them with the emptiness of painful inactivity loll into useless states of dampening despair beyond redemption. Their tired and worn muscles long deprived of the building strength of conflict and the push against which the renewal and continuity of building and replenishing the strength is a non negotiable requirement, lounge langorously in meaningless places where they waste, suspended in time, where time has been stripped of all meaning. The momentary pause in the haze of maddening activity has lost its intense relieving pleasure. Deprived of the counter pressure that makes relieving the pressure worthwhile, all wait in suspended animation, yet they waste. Wait is purposive when there is a thing to wait for, wait is torment when even the thing to wait for is yet unformed, formed it must be while the waiting has yet began. Minds that tire from seeking things to think about, until tired of waiting they strike out in rebelious anarchic disregard of convention that stifles the growth waiting to be born. The mindless abandon let loose in the torment of the dry places. Stretched to their limits, straining against the non existent, direction invoked from the hidden sources that are yet still unfound. In the place seemingly devoid of existence, thrives the things that quench the living. The fearsome, unexplored, barely understood, have found their dwelling in the dry places devoid of meaning and living for, there, they with tormentous slowlyness, that is paralysing in its seemingly inactivity,  exult in the renewal that comes from the destruction of the presently existing far removed from the truth that abounds.

 

Days of empty loneliness

Stretching way beyond the yawning emptiness

of known horizons-

Time in unlimited supply of inactivity

Minds decaying in living shells, emptying-

Thinking of things to think about

Eyes weary of sleep,

slumbering in the darkness of light-

Weariness of churlish existence

Unending boredom of unrelieved tedium

Latitudes of lasititude

Profoundity of profuse uselessness

Postponned urgency for nonexistent occupation

Unappetising lumps of undesirous filth

Loathsome limbering stretch of unexercised circumcision-

Conspicuous desolation of faltering hope

Murderous abandonment of aspirations undreamt

Maimed souls seemingly beyond redemption

Abandonment even death forsakes

Hopeless lilting futility expanding unendlessly

Waves, upon waves of simmering undiscernible lividness-

Leaking disgustively foaming stinky puddles

Shaping in agony incomprehensible in form.

 

There is a simmering meaningless anger, within the profusion of untapped talents,  flowing into wasteful aridity of uncultivated deserts devoid of the quickening spirit of fertility, nourishing renewal. Long in expectation, hopes are hung on withered branches, the shrubs of failed trees, that long devoid of the renewal of water are silently dissolving into dust.

The hopes and aspirations of the masses need the shaping hands of true leaders who bring to realisation the silent dreams of the masses suffocating for want of the directive strength of a leader who breaks the mould of suppresive nonaccomplishment.

 

In the maelstrom of dissillusioned inactivity, in time, it is only the procreative act  of sustaining replenishment that assumes centrality. Earnest ambitions had been slowly and deliberately starved of means of finding realisation in accomplishments. From the enactment of this basic primeval acts of procreation misused for pleasure, arise the need nurtured for redirection and the creation of meaningfulness. Words mumbled in states of expiation, mumblings of meaningless exasperation.

 

The rumbling underground train thundered through the cavernous and endless stretch of dakness. The background of tunnel darkness in contrast with the inside flourescence, created a perfect mirror, one look and the head involuntarily bows under the weight of the conscience, the image mirrored so perfectly, peering with a half open-mouthed astonishment at the memory,of recent events. A people caught in the spiral of the stream of time whooshing through the cavernous darkness of modernity.

 

They came with a hope, they descended from clear blue skies into a cold, clincally clean environment of a city in the northern reaches of another world. A journey that took them from the frustrating dirt and grit of Africa to the cold reality of the only proximity to a perfect society on earth. The first few weeks would be a hazy dizzying adjustment to the northern climes. Rather than being a short period of acceptance and adjustment, their bodies and minds were to sustain their combined refusal to acclimatise easily and enable them find their footing. The 'I of the me' in them, fights the body and the mind state as it were in rebellion. The splintered personalities had to find a combined ground of mutual acceptance to enable a resolution to that great internal struggle. The chaotic disintergration of cohesive personal existence, opened the doorways for pale ghosts who were the welcoming committee to usher them into the new setting, their silence voices echoing a persistent refrain of accusation. The silent voices keep screaming, without let, they keep whispering, shouting their maddening insinuations, those voices, silent, yet so clear and loud. The words come clear and distinct; the temptation to engage the silent voices in conversation becomes irresistible until you let go of the remaining vestiges of sanity and indulge in the unlimited joy of unshared pleasures of seemingly meaningless diatribe. It is the observers who have a problem, cause by the time they begin to talk back to the silent voices that torment them, they are too far gone to care about what they think of others or others think of them. So they hold it right in there, keeping as tight a control as they can, caught off guard they murmur some inaudible response. The silent rage builds up, its like the gas tanks they have become. The propensity to ignite is a palpable possibility. The pressure ignites that inner rage and they are caught in the vortices of powerful uncontrollable emotions and yet how  proudly they carry themselves, yet for all that outer display of self-assurance they are wilting within, empty shell, turning and unable to anchor solidity of the self in the totally consuming inner generated response to the hatred that comes from without. A constant reminder of a task unfinished. Recalling with the vividness of images that make a lasting impression the picture bounces to the fore of the minds eye, the tangled shock of unkempt hair, the wild flashing eyes deeply set in flushed faces, on a fourteen year old boy seating on an air of thorns, moving restlessly in all directions in a non ceasing jerking non coordinated fashion that sets nerves on end. But it was the smothered appeal for 'recognition of my pain' lacing through those sad brown eyes that holds one in a tight fixture of constriction as a mumbled burst of meaningless spurt of 'hello' not directed at anyone, but in a sort of acknowledgement that surprisingly was acknowledged. The rumblings of the subway, the confinement of well separated individuals.

 

There was a certain belief, a sort of guiding insight into reality that was self sustaining, that  has been nourished and been realised in the lives of others. It was the belief that systematised knowledge, as offerred in the formal academic setting of universities was a key that opened the door to meaningful existence in the base materialistic world of unending desires and the higher self attainment realms of the mind state, that conceives the reality in intangibilities. In that formal system, lies the possibility of the formulation of reoriented policies that could draw society further away from the brink of the bottomless abyss of chaotic disintegration, which all of society was peering into with great forboding. It is difficult to separate the self and the set outcomes from the woes of society. There is a general belief that, a new way of realising the common expectations was possible and could be realised by individuals who desire a new social configuration, these ones think of the common welfare rather than the individual well-being. Knowing that in the common-wellbeing was the truest realisation of the individual's most honourable and most base desires. And there were indeed many similarly oriented individuals among the youth and the elderly; who felt betrayed by their society and its leadership. Some study abroad, to enable an appreciation of the supposed heights of human civilisation that their society has been pursuing as models to be approximated with lingering failures all these years. It was a means of escaping for a while from the all embracing decay of societies that had become decadent and disoriented as they struggled without affectual direction to relocate their centers in a world that was rapidly gyrating out of focus. The idealistic aspirations that lifted the weighed down soul upon the floating wings and set me down gently unto the cold shores of some faraway realms, were shattered by the harsher realities of unbounded meaningless constraints of others frustrations finding realisation in ways that impacted my bubble of hope, with precariously negating effect. The calm quititude of isolated loneliness that defined the landscape was an illusory sheath, barely confining the strong emotions of tentative destructivenes in a carefully cultivated contentment of civility. The act committed, ahead is a lifetime of a deliberately tormenting conscience to deal with, a conscience that is deliberately cruel, playing variations on a tormenting ever present theme. It was not an accusing conscience, but it was one that refused to provide a specific expression, of appraisal, and condemned the individual to a mental state of blankness, where there is  a refusal to recreate the events of the past. 

 

Identified, is the problem of the lack of a culture of maintenance in a situation where there is little to maintain, Seemingly, swimming against the overwhelming tides of a rapid and turbulent sea of change,  there seems a lack of technique, a nonavailability of knowing how to flow with the currents, yet, it was a time of surviving in a realm where only strong swimmers could manage, so clinging to their 'pieces of iron' they took the deep plunge to nonentitiness. The never ending journey inwards, where that which is acquired with undeserving difficulty implodes destructively, has for some become a maddenning search for the reason underlying the meaningless behaviour of seemingly nonaccomplishment. Why having touched the core of fundamentalities, could they not use the energy gained in the inward journey to source, to reach out to recreate, but rather self destruct ? The search must per necessity be from within, in accessing the inner strength, in order not to be stiffled within those increasingly spiralling inner power to dissolve into nothingness, there is also the need to seek that which is without and constantly evolving, the act of delicately balancing both sources of powering strength enables the escaping of one without the destructive impact of the other. The hidden hopes of the multitudes hovering in a meaningless dimension seeking for a solid landing zone, hinges on the actions of the doddering unaccomplished. The leaders are caught up in the frustrating complexities of the microcosm of personal prides and wounded hides, meanwhile the waiting goes on unabated. They have become attached to the uselessness of discarded outmodedness. Thriving on the maintenance of things that have long given way to improvements. Sealed as it were, in the perpetuation of never ending cycles of doomed existence, where the trend is not toward the outward wholesomeness of broad configurations of outer projections of closed attainments projected upon each other incrementally, powered by the awareness of self capability, rather there is a tendency to focus on the slowly dissolving crudity of decayed particularities of ever lessening circuits.

 

He was a strange quite fellow, he walked the streets with stooped shoulders, bracing himself against heaven knows what. There was that glint of fired determination that lit his squinted eyes, that is if you bothered to look into them. There was that air of something about him that triggered a second look when you first met him and on consequent meetings. Then my 'paddy,' Charles told me his story, not Charles' story but that of the little man with fire in his eyes. Actually, it was just a statement, casually dropped, as we parlied about "things", as we strolled down the treeless street, "that fellow has completed his masters, but he deems it below himself to put the knowledge acquired from school working for a corrupt military government".

It was just said in passing, and quickly forgotten, on my side it never quite departed from my ruminatory mind where ideas that are ensconced, are regurgitated every now and then for palatable paliative contemplative rechewing. Several years later when I brought it up -'it' referring to the 'wilfull unemployed'- with Charles, so I could ascertain whether that lonely rebel had changed his mind, he looked at me with the kind of look that one assumes when one is trying, impatiently, to come to grips with the complex thoughts of a moron. He had completely forgotten who the chap was and why any one would refuse to work after graduating. A behavioural response that infuriarated me in no small way, considering the gravity of the ramifications, from my perspective, that an individual proclamation of condemnation of the naivety and simplistic approach that governance assumed in our time. To me the silent hero was not to be dismissed casually from mind, but his bold and immediately slow self destructive sublimely fierce indictment of people who had betrayed the trust of a suffering humanity gripped in the intense monotoneity of the introverted spiral of meaningless existence needed to be accorded in the private recesses of our thoughts the commendation of heroic status.

 

The inability for governments to realise the expectations of their societies finds expression in individual frustration, as the sorry citizens live through a haze of dissapointing reality in the midst of overwhelming possibilities, the haze of daily existence is truly expressive of the difficulty to appreciate the clarified nature of the failure of their societies in establishing the means for the realisation of individual their aspirations. Beyond the immediate basic needs of most people, which needs cannot be met in most of slum urban centers, there is also the desire for the life enhancement needs that are frustratingly ignored by those who have been assigned, or have innappropriately assigned themselves the role of managing national affairs. Most people, initially, assume an attitude of just giving themselves and those close to them meaningful existence, but after a while it  becomes inevitable that no matter how well, they had managed their individual fight to survive, they are clutched inextricably in the collective failure of the society at large. Their burning anger at the system that refuses to sustain itself and those within it begin to shape into a need for rectification of basic errors and a solution to problems boiling without let from within and clouding the hopes of the whole. Inevitably the society begins to digest and ingest itself from within in a frustratingly slow motion of certain volatile explosive expletivities of non definable attainments.

 

 

Magnetized Pooling Centers

 

Development of regional centers on the continent is gradually emerging and assuming definite shape, a complexity of factors has defined certain countries in each geographic zone on the continent as centers of advantageous growth. Thus becoming potential targets of regional economic strongholds and centers of development. In the instance of countries such as Ghana, there is the need to acknowledge their locational  advantages and make use of their inherent potentials as centers of growth. It is up to farsighted leaderhip to evolve far reaching policy frameworks that will enable policy formulations that entice investment and stabilise industrialisation. Those policies will not emerge from the linear thinking conditionalities emerging from external sources. It calls for clear headed leaders and an administrative machinery that exploits existing potentials creatively, potentials that presently are generally overlooked. The government machinery must be deregulated and national parliaments rather a national be established. The parliament as the law making organ of government must be located within the ruled, Ghana must have three parliaments - the Southern Parliament, the Ashanti Parliament and the Northern Parliament. The Ashanti must be given self centered government machinery. The development of such ingenious people are being stifled by overfocus on the capital. The central location of the Ashantis in Ghana and West Africa correlates with the strategic positioning of the Ibos, and they must be enabled free rein to industrialise and develop their bussines potentials through intelligent government. The three sitting parliaments will thwart any adventurous coup makers and demand by consensus that legislation be effective and development oriented since the legislators are within their own kith and kins. In the area of education - taking Ghana as an example - needs to develop a regional research base at its universities attracting talents from the large pool of potential human resources in the West African sub-region. All universities and higher instituitions have the potential of being at the forefront of groundbreaking research, but as to whether that potential is utilised is another issue. The adoption of short term measures, such as increasing student room occupancy from their required occupancy rates to something akin to poultry coops, is a representation of the gap between the aspirations and desires of the populace and the activities of leadership, even, in the rarefied heights of academia. Academia is not the disposal site of aging knowledge, but a potentially vibrant setting to rouse society from its slumber. Out of academia, the depository of active and flexible knowledge must engage itself in creativity in an unlimited and unrestricted manner. They must progress from the uneviable position of perpetual victims to implementors of profitable ventures. If higher instituitions with their repository of knowledge cannot generate effective ideas to exploit the resources in their environments to achieve expected ends, who will? There is a need to break the mould of redundancy and institute progressive policies that aggresively exploit innovatively. The nature of accomodation in Technical and Polytechnical instituitions, as well as other specialised post secondary instutuitions of higher education, must change from dormitories to community flats. In a setting where there is a severe lack of housing for workers, it is naive that, the existing government policy expects a private sector investment to provide adequate hostels for students at a reasonable price, and possibly with adequate facilities. Minor, and inconsequential as these issues may seem when compared to the larger issues facing society, nevertheless these minor issues touch the daily existence pf the people and determine their day to day well-being and thus are the end effects of higher policy making that are of relevance to the people. It is these reoccuring defects in leadership, reflected by severe deficits at the end of the chain- the common man's daily outcome- that project a sense of desperation and incapacitation on the part of leadership, and profoundly curb the people's hope of any progessive improvement in the forseeable future.

 

(The area in the mid voltaic hill country of Amedzofe, Akpafu, Vane, Fume, Nyagbo-Sroe etc. must become a south eastern volta higher education and research catchment area, providing an infrastructurally immense and incredibly developed educational center located in the hill country and its malleable regional climate and human resources complemented by an ingenious system of cable cars and electric trains. Attracting scholars from the whole of the West African sub-region and the world beyond. National boundaries must be considered in more matured states of mass rationality as being configurations that demarcate states of enablement. To foster inter-nation development, there is the need to build Aflao and Denu in the Volta Region as commercial and educational centers taking advantage of the Togolese capital's proximity to pursue dual language education and commercial initiatives. Likewise the other border towns must take advantage of strategic location to become highly developed centers. The lower Volta basin must take effective, forceful, local action to improve the traditional economic base by improving upon traditional practices of reaping natures bounty, fish farming in the Keta-Avu lagoon must be considered with all seriousness. The breadth and extent of the lagoon must be increased by massive excavation of filled in parts of the lagoon extending northeastwards towards the southern portion of Agbozume and Some, south eastwards linearly towards the Togo-Aflao border region. The massive clay deposits to be excavated could and should become the raw materials for one of the large scale brick and tile factories to supplement and provide for high quality construction material for the nation. The Keta lagoon sea inlet project must be seriously reconsidered and modernised to provide adequate seawater to blend with the Volta river lagoon innudation project. In the Northern territories of Ghana, Navrongo and Bolgatanga must become regional hubs of transnational education, agriculture training and commercial hubs for local and cross border interests. While the large towns in the Northern sector must undergo massive reconstruction, just as the rest of the country. A process that will absorb idle youth for more than generation, a period of respite to ease the excessive unemployment, while government contemplates far reaching policies. There is a need to encourage the establishment of a navy cadres marine instituition to educate children and youth in mainstream education and maritime specialties in the Western Region. Thus begins to emerge regional specialisation to take advantage of local endowments.  Nationwide there is the need for total rebuilding and relocation efforts to eradicate slum dwelling conditions all over the country. This is the sort of huge infrastructure project effected at the local and district level that will provide massive employment to occupy idle hands and generate the realisation of a real improvement in national development that has a direct and immediate impact on the wellbeing of the people. Unless there is a dramatic shift of direction in what the nation envisages, in terms of improvement and adding value to peoples lifestyles, in addition to ongoing efforts. There is no doubt that the gap between expectations and what is realised will continue to widen. There is the need to consider the emergence of instituitionalised cyber centers of technological diversity, Kumasi is an obvious choice in terms of human talent and location.  Tamale and the University of the North should also provide a northern hub center. The University of Cape Coast seems a viable choice in the mid southern sector. Comparatively, Ghana is an "island" of stability in a region where each individual country is struggling to come to terms with post colonial power vacuum that needs to be resolved and redefined. The two potential tribes that could split the nation assunder, the Ashantis and the Ewes, apparently have settled down to acceptable tolerance of each other. The remaining tribal differences are self contained and do not have sufficient power and territorial influence to break the country apart. The Ashantis, indomitable warriors and one of the most influential tribes in the West African sub region, play for significant recognition and influence in the national political millieu, but in the whole there's is a society where success expressed in terms of wealth supercedes any other thing. They are still rooted in strong adherence to traditional authourity, and their Ashantihene is a force to reckon with and commands more respect and adoration than any leader within the nation. The Ashantihene in the post colonial setting has shown no inclination to push his subjects to war as a means of exerting the overwhelming influence of Ashanti power, despite the fact that some influential individuals within that tribal grouping may have considered the idea it finds no overt expression or following. The Ashantis together with the Kwahu's have become a formidable business and awe inspiring fortune seekers who continually show their inner strength by the tenacity and intensity with which they will pursue any means both home and abroad to become successful owners of property. The Ashantis are harbingers of eye-openning cultural introductions into the country from other societies. They are welded together by strong bonds of tribal identity over and above the closed family relation. That way their actions are responsive to strong public opinion and expected standards of social interaction. By their unique ability to ease themselves into any setting, they infiltrate and live securely in every region. While they learn local customs of the place they live to easily assimilate, they have been noted to prefer exporting their language and subtly persuading others to acquire their language. The Ewes of the Volta region come in two broad non-specific groupings, these are the southern Anlos of the coastal subregion and the mid-voltans who have a culture that is heavily influenced by the Ashantis. The Anlos are a strict paternalistic tribalists of intensely individualistic stance. They are great achievers and incredibly bold self centered people whose centrality of ambition is individual success and achievement that radiates to the whole, but the person is central to the group. They strive with an intensely honest goal of self-achievement, in the process exhibit an intolerable sense of discipline and intolerance of wrong doing. The Anlos have no clearcut traditional authourity with similar clout to decide the actions and directions of the tribe in national issues as compared to the Ashantis. Among the Anlos education and educated decision making rank at par with traditional authourity and respect for the elderly. In a sense it could only be wholesale persecution of an extremely violent and inhumane nature on the whole tribal indentity and its membership that could generate a united base for defensive reaction, which former action is most unlikely to emerge from the Ashantis. The various powerful groupings of the northern territories have no inclination to impose their will nationally, there is the Islamic factor that unites the various groupings, but there is also the split engendered by unresolved tribal differences of land rights that exercise a stronger emergent differences in outlooks among the various tribes. Individuals are geared towards education and agriculture the former late in arrival and of yet defining influence, the latter an aspect of the whole nation. People are finding individual achievement determined in a seemingly broad definition of educational achievement.

 

The unresolved tragedy of these times, is the emergence of a deterministic central government which has whittled away individual and communal responsibility for self determination. The massive displacement of responsibility unto a seemingly ungrounded and shaky national government has as indicated given rise to polished banditry. The gruesome plunder of national assets by neglect and partial responsibility founded on individual interests before social commitments has rendered government implementation dangerously ineffective. The redefinition of the art of governance and leadership; the expected qualifications and mass endorsement of effective leadership are unnegotiable priorities on the continent. The future cannot be mortgaged for purposeless rhetorics and nonaccomplishment by any single group or set of usurpers. While we maintain the existing national boundaries as conveniencies, the governing process in actual power and purposive realisation capabilities should per necessity devolve to the governed. This requires far reaching innovative governing strategies, which will lower the power of presidents and prime ministers or have three leaders corresponding to the three parliaments who must then work with a national figure head to determine the outcome of their constituencies. After all it is not so much about the person at the top as it is about the common man who is waiting expectantly that social organisation processes will yield desired outcomes. The truth is that most people only care about the leader if he or she is totally incompetent or excellent. In between they just expect that leades should do deliver on their expected duties and society should progress. In the long run what matters in defining the direction of economic growth will be private investment against a background of adequately supportive and socially conscious legislation. Leadership will have to create value and relevance for itself in its social oriented programmes.

 

The African intellectual property organisation

 

To speed up the modernisation and upliftment of life in the slums where the majority of the people dwell in the cities, there is the need to opt for zone specified developments occasioned by total infrastructural upliftment projects. Without curbing private sector initiated developments, the deprived settlements, like Korle Gonno, Nsawam, Nima, Chorkor and the coastal zone lying south of Mamprobi and Dansoman require a massive redevelopment and structural upgrading scheme. The development of residential, social and economic infrastructures financed at the national level are prerogatives to absorbing these otherwise boundary inhabitants of society. These areas, like many others, are the underprivileged with insignificant or virtually no employment opportunities for occupying the youth. They must be considered for employement creation projects and socio-economic upliftment support schemes. They must be empowered through self governing schemes where the basic fundamentalities of organised modernisation will be dynamically structured to be improved by additions and improvements introduced by inhabitants of these areas. These slum and deprived environments must be enriched and educational facilities must be of the highest calibre. The architecture must bring "joy to the heart" by its elegance in the artistic blending of nature and solid infrastructure. A total and unimaginable, but necessary desire to be fulfilled, a departure from the slum conditions to human decency. When the means exist to enable better and improved life conditions, any adherence to prior existing deplorable states, whether inevitable or preferred, is a disacclaimation of the human essence that appreciates beauty as a definitive realisable concept to be sort after and expressed in concrete expressions, when the individual appreciation of spirit lifting physical beauty cannot be realised within society and the physical environment they inhibit, their seems an acquiscence to prefered states of lesser beings. There is a natural predisposition to improve ones states of being, whether out of 'neighbour envy' or plain restless ambition fueled by survival needs, which needs in these times has assumed expanded needs, which expanded needs have defined quality of life so thoroughly that any attempt to pretend idealistic rural agrarianism as an option, in a culture and society which has barely emerged from the harshness of the reality of primary rural existence, will not as the saying goes, 'hold water.' For the African, proud and independent, the fight is a deep seated inner conflict of quiet, intense brooding, where the individual creatively resources means of self fulfillment, hoping all the time that hope will come in the form of bold leaders, focused on the grander issues and not ignoring the easily ignored. The self is under a lot of pressure and constantly seeking for direction and support, with the individual lacking the means to realise grander ends with wider social ramifications, the proudest, most capable people, with faith so strong it lights the fires of expectation long before hope is realised, these strong undeterred, underutilised, people, the colours of the earth, these collectives of determination, are among the saddest people anywhere, as quietly they watched with courteous trepidation and see their leaders perform the things unmentioned in the open places of honour, and they weep, those heavy tears of inner pain, unshared, mutually acknowledged and pretentiously ignored. They see the truth in the words that express the private shame played in the inner chambers of sullen and dampened hearts, at play in these words evoking their painful states with cutting clarity. The one thing that emerges is a question that is sounded with the exhalation is "so what do we do?" The leaders being inexcusably deficient in task execution, the society becomes a collection of bitter escapists, recoiling into the inner self to find fulfillment in severely restricted dimensions or running into wider outer societies to be more severely restricted, displaced, dissappointed and sidelined in the era of seemingly unending possibilities they are eaten by inner humiliation and tormented by assumed hopelessnes. The inner spirit flared by the drive to survive awakens to new possibilities and hope is converted to creative pursuit. The factor that holds the individual semblance intact and society minimally functional is hope, hope that one way or the other somebody will emerge who sees things the way the individuals in the collective, in their secret lomeliness perceive reality. The hope that solution is feasible, it is just a matter of making the appropriate derivations within the existing reality and the expected solutions will begin to fall into place. Indeed it is this hope that holds this tattered society, straining to split asunder along many lines of fault ridden weaknesses. The materials to realise  Identity cards, credit schemes for social and primary needs financing should enable the provision of the basic essentials for comfortable and meaningful domestic convenience. These are the basic requirements denied and desired by the masses, languishing in poverty and want of opportunities.)

 

As a people and a race set apart from all others. African will define the course of improving the life and settings of its people only within the unique configurations of the continents social dynamism. The continent will benefit adaptation of relevant technology from other societies but in its intricate details and sophisticated operation will not be the same as that of those other groupings since the basis and focality of these groupings are at variance with the primary human values of Africans as a group.

 

Government's role in national development is to be configured as an enabling role not as a definer of outcomes. The role of government as the manager of the common resource implies the need to operate at a highly noble and articulably highly paced role, providing to improve in significant ways the upliftment of the people from the restrictions of want and poverty. Enabling the liberation of the potential talents locked and waiting to be freed for creativity in a diversified environ. The role of individuals as harbingers of cultural imports should be eased and raised to an artform not restricted by regulations and punitive taxes that hinder the fast forwarding of national development.

 

National borders are a figment of collective imagination, these barriers within the African context must be considered boundaries that facilitate development. The individual geograhical demarcations of nations state must pursue intergration at various levels to enable taking advantag of each other for the well being of the whole. The individual person, the lowest and most vulnerable person in each society should be the mark of comparison. When it is well with this person, then it is well with society. The potentials that governments open up to be explored will invariably project the most determined, the luckiest, the sharp investor to the fore. But of utmost significance is that the most vulnerable and weakest individual should be our mark whereupon the well being of each society is defined and evaluated in terms of having achieved its social improvement goals.

 

The resilience of African talent that has contributed to the rapid civilisation of the world should be energised and multiplied in the crucible of the suffering humanity. Africans have learnt from the table of stinted accreditation and must bring to blossom on the collective wholistic level the lesson nurtured at the knees of sorrow. It is a sorrow of humanity as a whole. The continent must be the welcoming home place where the people are at peace with themselves and their environment. Breathing the purified air of freedom in a God given plave that they can best exploit their awesome potentials as God's foremost creation. When Africans awaken from the futility of striving without meaning in an unfair race to edify themselves at the court of unappreciative humanity, itself seeking to discover meaningfulness in the maelstrom of misplaced priorities. Then they as a whole will relax enough to be refocused on the primary task of evolving within their uniquesness to uplift each and everyone for the collective wellbeing. At that point of self realisation they will begin to emerge like butterflies from the deceptive self wrought restrictions of cocoon stage.

 

Once the large mass of the continents human resources and organised institutions are able to evolve an alter continental economy, freeing the continent from the debacle of the foreign exchange restraint which so far leaves the continent at the mercy of manipulable forces that retard continental growth, therein emerges the beginings of the critical continental determined trade and resources exchange economic development that will parallel and co-exist with the international exchange process with one not relevant to determining the outcome of the other. The truth of the matter is that Europe and its allies of the developed world economies are practically miles ahead of African economies and it will be untenable in the medium term to continue being stringed along at their pace and by their unfair standards, in monetary, economic and trade policies. While there must be energised speeding to catch up with them in basic infrastructure, with more complex infrastructure, time plays to Africa's advantage invariably. The very emergent of which is a watermark in the continents maturing process. The process of continental rationalisation of priorities that places the community over and above individual interest, while at the same time ensuring the well being of the most incapacitated in whatever ability, is invariably an evolutionary process that cannot be forced but nurtured into realisation. The idea must be projected into the collective mentlity like a seed sown and watered to speed up the nurturing process, it must be fertlised by letting it gain ground and conceptual realisation among the intellectuals and community leaders.

 

There is the need to demystify large scale engineering projects and with assistance enbark on massive but meaningful and applicatory engineering projects to manage our environments to the improvement of traditional society. Africa cannot afford to engage in piecemeal and a slowed and watered down growth process pari passu a world that is rapidly transforming itself in directions hitherto unheralded. A radical socio-economic shift rather than lineal growth is in order. Society must be moved into a higher plane wholesale, a need for looking at things on a grand scale, to bring to all their basic infrastructural upgrading in a generation, in the process providing meaningful goal oriented employment on a sustainable level. It is not the impossibility of it rather than the mind barrier that limits the growth that privately and individually is seeking to be let free for the common good. For their capabilities are system inherent and must be facilitated by the provisions of efficient organisation of the social instituition with the collective wealth at its disposal. What government must come to terms with is that their relevance is directly related to the effectivenes with which they are able to provide society with what it desires. What Africa needs are not series upon series of debts but governing processes that enable the individual to maximise their potentialities in the decency of qualitatively the highest standards anywhere. A society that has little must put its limited resources to the highest quality application and that should apply in all sectors. Government efforts must be identified with the highest quality anywhere because the government has the collective and must use it justifiably. Better the little that is done be of enduring quality than littering the society with slipshod inxecusable debris of excused ineffectiveness. There is a vast difference between foistering useless short term gap measures and identyfing and implementing simple technologies with far reaching utility values.

 

Maximisation of continental resources and the breaking down of externallly instigated limitations and restrictions is a sine qua non as the continental socio-economic shift is enagaged and activated into realisation.

The continent by dint of human progression stands at a better location in time to engage in the type of massive shift and socio-economic projection into better societies than any previous civilisation. The toils of past generations in every aspect of human civilisation is available to us by means of the tools of the inormation. Its resources mustt be comaandered to yield optimum benefit as Africa makes the jump shift into a new era. The drive for change will have continental ramifications and yield change at the most profund level of individual psyche. But the emergent seeds and the dream is a solitary endeavour of a few gifted individuals out of synch with the masses.

 

The continent must borrow knowledge with the aim of adding value to its existing reality. And in the process stretch the boundaries of known scripted knowledge. For lying dormant and latently in the unresourced minds wasting away in the neglected sectors of society are the the God given abilities that will bring changes unconceived to this blessed land. There must not be any self imposed hindering of copious borrowing from everywhere knowledge is available by what means so-ever. They are entitled to it, because it is the common heritage of all that is capable of utilising it for their well being and  not the property of short sighted and limited civilisation. The continent and its people are limited only by their self imposed restrictions, the African must not continue to act like the chief who died of thirst by the riverside because there was no slave available to serve him water. The people must apply themselves without aforethought to the utilisation of all available knowledge from any culture and any part of the world and apply themselves vigorously to all such knowledge with vigour expanding within the unique environs of the culture and the setting the boundaries of knowledge in directions hitherto unconceived. Africa is where it all begun, where knowledge shall return and take a drink, a refreshing at the fountains of the ancients, the cauldrons brimming over with enhancing spices that give depth and variety to blandity.

 

Pride and restraint must give way to end-goal-orientation mentality. It is what is gained eventually, the means is more a moral consideration. However all human emotions that retard the projective goal must be subsumed by inner strength to focus with a determined end goal achieving mentality before which any and every other thing is secondary.

 

The unbelief and hesistancy that occassions new and untrodden paths as when radical reorientation effects a transitional shift that in the case of developmental growth needs commesurate with mind state evolutionary states, will on the continent be technological enhancement of organised systems, is normal, expected but would and has been a transient period, after which quick responsive adaptation enables projected growth. The failure and faltering that has led to social downgrading has been more of system inadequacy at management points to maintain stability at higher planes of social transition, rather than inherent system incapacity to maintain itself at higher plane levels of mind actuated human social existence.

 

There are certain misplaced beliefs that Africa will reap of the benefits of the hand me downs of western development, if it does happen it will certainly be an afterthought, if prior history is anything to go by. Whatever will be achieved in terms of development will be the result of sustained effort building upon the derivatives from the aberrant thoughts of visionaries. The existing developed worlds attained that status by opening up their societies and engaging in adaptive applications by copious borrowing and grafting through exposure with other cultures. Given that this has meant growth of stagnating knowledge in original sources, it has been a positive factor to the human race to open up and merge ideas through trade. That Africa should miss out on this piquant adventure of great social benefit is a failure that cannot be displaced to any externality albeit such influences are pervasive, they must must be tempered into applicatory usefulness. If it misses on in it, it would be more a consequence of societies that accept and tolerate leader inadequacy and by so doing limit the full utilisation of their utmost capabilities. The leaders who imposes himself on the society has one condition for tolerance of that sort of malfeasance that he projects a vision and makes evident achievements that indict social tolerance for this sort of roguery. The only revolution this continent needs is the true revolution, a clean break with the negations that foister suffering on minds that have outgrown the restraints and limitations of primary existence. The people who have the choice of electing their leaders must cut through the mush and noise of the clanging political machinery and source for leaders with a vision and an expressed basis for catapulting their society upwards and to more desirable states of social organisation.

 

There is the need to attract for cultivation and development, the continent's mental resources, mainly underemployed by a systematic strangulatory effort employing sophisticated and manipulatory mechanisms to hold by fiduciary control these mental resources and most determined of souls wasting away. These are the talents that have had the foresight and blessing to fight to pursue the intellectual disciplinary effort needed to obtain what they perceive as a key to successful individual existence and appreciable social worth in some contextual definitiveness, they also have the mind set to respond to practical calls from their motherland to apply the wisdom of age and experience in conducive settings to facilitate progress. There is an enormous reserve of waiting minds begging to be uncovered by educators enabled by appropriate educational programmes that do not concive higher education as the sole preseve of a selected few, whatever the medium of selection, rather education at all levels conceived as an enabling process of encuraging the discovery of human abilities in perfect synchrony with individual capabilities. Remember this words echoing down the halls of time - @The true wealth of a nation is measured not by how much gold it possesses, but by what it can produce. (Adam Smith 1776, The Wealth of Nations.). The external world has capitalised on the mind and created value for the things that formerly were unmetered. Africa having observed this expanded game of primary exchange, seeing that it has great value must apply it in diversified adaptations, that set the human value at its core, with appreciation for the source of physical sustenance, this God given land of unimaginable riches. The development of this continent is not necessarily mandated on the gadgeteries and contrivancies of the external world, though admittedly they do help along several frontiers. The development of the continent is the activation of expanded mind sets to push the boundaries of existing limitations by increasing the inherent human creative energy in diversified activities that add vakue and expand the horizons of human capabiities, while at the same time, in ethos with the provisions of the era, making existence on earth a bearable burden. In the past, societies, cultivated crops, herded livestock and engaged in trade, learnt trade and other arts from old masters and at times fought a tribal war. Those were activities that were commensurate with the ethos of that era. The times have changed and changed overall positively, it is not that the contnent will be bypassed in totality, but the worry is that faulty social organisation may leave many by the roadside of the streets of development and growth, and come the night the city will hear and feel their anger. The whole society will be wrapped in fear because they have failed to take responsibility in totality, that is the basis of accusation, the referrent point from which revisory effort should continue. It seems that society is begining to accept with great discomfort, to astute observers that some by circumstances beyond their control should live an existence of miserable torment , while others may live in pleasantness, what is wrong with all appreciating the benefits of God's benefice, even if it is in terms of material provision and engineered decency, afterall he enabled the mind for its realisations. Evoking God is postponning the unpleasant reality of this lopsided development, for while God is patient and longsufferring, human's are fairly unpredictable and short fused. Thus it is more an issue of how to facilitate harmonious societies on the continent that supports humanity than pleasing God. For God finished with his work and was pleased with all he has done and set the framework for human social organisation, love your neighbour as yourself.- It is up to humans to utilise their creative intellect and realise the full potentials of the collective intellect in each evolving era. The lines has been drawn and the equipment provided, the rest of the game is up to humanity to enact, and in the process create some worthy existence for themselves, that will make their short life on earth a bliss rather than a misery.

 

Continental development in a picturesque presentation could be imagined as taking the rough abrasive edge of traditional percusion and modifying and blending with smoother and refined mellowness of classical composition filtered through the wide and widening range of modern music in all its diversity. However much change it undergoes in this transformation process there remains a detectable element of something traditionally unique in origin and strongly definitive.

 

 If is of course without doubt that whatever level of social upgrading that will in effect uplift the African image must emerge from the minds of the people dwelling therein, there is little point in stressing that Africa and its talented humanity must wage afrontal war not against each other over personal aggrandisement of any individual, the true war are the battles that must be fought in the mind and in planning centers to bring development in its highest possible level to each and everyone, the continent must depart from second class and subsidiary social philosophy of third worldism and awaken to the realism of concerted social up gradement second to non. The only difference realistically in bare bone terms between  the haves and the have nots is one that is defined in the mind set to change stones and pieces of papers to valued exchange commodities and craft a civilisation from that. In the process Africa has found itself as being over these few hundred years a raw material that is an input reource with no aforethought consumptive consequence of others machinations. The awareness is a step in the process to craft a self sustaining system outside and beneficial to the continents and its humanity.

 

Each stage of the current drama of continental developmental drama, replete with failures and horrifying blunders and at times retrogressions into the abyss of intellectual and social darkness, in retrospect must be seen as part of a difficult learning process, where hopeful the past provides roadmarks of forms of realisation not to be evoked since their outcome are nothing short of disaster. Likewise it is the case that their a time when certain well intended plans, implemented may yield positive outcomes while in other times and settings they result in adding to the miserable state of the vulnerable. The developmental process is per necessity fraught, like any endeavour with peaks and depths of success and failure respectively like any human endeavour. So long as the course pursued, is genuinely based on concern for the least of humanity in an effort to uplift all, there is ample room to adjust for errors and re-position course for the sought after goal.

 

There is no basis for pursuing a programme of approximation to existing systems and patterns. the whole process of upward growth and civilisation over time has indicated a pattern of copious borrowing and a hack and patch adaptation process where freewill and strong willed leadership has exerted a creative spirit elevating the individual mind in concordance with the massed desire of humanity working in concordance with God's purpose to elevate humanity one notch up. The African must make use of what is natural available to him/her in complementing it with what can be borrowed from others and begin to forge an accelerated social upheaval that is not necessarily an imitation of others, so long as it in response to the basic need of improving upon existing circumstances, to add as it were value to primary existence.

 

To those upon whom the mantle of leadership has fallen on the continent, whether they assume wrongly that it was in a large part due to their personal exertions, they, the every first moment they assume power have an obligation to the masses within whom their power base base finds definition, to become channels or conduits for channeling the greams and expectations of their governance with a single determined purpose to bring to fruition as much as possible at the most advanced level an improvement on the well being of their people and their circumstances. The continent must be envisaged as one complementary segmented whole. Where the dispersed resources must bring relief to all its colourful diversity. Diversity need be emphasised for bridging the monoteneity of attempted eveness, it is contrary to the very dictates of nature, but it should not be exploited for destructive ends. If there is one commonality that binds all, it is the poverty of short sightedness and incredible stupidity in the presence of unlimited possibilities. To be bold and open minded to acknowledge the limitations of the mind set that perpetuate unnecessary suffering is a necessary first step toward working out viable and sustainable long term solutions. The primary long term goal is to underemphasise selfish exploitation and cultivate traditional communal values in the aid of the highest and most refined socio-cultural-economic development. Beyond physical infrastructural development is the cultivation of the finer mind set on societal basis. It is only within this mind set, that individuals and communities begin to breach the negative tendencies of introverted selfishly destructive imploding focus on the self, the small grouping and the tribe, to begin to enlarge their focus and begin into view the continental possibilties that are unlimited in their potentialities. This mind set will enable sustainable development that is closer to the development of the self, over and above a faceless, meaningless government. It is the mind set and its philosophical underpinnings which when transfused down the generations will keep ablaze the flickering torch that is hopefully being lit. The idea must need be given life and palpably wholesomeness that must find continental expression not as figment on the peripheries of the imaginations of a hopelessly embattled fragmented mass seeking for solace in the wrong places and putting individual satisfaction in total disregard of the economically disenfranchised. Instead it must find voice, be articulated and permeate the thinking and daily expression of the least informed individual. It is the beginning of the effective articulation of a continental desired destiny that transcends the rarefied halls of officialdom into the local parlance that will instigate the mind search that occasions the awakening of the slumbering power of the common will working to bring to realisation the idealsitic musings of the populace desiring a better state of affairs. It is this desire that accords humanity the pitiful, but nevertheless essential appreciativeness to applaud mere approximations of desired states by leaders who impose their solitary madness on the collective mentality. In the land of the blind the one eye man is king, so in a situation where the expected best of the most elevated only yield barbaric expression of brutish, carnivorous feast like despoilations of the nobility of human gentleness in misdirected acts of cowardly and visionless despoilations of the weaklings, even the slightest spot of brighteness in the wary dimness is worthy of commendation. How much more when the full light of liberated minds lift the cloak of visionless rutted leadership for the liberating upliftement of the true touch bearers of the freedom that liberates the mental bondage of made believe poverty in the bountifulness of God's treasure house of creation and creativity, the land, in which we live. The position of leadersip in a surrealistic sense is akine to the highest realisation of philosophical vacuity of bringing into being at the highest level humanly possible at a societal level, enabling the possibility of the hopeless to perceive hope, empowering the powerless to become instruments of communal contributory effort. The government machinery in that case becomes a humane instrument striving to create meaning for those languishing for want of direction in the throes of indecisiviness. It is not in this case a murderous instrument of chaotic dismemberement of fragile social strand, there is no life in death, there is no truth of sacrificing one life to realise meaning for another, all life weighs equal, the gift of God, not to be abused for any flimsy excuse of any misguided individual aggrandisement. The realm of avaricious self centered acts of individual greed is best realised in the realm of private business. The transformation of governance into a falsified staged theater of individual greediness and contrived deceptiveness is a realisation within the collective acknowledgement that spells a dim future. The unmitigated truth that is obvious is that, honesty as a social construct is evidently the basis for social stability. Leaders must be honest to their electorate not because it is a resounding platitude; and society must be honest in its regard of rewarding leaders equitably because it is a condition for demanding good government.

 

Africa is cornered by desperate poverty and underdevelopment of an excruciatingly painful kind, the pain arises from the awareness that, the leaders have failed to take appropriate advantage of existing knowledge states, where others have blazed the trail and the human mind has attained a collective state of intellectual capability needed to ease the overpowering control of the at times harsh impositions of traditional agro-based social organisation, not much is being realised in reaching critical mass effect in terms of structural change effects that will bring much needed change at the level of the most deprived- more so because the land and its resources have been largely underemployed to resolve the most basic of the needs of the people in a transformative manner. The African seems to be enshrouded in multilayered silk cocoon of seemingly unending woes trivialised. What is rather disturbing is that they seems to be no concerted effort sustainingly aimed at breaking the mould of sperficial restraints. As a collective, the people have not tested their strength and capabilities to breaking point to create a surge effect that will lift the collective mass into a higher ring of the cyclical spiral and thus are incapable of knowing their limitations and their possibilities in the context of presenty existing facilitations of developmental processes elsewhere. The amorphous government machinery made up of individuals who are sentitive to the needs of their communities and brimming full of ideas in informal settings, must begin to undorn itself of the garment of isolatary and vacuous policy implementation. It must be more person oriented in its policy implementation, not achieving results in half hearted, half-way, developing context, but within its limitations delivering the best perfomance each time in its implementation. The African scenario is clearly one where there seems to be an accepted policy of later redressing of fragility. This must give way to the delivering of the highest quality implementation process, no matter how little at each installment. It is without doubt more acceptable to give the very best at each serving, rather than reserve for another time what is inapproriately conceived as developed world quality, there is only one consideration, what is the best that is possibly conceivable. There is no need to perpetuate on the self debasement emanating from fictional sources. The Continents's first perfomance must be it's best perfomance, that way the people stand to rise above themselves the next time around.

 

The fragmentation process set in motion on the continent due to inept past governments is creating a schism that is spreading the social margins ever widely. In the one instance are a few who through advantages that are of irrelevance to the argument but that nevertheless have established solid self contained units of up to date material wealth enabling them to approximate lifestyles that are askew with the deprivation that torment the majority underprivileged. While legislation is made from the viewpoint of favouring these lucky wealthy and the significant influences on policy making to a significant extent derive from this captive enstranged class who are out of tune with the harsh realities of the extremity of deprivations that make beggars of honest people. The government by asceding to pass social and economic policies that make no serious attempt to break the vicious grips of poverty and depravity, while at them same time perpetuating a form of local government that does not ensure marked economic improvement but focuses on petty toll collection economics; tasking the poor to spite them that is irksome. Refocusing on basic issues it becomes clear that through time the human mind has been pushed by extreme circumstances to yield to higher states, but in the case of Africa's deprived masses the problems and the solutions therein engendered tend to center on basic live requirement of decent environment to live, adequate housing provisions, the basic furnishing and rudimentary domestic entertainment devices and a steady employment. Many are left wondering why the gap between the governing process and the most vulnerable persons who are in majority, needing all the assistance that organised exploitation and export of the continents resource are suppposed to support most. By ignoring to set into motion activities that are practical in meeting the basic expectations of the masses, the governmental apparatus has become an isolated significant determinant of the quality of life outcome of the people. Governments are made up of people, they are supposed to represent the interest of the citizens, by dint of that, a government for the most part is not represented by physical structures and clearly defined non relatedness in interest and activities from those it is supposed to represent and act on behalf of. The structures that povernment habit are properties that belong to everyone, in a sense everyone is entitled to such premises, it is for the public. The government that begins to act on its own is in effect not a government but could be classified as innapropriate appropriation of the common good for selfish purposes. Reactions to restore to the rightful owners can only be achieved in terms of recourse agaisnt the individuals who have betrayed the common thrust, but not against the instituitions and the structures that habour these instituitions. Individuals by common consent and social responsibility have been granted a piece of the land that belongs to society as a whole. Beyond that is the reality supreme that everyone finds acceptance and definition by dint of allowances made by others in any of a varied of ways to yield them social acceptance and tolerance, and in some cases respect. In the same way that it is given it can be withheld by society at large. A leader that is denied rulership by his subjects is no longer a leader, simply because leadership finds power within the ranks and file of the commonality. It is at its highest and most refined level not a unilateral imposition by any one person on all others, but an acceptance of one person and a small group to align the expectations of everyone in a rationalistic and creative manner to yield fallbacks that profit the society as a whole and enable the individual aspirations in all its diversity to be realisable in a socially acceptable manner. When this realisation filters into society, the power base is transfered into the hands of the least of humanity who acting in conjunction with all others can with hold the killing hands of tyranny and refuse to spread the mould of corruption that taints by misrule. Awareness that power resides with those upon whom power is exercised acting in unison is to bring constructive awareness that, much as individuals strive to be what they wish to be, striving against impossibilities and nay sayers, some and a lot achieve success beyond their wildest dreams. For a society comprised with such talent and potential, it only requires the appropriate directive influence to convert improbabilities into possibilities and uplift the vibrancy of being several notches. The effort towards positive and realistic social change must derive from within the very continent. The outside world realistically, taken, as  from the perspective of the individual can be assumed as a helpful, tolerant and supportive society. However the primary driving force is what comes from within desiring the change and willing to make the commitment and sacrifices to enable attainment of these noble goals of projecting oneself to the stars against the force of gravity.

 

Within the philosophic assertion of circumscribed determinism, there is implied an assumption of maximisation of the lee way of deterministic potential available to justify accomplishment. For lack of vision the masses perish, it need not be a vision born of critical conditions that demand outrageous policies. It is incumbent on real leadership to harness the potentials of its citizenship and bring to realisation projects and efforts that find realisation meaningfully only within massed effort in socially responsible settings. There in indicative a leadership vacuum when the sole effort of governance projects the promotion of individual initiative without igniting the communal spirit of large scale state sponsored projects aimed at uplifting the dismal state of the weakest of society's composition. These poor and inappropriately denied have been relegated to beggarly status not for want of resources and a the individual to achieve, but merely by a denial process consequent of closed mind leadership (where lacking of ideas, the leaders refuse to acknowledge traditional values that wisely say that, one head does not rule a nation). Leadership lacks capability to organise its human resources to be fully employed in productively profitable ventures. Profitability has been constricted by non expansive thinking processes into monetary and stunted profit-loss economies. There is the profitable employment of labour that is directed by society to improve upon its own environs. Thus it is the case that while everyone demands a clean society, it is an aspect of normality to maintain a semblance of personal beauty at some level, yet it still requires the deft management of adroit authority to employ the energy resources of its willing but pliant human resources to apply this God given energy, employing simple tools to heighten the droll(the ones who due to bad luck become the objects of laughter for the ones who by dint of luck can afford to laugh at others less fortunate) and dross(the seemingly worthless and nonproductive humanity) into productive mechanisms that convert the raw into artforms of aesthetic exuberance. The truest definitive attribute of leadership is not based on depriving the majority to provide for the unappreciative few, neither is it based on ignoring the plights of those to whom the greatest assistance is due. It is not so much a n issue of closing the gaps between those who have and those who lack. It is enabling those who nedd support and adding value to their existance, while at the same time providing ample opportuntiy for those who have to increase their wealth and share with those who lack. There is a preoccupation with complex systems when the simple suffices more than enough, to advance isnot necessarily to become more confabulated, rather in advancement the seemingly intricate is unstranded into into its barest minimun, to facilitate understanding. There is no substitute for fundamentals, the builders foundation on which are placed the complexities. There is likewise no alternative to gradual beginnings. Construction begins with an idea, that is converted into primary sketches, these then become an architects blueprint, that guides a construction crews realisation of the idea in concrete terms. The actual construction process is a gradual, systematic process, with clear cut beginnings, anyhow there is always a form of systematic projection. Long term projection is a bedrock of sustainable, sustained development on the continent. Continental development is a hands on project, not set against other prior or ongoing developments, the marginalisation of the continent, whether seen as a consequence of other civilisations or a carefully orchestrated attempt with darker motives notwithstanding, is only of secondary importance. It is merely of historical consequence, all that the continent needs to upgrade itself is within its capabilities and boundaries. Of immediate importance is how apt are the governments to gear themselves to take advantage of the times to shape a new and materially improved future for their people. Applied to languishing masses, there is no relieve in sight if there is no attempt, no matter how miniscule, at initiating physically prescient upgradement projects within the poorest of the land.

 Government is not the sole reserve of "qualified politicians", it is a domain by which society enables those most capable to wield the directive power rod for traversing a set course with a starting point and a defined objective, it is in its implementation, a process that transcends the time and times and parochial interests. It is a vibrant dynamic entity that is yields socially oriented benefits, rather than a position of greedy acquisition and self aggrandisement.

 

The national economies are stunted because the majority of the people who by their earnings are supposed to grease the monetary economy are virtually moneyless. There can be no significant money games enabling cyclic expansive spending to boost economic activities on a local scale if economic policies are not structured to make monetary resources available. But if the monetisation game is not balanced by productivity, there are the inflationary considerations. The retail aspect of local economies remain in a primitive state and tax collection resembles market tolling because obtuse monetary policies that lack imagination determine the never ending poverty enhancing inflationary driven torment of archaic and strangulating "big brother" economics. Conceivably it is expected that new and far reaching strategies will enable a well knit spending process that enables acquisition and cultivated spending, while keeping control over excess liquidity. To allow such a process to evolve naturally is ideal, but can never be realised in the presently foreign exchange determined monetary value structures that hold the poor in perpetual bonds of economic deprivation and social denial. An alternate parallel process must be evolved where government in the processing of alleviating poverty by highly intelligent and imaginative mechanisms enables the growth of diversified and sophisticated trade and retail activities.

 

As noted by one analytical mind, some revolutionary and world changing technologies never do have all that great an economic impact. Radio, for example, blurred regional differences, wiped out vaudevile, and enabled the rise of national consumer brands. But its hard to find anyone who can point to a causal link between the arrival of radio and increased national prosperity. The truly crucial technological innovations from an economic standpoint are those that make humans more productive.

 

Such innovations enable the human mind in its central role of system regulator to yield more of its seemingly infinite capacities. Productivity increment through this means if applied with consideration enables all round improvement in society.

 

There is no reason to emulate other civilisations or developments that have occured elsewhere. To attempt to do so is an exercise in futility. For one, there is so much that is imperfect in those developments, secondly the course traversed to attain these hyped states of imperfection is far too long and the cost, of which, the continent has contributed, without much in return, is far too costly. not in human designated material costs, but human costs. More importantly, the variables that influence and determine the outcome are dynamically varied and situationally different. The continent must take advantage of the experiences of others, picking wittingly their strong points and discarding the negations therein inherent and blend these with the natural provision in crafting an improved society in terms of life enhancing actions for its people. It is not per se that by remanining in existing primary agro-based systems, there is any likelihood that there is certain to be a complete anhilation of the populace. There is however a certainty that defining strength and development in military strength and advanced mass destruction technology will anhilate the entire populace. There is a middle ground that entails selective choice and adaptation that bodes well for sorely desired easing of the burden of deprivations on the majority for whom existence is an unneeded suffering. All the organisation and planning needed to facilitate a much more wholesome society is to a large extent outside the economic dictatorship of external power bases. The wisdom that abounds on the continent should awaken fron its dormancy and give forth selfless leaders who are bigger than the limitations of personal greed. Until the millions of minds brimming with ideas that are not regulated by world banks and yielding ideas implementable, no matter how grandiose, government will remain a preserve of dehumanised entitities, who capitalise on ballot box mentality and sweet talk the people to an early and hungry grave. To share and participate for the common good does not begin at the ballot box and four year terms, this naivety is an imported imperfection of systems that are seeking for balance in the midst of uncertainties. It has its noble aspirations, but there is something that is higher than a wasteful diversion on. . .There must be an inner desire on the part of society to realise in its leaders their most grandiose aspirations in concrete achievements, be they the idealisations of individuals or society as a whole. Society must hold its appointees responsible to their tasks, just as leaders hold their subjects responsible for task executions.

 

When one lives life looking at things through the lens of other peoples eye, it is not totally out of place to assume than soon they loose sight of their perceptive abilities. They thus become inactive participants in defining their own viewpoints and courses of actions. They have lost focus because of lack of exercising their own viewpoints and takes on issues relating to the self, those same issues that they have seen through others eye lenses, distorted not only because it is distortion of faulty viewing, but also because the borrowed eyes just cannot see what they are made are not made to see. The take is perculiar and only those with the designated equippage can effectively discern the terrain and its obstacles. They should benefit by heeding advise and learning from others who have tarversed similar terrain. By acquiscing to others viewpoint of what best classifies the self, unconsciously there is a bounding slippage of that others assumptions of how to realise the self with all its excess baggage of negations therein accruing. Worse is configuring to fit the assumptions of those classifications-which in truth do not reflect the desires and expectations of those so classified. Until there is a marked improvement of the conditions of the masses of the people dwelling in filth and desperate poverty. Whatever is achieved will be defined from the scope of those who leaders see as inconsequential. The state of the continent will never be defined from the viewpoint of how many have broken through the poverty barrier to become middlemen rather it will always be defined by how many continue, even in the remotest settlements to be denied improved life conditions.

 

Limited resources must be justifiably applied not on redundant discards that have outlived their usefulness elsewhere. By the assumptions of social jump theorising, those who begin late do not have to recourse to retracing the steps of others who have prviously traversed a similar course. They must begin where others have ended where possible, and take short cuts through well travelled terrains. That is not an achievement that will be handed down with gratuitious smile from those who paid the  price of seemingly vain idealism to push the barriers of realism unto hitherto newer frontiers encompassing changed and changing 'worlds'.. For the Africa lacking in truly bold leadership, it is an effort that never yields to realise the basic underpinnings of such idealistic musings in constraining circumstances. It is a constraint that is particularly vicious in its unyielding grip in a world system that relishes in the inadequacy and deprivations of the masses. The world is unwilling to share the fruits of its gain, delighting instead in self glorification, designing economic systems that perpetuate suffering and qualifying its justification on superficialities of realistic inconsequences. The time of laying blames need to give way to optimising the forced ejective energy latent in deprivation in the midst of possibilities. There are sublime advantages inherent in being followers rather than trailblasers. At least one is saved the cost of unforeseen mistakes in plodding well trodden paths. To be a follower does not imply to be an imitator. The past is for guidance, not a retrogressive zone to revert to  as a means of retracing lost time processes. The reality is a catapulting effort in trajectory with the here and now, where possible and as much as possible. Natures unprocessed resources have a nurturing limitation, it seems as if following the nurturing period, the maturing process requires the application of the collective mind power to yield sustenance from nature. Since humanity is certainly dissatified with remaining in situ and thrives by constantly changing. The means to satisfy the hunger for change, by tinkering with nature's resources, lies with potent leadership.

 

It will be naive to think that all the lessons of other world civilisations have no relevancy for Africa's growth. There are inherent lessons that should be applied to an evolving processes in progress on the continent. The most significant lessons are that tyranny and wars do not aid development in any sense. War mongers retract social growth and increase society's burden, there is no destructive effort that in total effect acts as an element of growth. Tuburlences can forcefully wrought a change in some instances, but the obvious indication is that incapable leaders create the social dissension that push normally peaceful and a docile public to acts of wanton destruction. The grip of incompetent tyranny that has overwhelmed and touched of decay in the vibrancy of potentialities and possibilities, will certainly not let go willingly. For as long as those who should play a role in society's affair are not participating, projecting ideas and parlaying on how to realise them in their communities and society at large. For so long as leaders and governments see their role from the limited viewpoint as ends in individual ambition rather than as responsibilities requiring sacrifices for the well being of the majority, the kind of growth nurtutured in every heart for their communities will not find expression in projects of social grandeur. Until there is an unlocking of the hold of manipulatory authority which allocates positions of governance as favours and rewards for affiliation rather than based on capacity to effectively execute the demands of office and qualified background knowledge... The worthy truth is that office of leadership is a sacrificial engagement that requires a mind power that transcends monetary and selfish material desires. Those to whom office is offered as a reward for personal favour are better off with cash donations. The inefficient office holder is not only a liability to the growth of society, he is a danger to himself in all the entrapments of his incapacitation. Until the allure of greedy acquisition is stripped off the lacklustre realism of public office, until adequate provisons are made by society for its leaders to enable them focus on the major task of renegineering society, underdevelopment is a self sponsored reflection of people who are still wandering in the mist of uncertainties. Africa needs insightful leaders who must enable the emrgence of all that the continent is capable of. There is little doubt to be expressed over the viewpoint that, while it is worthwhile to appreciate and attempt to find some form of tempoarary orientation within the existing monetary order, unless fervent efforts are made to develop a parallel continental fiduciary instrument that is robust and capacious enough

 

While it does makes sense to have a measuring rod of what state of development has been achieved it makes for good comparison to realise that emulating others achievement to petty details does not seem realistic nor feasible. Against their imagination and with nothing to compare to, others have risen to great heights of societal growth hitherto unattained, in some of its realisations. The continent must take a cue and adopt a tangential developmental comparison strategy, with the factual dictum that the basic measuring rod is that development has made available to the least of its habitats the highest posible level of human material and potential enhancement capability possible. Using what can be obtained locally and what can be accessed from outside domains. There is no need to approximate to exact details comparative achievements, insamuch as these can be guideposts and indications of what is possible. By focusing on the foremost activity of change not from a definitional perspective of being in the process of striving to approximate other civilisations the task of continental development can be better realised with a more confident attitude of reconstructing nature to add value to habitat and tame the latent energy and resources of nature for yielding added value through human ingenuity. There is a path that is common to all humanity, a desired and commonly accepted and when realised a welcome respite to all people. Beyond the essential physical upgradement of mud and swish tenements, the provision of continuously updated and innovated technological facilities to enable the desired life improvements that have been achieved in other places, envied and desired elsewhere and generally appreciated as definite improvements and facilitating provisions. The difficulty is defining the underlying philosophical grounding of natural development and induced accelerated development. It is a grounding of the projected development in a spirituality of existence that finds meaning within the unique contextual evolvement that sustains the course of that development, rather than the constructural replications of monumental structures imported as face lifting projects in the opaquity of an ungrounded face lifting. Any and every sustainable development must seek for and find definitional grounding within the spiritual energy of the intended source of the end project, to enable sustenance, for the inner core of the ideas, that no matter how idealistic in conception, in realisation are in tune with the aspirations and desires of the people, presently and in the future. It is this sync between the leaders and the led in engaging common grounds of pursuit that enable the philosophy of grounded development. It is an emergent phenomenon that evolves within the specificities of particularities. It must be sought for, identified, cultivated, fed to the people, be in concordance with their ideals, Development is not encapsulated in concrete edifices, it is the massed mentality finding realisation in concrete form that is the true indicative nature of development, spanning time and place. The central significant role of a well planed infrastructure is a desire that reflects the massed mentality and one that in its actualisation will reflect the true realisations of society.

 

The best and most ingenious trading techniques are the ancient, but timetested financial skills, honed by the centuries and in interaction with the emerging financial savvy of developed economies by the  agile Mossi. To these ancient talent, go back and learn the true lesson of economic finesse. The purported best minds of the world, have proven best at what is most easy to pursue. Leave the weak to perish and impoverish the borderline cases. Of the strong enslave to a an international financial system that will never set them free from the bondage of debts. The greatest bondage is the willing succumbing of one's 'mothers wit' to the undiscerned knowledge of another. In the process one has lost the foundation of wisdom and sacrificed budding intellect into a permanent oblivion of hazy confabulations. What passes for stupendous and overwhelming groundbreaking discovery, the sort of discoveries that uplifts the weighed massed soul and keeps it bouyant for generations yet unborn is the lightning strike of simplicity. The simple is counfounded by the excesiveness of the complexity of ignorance seeking to obfuscate the clarity of simple and bury it under cover. So that when the simple underlying truth is discerned it is applauded as remarkable. Yet we are no further from the possibility of a commonweath of joy than our selfishness and greed restrains us. At a point, light must begin to filter into the darkness of carefully wrought deceptiveness that delays the growth of the continent. The ongoing pervasive questioning by all on fundamental issues, is the mumblings of an awakening sleep walker, the fogs of sleep are certainly wearing off. Now is not the time to retrieve meaningfulness from the nightmare, perhaps, indulgence in the unpredictable art of dream interpretations, may help discern some elemental value of the long nightmare. The sleeper must wash his face, tidy up, and pick up his work tools, while he slumbered, grinning with stupidity in the dream state, others have been at work. He must with earnest attempt to do his share of work before time runs out, yet time runs out at the beginning of the night, only to begin with the crack of dawn. Time is what favours the lateariser, giving the chance of making up for indulgency and catching up with the earlyrisers in the longtime, but there can be no catching up if the basics of a waking day are postponed, waking up.

 

The collective expectation of the individuals of a community for progress in society are expected to find massed realisation in those upon whom the responsibility evolves to collatively manage the common good. To deny these realisations by acts of commission or ommission is criminal neglect. It is the sort of social irresponsibility that needs no qualification in its positioning among the generally acceptable acts of unacceptables. Those take opportunities of positions or responsibility to augment on their individual greed are glorified social pariahs, their wealth need not incite admiration, but made to exude the stink of corrupted undesired. The insignificants of society are the mediums within which the undesired seek to find acceptance to exhibit their grandeur, that acknowledgement must be withdrawn by society. Mediocrity has been elevated into an artform and placed on a pedestal, whereupon society delights in vileness that has been layered by layers of deceptive malevolence to become acceptable against the urgings of individual conscience. The collective sensibility is no longer reflective of the inner purity of individual honesty and goodwill. By the uncommital acts of individual silence,  evil which has found acceptance as normality thrives and has defined a reality in a surrealistic settings. There are no kindly over achieved societies ready to pass on their excess to assist those in need. Many more shall be the unrelenting woes of Africa if they believe at an individual level to be a part of a larger whole. The individual's striving in dismal and seemingly impossible situations to add value to live will more likely yield even greater results when pursued at a communal, continental level. While on a continental level it is unlikely that the fierce independency of the African personality will inveigle itself into total state controlled manipulation. It is also unavoidable that at some point of complementarity the individual drive must be supported by a well planned higher level governmental policy and implementation process geared in its totality at providing a base for poverty alleviation. While there exist rudimentary forms of this and other feebly functioning mechanisms of govermental implementation in one form or another. There is room for a reconsideration and an adoption of goal oriented decisive developmental projects that bring adequate housing and generate sustainable employment for those who can not afford to build standard homes as well as obtain the capital to be self-employed. Improving such basic public responsibilities as keeping clean streets warrants the call to resort to basics, instead of bandying words of despisement like "the poor, the disadvantaged", as inevitable unresolved consequences of a free market economy. Africa does lack in many ways, but it does not lack wisdom at the individual level, the few educated and capable must begin to shape realistic far reaching policies that should intend to put limited and outdated technology in solving basic issues while the search continues for more sophisticated approaches to solve primary problems. After all, while the last 50 years have resulted in an incredible leap in science and technology, the definitional infrastructural layout and economic establishment of other civilisations were attained in conditions far more primitive than the existing isolated patches of advanced social and technological knowledge base and capacities that dot the sorry picture of a seemingly visionless disaster zone that the continent has become. It takes one bold visionary to bring the light of knowledge and awareness to dawn on the multitudes. The "poverty and disadvantaged" classification is a reflection of inadequacy at the societal level, rather than individual inadequacy. If only the people could express their heart felt belief that their leaders have their best interest at heart, poverty and the pain of developing will no doubt be easier borne.

 

The development of a continental fiduciary instrument to facilitate a continental trade and exchange activities is inevitable. The earlier efoort is put into the expected slow nurturing of such an instrument the better suited it will be as a stable and sustainable instrument of continental growth. It is inconceivable that given the long term developments, based on present day experience, continental business interactions will be based on an external medium to facilitate harmonious exchange activity. The fractious dispersal of resources and core centers, likely to become emerge as focal zones of growth make it imperative that individualistic, nation centered economic development is not likely to lead to the emergence of a strong fast developing overall Sub-Saharan Africa. Co-ordination of activities and agendas with an ambitious realistic continental based buwarked support system is a more advantageous possibillity. The idea of what passes for and is accepted as hard currency must begin to evolve from within-without. The fundamental idea for the development of a continental fiduciary instrument, is not to be based in terms of a competitive instrument against highly developed external sources, rather it is to enable meaningful development in primary exchange of goods and resources on a continental basis without the hindrances and constraints of externally powered monetary resources. In a way of speaking, it must be asssumed that it is because of the unsophisticated and uncomplicated nature of the evolving system that enables the development of a replacement-parallel continentally focused instruments, against a background of marginalisation by the developed economies with all their shortcomings. The capital market likely to arise therein will initially be comparatively moderate, but in addition to ensuring ease of continental exchange relationships, it will in time become the medium of exhange for all dealings with the continent. Enabling greater stability than the existing fragmented national currencies that are virtually weightless individually against the rest of the developed united world economy. While certain concessions could be made to ease the economic burdens of small and weak economies, the reality is that the rest of the universe is not going to take a pause for weakers sibblings to catch up, you either grow up or wither away. Continental growth is best conceived from the a position of a unity of weaklings and their resources. As units the economies of the individual countries like the critical mass to facilitate the sort of all embracing continental growth expected, what will occur will be atolls of economic success in an ocean of despondency. There is no better opportunity or condition under which to combine resources than when unity forges hitherto unattainable strength. The direction for the way forward will not come from outside, for the outside has never proven hopeful. The power is within and with the people and their true leaders. They are the true visionaries who let loose the chains of mental incapacitation, empowering the least of humanity to reach to the inner core and leap higher than the imagination. Not the fake usurpers who denigrate the collective conscionsce of the expectant expectations of generations by acts of mindless despoilations. The coming together of previousl powerful economies provided an alter ego to a powerful controlling economy, the gradual nurturing of a third or fourth will keep a center of balance between previously existing, and of more importance yield immense benefits to the continent. Africa's above all differences are united by a cultivated culture of poverty and inferiority that it can more effectively reverse by uniting than wasting time and scarce resources attempting  to engage in a competition of who tops the base list of inadequacy. Much more will relevant and useful is combining the latent strength into explosive growth, albeit realised slowly.

 

There is no call to begin a short sprint to approximate other world achievements, the benefits of these are available to those who can afford it. All achievements are driven by two basic incentives, it would seem on the whole. The first is an envious drive to be one up on someone or everyone else, the second is the profit motive, in which case, over and above the wider cycles, people who can will have what they want, the underlying principle of the so-called global economy. The call is for doing what is right by the masses of the people and in that process adopting far reaching policies that ensure that, as a race each and every African has a future and a life worth living. The task is only as undaunting as our minds limit us into believing it is, its realisation will still call for the simple task of organising the community to realise its collective aspirations.

 

But the needy will not always be forgotten,

nor the hope of the afflicted ever perish. Ps.9:18

 

Public works are an essential aspect of government implementation and has been recognised as such. In most African countries though public works were later to earn a disreputable image of waste and inefficiency. There is little doubt however that these state sponsored nation building activities elevated and improved the underdeveloped status of these countries. The problems that accrued with state sponsored job creation activities and nation building activities were lapses of admininistration and greed on the part of leadership. The bulk of activities required to improve upon the miserly and extremely unhygienic conditions of the bulk of people residing in the urban slums will never emerge from the private sector. The private sector will never build roads, central sewerage systems, cemeteries and funeral houses, modern and well equipped schools, as well as provide the housing needs of the people who dwell in the slums, for the simple reason that the private sector is a profit oriented setup. By the neglect or delaying of these projects, the cities and towns on the continent will never attain the sceneric beauty of layout and cleanliness that all the people so desire. There has been an excessive tendency to heed ill conceived advise from external sources who are inadequately placed to slate unconditional requirements of how development should procede. While there is general acceptance that governement must disengage itself from sectors and activities best realised effectively through the private sector, the fact remains that many of the future developments in job creation would need massive infusion of public capital. The crown of leadership is continental wide growth, with infinte potentials for individual growth potential realisation, not segments of well-being in the encompassing misery, thus if existing policies are not pointing to these direction, there is more than ample cause for worry (for as far as the lumbering and slow process of instituitionalising social constructs are concerned, the future is very much mapped in the present, irrespective of the fact that the future may be quite unlike anything the present can conjucture). The lack of insightful leaders (an insightful leader is one who has the foresight to advance policies that not only are in tune with the desires of the electorate but one that is one step ahead of the times to keep society's growth tangent sustainable in the medium term) (such a leader, by no means, is not one who is pursuing outdated policies that are hardly reviewed regularly and improved upon) has not helped the situation either, but worse than this, are those citizens who refuse to participate by forwarding opinions; and complacently refuse to participate in nation building. The nation, the continent is not the sole preserve of any one person and his or her gang of usurpers who stunt the aspirations of generations yet unborn by refusing to prepare the grounds for a future worth looking forward to. It must be reitarated that leadership can only be realised within a domain of willing subjects reading to will power to a select group, that means of facilitating leaderhip can be withdrawn by the suffering masses from usurpers of the commonweath for personal ends. Worse still are those who for selfish ends assume positions of leading to bring to realisation the aspirations of the masses and don't know what to do. A leader is not expected to be the sole preserve of knowledge on anything, he is supposed to be the level headed individual who seeks for guidance from his or her subjects and facilitate for the common benefit what cannot be easily realised at the individual level. A real leader is a servant of the people and not a 'cane wagging bully', the people in recognition of the immense duty they require of their leader in turn threat the leadership role with respect and dignity, according leadership role great honour (which honour the new leaders have discarded like a filthy overcast, these are times.) In effect the leader cannot be afraid of his or her subjects, since he is in a role of administering to the interest of the people and not formenting enmity and creating blocks of supporters and opponents. The agreeable and disagreable segmentation of society, is based on idealistic opposition and convergence on issues and does not assume a personal nature. The true great leader is the one who by action and deeds, instigates reactions of single minded disclaimers against unpopular policy decisions or implementation, while garnering praise and adoration for the appropriate measures. He is focused on issues without neglecting individuals, their peculiar needs and emotions and is prepared to acknowledge that leadership is not a pursuit in perfection but an endeavour to touch the least and most neglected of society, without polarising society on the basis of haves and havenots. To those who have acquired by honest means, a good government will increase their wealth, to those who have not it will provide for and for those who have acquired by illegal means it will return the loot to their rightful owners. The role of leadership in Africa with all its endowments and diversity is principally an effort at harnessing the abundant human resources presently excessively underutilised and project all that energy into productive and growth related activities. The ease and efficiency with which warmongering madmen have taken advantage of the frustrations of of the youth, at their impotent governments. Mobilising and finetuing them into highly efficient phenomenal instruments of death and destruction. These local wars have defied all reasonable expectations in their sustainability, employing the most basic but incredibly efficient primary war tools, they leave one wondering how much more could be achieved if all that ability were directed into social upgrading projects that satisfy the nobler instincts of human nature. This is enough evidence that it is not for want of ability to achieve that the youth are wasting away without benefit generating, socially organised employment activities. Rather it is the acquising neglect of the people to participate and require from their governments the best that could possibly be given. An individual no matter how determined can never sustain an act of aggressiveness and hostility and plunge a whole generation into a state of chaos. But when he does persuade and deceive people in search of direction, into the wrong places and in the wrong actions, he suddenly finds a power base of deference and acknowledgement where criminal behaviour is appraised by ignominity as the role of leadership. The poor and depressed by withdrawing their acknowledgement and support of participation in wasteful ventures, gain by creating an opportunity for change and redirection for hope. Investing their thrust and hopes in a choice of leaders who stand to provide the social foundation that facilitate the growth of initiative. The awakening of the least of all humanity to their role in facilitating the operational medium of a leaders power is a critical first step to sobering criminal neglect and lacklustre governing.

 

The excessive emphasis on the operative inefficiency of the public sector to engage in anything that the private sector could make profit out of, has resulted in a linear pattern thinking where even what the public sector needs by requirement to undertake to alleviate public discomfiture is not being pursued with the urgency required, maybe new beginnings are elusive to the public machinery.

 

There is a need for a balancing of a drive for open market oriented policies - which at its most efficient and idealistic level will ease faster and stable trans-continental intergration at various levels by removing the turf-invasion mentality in practical and easily acknowledged form - and the overemphasis of privatising government. For their are realistic advantages in maintaining an efficient state initiated projects in construction, education, commerce, etc. Without necessarily compromising private sector investment. For instance the investments of the private sector in housing and education is not likely to be jeopardised by the governments efforts to provide high quality and modernised housing and other infrastructural development projects in areas and sectors of the society that are so deprived that not in this lifetime are they ever likely to accumulate enough financial resources in the hand-to mouth barely sustainable personal economy of borderline starvation inwhich they are forced into. These projects, will, on a scale large enough, provide employment in the construction industry and other economic activities that will emerge. Thus putting to use the immense resources of a humanity, that by lack of appropriate initiatives, on the part of those upon whom the duty falls, are presently being wasted. The biggest problem that Africa has to deal with is how to find a way out of the rut of linear reasoning. By diversifying idea resourcing and widening resourcefullness, at a level, that by enabling the people entrapped, by the narrow minded and oft times confused non directive administrative mechanisms at statal level, to be freed and consequently engaged for productive and life satisfying activities society on a continental level is likely to be all the better for it.

 

If there is a belief that social welfare oriented policies are a threat to capitalism, it is a misplaced belief. If there is a belief that by focusing on primitive low tech educational policies there will evolve a modern, well educated and technologically advanced population of youth capable of projecting continental development, that is not likely to be realisable. A school is more than an aluminium sheet draped over four pools in a dingy environment. Much as a market place is more than a collection of dirty sheds on a rubbish dump. While all desire improvements, it is only at the governemental level that the required change will be manifested. Capitalism thrives on populace with money to spend, if governement is not focused on job creation as an end policy, whatever market economy is supposed to do will be a dream unrealised. Nothing will change unless the mind set is drastically re-oriented towards more progressively idealistic but nevertheless realisable policy making and implementation. The multiplier effect likely to result from the initial government expenditure to improve infrastructure and in the process providing jobs in the slums and the rural areas will more than necessary qualify the justification for the required expenditure in this neglected sectors of the society.

 

The land issue requires forward thinking, radical rational policy making strategies and direct involvement of the local populace in decision making discussions. By adopting policies that will increase agricultural yield per unit land area, adopting modern cultivation practices and advancing communal landworking practices without withdrawing private land ownership, there will be the desired emphasise on productive land yield and

employment of agricultural worker force while deemphasising the landownership strife and its concurrent unproductive activities.

 

Society owes critical responsibility to provide for the creature comforts of its governing force while in office and after completion of their office term to ensure that those in leadership are not distracted by the important personal deisre to secure a comfortable safety net after serving a term of rendering public service. The provision of what is considered at the time as standard requirements of decent livelihood in property and financial needs must be a condition of reward to give valuable cognisance of the task of administering, while on the offset setting a conditional requirement that to whom much is given much is required. The hard driving individual aspiration for material success in African society, where individual acts of ambitious achievement are applauded and become the materials of folklore, cannot be easily waived aside for a form of outlandish socialisitic system of common ownership. It is in view of this that sight must not be lost of the fact that aside of the latent desire to do good, people in office of responsibility also have a personal need of material success. This need will not be set aside in the absence of conditions to guarantee it for office holders. For the public office is a highly demanding and requires great sacrifice to ensure social goal attainment. The worker must be paid his due. But as to whether that due suffices the worker's needs is often times beyond their means.

 

The time of high vaunted non realistic rhetorics coupled with inconclusive policy implementation has yielded a prolonged period of despair among the peoples. Their hopes and aspirations had been hijacked and trounced by leaders who represented themselves and their shortcomings. They shortchanged idealisms for reality and realised surreality. These troubled souls have not in the process found any redolent joy but have been and will forever remain the pariahs in the opening pages of the continents postliterate history. Now there is a need for a hands-on approach that seeks to brighten the increasingly depressing political and economical landscape with activities that are in tune with the upward progression of all humanity and not burden  the people by perpetuating mediocrity in any guise. While the governements must not be isolated from the people they represent they must also be harbingers of far reaching and innovative projects that bring succour and hope rather than policies that destroy the worthiness of life of the least of humanity. Ladling them with increasing unrelieved suffering.

 

Ideally it is preferable to have dynamic instituitions that are updating and reviewing policies and implementation processes. Instead, were have governmental  instituitional activities that are for all intents and purposes collectives ponds of fetid inactivity, pursuing outdated and irrelevant policies. More worrisome however is not the lack of activities within these institutions that would have rendered them inoperable, rather there seems to be a fixation to instruments of establishment, with simple and progressive retooling activities that would have ensured incremental improvement of services to the public these instituitions are set up to serve. Continental instituitions are contrary to all expectations and desires not maturing progressively, but crumble into decline from their set ups. While examples abound, it is arresting that Housing and Development Banks have all but depleted their resources and in evolving have assumed commercial activities, while the construction of residences and private and public sector construction have not progressed, by benefiting from their activities in any remarkable manner.

 

In the educational instituitions there seems to be an awkward touting to heights of seemingly absurdity theoretical espousals that have been discounted and taken a back seat to developments in current researches elsewhere, while little effort is made to encourage the development of situational representative theorising. The continental educational effort rather than taking a cue and evolving parallely has been frozen into a state retrogression into meaninglessness. The advantages of the quickly developing computer and internet technology that will have brought the advantages of the positive aspects of vibrant and abundant educational context therein available have so far been a quiet by-passing phenomenon to a student population that stand to benefit most from it. The worrisome question is, while all acknowledgement that, by another continental lack of initiative, of excessive reliance on an international financial system that is light years ahead of weakened continental monetary instruments, the continnent is cash strapped. That is foreign exchange strapped; when will there ever be a correlation of the needs of the populace with the actions of their elected leaders or otherwise. While research and development are expanding in other Universities elsewhere, graduate education and research funding are inactively discouraged. The potential advantages that could have been improved upon and utilised to no small end, have been left to wither into nothingness. The regional potential of the universities and research instituitions in some countries on the continent serving as service exports and development bases for innovations have all, but been discarded. To all intents, there seem to be a captivating attention to others achievements and efforts, while whatever little that could have been nurtured to gigantic proportions, we aborted and abandoned.While the general populace have little ambiguity about what the direction of developmental policy and implementation should take, the governments are still undecided whether to give way to others or continue to reign over mediocrity. That one equates governments with individuals and groupings outside the general populace, is a reflection of our times. In reality, the government is the people, but the leadership is an expected aspiration of the wishes of the majority, with a personality that often times represents itself and its limitations; rather than the ideas and expectations of the people. The desired change in the state affairs will only emerge from an actual tackling effort of the problems instead of piecemeal scattering of misplaced trivialties that pass for government action. The continent does not need foreign assistance to keep clean streets, it is absurd, that even the simple task of keeping clean markets have assumed the formidability of unresolvable. The poverty that is all evident is evidence of our collective failure rather than the machinations of any external power. That the continent in its leadership's expressivity tout underdevelopment as an accepted definition of failure to act, and embrace as a qualification the woeful characteristics that all seek reprieve from, they have failed their people.

 

While scarcity of resources call for a careful dispensation of limited resources. The adaptation of reform policies from borrowers, there need be a reminder that all countries no matte their current state of development have relied on massive state intervention to keep their economies running, as well as achieve theor current state of development. By turning away attention from the core issues as relates to state sponsored activities, which is project monitoring and managerial responsibility and accountability. Not only is continental development delayed, and further deprivation ensured. But the burden of activities that should have been started, but have been sidetracked by these half-baked, incompletely considered policies, (whether imported or locally cultivated) increase tremendously. The long term effect is that in the face of overwhelming and daunting obstacles due to delay and the pile up effect. There is an onslaught implementation strategy with its expected jerky and halting progress. What should have begun as batches of small, and easily tackled government projects, executed and maintained over time, being revised as time and extenuating circumstances evolve is attempted at a go, and without much surprise, but disappointment nevertheless, often half completed failures.

 

By putting themselves to overcome seemingly impossibilities, the incredible intellectual creativity that is characterisitic of human nature is flexed to invent. Each improvement is a departure point from the mundane, and an opening to the excitingly fresh. Technological progress is an accumulative departure from the familiar and time rendered redundant. By remaining in situ, captivated by the trappings of undervelopment and endless pursuit of dead end approaches, by extolling the transistory short gap measures of seeming to await the abridgement of a development gap. The latent creative energies of the youth are stunted and die untilised. By refusing to take challenging measures of upward and breakpoint development (breakpoint development, is by using the advantages of modern technology, one creates situations that may define the course of continually improving technology) the leaders have turn the key and locked their people into a void of unending frustrations.

 

The course of human nature has indicated a process of differentiation and intergration, as prior and ongoing verities of evolution and growth. Where the integration is superceded by sumsumation through power exertion and dominance the end process, invariably is a fusion of principals. The separation of cultures in a way enables the competitive spirit of human nature to pursue a course of yielding comparative best. At the apogee of achievement the winners merge and together increase their joint benefits as a single entity. The reverse process is where the weak must join forces to form a power base to survive. There is no option for the continent, but having failed to strive separately, the time of unions mandate that there is nothing but to join limited, both human and material. resources to forge strength and start from their accrued positions of failure. It is an union where separate entities strive within their limitations (seeking help where it can be found) while maximising the advantage of  continental filiaty. Instead of pursuing meaningless and unrealistic nationalistic policies which drive a wedge between imaginary nation states that are still struggling to find iternal identity. There must be open doors policies where borders can be seen as demarcations that facilitate manageability of portions of a larger community of equally desperate people. The borders will remain nothwithstanding, and will enable leadership accomplishment to be measured and compared. But competition must be progressive and growth oriented, where each is the brothers keeper. When situations are broken down to their fundamental components and the facade of vague complexity vaporised by common sense and traditional wisdom. It becomes overtly apparent that what has been misconceived in true terms of personalities and their shortcomings, have transcended their narrow confinements and superceded the critical task of societal issues and become debacles that undermine the progressive improvement of society. By redefining issues in the light of emergent clarities and clarifications, the previous hindrances can be converted into present advantages to fuel continental growth, on a scale hitherto unimaginable. Open market economies demand large populations and huge markets, the easiest way to facilitate these market of buyers is to open the borders and redeploy the dysfunctional border guards in the manufacturing and processing industries. Long before traditional traders had to bother about national frontiers and still in practice, the tribes had traversed Kingdoms to take advantage of market avenues. Now the past and the progressive future dictate openness and the facilitation of conditions at various levels to ensure sustainability at an individual and societal level. The individual drive is by no means lacking, but the society is dissolving at its foundations.

 

Underdevelopment must be jugulated with its vices, to enable the formulation of transformational policies that are not in a race to approximate any other system. Other than a forward looking sustainable policy of redefining the existing paralytic grip of inefficiency on the continent. The hodge podge fuddle of western education that in misapplication has held the people in an estranged prophetic lingering for an exalted time of enlightment, that will usher in the immediate realisation of all their developmental expectations. Lifting off the veil of suffering, is a waste of time and a depletion of energy in the wrong act. Like true salvation, you must work your salvation through faith in the Saviour and in so doing yourself. The unchanging fiat of creation dictates that by thy sweat thou shall realise. The problems are within the range of solvability, if only the leaders will direct the workers, it will be accomplished. Instead of a pervese absurdity to keep hampering on excuses that have outlived their usefulness in propping up misfits that have surlied the altar of social progress. The earlier, opportunities for upward projection, are teased out of intricate, seemingly unresolvables, by a process of creative, all hands on deck, problem solving approach. The less likely it is that the years, may very well see a nascent retrogression from positions of nonaccomplishment to a void of inescapable despair, if that has not already been approximated. There is no resort to unending criticism, but an opening for stimulating deliberation of what by complacent avoidance should have been and could be done in the limbo of indecisiveness.

 

While the rest of the word slides by Africa, this is the time to evolve durable, yet flexible and responsive internal operative mechanisms of growth and development. It is indeed an apprehensive observation that in the absence of such objectives, and an excessive adoration for anything emergent from external sources. The continent is virtually promoting a strategy of unconscious self containment with disparagingly woeful consequences for the people and their future. If those to whom the obligation has fallen to carve out a sustainable existence and future for their kith and kin are not up to their duty. They must not only bow their heads in shame, but abdicate their trusts of great responsibility and let more capable persons assume the role of designating a surety for their yet unborn. The pattern of peripatetic half hearted and half witted partial discharge of responsibilities, with a bias towards self enrichment as against instigating creative diversity to promote social growth, on the part of individuals, who have lost sight of the utmost importance of their role as trustees of the future, is a lamentable and hopefully quickly curtailed attitude. For in the end process humans are predators, the strong will exploit the weak without let to nonexistence. Africa must not by acts of willful omission and individualistic non participation in decision making at the higher level become a depleted desert to be filled. Just as the grasshopper tarried while the ant toiled, there is a price to be paid for waiting too long, wasting time and resources pursuing stop gap measures while the real issues are always being postponed. The future is to some extent a determination of the actions of the present. Those whose actions have created the existing lapse of discontinuity, have shortchanged by their little acts of omission the sustainaible viability of supporting internal environments for the generations yet unborn. If the toils and despair of the present were conducted such as to provide a continuity of  hope for the future, creating stable states of progressive enhancement. Then suffering has a distinctly human face. The unitary question on the minds of all the people is what is wrong with our governments? But the true question is why do we continue to tolerate these brigands who like the "fabled Nero are fiddling while the future burns up in flames."  The leadership issue is the crux of the problem the continent faces.

 

There is the need for leaders who define their situation, and present grounded projection of achievables, and then solicit for assistance. The existing situation of soliciting for uncoordinated advise, is a "putting of the horse before the cart." First define a purpose and seek for ways to realise it. The reverse is anomy. The society may be brimming with intellectually creative ideas, but if there is no bold, bright, and focused leader to channel the massed brain power into the realisation of energising projects. All that individual ability is shortchanged, and instead of being the force behind the forging of a formidable, forward looking Black African continent. Will rather find its highest achievement in one house built, and a cheerished second hand automobile, in a surging sea of poverty and dirt. The expected sense of triviality projected, is the truth, of a people without a vision in the midst of explosive potentialities. The financial manipulation and the "unfair international trade system" are consequences rather than determinants. From another perspective, Africa has never been any further or nearer the rest of the universe than it is now or will ever be. As a collective, exposure to developments elsewhere and the willingness of support from external sources, though restricted, is an enabling motivator to upgrade the traditional societies. It is part of effecting that change to activate imaginative resolution processes to obviate the consequences of contact with those externalities and their seemingly retarding effect on continental evolution. In all verity, the offset is a society mired in the rudiments of prolonged tribal and agro-based economies. Six centuries, notwithstanding, the refocusing on the reality of Africa within the context of a millenium of human evolution will most likely change our expectations from others. While redirecting the organising principles and the philosophical underpinnings of how the continent's development is to be realised. The rest of the world owes Africa, little, in terms of realising the well being of its inhabitants. Other distinctive races have not survived the consequences of European civilisation, but like the Europeans, after the Roman civilisation, it is up to Africa, to take advantage of the benefits of the influx of that civilisation to adapt and improve on its society. It took the rest of the then world, well over Africa's present six hundred years of post European contact. To take full advantage of that presently, defunct great empire to carve out an identifiable civiliation that is still in progress, separate in identity from that other worldy civilisation. Incorporating every single benefit of its accumulated chanelling of previous human achievements in its benumbing overwhelmingly great civilisation. Africa, must through its leaders, blend in with the rest of humanity, knowing that every single acquisition of a gain, is the equivalent of a battle of wits fought and won. It is only with this mind set that a proper course for true continental growth can begin to be plotted. A course that dictates that every true change, every approximation to a desired state, every radical reorientation, while borrowing from others, must come from within. To realise these change within a seemingly non supportive external environment is part of the package of continental goal achievement activated within well defined strategies that incorporates extenuating externalities. The existing sickening attitude of beggarly cowering and a seeming "everybody else owes it to us," is a reflection of the times and the failures of the individuals, who, by dint of the roles society enables them, to be the voices that project the collective intellect have ineffectively articulated the truest desires of the populace. By their individual inadequacies, and misdirected senses of duty and responsibility, they have perpetuated society's slowly deteriorating demise. A growth process that is retarded, and belated, a regressive net output when compared against what can be but is not, may seem like growth, but such growth is the expressivity of a failing struggle against a terminal situation. Nobody owes the continent nothing in the ongoing individual drive for material acquisition, which finds expression at the societal level as the taking advantage of the situation to better the individual lot. For a time Africa has been consenting victim, when it could also have been a predator in reversal. Having been awakened to their lapses, the only resort, is to earnestly begin the dreary, but nevertheless uphill task of reconstituting and setting right what is amiss. Given that it is not broad based platitudes that reconstruct obvious failures, it is also clearcut that in the absence of consistent transparency of what the priorities are, as articulated and projected at the highest level. There is a need for redefining the groundrules of what needs to be done. Until such a time as there is a vigourous individual reaction on a collective societal basis, to repudiate this misnomer, as not being truly representative of the collective, by withdrawing societal consensus. Until such a time when leadership roles are the highest expression of honour that society endows upon the wise, rather than the sole conserve of usurpers, the continent is doomed to bow its head in shame. Because as individuals selfishness, offishness, and general disinterest in the most critical social exercise has taken root in the midst of the continent. Nothing will change, unless a direct effort to make these changes at the most basic level is set in motion. No matter how much one expresses a desire for a certain state of affairs, that state of affairs will never be realised unless wish making gives way to active involvement in concerted effort at realisation.

 

"We have enjoyed a long period of peace under you,

and your foresight has brought about reforms in this nation. Everywhere and in every way,...we acknowledge this with profound gratitude. Acts 24:2.

 

(Of whom in these times can these ancient words of acknowledgement be made?)

 

Government, by having the collective resources of the people in its possesion, remains a formidable instrument of development implementation. Any excessive harping of government's inefficiency is in reality a displaced indictment of individual inefficiency. The government sector more than any other sector, has the commitment and resources to manage strategic and profitable ventures. The missing link in the equation is monitoring and accountability. As has been rightly pointed out by a Swede (the ultimate social welfare nation) living in the USA (the ultimate capitalist abode) "It is a myth that all state or community-managed activity are bound to be less effective than privately run activity." People, it is the case, have a tendency of keeping a close eye on activities in which they have an invested interest. The disinterested inactivity of the common man in government and collective decision making, is mainly due to central authourities inability to generate stable focus of purpose in dynamic social set ups of governing, and by so doing project a consistency of pursuit that permeates the rest of society. Government machinery thus has become liabilities on individual initiative in newly established nation states. As awareness increses that the governing effort is a collective responsibility, the disinterest that enabled abuse of position and unchecked, and unhindered irresponsibility is not likely to predominate and flourish as in times past. But whatever the nature of that awareness it will require extremities of dedication and heightened communal devotion to put the anomalous society's interest above the obvious individual interest. It is a dedication arising from an awareness that by implementing creative policies that expand development and forcefully breaking the restraints of lower level development era constraints and ejecting the society upward to a higher social growth plane, the wealth and mind state injected-evolutionary progression sets into activation dimensions of materialistic growth that supercedes anything the existing era enables. The leaders have a responsibility to awaken public interest and encourage active participation and the supervisory role of the people in their vested national investments. It is in place, that all and every state initiated project of prolonged duration should have its workers as partial share holders, thereby encouraging higher commitment. The releasing of as much as fifty percent of the shares of all state initiated project shares, to be floated in the stock exchange, shoud be the rule rather than the exception. Where, it is assumed that brokers will market their activities such as to encourage minimum cash investments in stocks, cutting across all social strata. By having their livilihood tied to the perfomance of the commonwealth in developments that enhance the well being of society. There certainly will be individual and society's concern with how their common resources are managed and unrelenting interest on the outcome of the management process. There certainly will be interest in those whose activities, in perfoming their official duties, have profound effects on the individual, commune, city, nation and continental outcome. Right from the cottage industry grinding cereals in a never heard of isolated location to the mega industrial investments at the national and continental level. Those who by their acts of omission and commission have proven themselves not to be within the consenting approval of public expectation will be quickly replaced by the public demand for effective management. Administrative processes will thus become responsive to public expectation, rather than being agents that act disdainfully towards the society that set them up to further its (society) interest. Innovative leadership by subtle and intensely promoting individual interest in the governing process, will engender in return a responsive commitment to the higher causes of nation and continent building. Forcing a requirement on the part of leadrship to be constantly perfoming and improving in response to their constituents criticisms. A state of affairs that will ensure that the public is constantly provided with detailed information to judge their leadership by perfomance related activities rather than blank explosive rhetorics that are disconnected from the heart of the people. Instead of the laikadaisical denial of information to the public by state corporations, banks and other instituitions, these organisations will have to engage their public audience rather than treat them as petty irritants. Where management's tenure is tied to the votes of stockholders, all of a sudden, state projects will become the domain of the brightest and the best, and yielding profits to boot and more important "realisation". Any civil authourity that does not strive to secure popular participation and commitment to its governing effort, has by an act of overt omission eroded the only true power base it has claim to. It is the wrong viewpoint by the populace, that government is an entity outside the governed, that has created a responsibility vacuum, of who actually determines who or what group of people are fit to take control of the leadership role. A crucial role that in all its reality exercises a determining influence over and above the role occupant and their supporters. At stake has and is the future of the people. It is a vacuum that has enabled gun totting disoriented men to hijack and disrupt the lives the populace. With no one but themselves to account to, they run mayhem administrative processes that have been nothing short of disasters, that tainted even trained administrators. It is not enough to conclude that something is out of order, the fault within the system must be traced, and workable solutions formulated at the broadly defining level and implemented precisely by an adaptive process that is particularistic. It is the belief by parties elected through the popular vote, whether genuinely conducted or otherwise. That they can exercise their mandate outside the public, to whom they owe a task of executing their stated proposals, that has led to a disassociation between the continent and its leaders. It is a disassociation that created vacuum that cannot be filled by balloting, but by responsible and honest leadership. Broadly applicable descriptive terms like "responsible" and "honest", are often taken by some as mere illusory deceptions. Yet, it is also veritable, that in a situation, where ones ability in a public office are qualified in terms of the adroitness with which such office holders pull the wool over the punlic's eye, while staching away public funds, leaves much to be desired, including honesty and responsibility. Over and above that is the search for the visionary men and women who articulate bold aspirations, tapping into the collective intellect and having the qualification to back their claims. The qualification of a good leader benefits from literacy, but it is not by any measure the definitive determinant. That required qualification is a consideration to truly listen to those governed.

 

Governments, for now, still remain the most secured bet for foreign investors in Africa. They offer a better guarantee against investments, because by being the supervisory authourity over the dispensation of national resources, they are by all considerations potentially rich and can secure investment funds against marketable natural resources. A security guarantee that is beyond any individual private concern. It is in this light that governements must sell the deprived state of the richest natural resources endowment among the continental land masses, as its greatest asset for the market hungry industrial community world wide. Given the natural flow of human activities, it does not require a genius to discern the awesome market potential of the continents acquisitive people, who in the main lack in many marketable products. All it requires for the over capacity production that is leading to unemployment in other parts of the world to exploit the potential millions on the continent are far sighted leaders, with a gift for discerning the unobvious. There is a subtle, primitive, layered subconscious opposition among discernible differentiation of groupings, a vestigial defensive reaction of wild groupings of protective hunter gatherers, a gripping and lingering genetic seepage that adulterates the cultivated sophistication of mankind. The resultant wild whoops of 'we have the territory you run' finds expression in the turf protection framework around which global society is weaved. The pretentious shared sympathy or the self-indulgent approval, are the current versions of chest thumping self acknowledgement. It is a normal expression of a degree of achievement through hard labour.  To find the weakness in the perforated certainty of instinctual self protection and provide a means of continental development through infusion of self enhancing rapprochement of differing interests with common destinies remains to be fully exploited. The calamitious destruction of grand scale war has meant in an excusable manner a growth industry for the steel mills, for example. The situation is no different in Africa. The leadership must sell the continent to the manipulators of the money game, so that the circle of demand induced industrial sustenace and economic boosting for the developed economies will yield reciprocal satisfaction. It is the duty of leadership to expand their mental scoop of possibilities and dare to venture beyond the horizon of known territories. It is a mind game. In the end, it all borders on a healthy internal economy for the big players and their bosses in the money game. In the same vein it is a question of infrastructural development to alleviate poverty and destituition for the continent. That is the criteria by which the people will judge the success and failure of their leaders, among others.

 

There is an aspect of the collective mentality that must be identified and tapped into by government to arouse commitment and national identity. It is that force of the people that is willing to applaud positive effort, ready to lay its life down for such a vague course as guerilla warfare in its most detestable expression. It is that exultatory gushing of goodwill that uplifts the collective mentality to bouy football teams to victory. In a way it is only when that powerful identity with rulership is realised that the severe shortcomings of disassociative governance will be obviated. Just as millions vibrate in a mental unionism of collective desire to excell in the activities brought to fruition by a disciplined representative of 11 men. In the absence of effective articulation of  the expectations that are of relevance to total well being of individuals from their governments. The noted disaffection that characterises the relations between the populace and their representatives widen. The dangerous quicksand phenomenon where the government machinery has been depersonalised, and virtually capable of finding social representation outside the wellbeing of individuals in society may continue to take dominance among the populace. The consequent widening gap, thus is not only a continuing disassociation between the governed and the governors. But owing to the unique political evolution of Africa in the post-industrial age, society may eventually be subtle drawn into working against itself in an unusual, albeit operable state of chaotic dysfunction. In this state, the weakened state machinery, losing all identity with its power base, exists to promote its own member employees interest. They through, a socially less engaging democratic process of acknowledgement by balloting, pursue an energy draining administrative process of self sustenance, that bears little on the real interests of voters. Caught in a circle of budgetary deficit and the ever increasing irrelevancy of token implementation. The employees of the giant state machinery, exist to exploit the very society they were meant by designation to service, the very society that by no collective constituent malfeasance is being gnawed from within by its critical components, that by some freakish socio-genic defect has turned self-destructively on itself. The individual members of society, thus, see their government as a bunch of strangers perpetuating their state of suffering, and not representing them. Instead in the collective mentality, government is depicted in all its emblemetic representation as a necessary liability of society, that must be exploited where the means exist. Thus is the nasty twist introduced, who is by elaborate definition a separable entity labelled as the government other than a  vital segment of the social construct turned dangerous?  This type of exploitation can be likened to a situation, where one member of the family depletes the limited food stores of the family in the middle of an arctic winter, through selfish indulgence, while the others look on unconcerned. Nobody gains in the long run, only in the short term, will one family member suffer from bloated constipation, and torments the laikadasical relations in closed confinements with offensively nauseating self relief, in the long run they will all perish, due to improper food management procedures. Owing to the peculiar setting of inextricable relationship between the government and the indifferent public, a relationship that is anything but that between opposing viewpoints, the conflict that results is equivalent to a head bitting the tail to rid itself of an itch. A badly bruised tail does not make for a comfortable state of mind. Unless the tail takes evasive action to avoid the heads absurdity of harming the tail. . .(that, indeed is how absurd the situation becomes when it is broken down to its barest minimum).

 

It is leadership that is able to sensitise the populace to their full awareness, of being the crucial determinant factor in the governing process, that will take the first step to national and continental development. The variety of diversity of deeply embedded tribal values. The unresolved pre-colonial differences and inconclusive tribal wars, has left openings that could be exploited for destructive retrogression. Or utilised for awakening an obvious but quaint reality that all Africans share an unnegotiable identifiability that cannot be eradicated or negotiated; their unique positioning in creation is assured ad infinitum. In the interim, poverty and the predominance of primitive living conditions due to lapses rather than a necessary state of being defines all, without exception. Individual success is irrelevant in the face of mass deprivation, in the definitional categorisation of aspects of blackness. The only course is the acceptance of the positive values of welding the diversity of varied cultural perspectives to eject a variety that is vivacious in their onward search for progress. On the other hand is the stiffling referral to historically inaccurate rampages of forbears who have nothing much to prove for all their valiant destructiveness, an emphasise on differences that owe more to geograhical adaptation than any deep seated differences between people who share a common destiny that has a potential to create a society that is consumed with hatred. This seeming absurdity has surfaced more often than most people care to knowledge, with all its distractive despoilations. A leader who taps into the deeper emotionalities of the populace and by a transparent process of involvement invokes an identity of the government with the governed, has by this achievement, given impetus to a committed goal oriented, achieving workforce, who will nurture their work like that work is a fauvorite child. A child with all the hopes of the parents hinging on its success as an adult who will feed the parents in old age. In the absence of this nurtured identity with the government and its activities. No matter how high remuneration rise, workers will continue to see state and continental commitments primarily, as exploitative sources for individual interest. There are to many diverse interests that constitute the populace, that have not had, the created or naturally, arising opportunity to share deep seated bounding experiences, forming the nation states. To expect high patriotism to arise naturally or in concordance with assumption of positions of employment, appointment or responsibility is vague unrealisable. The nearest to such bounding experiences, can probably be ascribed to the briefly shared  high hopes arising out of the achievement of independence. Which in hindsight was a misplaced expectation, since the focus revolved around charismatic individuals. Who, seeing that the glare of the spotlight of popular attention had its benefits, of personal-egoistic bolsterism, decided not to defray the attention. If they had taken advantage of the opportune timing independence enabled, to shift the popular enthusiasm with the governing process into a national commitment. They would not have failed so miserably in their principal task of nation building. In its stead, they built personality cults and allowed the split between the populace and the governing process to grow wider and wider, while encouraging further splits along superficial levels of differences, till they seem incompatible. It will require commitment and purposive aspiration to realise this hitherto lacking intimate connection between the government and the governed. No amount of rabble rousing will suffice. Identity of the populace with their governments and the governing process must be cultivated by acts of exemplary leadership, fairness and honesty. As well as overt efforts to court such commitment and interest. Without seeking to arouse in equal measure the support and emotional identity that national football teams arouse, the leadership cannot by any means run a tight ship of total commitment to a common purpose. If it is the case that leaders with such orientation that focuses on the populace cannot emerge to take over the mantle of leadership, for all its perishing talents and potentialities, Africa will not realise its fullness. On the side of the populace, at the individual and societal levels of expression, it is a desire that people are aware will stabilise any search for social and economic progress, and will appreciate in its realisation. The leadership and the governing process lies at the heart of the individual drive for success. As the enabling authority that channels society's massed energy to create the amiable social setting in which all hopes flourish (or founder). The individual citizenry cannot in verity distance themselves from a process that is so central to their ultimate well-being. Neither can those who occupy such high offices, of so great responsibilities, allow themselves to be distracted by petty crimes of individual acquisition or the fomenting of tribal differences. Instead of inscribing their names forever in letters of gold, it is a sign of the times that many will rather forgo their honoured position in history and aspire to petty misdeeds. (Anyone who ascends to higher office with the sole purpose of personal acquisition is a social aberration, and in reality is no different from a common thief). These failures on the part of leadership are abominations rather than failures. Neglect of duty at any level, no matter how low, is akine to pointing at your mother's village with your left hand. It is just not done! In an amusing manner, most people seem resigned to situations, that, they have the ability, to steer to positively, definitely rewarding ends. In there private conversations and witty social commentaries, they give vent to their frustrations, anxieties, and suggested solutions. Some of which suggestions for what needs to be done, in their innovativeness, as far as the positing of ideas are concerned, are bar second to none. Indeed, the mind power that is required for change, is not a repository of any individual or groupings of specialised knowledge base. It is the communal repository of  shared knowledge in interaction that enables far reaching realisation of the gifted idealisations at the extremities of society.

 

Jehovah presides in the great assembly;

he gives judgement among the "gods".

 

How long will you defend the unjust

and show partialilty to the wicked?

 

Defend the cause of the weak and

fatherless;

maintain the rights of the poor and

oppressed.

 

Rescue the weak and the needy;

deliver them from the hand of the

wicked.

 

They know nothing, they understand

nothing.

They walk about in darkness;

all the foundations of the earth are

shaken.

 

"I said, "You are "gods";

you are all sons of the Most High

But you will die like mere men;

 you will fall like every other ruler."

 

Rise up, O God, judge the earth,

for all the nations are your inheritance.

 

PSALM 82 (New Int. Vers.)

 

The "aluta" had been in progress for a week and a half. It was becoming an unerving and dangerous precedent. In the weeks leading to semester examinations, the student leadership having been unsuccesful in gaining a needed increase in the student loan among other grievances have usually declared "aluta", and a condoned a mass refusal to participate in academic activities until there demands have inrrevocably been confirmed by the government and the university authorities. As a hall president and a member of the university student council, I was in attendance, at every meeting where issues were raised for discussion. Finally the student leadership opted for a refusal to comply with university academic activities and by consitutional demand force a closure of the university as a means of forcing the hands of the government to seriously consider the demands for increase in the student loan. As well as the reconsideration of fee paying at the tertiary level etc. The Vice Chancellor requested a meeting in his office of the student leadership, as we sat with him, he had two considerations and one option, he had a responsibility as the head of an instuition and a government appointee to prevent any disruption of academic affairs, he had also to acknowledge that he was dealing with young adults, who had a relevant issue worthy of consideration, his words were a clear manifestation of his dilemma. "Young men", he intoned in gravelly voice, "your parents have sent you here to study, I will advise you to go back to your halls of residencies and advise your colleagues to write their examinations and let us bring a long and difficult academic years to a close." It took me these many years to fathom out why his words left such a bitter feeling of disappointment on my leaded tongues. For a man who had benefitted largely from state largese and its free education policies, he was conniving to introduce school fees at the tertiary level when most parents could hardly make ends meet. He had failed to address the issue and skirted dangerously, attempting to arouse individual interests in a leadership of mainly upper middle class students, representing students from mainly poor backgrounds. Critically, has been the implicit, approval of the status quo, when educated minds exposed to other cultivated cultures should aim at bringing the fruits of change to advance the progress of traditional society, a few had yielded to the frailty of advancing years and growing children to sell the 'birth right' of youthful idealism of desiring and working for change that benefits the whole, to becoming acquiscent docile lapdogs of feeble minded dictators.The student leaders then had to confer with the general student body, to solicit their consideration and affirmation or rejection by consensus or disinterest in the executive body's suggestion to close the university through boycott activities at the student body level. At the halls of residence level, the decision was easily carried through by common vote. However a few dissenting souls, who were in their final years, thought the timing inappropriate, it being so close to the final term examinations, and wondered why they shouldn't be allowed to write their final examinations and bid farewell to the fast deteriorating university conditions. The infrastructural development of the university had been at a virtual standstill over the past twenty or so years, while the student population had been increasing in multiples. There were excesive overcrowding in the halls and lecture rooms and to worsen the general displeasure, there was now a suggestion by a government in which students had no confidence to implement IMF policies to commercialise and instituitionalise fee paying university education. The matches that usually occasion the boycott of formal academic affairs, had become a regularly end of year rite, since invariably, there was always unresolved issues that each student administration sort to obtain closure on, through forced bargaining with higher authorities. The matches began after an outdoor student leader adress at the "kenkey stand". It ws an occassion where all the closet marxists and private revolutionaries gave a fairly impressive display of their gab, in high vaunted exhortatory speeches of the fire brand kind to let "aluta continua". The reception was always great exultations of pre-examinations tension being released. After several days of these pattern of activities repeated, there dawns the silent inquiry that soon gains public expression, what next. There could be a match to town that will for sue be put down forcefully by the police or a slow wait for the closure of the university at which point all go home, wondering whether the policy will be forcefully implemented outside the popular dissent. On a monday we were invited to the Vice-chancellors office to discuss the state of affairs. At the first meeting with the V-C, he suggested that since our demands had been forwarded to the government ministry responsible for education, the leaders should request the student body to return to normal academic work. A suggestion that the "kenkey stand" audience vociferously disagreed with. The next meeting was a rather informal affair where the president of the student council, and a couple of hall presidents, of which I was one of two, met briefly in the V-C's office, here a concerned and fatherly looking V-C appealed to our individual senses of responsibilities as students with aspirations of our own, and desired that we convince the students we represent to return back to the lecture halls. He knew and we knew that it was a betrayal of the common trust and will not yield any change in the general agenda for a rescincision in the government plan. We requested that the dean of students, a respected senior lecturer at the African Studies Instituition convey the paternal request of the V-C directly to a restive student body. A nervous senior lecturer confronted the angry and restive gathering at the famed "kenkey stand", they were awaiting a positive response from the government. Who it was, rumoured had placed subversive agents and spies among the students, a suggestion that smacked of conspiratorial theorisation, but that nevertheless appealed to the popular intellect. The dean in a few well placed words suggested that since, the university administration was involved in negotiations with the government on the student demamds, the students should proceed to carry out with their normal academic work till their was a response from the negotiators. A response that was supposed to be rendered before the university examinations proper began. One of the stranger aspects of the "kenkey stand" presentation, in those days was that it was a mob scene where a loud and drowning approval carried the finality of the ultimate student body expression on the issue tabled for popular acceptance or rejection by acclamation. After the dean's presentation there was a pause of unnerving quietness, whereupon the was a call for responses by the student president from speakers from among the student body therein gathered. After a few presentations, it was clear that opinions were divided as to whether to proceed with boycott or to await the negotiation result. In a remarkably well timed exhortation by Mickey, hall president of Sarbah Hall circa 1990, in which he boldly yelled, " Give it to him, lets give it to him, the time they require, lets give it to him." For the first time in several years the university avoided a break in the normal running of the academic year through a student boycott.

               At that point, it was a sudden revelation to realise         how a  strong individual

with a clear, unselfish mind state had gone against all popular expectation and realistically with a boldness that all those present that day, on that occasion, lacked the boldness to proclaim their beliefs, set a new pattern for the student administration, when "boycotting" was in the process of being realised -by expressing a truth that run contrary to popular opinion, not to block the officials so long as there is one more level of negotiation left to pursue - There are always choices and options at every level of decision making.While some decisions have a beneficial outcome to all, some other decions are made with personal interest superceding social consideration. (Such decision making are the hallmark of small minded leaders who have little recognition of their unique positioning in the cosmic universality of human affairs, their actions have significance over and above their individual limitations in time, place and situation). Since such decisions have an exploitative element, they are self limiting in their general social benefit when not applied with the wider dimension in focus.

 

There is not implied here the viewpont that with time the situational limitations imposed on the society as a consequence of the exigencies of the time will not get better. But it is definitely implied, that if no persistent effort is made in the direction of required change. There will be no improvement or lessening in the desperate grip of poverty on the lot of the majority, who have seemingly lost faith in their ability to win their individual fight against the adhering grip of desperate hopelessness in a society that apparently is uncaring. Desired change in itself is not a naturally, automatically occuring phenomenon, it requires an identification of a situation warranting change. The formulation of a change strategy, that consults the constituents of the proposed change.  A deliberate pursuit of the change, with adjustments made to accomodate unforeseen developments. While there is no doubt that in the absence of any directed effort, change does and will occur, it can be argued that the nature of that change is least likely to meet the aspirations of those affected in its occurence. To qualify change as having achieved a lot, demands a fairly definite agenda, seen through to its implementation. If there were intents on the part of the governing body on the continent to give hope to the populace, it must have been layered down by the economic malaise. The economic malaise itself is a reflection of failure on a grand scale by the leadership. If people cannot even sustain basic living standards, in a land that is cultivable, year round, notwithstanding other problems posed by nature. There is definitely a point to be made for significant failure, at some level of planning, implementation or policy renovation. While across the board generalisations are hardly the basis for jumping to irrelevant conclusions, it is also the case that covering up obvious defects in the system will not facilitate system reorientation in core policy making. An acknowledgement of defects is a required beginning to resolving the deceptively sealed cracks of inadequacy that frustrate the wholesome realisable aspirations of the continent.

 

Core policy making in the economic sector is currently market oriented and tended toward private investment, but it is the sort of market oriented policy that places at its fore the belief that the society will only advance if foreign investment resources are allowed to gain easy entry. It is a core policy, that by deemphasising continental evolutionary involvement in progressive dispacement by replacement of entrenched irrelevancies, and by emphasising the external superiority. Has shorterm relevance, but no long term benefits for the development of continental based economic determinancy and maneuverability. To wit, by not making any effort at effectuating the domestic maturational strengthning processes in industrial innovativeness, while incessantly courting the  facilitation of investment strategies with no definable long term benefits. No provision is made to gradually wean dependence on external goodwill. Rather, there  seems to be an amiable acceptance to being configured into a system that is designated to enrich the rich and deny the truly poor, without any relief. To all intents and purposes, the lessons of others experiences, seem to have no relevance to the continental effort. Since the leadership is obliging to duplicate their mistakes, when alternatives are evidently pursuable. To go through the same brutal "civilisation" process leaves much to be desired. To acquiesce to the dictates of external sources without proferring, and implementing alternatives is to concede to the perfection of those systems. An acceptance which is unfounded on the anvils of experimented factual basis or reflected in reality. These are systems that are not only imperfect, but defective and constantly adjusting to compensate for their shortcomings. Their best, at any one time is not necessarily the only viable working alternative. It is also an affirmation that the inadequacy of previous governments is a true representation of the society's highest realisation at policy making and implementation. Thus at a dead end, the society must accept as defining framework, impositions from external sources. As regards the moral grounding for acknowledging acceptance, of those biased advices and or requirements, there is none. It is based on a game that at its most effective deprives a part of the whole to sustain a minority in nervous well being. It is decidedly and conclusively imperfect and transistory. That being the case, the leadership must persist in evolving self sustaining, more efficacious policies, that emerge from within in response to unique circumstances. Rather than attempting a wholesale implementation of invasive fault ridden externally instigated policy frameworks. If there has so far, not been the wholesale recognition, that these external systems are high stake games, begging to be corrected and replaced. Then there is much more suffering and bondage ahead. In antiquated settings, that predate the existing mess, the disregard for the weak and indefensible, by their leaders, who fell prey to inadequate assessment of the whole and prefered the short term benefits. Has led to a scarring of humanity, that is yet to heal. Since then, only the level of sophistication has gone one step higher, mankind has still not absorbed the spirituality of humaness in its entirety. Unless concerted effort is made to rectfiy the internal weaknesses,  as well as the promoting of self sustaining policy frameworks that is all considering. History, it is certain, is barely widening its circlic whorls, but the end results of entrenched deprivation in sectors of society are discernible. Only this time, the blame cannot be passed on to others. Once they opaquecity of the game of social organisation is grasped in its entirety as nothing more than carefully contrived human endeavous with desired end purposes. Then there need begin the grafting process of rewritting the rules of the game and redesigning its spin offs to meet the deprivations of novel settings. The greatness of the United States of America, is not in its progressive gradual evolvement into a heightened state of civility and modernity. They have superceeded the previous emergent centers of civilisation by pursuing a discordant dissonated ante beat of radical replacement module of disparate patchy projective strategy in realistic pursuit of enhanced instituitionalisation of nobler states of human existence. Enabled by access to the existing provisions of acquired states of human achievement, giving free rein to human endurance and the hitherto untapped inventiveness that desperation unblocks in the higher realms of brute streghth and the light that the mind reflects, when unhindered to guide the tormented soul into the miracle of redefinitional enablement, when the flight and the fight forces emergence from the darker realms of privation and seemingly unending hopelessness of human bondage. They created a beam of hope and recreated the finer spefications of social recreatability relishing in the unlimited expanse of its ever widening realisability, giving hope to hopeless humanity and creating physical beauty that gladdens human existence in the wilderness of infinite gloom. The course ahead does not necessarily lie in the course previously travailed, though all the lessons of past experience do come handy and are worthwhile. It is a desire, fuelled by slighted nobility, the nobility of the causes that do not find acceptance in the courts of the self designated nobles of the presciently existing, to realise for the wretched insignificants on the margins of human existence that releases the spiritually fueled heightened possibility of hitherto unacessed energy to reconfigure nature to yield pleasure in the maelstrom of frightening collaidal withdrawal into nothingness. The slow disintergration, that turns to dust the structural reality denied growth and stunted by self limited inhibitions of noncohesive individuality, fragmenting in the turmoil of the storm that besets the society on the edge of the transmogrification, not re-instituiting itself, but dissolving into the dust that clouds the spiralling winds.

 

There is an implicit desire in individuals to share and show off their talents. It is this communal asset of the thought process that when tapped into and liberated for the common benefit, has a potential for laterally elevating the society into higher states of communally driven achievement. History clearly indicates that the excesses of bad leadership have flourished, in contradiction of the popular desire, because there have always been minions of the bad leaders who easily without any moral consciousness will work against their own people and their honourable goals. However, there comes a time in the affairs of disassociated systems where  in the absence of any evidence that the leadership will ever foster a self engendering honest society, over and above the gluttonous self focused corruptibility of slighted honour, must find the inner insight to rise against the overwhelming oppression. The fight for self sustenance supercedes any benign latency to serve the well being of society for the common good. At that point the people have lost faith in their leaders, the communal values (that are still dominant in agricultural communities) that sustain honest service, and will do anything for individual survival and acquisition give way to the brimming upheaval of the desired social outcome foaming within the individual. It is in that state of intensely devalued social morality, where a thin thread of reasonable tolerance, sustains a frightening state of corruption and barely disguised theft on a socially grand scale. Where the society is tottering on the edge of anguished desperation, and effective task execution gives way to crafty stealth at avoiding responsible role execution. It is only then at it becomes most obvious that a leadership that is unaccountable, is a social liability to society as a whole, without exempt. Leadership that thrives on the society's earned respect, is one that enables the unrestrained growth of all its potential possibilities. While it is indeed the case that the transparency that is desired is best structured in complex arrangements. The basic underlying principle, the true lesson that needs to be learned and emphasised is that, all are subject to the same laws, and government is a collective responsibility, that by collective consensus designates by a formal appointment procedure representatives, who must at all points be answerable to their society. The concept of democracy is a welcome idealism, to a society that has seen some of the most verminious forms of leadership in recent times. But as has been noted by some of Africa's great scholars, in the pre-colonial setting no chief ( with a few outstanding exceptions, who have all perpetuated great tyranny on their subjects) was greater than the people. The power of the ruler is a social consensus measured in terms of its approximation to the people's expectation, no matter how crude those expectations are. The democratic concept is not in its entirety novel, but the wanton abuse of political office is a departure enabled by colonialism, and capitalised upon and instituted over the years as an aspect of the governing process by the renegade leaders, democratic concepts need be modified to suit the continent's special needs.

 

There is nothing that gives sustenance than a quest for high ideals. The  establishment of a continental agenda for a continental fiduciary instrument, free trade and regional trade zones, an African intellectual college of  academics and technologists, the intergrated continental communication network programmes, the continental satellite project, etc, are ideas that have been touted, some have been realised, ad have yielded enormous benefits in terms of improving the welfare of the people. There is an undeniable need to continue to amalgamate at all levels, it is unnegotiable requirement to make use of limited resources, for the benefit of all.To reduce the mental dependence and cement independence in self dependency realistic terms. The fragmented rebellious outcasts snipping like wildcats at the outer edge of society, fuming over and seeking with a fire brand anger to smelt the masses and rework them into worthy substances of accepted humanity. In their all consuming anger they have been blinded to the reality of the destructiveness that they have become in their rage. These are the ones who are in responding to their society's failure have swung out of sync and in maddening intrusive reminders prod painfully the somnolent mass, leaving in their wake a splattering of nightmarish mindlessness that further bewilder the lost ones traversing a treacrous time haze seeking for direction in a dream state of receeding reality. The blurring of reality has cast them outside the mainstream of nightmarish reality, they dared not be forsaken, lest in their ever heightening clarity of facile phantoming of the dream state of mind manipulating dream state, they keep waking the dreamy mass up into ever deepening horrors of the frightful horrors of the nightmare visited upon the unwary uncaring. They must be sought after, courted and reembraced, being awakening to the futility of the struggle against the dissolving images that taunt.

 

The schools, the educational instuitions, must be uplifted both physically and non materially. The schools are embodiments of the future of the people. Physically, their architecture must provide the highest possible realisation of beauty and comfort for the common benefit.  Schools, right form nursuries to universities, must be artscapes of beauty on the landscape, a place where people shall desire to inhabit, to acquire knowledge. Rather than crumbling structures of miserly despair, that sensitises awareness to despair. Without being, as should be, the source of light to be realised within and without, bringing the seeds of enlightment that bear fruits of joy to society at large. Currently these institutions, like every thing else, are true reflections of the common mental state. As the society embarks on a projected growth process, there must be a reflection in physical edifices of the rapid upgradement, which should mirror the envisaged hopes of the continent.

 

"Some people say there is no use trying to change the world, but if we don't  try will it change?" (Jonathan Mann, 1947-1998).

 

The marginalised, in a society that is determined to place the individual interest before the commonwell-being, giving vaunted praise to open market policies, while neglecting the more important task of creating the foundation upon which that growth will flourish, is on a one way track to perpetuating a cemented underdeserving underdog of dangerously envious poor class. In a setting in which the rich can only thrive on the continuing deprivation of the deprived majority, there will never be the beningn enjoyment of the wealth, thus generated without a tinging of retributive bitterness. It is the society's empowered leaders who by simple foresight, should, create the balance to ensure that all without exception share in comfort, the gift of God, that is within their means to administer and distribute equitably. In many ways it is the very heights of absurdity that in a setting where there is a need for, a from the ground rebuilding effort. Many young and energetic men are wasting away pursuing aimless non activity. The art of combining nature's resources to build society, is not a negotiable conditionality to be determined by external agents who have all the lesson of their past sufferings to tender their hard unyielding consciensce. It does not glorify the achievements of the massed intellect that in the midst of so much, many go without remission, wanting and languishing for want. In totality we are all in a mind state of primitive barbarity. What has developed is the physical environment, but the mental state is definitely barbaric. The people who have empowered visionless leaders must, from their state of suffering retrieve all the possibilities within their means and effectuate change by their combined strength. All without exception know what is good, all want to have that which is good, and all have the means by their individual acts to participate in realising this commonly shared desire.  The respect that enables power, emanates from the people as a freely but carefully assessed withdrawable social approval, there is no modicum of difference in strength of each individual's vote, an affirmation that should be reflected in nonambigous physical enhancing realisations on those who have presented a worthwhile agenda. The entrapments of political ideologies is for the sated and those dwelling in luxury. For the suffering masses it is an issue of when each one will share equitably in what others by stiffling the masses take for granted. There is no future time ahead that will produce an exceptional individual, upon whom leaership is inscribed and who will bring about all the changes that society envisages (at least not in the human realm). All must endeavour by a desire that is strong enough to activate the slow rebuilding process. Just like any individual endeavour, there will be mistakes, failures and exasperation. But what needs to be done, must be pursued unrelentlessly. The masses have taken to religion and football with fervent despair, that is frightening in its intensity. It is a peculiar displacement of massed social support for organised social activtity, with a certain, but nonetheless unspecified end goal. It is the sort of positive social support that good governance will engender among the populace. There again is evident what the massed energy of people acting in union is capable of achieving. It is rather pitiable that there is no crossover effect in applying, the inherent lessons there unto daily life.

 

    "Your wickedness affects only a man like yourself,

    and your righteousness only the sons of man."

     The Book of Job in the Holy Bible (NIV).

 

It is not so much wickedness as it is gaudy ignorance. Humanity is progressing at several levels. The change is marked by professed standards that serve as the guiding measuring rod of social expectations and realisations. The aspects of imperfections of the attained level of growth are marginally zones marked by acts of faintly disguised barbarity. The struggle for male supremacy, the pitted bullfight for economic and monetary power, finds adequate representation in the animal world. The finer aspects of growth and those easily realised have been the flexible points in the strained  rope of social tolerance. In the substituted fight for satisfying the cravings defined in concordant progression of society, the focus within the roving band of stultified groupings of human groupings, centers on the group and its boundary protection activities. Within the bounded territories of pretense, well demarcated in overlayered spillings of futility, bleeding and bled in congealed markings, there comes into play the peculiarities of situational relevant contrivancies that are irrepresibly amusing to the external observer. It is within this mind state that development has brought progress that engenders anger and distrust in one sector of humanity while promising hope and improvements for the other half, it denies its realisation for the weak and deprived. The monstrosity conjectured, is itself a negative breeding of angst driven search for the commonly desired multiplicity of desired ends that has been manipulated to find limited expression. The limitation is itself an affirmation of massed limitations in social consciousness of the apt and inept.

 

For far too long the highest hopes of social growth, in the most materialistic expressible way has been touted as the highest possible aspiration attainable. Like a cruel joke, when all have bought into the scam, the means of conversion that will garner the society's resources and bring to realisation this acquired desire, is being dangled at an unattainble reach, right at the nostrils of a seemingly asinine humanity. The blundering errors of our times are finding ready acceptability, until in the druken haze of the fumes of imcompetency, displayed at the exalted height of honored positions, accepted defectiveness descends to permeate the body politic on the one hand, and punishes the populace on the other. The consequnce is a non striving for improvement in the case of the former and a creeping despair that is frightening in its realisation in the latter. The whole society is gripped in a rut that is deepening constantly without any hope of  an internal, outward projective ejection from the entrapment, unto the higher grounds of realisation. It is a sinking desparation. There seems a need to acknowledge the quaint uniqueness of the particularities that distinguish the people, but more importantly is a requirement to make a communal progression that enables enlightment for the whole society. The benefits that accrue to society as humanity progresses, should not be denied to any sector of society, by dint of the fact that they do not have the pecuniary resources to buy into this progress. That it is presently so, is a clear indication of the depth of deficiency in the governing process. Society may engage in copious borrowing where the need exists, continually seeking to improve the existing situation, with the foundation of a rich history of past attainments and capabilities, and a general ease to assimilate the best that the rest of humanity has to offer, with a view, to constantly set ahead, to a better future for all without exception. The refusal to engage in adaptive change, not necessarily inventing trail blazing approaches, but being quick to graft emergent approaches that have far reaching effect, is an aspect of the defining role of leadership difficult to comprehend. There is a repugnant grovelling in discarded inadequacies, that has been excused as underdevelopment. Underdeveloped by simple logic, implies an identification of a lapse that must be rectified, rather than exploring its negative hindrances and revelling in it. There is a lack of projective policy making, and an abundance of hopeless reliance on incapable outside sources. Outside resources will yield benefit within a system designed to incorporate those incoming resources in a manner designed to yield multiplicative growth benefits. There can invariably be an absorptive capacity that gives credence to any assistance, but has that absoptive capacity within it a generative designated capacity? It is the lack of the a carefully planned and constantly revised internally designed system to incorporate available knowledge from external sources and adapt such knowledge in a progressively productive basis at the wider societal level that accounts for a larger part for the retardence of society. At the individual level those who have the means will acquire the aspects of the outcomes of technological and expanding knowledge base to better their wellbeing. The gap thus created between the haves and the have nots, is in several ways the malfeasance of the governing authorities to incorporate a forwardly oriented social development policy. There is a never satiated abyss of self oriented desire satisfaction, especially where money and material resources are concerned that has by default of a weakness in the human nature predicted that any expectancy of some one else doing all that it will take to bring forth the groundings of desired change will ever be fully fufilled from external sources. This awareness by itself implies that any preoccupation with self centered aspirations of any leader, reflects as wasted years for the society thus denied any well formulated focus on central issues cogent to progress and improvements across the board in the whole society. Instead of silent acquiscence to this wickedness the deprived in society must begin to realise their strength in the society's outcome and practically begin to utilise this strenghth to ensure that their well-being is catered for by their representatives in leadership roles. The degeneration of the governing process into a squabble of poorly coordinated subtle fleecing of the public purse, is a repudiatable social acceptance and owes its entrenchment partly to excessive material expectancies from holders of dishonoured offices of great social responsibility. The drive to meet the social expectations that fuel the social demise has created a social debacles of unequivocal outcomes the attainment of one is detrimental to the pursuit of the other. The resolution is a resolve to uphold honourable discharge of social responsibilities in positions of responsible outcome to the social wellbeing. That expectations of honesty and dedication evoke laughter, is a clear indication of the state of the collective mentality as to what is right and wrong. The structures that enable organised and disciplined development have barely been indentified before they have been subsumed by the matured polished robbery, that in gaining firming currency spells doom for any emerging hope of a society destined to fully exploit all its potentialities. The issues that must be addressed in their trivialty are ignored and swept under the rug. But the whole society is insignificant by any standard, and the miniscule measures of rectification that needs to find articulation from the center, by being ignored has by ommission become the sealing of unrealisable hopes in a fetid cauldron of inactivity. The failures at the higher levels of organised society are the individual's painful tears of despair flowing unseen on the dried cheeks and scarring deeply the individual's distrust of the society and those who by choice have offered to set a course of meaningful realisation and having been given the mantles of responsibility, instead of responsible acts of leadership through high commitment to the social wellbeing, they, instead, take for granted the hopeful aspirations of the muted masses and bury it under a deep cover of dark and frighteningly wicked incapability, failing to realise for the whole, while with ingenuity, acquiring with greed, for the self gratification. The society is greater than any one person or group of usurpers, yet its outcome is always at the mercy of a clique, in the absence of society's self empowering awareness to enforce the fullest realisation of its desired outcome. The discipline required for establishing a base of decency in the governing process will never evolve naturally. In its absence all aspirations of the commonwealth benefitting the common good, is a pipe dream in an expanding sophistication of roguery and theft that will not only cement social deprivation but will give body to the simmering frustration that the inefficiencies in the society engenders and in a way will set the ground for a visitation of recurrent social unrest on scales that can only be barely imagined. There is an urgent need to fuel a drive for development with a surge in communicating socially relevant messages at myriad levels, messages must suffuse the social consciousness of the need for honest behaviour and the inculcation of thrust, by execution and perfomance.

 

The African must begin a recrafting of the crucial axis around which the continent and ts composites developmental evolution will turn in the foreseeable future. It must be based on policies that acknowledge the need for assistance for its majority and significantly marginalised human component, marginalised by the very social organisation that should place at its fore the weak. There is a pressing need to make comfortable adaptation to suggestions from external sources, that as mentioned previously are a hodge podge of imperfections that perpetuate suffering on those who are most in need of assistance. The solid basis for society's even development, is one that focuses on care and attention to 'the least of humanity', not excessively market oriented plunder economies that benefit a minor segment, and seals the suffering of the poor irredeemably in inconclusive policy measures. The policies that will sustain continental development are not buried in inaccessible formulations, they are the expressive desires of the individuals finding expression at a societal level. It is the idealisms that when forced into realisation, are creations of physical beauty and the wholesome realisation in the life of all the citizenry of the things that bring joy to the heart and make life worth living. Development is not realised in extreme antagonistic projections of depriving the poor to maintain the rich, it is not in tumultous desires to even the differences among the evolved levels of differentiation in society, insamuch as it is a bridging of the gap of destituition and the upraising of the deprived. It is not to be found in forced restituition of manipulated acquisitories to the deprived masses. It is in reality, a state of social consciousness that will structure the malleable system to enable meaningful existence for all the people the society, the commonly expressed social desires must find a true acceptance within the minds of the people and be reflected in the outward workings of the social system, like the air that fills all lungs, irrespective of differing lung capacities and lung conditions, enabling a teasing out of all the joys of life that is so fleeting, at a level commesurate with the dictates of technological advancement without curbing the individual drive of harmless ambition that catalyses the social drive for individual and collective well being in all its diverse expressions; without depriving or sacrificing the individual gains for their efforts or some vague pretext of some anomalous social consideration. It is not so much who has control, but to whom control has been enabled; to whom it has been enabled, is the  required expectation that increasing societal empowerment must be utilised to mobilise not for individual gain, but in creative ingenuity for providing without exception for all those within the influential effect of that control.

 

Each person in a role position of responsibility, must see in their task execution an appropriate element of importance in its deterministic outcome for the whole of society. Like the one who must execute his task with precise accuracy and commitment to enable a worthwhile realisation, the worker in whatever position, whether great or small, personally significant or insignificant, whether so deemed or ortherwise, likewise has an implied requirement of commitment and unrestrained execution, in the appropriate direction. Just as is expected of one in a critical role position, who may, by willful omission or commision become a nemesis purveying destruction. When people assume that their positions have little relevance to the grand social outcome and thereby disengage themselves from committed work goal realisations, they indict a system of irresponsible and  undedicated leadership. There is thus a complemetary process of compromising the obviously unacceptable. It is difficult to take a stand on an issue where one has an emotional involvement of culpability. While society expects its leadership to direct the way forward unambiguously, it is also a responsible requirement of each individual and grouping within society to demand excellence and uncompromising honesty from themselves. Much as the former is difficult to realise so is the latter. Difficulty of realisation however is not by any means approval of acceptance of the unacceptable. Society advances through a refusal on a part of its constituents, to accept what is prevailing, and a bold start to search for and realise a worthy alternative.

 

The plagued futility of an existence without a chance of improving on ones dismal poverty has created an ever widening pit of dangerous despair. The poverty of deprivation of mental and material growth has generated a despair that is frightening in its realisation in the youth. The youth are in the deepest emotional despair imaginable on a wider social scale. They are exposed to possibilities that  their systems will never enable them to realise, not even in their dream states. Their bleak futures are predicted in unrealistic terms, since there is no clearcut articulation of the gradiose idealisms and the crafting of social reality in directions that are expressive of the long term realisations of those wishes. In the face of impossibilities and improbabilities that are realistiscaly sealed in concretised states of painful reality by acts of gross negligence at the highest level possible, the mind state, they have submitted their youthful spirituality of aspring to a meaningful future, worthy of living for, and in one last dramatic overture of hopeless disthrust of a society that has betrayed the noble ambitions of youth and existence, wreck havoc in acts of wanton destructiveness that defy meaning in realism. But real life is a parody of meaningless traversty of rationality and justified possibilities, in an era of possibilities. The simple and easily realisable have been accorded deified status and then in mockery of the freely giving nature of the deity, denied to those whose exigent circumstances need its granting.

 

The African has been cast by history and the exigencies of the times into the role of a lesser humanity.  But this classification is realisable within the contemporaneous events of emergent civilisation, and by no means discredits prior achievements in some earlier definitional setting. The point being made is that in a new era, requiring new organisational principles, there is a call being made to master the complexities of the newly evolving scenario. The realisation of individual talents by individuals of the race has done little to ameliorate the psychic disenablement of being later arrivals on the scene, a scene that is a disassemblement of sensibility, the peices of the puzzle take a lifetime to sort and then its noncohesiveness is the dirge to the departed. It is a traversity against the very land and the spirituality of massed existence, that in this state, the leaders will continue to do disservice to their unique positions as directors and uplifters of their people. In this setting, if there is any person who has not recognised their unique responsibility of honest and concerted effort in the discharge of their responsibilities in any position of responsibility, they are indeed pathetic. It is the individual apathy to communal responsibility, an apathy, that was itself a product of a negligent society, that found expression at the highest level in self centered acquisitiveness that led to the presently evolving system of twarted aspirations. The arising frustration at the system is as expected finding realisation in unmitigated violence and destructiveness. A seeming desire, that if society and those appointed to be responsible for its outcome, will not imaginatively create fair and adequate playing grounds, then lets with one accord, level that society. It is a rebellious acclamation in the opposite direction to well defined growth oriented policies, and since it is an offspring of desperate uncoordinated but massed frustration, will likely be a terrifyingly unending spree of man's most violent display of barbaric destructiveness. The scenario has found limited enactment in some quarters, and until open-honesty and goodwill prevail as the defining characteristic of the body politic in the polymorphic societies that constitute the landscape, the stench of dreadful forbearance is not far removed. People who have nothing worth living for, will court death and destruction with fearless comeliness and visit their destructive anger on those who by failing their senses of decency, have failed humanity and their people. There is a choice, change in socially accepted definition of what is honourable and acceptable, or a failure to admit the frailities in the existing reality and a headlong dash into the dismal future. The devolution into a state of chaos is an improbability that is easily realisable. The individual achievements of gratuitious acknowledgement are of irrelevance in a continental state of barely sustained social cohesivity lacking any indicative direction of committed idealistic expectations grounded in perfomance. There is an ingrained spirituality of peace attained only close to ones ancestral roots, no creature comfort can replace this hunger that tugs at the heartstring of the pale reflections of bold humanity that dot the diaspora. There is a sublime wishful thinking of a return to a quite peaceful haven, it is a peace that is realisable by communal effort. Communal effort, in a social system that is seemingly bursting at the seams from the diversity of individual talents and dispositions randomly firing outbursts of initiatives, need to be coalesced and directed in system enhancing directive influence, to tame the pulsating potentialities, to coordinate, to facilitate maximisation of outcome potentialities. A process of management that will guarantee a settling down process of massive upheavals on multi micro levels to facilitate the individual goal attainment through group coordinated effort.  It is beyond any one ignorant ego falsely parading in surreality, pretending to be in control of affairs that the masses are only beginning to conceive. The elevation of the social consciousness to approximate the individual awakening to the incontrovertible inseparability of the social and individual well-being is a crucial identity point in the transformation process in progress.

 

There are two fundamental approaches to resolving the deep seated issue of excruciating deprivations that is not receeding with the years, but finding deeper and growing entrenchment. There is the option of the natural growth that comes with good economic policies that in a way seal the class differences. And there is the alter option of accelerated assistance that provides the deprived with the basic essentials that define respectable lifestyles and a hope to fill the deep break between the capable and the deprived. The provision of good housing at every level of society, the existence of good educational systems that are diverse and undiscriminatory in their intake, the improving of the infrastructure, the health system and employment avenues therein created are by no means luxuries. They are the basic foundations of all societies. Their inadequacy or total absence is not an issue defined within the context of underdevelopment or any ther hubris, it is a clear indication of major failures with Africa and its leadership, both now and well into the future when the sole purpose of leadership is creatively engaging its populace in resolving these fundamentalities. It has taken other societies, who by no means have fullly resolved these issues, many more years than Africa's transitional ejection into the present era of civilisation. However, they made a concerted effort, and it is the unnegotiated establishment of that focality of definitional emegence of priorities that is being called for. It is to all intents in its most unclarified form presently existent within the individual psyche and need to be adequately articulated. The articulation process is an awakening of the society into a new realisation, it is a realisation that is somnolently epipheral in most people's idealisations, but while they seek to find reality in a system gone awry, has assumed the delicacy of leisurely after thought. To survive in the filth you must bath in the mud.  There must emerge a clarion expression of these expectations and their realisations, in the most divergent ways possible.

 

The subsistence agro-based society should not be misconceived as finding a continuum in the present nation states of the continent. The continent does not have the pleasure of leisurely growth into a state of civilised maturity, the precocious developement is the desired end to balance the extended entrapment in a social organisation that has ceased to serve any meaningful ends. This is the age that has displaced religious darkness with Godly enlightment, the achievements of the ages has caught the continent in the full blast of its afterpass and left the people twirling bewildered in search of a reality to anchor their wobbly stability. There has been a transitional movement upwards and forwards, giving rise to the emergence of a new society that operates around fundamentally previously non existent factors, that, now in emergence, combine to determine the crucial definitional expectations and outcomes. Which outcomes may reflect the expectations of the people or deviate considerably, in a negative unexpected outcome effect. Since individuals cannot in isolation realise the appropriate patterns of execution which they assume and are denied because the social setting for that individual realisation is a void of inefficacious nonaccomplished end states. They have no choice but to come from their mental and physical isolation, keeping themselves apart from the totality form which they inhibit, and force the body politic to respond to the expectations of its constituents at the noblest level possible. When left to its self, it is obvious now that it is the offhandly evil that preoccupy themelves with the governing activities and perpetuating abnormality on the society in a frighteningly possesively infectious manner, afflicting the populace with unimaginable deprivations. The supposed economic underdevelopment is a misconception of changed circumstances. The economic policies compound inadequacies without providing a way out and thus leaving the youth withiout a future. The seems to be in effect a forced struggle, deliberately instigated by leadership conspicuously inadequately equipped idealistically, to structure the bland state of an emergent transisted system, to choose to participate, when there are no obvious choices. The society must be structured to enable access to maximise individual potentials, by the provision, or a course set in the direction of the provision of enabling states of possibilities, of the core facilities and processes that are in concordance with the desired requirements of the new social system. The inadequacies of traditional agro-based societies that are fading away with their customs and essentialities, must not to be manipulated to become entrenched social class identities, but like primitive practices must be discarded and the acceptably desired fundamentals of modern society provided as the basis for the emergence of the transited African.  First there must be an acceptance that any policy that favours a segment of the population but leaves a majority to be despicable spectators of filthy wealth while leaving in dejected poverty is a social malfeasance and is an error of judgemental decision making on the part of those to whom the task has been entrusted  when accepted as unnegotiable. The process of re-formulating borrowed knowledge and rephrasing it in radically modified format reflecting the changed circumstances of relocation has been passed over for the passive application of borrowed knowledge. The resulting conflict between the paradigmatic variances between existing circumstances and the inflexibility of inapplicability due to the misfit has been at the center of worrisome development.

 

They misplacement or nonexistence of political will to tackle the issues that of immediate consequence to the depressed majority, has engendered a head in the sand political leadership, where there is an adoption and a tenacious hold on to the things that are easily manipulated, without a recourse to immersion in untrodden paths and exprimentation with positively valued policies. It is this fear rather than any form of external manipulation that is at the root of the dire poverty that bedevils the continent. The external world itself, is at some levels, expressive of a mere imitatory connivance of what is deemed appropriate and acceptable. But that approval and acceptance is the conditional and the limited viewpoint of those, who by design or mere coincidence, give expression to the voice of their society. It is by no means the absolute truth nor conclusively derived summation of complex intricacy. That being the case any adjustment that is based on an external point of view will be, as is, too little too late. The greater effort must come from within and find appreciation internally and externally. A good starting point will be a preaching of a politics of committed honesty and the provision of the fundamental framework that will enable its fúnctional realisability. The external influences and dictates that have assumed centre stage in African affairs, in reality, no matter their share in total continental activities, must be conceived as extraneous assistance rather than the focal exigencies of continental idealistic realisations. These idealistic realisations are works of civic and social upgradement, not the netherworld wanderings of blood lust and destructive ambition of the marginal minds that has held society captive in a trance of spell bound insanity.

 

The pursuit of an approximation to western capitalism as the pathway to modernity as the adopted preference of continental development has given grounded currency to descriptive terms such as 'underdeveloped'. The outstanding talents of continental human and material and other nondescriptive resources, have been dimmed by seeking to find realisation through imitation, by towing a too exact pattern of realisation. Given that there are many benefits accruing to attaining whatever material developments have been attained in these societies. There is still a lot of unexplored room for diversity, without the retractive effect on the onward progress of the society. Here is offered an opportunity for the conception and establishment a departure from the futility that has haunted and scoured painful despair across the span of human existence, and yet there is a waiting, worse than the waiting is the throwing away of the opportunity to bring forth status reversal. A throwing up of the hand before the task has been defined. Given the absence of a fully developed infrastructural framework upon which to evolve divergent excellence, there is a further introverted regression into the abyss of despair, when in the process of generating the girders upon which to drape the manifold creative intellect that will truly bring to full realisation the transitional shift to an age of renewal and positive growth, mistakes are made and by ignorance accepted through nonparticipation by the very people who are directly affected by those decisions, thus there is a weak basis for projecting away from the shadow of others. The chords that bind the continent in bondage must be identified and loosened, gradually to inconsequence. The bondage of ineffective leadership is a bane, that hangs like a dead goat around the unwilling neck of a thief in broad daylight. The unmaginable spectacleof a society spiralling rapidly out of sync in the absence of correctional measures to stabilise forces of vortice. The existing model of attained development that Africa is attempting to approximate is a fault ridden one, that entails the marginalisation of a significant element of society, the unnaturally created monstrosity of the deprived, the underprivileged. That in emulation, there has been a failure to take advantage of the trail blazing trail effect of this prior ascendancies and capitalise on their mistakes to evolve a better society, there is a serious lapse in the leadership process. It need not be overemphasised that if preparatory effort is not put in creating the supportive environment for consumptive behaviour, then in the future as at now, the outputs of the heightened productive activities of the information age will be only insignificantly realised, whether as products of the land or as imported end products.

 

The meaningless preoccupation with definitional categories-The expanded boost that manufacturing activities are meant to realise for the modern economy is a consequence of consumptive absorbability. The present disposition of Africa in the light of developments outside the continent imply that unless it constitutes a self contained, evolving system of economic development , that by feeding on itself, generates the drive to spur creative consumption, acquiring with an intent to mutiply. If not realised, not only will the continent remain marginalised but it will gradually dissolve into isolated patches of immeasurable despair in the midst of unexplored opportunities. For far too long, since the faintly acknowledged awakening of the masses to the transitional shift into another age, of possibilities other than subsistence agriculture and the emergence of economic forces that made possible hitherto nonexistent exchange of ideas and material products, making it probabilities within achievement the widened ranges of transforming nature to expand the narrow activity range of human activity hitherto . The continent has been only within "smelling range" without actually cooking the meal and relishing slavishly in its flavour. By initiating and implementing a continentally focused economic and industrial initiative, there is ample room for seemingly unlimited growth and innovative capacity. With the overwhelming abundance of information enabled by human growth in this century and the willingness for co-operative assistance there is a basis for embracing continentally oriented development process at all levels of social organisation. The outside world has been, and will always remain partially curious observers of a setting that confounds there understanding, and since there is not likely to be any sated state of development, given that evolution is a time linked phenomenon that is inexorably slowly progressive, there is no point waiting for salvation from outside sources. All the God given means have been concentrated on the continent to facilitate its  constructive development, development is not necessarily a process of aggressive destructive alteration of the beauty of nature to yield short term benefits. Development is more in the sense of the application of the expanded knowledge base and mind states to mellow the comparative harshness of human existence to add value and volume to the narrow and restricted limitations that unexercised and slow mind states have restricted overall social growth. That society is never at any one point at a halt, but constantly modifiying with the onward progress of time and the changes in the natural environment is undebatable, the sort of adaptation that any society is capable of at any time period is indicative of their state of development attained then. Invariably, the assessment of the quality of this development is measurement in terms of comparative improvement in the general well being and the level of refinement to mere crudity of a past period. Yet in this circle of systemic developmental evolution there have been heights of attainments, unmatched by anything the presently existing offers and depths of depravity out of concordance with the general progress of civility attained. That being the case, indisputably there are worthy lessons from the past to set forth the direction for the future. The added advantage is not having to conceive from thin air the direction, but build on existing knowledge. The intriguing nature of humanity is that it realises its self, self being a collective state of being, from pushing against the existing reality, formulating, reformulating and discovering wider dimensions of possible applications and usage and thus giving not only impetus for progressive growth but also a wider more satisfying appreciation of existence. This process need not be carried out in a state of constant suffering, inasmuch as suffering occasioning deprivations and inadequacies have been the basis for progress in some settings. Indeed it is the ability to restructure through a remodification adaptation process the basic provisions of natures endowment that enables societies sustenance through changing phases of differing periods of social complexity Social complexity is perceived in terms of the diversity of the ranges of social activities that occasion social organisation rather than in terms of unilinear expansion in one dimension of feasible definitional categorisation of society (for example expansion in population as compared to diversity of expanding activities as occasion industrial and scientific growth). In retrospective perspective there was and still is a constituent provision for unlimited diversification of the raw energy of nature and its resources to serve human end ad infinitum, the limitation is the limitation society imposes on the mind state to activate its creative element, to explore, discover and restructure to expand existing horizons. The contigencies of the times and the existence of influential directive capacity catalyses somnolent mind states to flex the malleable mind state to shift through phases of possibilities. Development and growth could as well be realised within a state of unembittered strive against plain vanities and gall-bitter inner strife against the sapping deprivations of unavailable provisions of sought for states of existence . It is the means for this realisation that must be carved out in the mind state of the populace and realised in social execution. The mind state must be uplifted and purified, to be plastered from the lowest to the highest level, in philosophical excoriation of unacceptable behaviour and the applicatory instituitionalisation of exemplary, acceptable task execution and behaviour. The striving for, and the full realisation of high and imaginatively beautiful ideals, to fulfill, begin as imaginations that are images in the individual mind, then are condemend as unrealisable on the wider social scale, and then in finding realisation are anchored into materially concrete constructions, and become the definitions of social reality.

 

On the whole, achievement in agrarian society is focused on the bold striving of individual strength. The sustained consenting contribution of disparate thoughts to benefit the common good, found expression in destructive activities as tribal warfare. To imagine that the substitution of individual self interest for the social well being can evolve without a sustained effort at identifying its core location within the massed mentality and cultivating its espousal as crucial to the emergence of a viable modern centrally governed system, is a foible of the unrehearsed faltering that persist in this poorly ocherstrated miasma of pretense struggling to find rebirth in birth. There certainly is no lapse in the indiviudal drive, but in the presence of a social vacuum that hinders rather than augment its fullest realisable possibility, it seems like a wellfought battle for the right course in a contextual void. The true and the basic environment upon which any form of socio-economic policy will advent true transformation is the mind environment. It must be prepared, cultivated and made to identify with the commitment to aspire to noble ideals in communal welfare. The absence of the appropriate mind set is evidenced in the infamous abrogated and unmaintained infrastructures that have deteriorated even as the need for them increases. The underlying uninferred cause is beyond the monetary resources, it is a lack of a consensual appreciation for the commonwell being at the highest level of the nation states. The consequence secondary factors are reflections of the absence of a cultivated mind set to conceive the public, the government, as inseparable from the self. Any policy no matter how highly touted must find expression through human elements, the sustainability and the the positive  transformation of those policy measures as they are sustained over time, needs an appreciative human element ready to make the sacrifices to bring to fruition its impementees. The popular mind of the populace needs to be courted and not manipulated through indoctrination. The process of planting the fundamental values of social responsibility needs to be equated by responsible behaviour in leadership processes at the governing level. Exemplary behaviour cements permanently the theoretical lessons of expected honesty. The crucial mind set that in interaction with disciplined purposiveness towards the progressive realisation of focused idealisms is the key that opens the door to social well-being in all its expressions. A society that marginalises a significant element of its human component and places the individual before the society can never expect any commital towards unnegotiable perfomance, the desire to secure the individual interest will predominate and since that desire is inexhaustible in its requirement, the short and long term goals are curtailed in the begging bowl of individual greed.

 

The prevailing attitude of free and unrestricted activities that occasion social organisation is not an expression of some quaint 'African freeness and opennes', as it is indicative of marked inefficiencies within the operational capacities of central authourities who are disconnected from their prime functional responsibilities and substitute  pretentious irrelevancies of excessive preoccuptions in their discharge of expected activities. Substituting irrelevancies of marginal activities as core interest, while barely controlled chaos is parcelled as individually instigated initiatives is hardly the way towards a balanced and self sustaining society, capable of generating self supportive growth. The unmitigated and uncontrolled profusion of uncontrolled activities carried out in contra-indication to the expected orderliness expected to be realised within the societies is nothing more than another indication of the disaster of enormous proportion being whisked in a bowl straining from over use and exerted over the capacity, without constant adjustments being made in social components to bring the society t's core controlling elements to reflect its radically changing reality as articulated by its members. This sort of uncontrolled individual imposition on an unresponsive social system is leading to uncoordination and barely constrained mayhem. There is a need to enforce standards of acceptable conformity without necessarily stunting individual intiative and creativity to diversify, in certain cases. Society and government must complement individual freedom with group limitations to ensure the highest standards of realisation in social and infrastructural implementations. The active enforcement of social regulations aimed at the highest possible realisation of vaunted social goals will certainly ensure that what is being done on a limited scale has long enduring existence, maturing graceful with the passage of time, rather than stop gap measures, awaiting another occasion for a preferred realisation. Every individual activity is best set to prosper in the social millieu advantageuosly structured to catalyse its prime realisation and growth. It is the absence of that millieu that belies some of the contamineous distress that occasions all organised activities on the continent.  Worse than its absence are those, who by default are placed in positions to thwart the fullest realisation of the highest and noblest capacities that are streaming to waste, in the unexplored rivers of diverse human creative intellect, that the stunted system, allows untapped to waste as deplorable uncultivated human resource. The greatest injustice of the years of despairing unfulfillment is the betrayal from within. The people by acquiscing their power to inept leadership, and condoning, against their intuitive intellect, to sack their communities from within have become self consuming organisms. The clarion call of awakening is a call to self-awkening from the destructive slumber of selfish indulgence. Society must postpone its judgement of the people and their unique location within the wider universe of humanity, until its potentials, fully accessed and explored are fully exhausted, not before. The struggle to get to the starting line is apparently set within the wider cosmic reality of things not easily configured. But translated to the more accessibly informed state, is the dictum that there is no need to postpone, what can presently be released. When there are such great issues at stake as the worthwhile realisation of priceless humanity. In the surrealism that reality has assumed in extreme circumstances, after identifying a problem, it would appear that another layer of problems is weaved in, to encapsulate the identified problem. Thus, instead of a scaling and peeling off of the originally perceived defect, the solution is a layering of creatively conjuctured negations to the original problem. "The short term" is a perfect covering to camouflage these perfections of the unperfected.

 

The disassociation between the intellectual elite and the unelightened stupidity (stupidity qualified in terms of comparative awareness of existing possibilities, without being negative in connotative indicativeness) of everybody else, is another expression of blinded individuality that belies continental problems. The assumed intellectuals by carving their own spheres of realisation in the sweltering fecund fetidity have given adequate proof of their limited insight and overtly displayed their self-centered aspiration to better their lot at the expense of everyone else. Anyone who takes advantage of the freely proffered assistance of their community and after realising the full benefits of those benefits turns his back on the languishing masses, who by consent enabled that one to be an expected means for the many, may very well become adept in his field of professed knowledge, but he or she has failed in the ultimate task of self attainment, by failing to realise at the global level, the sacrifices of his community. It is the realisation of this  failed fealty to society at the individual level and the censure of society to curtail these ingratitude that will form a significant aspect of the realisation process of the awakening to reality. Reality is a state of social awareness where the issues that constitute to define lingering obstacles against the hopeful upliftment of the society from its deep seated, fitted consignment to the extremities of desperate existence of the larger segment of humanity, is sought for, identified and unravelled of its mysticism, and effectively discarded into the dustbin of  the practically inapplicable. Reality is an awareness that equivocates a search for appropriateness within the contextual realisation of inappropriateness. A practical, unassuming, humane effort to ripoff the lingering, left overs of cleaving rotteness of disgusting fealty to placatory corruption that hinders social progress on a grand scale, yet in being tolerated slowly infects the purity undiscovered beneath. The violent discarding of the superficial, decayed façade, will enable an assessing of the untainted purity of collosal capabilities hidden by the accumulated dirt of the lost years of despair.

 

The desperation of futility slowly takes a strangle hold and completes the transformation of the transformee into the transformed. These are the gentle giants of emptiness, gliding slowly with downcast eyes along lonely forgotten paths of dreams that in turning into nightmares are sublimely realised in the self consumptive emptiness of the void. Their tears unshed, have rained within into the prepared grounds of fostered pain, borne with seeming ease. Their beds of thorn have with great unobviated tolerance became downed feathers of comforting respite. These ones laugh pain in the face and court danger with submissive ease, in search of nothing.

 

The imbalance of contradictions within core system constituents and operative variable indicators in the social evolution is evidenced in the skewed emphasis on aspects of social engineering that strive to attain perfection in fiscal and monetary policies without establishing the social environment within which these policies can promote stable social development within the whole system. There is thus created and boosted an anomaly where the few favoured make a fairly established transition to a new phase of social development and the majority by no fault of their making are like heavily loaded weights that drag and dangle the society in the practically unbefitting operatives of the vagueity and vagracies of a previous, presently, non viable period. The people are holding on to hopes built without a reference zone of probable attainability.(The fear that they are permanently caught in the vortices of forces stronger than they can effectively bend to their favour has created a palpable state of fear of failure and social inconsequence. In the society's failure to guarantee the individual's capability in being socially relevant and individually self sustaining, the society has cast people in an undesired state of tensed suspension of dread, it is a dread of unconditional failure that is in contradiction to the fast disappearing traditional social values of self definition of manly capacity through hard work in traditional preoccupations. The emerging society is replacing traditional occupations in large sweeps with unsustainable and limited provisions under the aegis of the definition of the modern economics, in the limitations of the provisions, individuals are finding no effective all inclusive replacement for traditional economic activities. It is a failure due to government's incomprehensive ability to structure and reconfigure the emerging society along progressively radical and essentially relevant reconfiguration to accomodate the existing resources to the populace in a vibrantly diversified format. In the abence of a clear redefintion of procedures in implementation to reallocate and accomodate emerging system dynamics at various levels; excessive emphasis on free and unrestricted system self configuration far from ensuring the emergence of a stable prosperous free-market economy, will possibly yield this expectation at one level of society and creates massive system failure at another level. Since social systems are linked inseparably, there is bound to be a cancelling out effect which inarguably will be insufficient to naturally control for the system embalance, which must be corrected by far reaching intrusive system engineering efforts emerging from the leadership. Anyhow, so far the shift into modernity and the consequent transitional phase of continental evolution has been a bitter experience of hopes in suspension).  The society has fostered marginality by facilitating partially realised directions pointing into a netherworld of unfulfillable dimensions. The full benefits of the new system, which system has not been fully appreciated by the power brokers to appreciate its intricacies and unexploited potentialities, cannot gain general foothold to yield its fullest benefits unless a concerted effort of taut commitment to pursue rational generally all benefitting policies at the level that impacts the individual state of being is activated from the leadership level acting in conformity agreement with the  rest of society is pushed practical existence. Enabling the full realisations of the new and partially emergent system optimum utility capacity. In effect the modern society as is being sought in African society is beyond the realisation of small scale cultivators of pepper or any other type of agrarian or small scale activity that generates barely sustenable domestic economic sustenance. This activities have their relevance to the general social wellbeing, but the very nature of the society that has evolved in response to the changing times and their required adjustments, has been probably inadequately understood and improperly managed to enable a close approximation at all levels of society, for changes at the various levels of the changing society to be in concordance with the dictates and outcome effects that the change has impacted on the society as a whole. Thus there has been a conspicuous excess of defective and unexercised The society must assist to rebuild the agrarian system with its crumbling infrastructure that was sufficient for primitive agrarian systems but inadequate to equate the accepted standards of expected living conditions of the modern(?) society. The system identified as the modern society is not an alternative choice of attained states of self attainment. It is an irrevocable advancement, an upward unnegotiable upward transition to a new state of human social organisation. It is capable of individual realisation, facilitated in a limited sense, but must find full expression and realisability at the highest possible, massed societal level for its full benefits to prevail system wide. There is no viable alternative, the traditional society and all its accruing materialisms has outlived its practical usefulness as a desired end state. The emerging society can put in place the needed policy framework that is effectively universal in its provisions and direction of purpose to upgrade society, in its absence will be the hapzard, erratic, bestial struggle to attain the possible better state of existence. The basic provisions of upgrading the housing needs and the educational provisions, the redesigning of communities through basic infrastructural reconfiguration, are activities that should not by means be delimited to select urban estate projects. The  presemtly evolved state of African communities is not an urban phenomena, the beauty of the rural communities cannot be obliterated in the presence of limited clearly defined purpose and intents and gross inefficiecy on the part of leadership. The prevailing serenity of small and large villages wreathed in history and symbolism must be upgraded and reconfigured into the modern society, bringing to these communities the advantages of modernity without creating cultural deserts of emptied, sanitised, layouts of meaningless, fertilised beds of unseeded earth, waiting for the seeds of wickedness and dysfunctional youth culture to be sown, while at the same time not leaving the roots of presently dysfunctional traditional customs that stunt growth. The present urban slums sprawling with unchecked impunity into permanency must be eradicated and a breeze of structured orderliness brought to realisation. The beauty of modernity must be structured and built to enable the fullest appreciation of God's given endowment in all its respledent natural beauty.

 

 Our desire is not that others might be relieved

while you are hard pressed

but that there might be equality.

At the present

time your plenty

will supply what they need

so that in turn their plenty

will supply what you need

Then there will be equality

As it is written:

He who gathered much

did not have too much

and he who gathered little

did not have too little. 

2 Corith 8:13-15.

 

Human nature is tainted by a lot of ingrained inferiorities that oppress the emergence of noble acts of social goodwill. The process of socialisation mostly attempts to inculcate positive values of social responsibility and respect for others, an underlying soft spot of essential humaness, that makes appreciating the pains and discomforts of others beyond the self the essential consideration of ordered society. But at some higher levels of culturation there is an imbibing of negativisms that promote the worst elements of social behaviour albeit in a refined manner. Thus society does not seek to provide a level ground to promote its even growth, rather there is a nourishing acceptance of others suffering and suppression subtly promoted and sustained by a select advantaged grouping, who have manipulated and grafted themselves into the social wholeness and have been eating away at it with rapacious ravishness. An element of the system that has the means to correct the social error continues to promote their well-being and gain, without easing the social discomfiture across the board. These have set themselves a race apart from the masses, setting superficial barriers (that nevertheless hold fast in situ) of membership, and in a grand orchestration of sustained moral indignification have held the whole of human progress by deliberately holding back from opening the doors that set free constrained minds to achieve with a purpose. While this is not per se a call against self accomplishment and individual strive for success, there is certainly a serious defect in a system that focuses excessively on the self at the expense of the total well-being, and the processes that promote the realisation of this potentially imploding social process of selfish gratification. The unique positioning of an emerging social system to construct a social system that enhances the total well being of all its members without in any way limiting the push for excellence among its ambitious individuals is worth striving for. While the termination of processes that inveigle society into accepting the negative and partially parochially benefiting, intensely savage, parasitic, advantage taking of the weak and disaffected members of society, no matter how well couched it is in civility, is to be discarded.

 

There is in a way a requirement in the mind limiting state of poverty that is currently realised that every single brick put on another must be with an aim towards the realisation of airy beauty, and not another addition to the ugliness that saps the light out of existence. The massed realisation of poetic ideals, must find expression at the unique level of leadership that by giving expression to the massed appeal brings beauty and hope in its effort rather than damnation and unceasing misery. The mind state sustained the intolerable suffering by devising innovative, seemingly unevitable, procedures to further entrench the looming permanency of a perpetual underclass. By condescendingly promoting a social focus that revolved around quickly realisable profit through trading, while deemphasising other social issues of immediate relevance,. The aggressive unmediated drive to acquire material wealth has become the dominant preoccupation of the society, by any means.

 

The capitalist open market system exported as the end solution to economic underdevelopment finds concrete realisation presently in idle youth with brilliant minds vending the lower ends of the extolled products of the industrial overlords of ignorance, waiting under temporary sheds of superficial achievements, unstable and flimsy foundations of self centered strivings of limited conveyed social relevance and wasting away. Simply because the basis upon which it will operate efficiently, enabling its utmost totality of social relevance to be fully realised is unavailable. Herein lies the required lesson, adaptable concepts are conditional upon the provisional requirements of variable system states, where their potency can be fully cajoled into operative realisability, inveigled, albeit -circumsbribed rationality- to fuse with the dynamic social system variable state to yield expected ends. Money is the endgame of futility in the midst of the greatest impetus to push the creative intellect to diversify and expand the narrow margins that stiffle meaningful and expected states of existence. Money and the processes that manipulate its undeserved centrality have become the centrality of existence. The pleasures of the immoral acquisitive nature have beffudled the leaders, blinding and binding them into a state immoral stupor of worthless preoccupations that deviate the essence of labour and the beauty of existence in pursuit of the intransingent misdemeanours of sinful pervesion of rightful positional influnce. The self at the center of the leadership role has meant frustration at the core of society, especially when the self has meant diffused rationality of inconsequential relevance to the well being of the governed, and of yet still unmeaningful designation to the role requirements of the leadership act. Those who are disposed to accumulating material wealth and partisan favour are less disposed to rule in situational requirements demanding greater minds, with wider, all embracing focus,as they are more favoured to find utmost appreciable self realisation in the market place of capitalist end games of winner takes all. The profit motive and the means and the accoutrements of this form of social activity is an undeniable relevance permeating the general social system and facilitates social organisation. It has given birth to its 'creatures of manifest greed', but government and its calling, endow the specific functions of the leadership role with nobler characteristics and requirement, over and above the rapacious banditry that occassionally occassions the core functions of commercial activities. The essence of the profit motive is dominance with material and monetary accumulation that empowers at a level commensurate with the specifities of those activities. Leadership in the governing processes requires more emotionally based characterisations like mercy and care to enable the enormous power and strength it wields to yield its utmost value to its subjects. Leadership is not a domain for exploitation but a means for facilitating utmost social improvement across board. The mixing of the boundaries between the two have confused priorities and delayed the thrust upwards to higher states of being across the human stream. Commercial activities are self constraining acts of limited intents and ends, they are limited by their very designation to engage in wider mind explorations of physical realisms over and beyond their immediate profit goals, which profit itself is a narrowly defined self gratification rewarding instrument which focuses first and foremost on the entities that seek to control through limited knowledge of the social realm within which it finds realisation.

 

The aspects of social organisation and cultivated systems that are appreciated in other cultures and are desired to be emulated or considered a part of the continent's sociogenesis, are in many ways idiosyncratically established social norms and values that over time, by appealing to the general society's sense of valued and esteemable indicators of worthiness have become accepted as ostensibly universal patterns of social approval. The structured composition of ordered thoughts as knowledge, finding expression in diverse mediums and transferred by an establishement (of seemingly permanent fixtures) are idealistic realisations of idiosyncracies that had (and still have) a common appeal and found general acceptance. The crux of the matter here is that, there are unlimited possibilities that are worthy of exploring, and that in their realisation uplift and are accepted as valued sets of knowledge to be expanded and made to yield benefit across the spectrum of society in place and over time (and hopefully uplift an emotionally and psychically dampened society). The means and the minds that realise these are within continental grasp, but it eludes formative constructiveness because, on the whole, the finer details of the vaunted socially desirable aspects of these grand individual aspirations, can only find definitive expressibility in the social millieu, that is structured to enable its attainment. The society is at one level a gathering of consenting free thinkers, but it is a highly malleable entity, in which constituents are constantly seeking for patterns to follow in the quest for individual self attainment. The forces that coerce directive influence on this malleable entity; society, can very well be positive and attuned to the purest and highest ideals possible in time and place or malevolently evil in its intention and by flimsy pretense position society on an inverted course of individually centered desires at social expense, or worse still engineer the elements that compose the society to work against each other and in the end self destruct the fragile membrane of social network that sustains society. There are and always will be options, but in veracity, there are no choices open to a society that finds definitive definition in excesses of negativity. There is a need that finds expression from within to seek for and strive to attain the highest excellence possible. The heights of creative effort are great internal upheavals against mediocrity and the most suppressive forces that have festered against a cowed human(ity) for so long, such that, that the fear that binds, looses its grip on the deadend. Manifesting creatively in effect as the explosive rejection of all things that limit the freewill. Often times these reflexive reorientations, give birth to attainments that have transformed the pits of festering evil into the gleam of new ages of human possibilities. That is the choice that is left. The way into the abyss of futile greed is the path we trudge on, but it is a pathway upon which the majority traverse as prisoners on a death match, while the few who benefit are the guards, who themselves are prisoners of a gloom that taints the regurgitating mind worse than the peace of death. Together, they are pitiable spectres of the darkside that stands in opposition to the purer brightness of the common hope fully realised. The denial by some on the whole, in finding partial expression, is an indication of an awareness that calls for a redefinition of the rules of the game. The game itself has transformed itself from orderly inconsequentiality, where the participants are accorded willing boundaries by apathetic spectators, into a mélee where the boundaries between players and spectators has disappeared. There is a free for all tumble player, where order has given way to chaos and coordinated team play (the rules that enable functionable system) has dissolved into individual struggle to come up for a gulp of air,  and plunge into the milling crowd. The essence of the fundamental pursuit has grayed into a nondefinable potpourri of  hasty individual survival guidelines. Yet, in society we seek to survive, individual survival and social organisation are inextricably linked, together, they can spiral into destructive nonexistence, or leap up, freed, reaching for the high ideals of human perfection, within society. The means by which the good things dominate and subsume the evil struggling to gain dominance are within the same system. The system can coordinate to attain optimum efficiency or rankle discordantly to disintergrate in a noncohesive uncoordinated grating of uneven spokes in the social wheel, spiralling out of sync. The failure of the larger mass of society to find adequacy of satisfactory social engagement is not failure due to individual defieciency to squeeze into the limited of niches of socially defined individual achievement or effort, above all things, it is a significant failure of the sort of social configuration  society has adopted and developed and when its failings are so obviously exposed, society still pursues it, these doomed development models, with the avidity of a blind bat deprived of its undeveloped radar sensors, are caterwheeling like the doomed creature, on a collision path with uneven but cold reality of finality against hard surfaces. The great advances made so far have been of benefit to a select category.  

 

It is human nature to identify with and emulate positively rewarding ideas and mind sets, in the absence of progressively multiplicable good ideas, men will resort to squeezing whatever that is individually rewarding from wrong mind sets imposed upon an unwilling but pliant society. The implicit certain truth is that, while the essence of apropos is dangling on the edge of every mind, seeking to find expression, it is only through a few purposeful and bold minds that it finds social manifestation. It then becomes a lingering chorus rehashed by the rest of pliable society's pliant human component and touted favourably for a time. There can however be no doubt about the paramount primary fact that while the continent on its own and through its self programmed agenda has become a certainty of failure waiting to enfold, little can be gained by postponnng the radical mind re-orientation that wil bring to fore the desired refocussing on the society rather the individual as the focality of the governing process. The activities of the governing process must be socially designated to impact in its material manifestation equally on all its members. There must not be a deliberate manipulation of the emerging society to favour any aspect of its component in a way that is unfair in its core operation and thus favouring a 'plunder the system' mentality. While it is still comparatively simple and unsophisticated, the governing process makes itself amenabe to significant restructuring that projects a foundation of transparency in implementation processes, which assumes a nonpartiality and an embracing social nondistinctiveness that is all inclusive. The implementors and the formulators and the affected must by principle be equally affected in the end process. Where there is a segmentation of the society not based on individual effort to excell but a deliberate manipulative effort to perpetuate poverty at one level while enriching another level unfairly, there is thereby introduced a significant element of destabilising variables, that will work against the very society facilitating this process.                                                                                                                                                                                    

 

A parallellisation of fiscal and economic systems that facilitates continental exchange activities within the grander scope of eventual evolving of harmonised continental fiscal policies and monetary instruments should harmonise economic activtities with an intent of expanding the existing range of active direct exchange potentials at all levels of social grouping. Hopefully (hope is a relevant evocation a positive outcome in a rapidly changing dynamism of relevant factors that predispose the system to respond strategically with adroit applicability of emergent paradigms of untested efficacy) while striving to obtain resources from the wider domain with monetary instruments applicable therein, the eventual outcome will ensure a coterminious dual existence of equally effective and practically relevant monetary instruments, that while enabling expanded continental exchange activities will open further the extent of interaction with the other transcontinental systems. Among other things, a harmonised continental exchange instrument and fiscal policy, should enable the gradual deemphasis on external monetary instruments, that in their sophisticated operativeness emphasise the sustained under developed dependence of their vagaries and defective intrusiveness on the projected evolvement of the continent, thus enabling a breathing space for maneuverability to coordinate local resources accessibility and development, without the encumbrances of external restraints. Inter- regional trade activities involving continentally developed products will receive a massive boost in terms of industrial growth potential, if the accruing benefits to the production source is unconstrained by monetary instruments grossly discordant with the fundamental realities of the continent. The present course of practically uncoordinated disparity of economic policies, with excessive focussing on counrty specific interest, if pursued without any effort at remedial assessment will eventually lead to a total continental economic structure dependent on externalities that by design operate inconsequential of their assumed importance as fiduciary manipulables of the continent.  The seemingly impersonal monetary system has a personal and emotional nature and while the economic system may project an image of desensitised figures and numbers, the critical operatives of monetary systems can hardly be separated from the base mentalities of the controlling human component of those monetary sources. Thus the existing dependence on an assumed international monetary system must be appreciated as a weaning period towards self developed, supportive, internally originating and continentally sensitive monetary instrument. Since the facilitatory convenience of monetary and fiduciary instruments is irreplaceable presently, a difficult start that coordinates that exchange mechanism to be a reflection of the existent realities on ground can gradually mature to ensure certainty of grounded reality in continental situations. For all its appeal, there can be no parity ever being attained between systems so disparate, as those that define the state of continental reality pertaining and the concurrent sophisticated diversification of other sub-systems.  Any participation in that global system must be an end, but involving only partial engagement, for its core operatives are beyond continental control. That controlling manipulation has only one end designated fulfillment; to protect its creators, its emergent source and their interests primarily. While the divesity of an enormous continental landmass with a prevailing commonality offers a possibility of an equivocation of the imitatable. One of the greatest obstacles that must be overcome is the mind set that assumes that any set of actions is incongrous to any existing externality. The reality indicates that development is a continuous process of grafting and improved adaptation, with one end purpose, that it should benefit those at the source of the evolving development and ensure a reasonable lee way of self determinancy in the midst of the vagaries of viable existence.

 

The establishment of state owned industries as the opening stages of the industrialisation process on the continent was a step in the right direction, but it took a wrong turning in its evolvement. But the inability of the society to accurately determine the deeper permeating basis for the failure to improve on an ostensibly good beginning, has led to fllimsy and weakly rooted diverse and superficial efforts at remediation that are in effect another shot in the dark in the hope of making a positive hit by a poor labelling process. Their failure consequently, was due to the establisment of state industries on vaccous mind sets focused on leadership ideas disconnected from the existing social reality, and a consequent inability of leadership with a good intent to engage and involve the general society in its shared vision. Leadership of the newly defined geographical entities was unable to resort with intensity to remodify the existing mind state at individual and small group level, grappling to define a new reality in a drastically changed social specification of reality and in failing to find a socially balanced focus to attain self worth, sought to delimit social reality through individual fulfillment at the expense of the general society.  By failure of reorienting society to a changed appreciation of the government and its provisions as a commonwealth of shared hope, to be cultivated, retained and improved upon. The lapse of a philosophical dimension to emergent continental leadership resulted invariably in a shift to sought for closure within the limitations of internal and self centered reality. Thus there was a shifting from social growth to individual well-being, noxiously also at the leadership level, where the definition of a new set of social configurations that would have set the mark and specifications that embrace individual attainments within socially explicitly defined specifications was severely shortchanged for vague self aggrandisement of leaders. When the expanding complexities of diversified systems, coalesced without clarity, in an  upward shift from primary agrarian and primitive states of commerce to budding industrial societies, defied the evolving incapable mind state of leaership activities that occasioned the changing African societies, there was and still is a befuddling of society in general from reconfiguring at all levels to maintain parity of varied subsystem elements, to coordinate and ensure balance in the evolving systemic whole. In consequence, unable to remedify that imbalance, there is still a continuing 'drag effect' of subsystems spun out of synchrony with other sub system elements, the effect is a disproportionate approximation of expected end states, that still prevails (In the absence of an unravelling effort of the problem belying a societal and leadership social philosophy, to enable a social reconfiguration along primary axis commensurate with the demands of the forces of change, the full benefits of the tear and patch social policies, which by themselves will hardly yield their full benefits, not to mention the more important and still untackled reality, which is that existing gap in knowledge which in being unabridged will never permit the instuitionalisation of the yet undiscovered full complementing range of reoriented policies, that will set the path towards sustained direction towards full continental transmutation from primary agrarian societies to nation states enabling full transformational shift across the whole social spectrum). The mind set at leadership level by being the coalescing force of all social capabilities will always remain the critical foundation, which in being solidly and soundly established in the needed social philosophical orientation of what its task definitions and its expectancies are,  would enable concrete attainment at the individual and small group level. The illustrous leaders who led the way into independence, had worthy ideals but were sorely limited by their distorted images of self importance, their task was simply defined and quickly exhausted, the situational requirements of existing reality on the continent is incomparable to anything that those early years could have configured, by inability to agily adapt and reorient, their has been and continues to be ineffective excessiveness of dependence on poorly qualified external models of little continental relevance. This is the pont of departure. The greatest achievement of the individual is that which can be infused into the common mentality and is capable of evolved continuity. To assume a pole position of irreplaceable knowledgeability, is itself a defective mentality of social arrogance. The fake projection of the personal individuality of a leader, over and above his responsibility, and his or her assumed self importance, whether self concocted or socially imposed is a false façade, the individual leader is an inconsequence of time and changing circumstances. They are all in role acts, in which their individuality is inconsequential in retrospect; rather, it is their projected mental conceptualisations executed to beneficial end terms that is the assesed qualification of their passage through their role act in the stream of time. A worthy leader lives behind worthy ideas, an unworthy leader lives behind a lingering stench of corruption and failure at societal level, probably soiling his lineage with the unworthy spoils of undesired material acquisitions. Steeping the whole of society in clinging putrefaction of expended usefullness and outmoded ideals and ideas. Social growth finds meaningful expression in concrete materialisations of infrastructural developments, but it is over and above this base, albeit necessary and needed state, it is a state of human evolvement ensconsced firmly at the mind state and articulated in sustainable conveyance to generations yet unborn and material states yet unconceived. By focusing on base material ends for the self and setting self importance, over and above the importance of the society, there has been and still remains a misplaced focus on the actual role of the leader and for that matter the proper functioning of the governing machinery. The critical evolutionary role of the leader as the agile manipulator, who instigates and sustains progress by wielding the instruments of leadership at his or her disposal, enabling the activation of the dormant and inaccessible, but nevertheless, immense potential that lies simmering within the populace, waiting to be discovered, chanelled and explored for the common good; identifying the means of employing and utilising that dormant lethargic energy creatively, thus attaining far reaching ends that supercede any individual in any role position, this the neglected role at all leadership roles in every major and minor position of responsibility on the continent that needs emphatic revoking. By harnessing for positive utilisation all the available human resources and bringing it to bear upon the latent resources of natures provision, there is invoked a bringing forth to activation, a latency, beningly sublimated in the coarsity of primary existence, that is creatively sustaining in the process of multiplicatively regenerating higher constructiveness that maximises human potential and possibilities. A catalysation process of leadership that thus gives a wider dimension to human existence and its capabilities in its physical existence. There is thus made possible a higher quality of existence that through a process of social organisation eases the difficulty of crafting individual desires by combining effectively the massed energy of individual talents managed and directed to positive and valuable desired ends. The being matched with the physical manifestations of desired states, enabled by a mind state that is comensurately increasingly expansive in its scope, human existence as a whole is gently nudged to higher levels of existence. The expectations of the required acts of leadership must necessarily be of such nobility that they transcend time and the meager provisions of material limitations. (That limitation itself a limitation in the activation of the capabilities of the creative intellect). The pursuit of the clamourings of material acquisitiveness at the expense of the social growth, stunt the spirituality of leadership and strips it of its implied honour, limiting in consequence, the possible attainments of the society, while multiplying its woes and despairs in unequal, disproportionate measures. The higher mind state required of truly great leadership cannot be sullied in being limited by lesser minds that set the leadership role in conflict with the baser desires of lesser requirements. The one to whom, at any level of social organisation, leadership role is enthrusted must be a reflection of a state of mental purity that births and nurtures growth at various levels over and above the individual constituents personal ability, a communal activity realised through appropriate directive influence. These are the ones society must seek to engage, in seeking a path out of the quagmire of despair. They are the ones to whom society must disengage power from the incapable and infuse with, to be led into the pathway of light, out of the gloom of deadends. These ones are the wise ones whose clarity of thought and purpose is clear enough to reflect the common hope and aspirations, hopes and aspirations set out for all to see without the need for interpretors. While society may wish for externally engenderd solutions, the answers, lie within the continental constituents and the means are in the collective intellect that finds expression through  'pointer individuals', who in setting a course of action expresses the common will in concrete actions with  specified ends.

 

 'Pointer individuals' are those whose fates are inextricably linked to the society's outcome. They are individuals who are designated by fate or circumstances to bear the weighty responsibilities of facilitating social outcomes. Through a self determined grittiness to overcome the challenges of personal obstacles, taking from the provisions of the commonwealth of their societies, exploiting its proffered potential benefits, they position themselves to respond to the call of a society that in calling for the requirements of the qualities they have toiled to accumulate as personal achievements position to these individuals as essential resources of their societies. They have been set apart to serve the common good. By unique natural human endowments are self selected, best equipped to work for the less favoured and the larger society. The society is greater than its constituents, but its grand outcome is indisputably in hands of individuals. It does not take long for any one of these 'pointers', whose exceptional natural traits predispose them to serve the interest of others less well endowed, that they are special tools designated to hewn the rough edges of nature in concordance with a purpose over and above their self interests. The bane of society, has been the excess of disoriented and ill positioned individuals at the helm of statesmanhip on the continent. The seeming disengagement of the general society to the acts of vapid leadership, is in reality postponned aggressive and violent requisition of the leadership role and its appropriate restitution to the qualified honourableness it deserves. It is the unawareness of the importance to the systemic whole of the critical role that each individual is capable of, who has a self or socially allocated responsibility to fulfill, that has contributed in a marked way to the failures that are evident in the social setup. There can be no possible compromise over total commitment to optimal efficiency in any public office. If each person is awakened to the import of their actions to the emerging social outcome, and coerced into maximum output efficiency by the required acts of expected fulfillment on the part of a responsive and responsible society, manned not only by honest, but also highly innovative leadership, the greater gap of the wide social chasm has been more than bridged. A positively oriented leadership running an efficient governing machinery is the ultimate pointer of all 'pointer individuals', facilitating the utmost accomplishment feasible within the constraints and the designations of the times and setting. The act of balancing the system to yield utmost satisfaction to all its organised sub constituents is over and beyond any formal categorisation. There are certain sub units of the society that exert great influence on the contouring of socially designated outcomes, but the basic requirement remains undettered, that the governing process involves finding a middle ground for ensuring maximum benefit for all the constituents of the society of concern without stultifying the individual drive finding expression within any sub-organisation or at the unrestrained individual level from realising its fullest expressivity and possible realisability. In most instances, there has hardly been any effort to configure the exact boundaries of possibilities of the continegencies of the times, less likely any sustained effort at progressing beyond those restrictions of previously attained efforts. The quality of government and leadership's outcome is measured unequivocally in terms of concrete realisable improvements among the least of the governed. Any leadership that does not conceive the ruling process as an act of constant and continuous improvement in all conceivably possible, instead conceiving of it as the maintenance of the status quo has started on the wrong footing and is doomed to failure.  The failure is due to a misconception of the fundamentalities of social evolution; highly evolved systems have in the process of evolving attained certain sustained peaks of efficiency that defy time and its exigencies, they then tend to sustain social organisation at some zone of the multiplicity of multidimensionality of dynamic systems. The systems under consideration, could not possible in their immediate transition to a new level of social organisation have attained any of those sustainable levels of efficient functionability. These emergent states can not be borrowed and installed, society is too malleable and diffuse to find concrete cross-over representation in wholesome significant segments across the disparate time and bio-feographic  realms where equanimity is assumed.  The present presence of negativities and akwardness that occasions the administrative machinery of governmental implementation can be unraveled and discarded by a determined effort to purge the mentality of dishonest gain and reengaging a refocusing on traditional values of honesty and decency in office holders as approved social norms. Whatever option is pursued becomes in the course of time the established pattern. In some external societies where the ethics of public office holders engenders clarity and high quality energetic commitment to task and responsibility, there has been reciprocal rewards for the society as a whole, in other societies where the art of repugnant corruption has been refined and shaded to become a cultivated social connivance, there has been equally negative effects on the society as a whole. There is therefore without ambiguity a required capacity for the leader to redefine the course and direction of progress of the emergent societies by concerted efforts to reawaken society's sense of decency and extoll honest behaviour or lead the society on a path of ignonimity and hopeless dishonesty fomenting distrust that ferments anarchic states of aimless abandon.  Any act of service that involves an interaction across the individual boundary, incorporating an exchange relationship, no matter how conceived, involves a mutually consenting acknowledgement of honesty and trust. A deliberate abuse of these all encompassing values that define the quality of assumed innocence and accepted responsibility, of the exchange relation at any level of social interaction, denigrates the quality of civilised behaviour and create frictions that unbalance the delicate scale of social interaction. Resulting in the introduction of negative intrusions that society needs to correct, lest they gain ascedancy and acceptance, since there is always an element of short term benefit involved in these acts of twisting the social rules of behaviour for personal convenience. Society is designated round deferred postponement of satisfaction, to subvert the tortuous wait to reap immediate benefit has a longing appeal, and uncurbed, can gain a destructive stranglehold on the delicate social balancing process that seeks to meet each individual desire in the constantly evolving social system. Such radical unchecked reversal towards social accepted social disorder strains the already delicate balance that enables stability to make feasible a mapping of a specified designated direction of expected growth for any particular society.  The call for reorientation must find manifestation from those who have assumed a directive role in the critical segments of social organisation and must find enforced compliance. Good governance begins and ends at the mind level.  A government that cannot penetrate the mind of the governed and rule the brighter side of the intellect, directing towards positive achievements, while dissuading the darker mind state of destructive hostility that pitches the individual interest against the society, in a struggle that is not mediated by the society, is a non starter. To indulge in physical acts of imitatory pretense that do not tap into, or at worst is in contradiction to the saliency of the mind state of exigent expectations and desires is a reaffirmation of nonexistent reality to the social well-being; an operation of the governing process in a vaucuous state of unfounded continuity between the the leadership and the governed. The government machinery itself is pliable to effective utilisation if the necessary structures and directive influences are facilitted through leadership's controlling influence. The hodge podge patch of small scalisms and appropriate technologies are tenous lingerings of substantiated, intermediary desired end states but must be substituted with major re-modelings with clear cut purposive aims of social upgradement to pull the people out of dismal antiquity. The only apparent continuity is an abysmal dissolution of the existing configurations into courted chaos in the vain hope of rebuilding from the ashes of self destruction a process that in retrospect never began.

 

In the absence of wise leadership, where wisdom is enobled by acts of bold discovery of the forgotten  straight and narrow path of collective social responsibilty and honesty, a veering from the existing constrictions of limited viability with delimited social interest and benefit is an expected requirement. An overall consensual failure, to project beyond the seeming possibilities, to seek for, and exploit the unique strong points of the diversity of varied viewpoints that must be strained and amalgated to yield the finest human developments possible, the society is gripped in maximal greed tapping minimal potentials and permitting the subversion of the barely budding hopes to improve the exiting dismal states of being. The ultimate measure of attained social wholesomeness will be the extent to which every single individual is fully benefiting from the commonwealth of society, managed to yield its utmost benefice at any comparative point in time and among the range of possibilities. The individual members of society, who by a malfeasance of the ruling process had been sidelined as inconsequentialities in the positioning for rapacious leadership, must be reinstated into their natural center position, as the essential core around which society and its acts revolve. Implying, unequivocably, that it is the individual members of society that by their acts of voluntarily participation, determine the relevance of social provisions rather than the vague meaningless manipulations of ineffciency parading as controlling authorities that minimise human capacities.

 

The split between an  urbane city state within decaying rural community nation states needs reconsideration of reorientation, each large modernised 'city within state', itself, a fragile, non impacting, nucleus of developement, swamped by an outer rim of slum, stiffling the growth that should spread from inside-out, and being cramped by the desparation without, worming its way in and snuffing the barely sustained light of hope, until in another desparate act of incomplete escapism, the center has shifted to the edge of the city, running, as it were, seeking for solace at the extremities of civility. These cities have become unplanned focalities of national development and the modernisation drive. There must be a redress to engage in structured redevelopment and reconcentration of smaller settlements as a partial solution to the land issue, while bringing the expanded benefits of industrial and service industries, both of which are premised on an educated and articulate citizenry. The massive redevelopment and reconstruction to upgrade the living standards, in terms of housing and associated facilities, will have to develop around the massing of scattered rural and small crumbling townships into central locations, with the facilities that are engineered to meet the expectations of the populace effectively integrated into the new settlements. The freeing of land will enable the development of larger joint commercial or communal cultivation agricultural activities in area thus suited. There must be an effort to maintain the social balance by not distoring the clarity of lands identified by appropriate entitlements and ownership rights, while at the same time emphasising the social benefits of structured urbanisations, whether pursued by private entities or governmental resources. Any development that insults the integrity and intellectual acuity of the human elements that activate the multiplier effect of the basic infrastructural component of the project is established on shaky grounds and will inevitably have to court acceptance by the society or be sabotaged into nonexistence or worse still as a vulgar disfigurements that stands as a constant irritant in the eys of a scoffing public. There exists within the individual mind an idealisation of equity in social organisation, the government is a social construct to bring to realisation this massed idealisation at the highest aesthetic level possible, in as varied and diverse, levels of expressibility. The deviation of the basic expected designation of government thus desired, to self serving instruments of social disfigurement and tyranny, will invariably perpetuate aberrations and anomalies of gross evil, finding expression in monstrosities of social deprivations and depravities, that no matter how they parallel reality and approbation at any level of wider social existence, in place or time, permeate a miasma of social discordancy and swell and roll pertubations of the tangential growth of normal development.

 

There is an obviated benefit of structural development, there is brought into existence through such activities an expanded economic viability that enables a geometric expansion in economic activities and organised social elevation, which makes this a focal area for governmental activity. The never abating search for exploitative avenues for individual benefit that parallels every project aimed at assuaging the social deficit is a problem that is as much a reflection of the disparity between the society, its social values and its constituents' desires. Bringing adequate equanimity that creates harmonious complimentarity of purposes across the diverse stream of disparate interests without creating the sort of tense instability that pits the society as self realising entity against its individual constituents interests, and thus preventing the deplorable situation where the common interest is subverted to satisfy limited self interests is the delicate balancing act of the governing processes that must be tackled with sustained fortitude. That part of the challenge of facilitating continental growth must be resolved through elimination of the problem, the problem is how to refract the focus on individual gain while maximising social gain.

 

Individual drives are restricted and curtailed by manipulative authourity that cowes obedience from the most ebullient drive for social benefice from any sector of society. The collective endowments enthrusted to and held in trust by leadership has far reaching effects on the determinant outcomes of individual aspirations. To obviate the obstacles of decandent tyranny to engineer and organise the abilities capable of realisation through the directive effort of leadership for the common good is one of the difficult tasks of enlightened minds. It is in a way not necessarily a confrontational engagement with the governing bodies, as it is an awakening of awareness in the sleepy minds of the stultified masses of the options they could demand and realise as members of the society.  The powers that be have carefully contrived by malfeasance a restive underclass of deprived masses held by leash under strain by a manipulatory minority who are themselves held in check from opening the mental portals that will enable the upliftment of the masses to fully liberate themselves of the contrived bondages of deprivation, be it material or of the mind state. The manipulatory minority master class have become docile prison guards refusing to activate the exploratory mind set of the majority to search for all benefiting better states of existence, their reward is the carefully measured material greed to which they have become prisoners, in defiance of their innate intellectual proddings to utilise their positions of advantage to expand their spheres of benign operable influence and realise the hopes of the masses. They have beome unwilling minds that contrive sophisticated mechanisms and operatives that stretch like sheets of fiery bronze across the landscape and perpetuating the legacy of ignorance parading in stolen glory that is filthy to behold. The greatest jewel in the crown of individual achievement of selfless service is that of redeeming the deprived and the abused, this aspect of the human mind struggles within the lives of the discerning deprived and denied, who even operating at the highest possible level of human efficiency have been consigned and discarded into the dustbin of inconsequential irrelevancy by the existing system. The best of years of youth are wasted in languishing despair of self relevancy and self worth in a social system where human worthiness is dictated by monetary value and ability to find relevancy and worthiness in employment. Whereas the system has configured relevancy of existence in tightly defined constraints and rewards, it has, the social system has failed to effectively ensure system balacing effect by ensuring sustainable variable adjustment configuration by defective administrative organisations processes that will in effect have ensured adequate allocation and ensured relevancy in constant adjustment. Revolutionary liberators are ancient romantics setting themselves the task of unshackling minds caught in self limiting bondage of unexplored potentialities, their relevancy in a modified state is a required necessity in response to the existing incapacitations within the stultifying governing bodies within the continent. The excessive reliance on the inadequacies of existing knowledge as a basis for decision making instead of incapacitating collective effort for facilitating systemic growth along expected delineations, should act as a spur for diversifying the exploratory basis for expansive creativeness. The collective mind at the leadership level must per necessity eschew itself of limiting doubts, and by overcoming their fear of giant projects, project an awareness that will enable the full flowering of individual potential that have social relevance. The acceptance and promotion of ideas that hold firmer the bands of belief of inferiority find expression in the extent and type of effort made to bring the social provisions of the society to be commensurate with the expectations of the human components of the system. Condoning a decisive lack to push the barriers of existing reality at the larger and higher and all embracing leadership level, in the face of evidence that the existing base of knowledge needs expansion to meet the existing demands on ground, draws tighter the inelasticity within the relevant decision making bodies presiding over the solemnity of the breaking dawn. Presently is required an expansion in the existing mind state to create value within the existing mundane states of relevancy. The whole of human progress can be surmised as an exercise in creative creation of meaningfulness that creates expanded horizons of previously nonexistent material expression of active mind states in search of diversified reality. Required and mere exercises in the imaginative capacity within the bounded limitations of what is expected is socially limiting (More so when reality is a constantly evolving variation, it creates a dilemma as to when the validity of what is expected has actually outlived its relevancy, in retrospect it is often the case that actual relevancy for any specific social designation is exhausted well before it becomes a general, socially acknowledged past) that being the case, the prescient leadership mind must be unhindered by the limitations of existing reality. The desired social improvement requirements to enable social stability and individual growth and infrastructural provisions that complement growth are capable of being realisable in every society. Required to facilitate progress at all levels of society are sturdy minds in pursuit of constant change in reponse to the challenges of dynamic systems short circuited from utmost effectiveness. This requires the exercise of the highest activation of the collective mind to seek and bring to applicatory enhancement the resources accessible and capable of being acquired to improve and expand existing system viability. In the absence of the collective active mind in constant adaptive creative effort with clearly specified ends and implemented with precision. The actual cycle of industrial and technological growth development and wealth generation as conceived within the existing social development paradigm projects its benefits as limited to a select grouping of favoured humanity while the rest are teased frustratingly with improvements that they are ostensibly capable of yet inaccessible to. Much as this viewpoint is premised on a seemingly arcane manipulatory power base that seeks to influence and project strength through limited controlled rationalisation rationing of the benefits of developing technology that delimits the spheres of benefit to select categories or groupings. It is also a persistent reality occassioned on submissive subjects by incompetent leaders in avaracious pursuit of dead end policies based on ineffectual exploitation for expectancies beyond existing reality within the narrow confine configurations presently available. Since technological development has emerged as the existing systems driving force for human social progression to improved and expected life conditions and states of existence. The nature of its distributive availability, invariably impacts on the state of diversified living conditions for all humanity. The chain of control of facilitatory availability has like all the positive values of governing capacity been entrusted to a select grouping of leaders who in defiance of their role as pointers for humanity have confabulated their roles with that of rationers of civility, shrouding simplicity under a contrived contraption of hindering economic nonessentialities, that highlights humanity's deprivation, and like the rest of human efforts lives the solution to the highlighted problems, as a sickening proclivity for suspended animation of active life forms held in situ in states of extreme undesirability, the leaders and the path minders have become connoisseurs of cultivated artforms of depravity, totally immersed in delectable forms of extolled wickedness, streched to yield variegations of human indignity, soiled, are the art and the artists, in the cesspool of the outpourings of the mournings of their works. The whole human race is deliberately lagging, being held back from the mass transition to higher states of flexible unlimited growth, being restrained by petty, negative, particularities of fealty association to personal greed that has been unnecessarily accorded center stage, while the grander acts of wholesome exercise of human intellect to shift to the higher dimension of limitless exercise of infiniteous creativity has been relegated by lesser minds focussing on group fealty, vestigial encumberances of vassal states and territory protecting activities of combative nature. While vaunted idealisms does not by itself replace the harsh realities of humanities present disposition, the refocusing of mind states on what is desirably and appropriately sought for and need be attained cannot but find expression in the dirge of the dawn of the awakening that buries the evil dead.

The liberation of essential human resources from groping and wasting in the abyss of futility of easily eradicated woes must be evoked to be activated, to give the people tottering on the edge a hold onto a hope.

Some processes need to evolve at a comfortable pace to enable an equability of approximation of the ongoing process and the human elements at the focus of the changing situation. However any process that gives added value to human existence, thereby bringing to fore the Creators awesome endowments into active utilisation can not be deliberated delayed, by unfounded philosophies deliberated at leisure by a sated segment of the totality; propounding selfish gratification as end goals. The high positions and the accruing material gratifications that accompany elevated status are the middle stages of a process of social empowerment to enable the socially advantaged, to uplift and stregthen, the denied, the neglected and the desperate. In essence the truest self assessment that any individual can make of his worthiness as a favoured entity in the array of God's creation purpose is irreconcialiable with material acquisitions that benefit the self, in the pursuit of spirituality, holiness by its very conceptualisation despises dirt and filth. There is thus an indisputable imposition on those who are favoured in society to have a socially beneficial focus in their self improvement drive which edifies the purity sealed beneath the filth by lifting the physically exhausted out of the grimes of painful existence. Of what use is medicine if not applied as emollient to assuage the pains of the sick? The sick by their very disposition are incapable, they must be resuscitated first and steadied to become capable of reciprocal favour to the social system. 

 

True achievement, in terms of the fulfillment of the individual's end goal success, has been inappropriately represented in monetary and material gains of creature comfort, but it certainly goes beyond that.  The focusing on the material ends of success has engendered a mind set that has compounded existing problems in confining the creative intellect into crushing limited circles of materially driven self satisfaction. It is a short circuiting of an unfulfilled social growth circle that has attenuated human progressive maturation to higher mind states. By seeking for, and eliminating the aspects of human material acquisitive nature that detracts from the ultimate end purpose of constantly improving human states across the board, while retaining the facilitatory role of monetised systemic organisation belies the task of visionary leadership. There has been gross inadequacies in systemic organisation or a severely defective natural evolution that has enabled the imported social values that placed material acquisitiveness as ultimate desired ends; a designation that has crystallised the prevalent social inequity and deprivations in a glaring limelight of irritating exposition of failure at higher levels of social organisation. What is required is a massive social restructuring to enable the approximation of required upgradements of the core essentialities of modern social organisation to sustain present society's operable existence at a level that is commensurate with the generally expected and desired requirements. In the absence of which the increasing turbidity of seemingly mindless aggression will continue to tear and rip society with a prescient, but not necessarily fulfilled hope of destructive creativity by mindless terrors of frayed sanity fringing the edges of society who are ever poised to wreck havoc in a sustained exclamation of frustrated angst.

 

Agnosticism has not displaced the spirituality of Godly awareness in daily activities, and in the detractive maelstrom of modernity and its materialism, belief in God is the nonmaterialistic foundation upon which meaningful reality is carved, verified and confirmed. (Yet how uncertain is our self concocted reality). By identifying the basic material requirements that by general provision will lessen the focus on individual centered economic foraging that pits the society against its constituents and in the insuing struggle within, the elements composing the society are activated to working for individual ends even at the demise of the social setting within which the individual finds meaningful existence; the constituents are thus pushing to unstrand the strands of socially woven networks of meaningful and dependent coexistence within limited states of unexploited potentials and narrowed bases of exploitable potential, randomly and disconnectedly bursting forth and distorting the uncultivated but nevertheless needed and must be realised socially harmonious synchrony of complementing interests for overall social development that yields benefit for all. The adaptive element that defines the human nature in its constant rebalacing effort to find stability in changing situations, set within a constantly varying environment implies the need for a directive influencing mind set projected to create the disposition to find stability within well defined mediums, adjusted and made responsive to correlate with changes at the individual level to complement the existing soial reality, albeit temporarily in the same consensual direction. It implies the creation of situational modifying contingencies, emerging from the leadership and expressively realised at all levels of the society which will subtly but firmly force social pressure to exert a moral guidance that influences the direction of individual pursuits in a uniform pattern of expected and desired, socially benefiting direction.

 

The anger felt is a livid  angst of betrayed trust

That in being acknowledged as a reality sui generis

evokes wide ranging emotions on the negative spectrum of the full emotional range.

There is little ambiguity over what needs to be done

Of the little that is done, most is done wrongly.

 

The awareness that the lighted candle is being pushed under the bushel, ever deeper.

Invariably awakens anxiety about the coming conflagration.

There is little doubt concerning that.

The massed energy is primed, ready to explode.

In the absence of meaningful and positively valued employment.

The resulting expression, is a misdirected fury that consumes without paucity until in the ashes, in ashes clothed

sitting in mourning over the emptiness of the future

in contorted despair, discernment is sought with resigned unfulfillment.

 

The forests has refused to provide shades for its habitats

The fishes poison the rivers

The land eats the seeds

The seedbeds of terror have taken root.

The measured meaningfulness cultivated with tedious patience-

Consumed by a rush of maddening anger

The vestigial lingerings of wisdom have been battered for pieces of material insignificance.

The leaders have fallen in the market place

The priest of the shrine has become a laughing stock

And the subjects laugh a strange high pitched spluttering of meaningless and chilling laugh.

 

The ominous clouds are closing round the midday sun

The light is being filtered through gaping holes of ignorance. Its very brilliance has lifted the ominous depressive cover of darkness and lighted the flames of consumig destruction. Spiking the heels of the masses fleeing in a helter skelter of undirected flight, in the light.

 

Each life, especially life that has been nurtured whether through trying circumstances or relative comfort is priceless. The years in between growth can not be any less important for any life in any social categorisation. If those years are not successfully negotiated, there can be no continuity worthy of contributory assessment to the general social well being . Across the board, the human being is such an awesome creation, placed at the top of a nature that in its creative diversity is an acclamation of the awesome grandeur of its creator. That every and any human life is a priceless entity is an understatement, that in being ignored or taken for granted has generated a history of human society written in the blood of humans discarded for vain glories. Those to whom the responsibility has fallen to harness the diversity of human potentials capable of being expreesed given the appropriate conditon, have hardly been up to task. In the falsely created illusion of awakened expectations, leadership has become an exercise in excuses for failures. There has been a deceptive cheapening of life's worthiness; a gradual seepage of deception that is fast clouding the wholesome mental hemisphere displacing the importance of placing the individual at the center, and displacing it with contrived economics that has turned to stifle the human growth potential. Leadership has failed to rectify the imbalance in the material acquisitive mechanisms as means of accessorizing the basic tenet of worthwhile existence, while at the same time pushing the acceptance at the collective mind state of evolving society by default of non exercising of appropriate corrective procedures that material success is an end on its own.  An acquiscense which reflects in the general social disposition, to place human welfare and necessarily protracted, sustained human development initiatives as inconsequential to materialistic end purposes. While material acquisitions and developments towards improvements that focus on creature comforts and limited focus exploratory activities have the possibility of a filter down effect on the general populace, there has been a tendency for far too long of general social orienting towards securing group advantages and deliberate manipulation at preferential levels to delimit general participation, as a bid to limit and control accessibility to growth effects and benefits, particularly among the underpriviliged, from having widespread social benefits. No matter what arguments are projected to support the narrowing of opportunities as a means of protecting an exclusive category of humanity, the end effect is that it thwarts the drive that propels innovativiness in humanity as a whole.  The only limitation desirable for any individuals desire to participate in any valuable and socially desirable endeavour, should be the individual's will power sustained by an accomodating and supportive social environment to nurture budding talents.- A social commitment of working to plant, with the aim to yield fruitful harvest, on the hardest mind surface, a drive to excell, exploiting to the individual benefit and social well-being all the capable capacities within each individual's latent potential. The "bottom line" of any enterprise within a social setting needs redefinition, the redefintion is needed because by relocating the focality of interest and effort, there is inculcated in to the social mindset a new acceptably prescribed focus as required behaviour.  The true bottom line is not a facilitatory designation, money, that has trip jumped from its proper place as a means to facilitate gentle social co-existatory exchange media to an end on its own. (If in effect war has been socially prescribed as a process of talking convincingly to win others  mind instead of wanton acts of meaningless destructiveness, there would be a grand social reorientation to render redundant the existing social relevance of  acceptable definitive requirements of war. To conceive of losing war as a graceful acceptance to adapt to the more mutually convenient point of view, and victory as the capitulation to adapt to mutual consent, then the spoils of war will be in terms of hitherto totally unconceived growth effects. (The destruction of life is a vestigial attachment to primitive instinctual reaction to protect the self, in a setting of growing mind states it becomes totally irrelevant, as the expanded mind acts of social reconfigurations of variable states eliminate and make irrelevant the situational variable states within which aggressive destruction of mutually cheerished values hold sway. It lives unaswered the obvious question of how to deal with physically aggressive social aberrants, but the awareness remains nonetheless that social abberration is conceived within social systems that enable its expression. If not capable of being eliminated, it is capable of being consigned to insignificance, from occupying a position of expanded social relevance, by the social designation of relevant states engineered to define society and its expressive states of relevance. Yet, as to why humanity accedes its collective power to groupings of pusillanimous governing authourity with an incomprehensive agenda of abusing power and limiting its utmost benefice, and, then individually and as a group, in an absurd display of abused innocence the social grouping deactivates the social coherence of power and its responsibility to the society, by pliant submission, instantaneously projecting unto a single individual awesome, undeserved mystical strength, to act out the peculiarities of their madness on a pliant, acquiscing, nevertheless underserving of such traumatisation, populace). The inevitable antagonism that unprofitably pits the "pointers" against the led in any social millieu of organised activity is a reflection of the disarray in the values of rationalised social processes. The variables of rationalised social management has stacked the appropriate variables in confused disarray, the rest of humanity waddle through the deviously engendered "mish-mash" in dazed confusion, exerting their energies and resources in pursuit of irrational ends.  Could there be alternative ways of organising the guiding principles of social tolerance such that society effectively eliminates the violence factor while at the same time receiving its due from leaders? Could an environment where the elimination of evolved primary needs, the availabilty of the common material provisions of utmost expectation, be created out of the existing social chaos; thus freeing intellectual and physical capacity to be occupied in higher mind activities that sustain in dynamic growth through the creative provisions of the mind state in the evolving social system; an approximation to expeted states of peaceful co-existence ? If it could, why has this approach not assumed dominance as the social philosophy to drive the evolving societies locked in the tenacious grid lock of conflicting interests in common pursuit of mutually desired end states? (Lower mind activities find expression as brutal exertion to debilitate the self and others, higher mind activities nourish the self and elevate the group to approximate ever higher dimensions of mind abilities, a flowing out of confines to expand and rise and birth forth the sustaining nourishment of ever expanding growth that is all encompassing.)

 

The whole of social science and for that matter any systematic study to establish first principles, and identify the composite mechanisms of seemingly fluid systems, is based on a validated assumption that all human activities involving some form of interaction congeals indicatively in identifiable variables. The guiding assumption of management is that the variables that constitute social interaction in any setting are capable of decipherable manipulation, the elimination by social engineering processes the undesirable aspects of these variables that amalgamate to be patterns of interactivity impacting systems with specified expectations. The inculcation of variables, previously existing within the social millieu or introduced and infused into the set patterns and causing reorientations that reset and diversify the social interaction pattern. The general society is at some level desirous of stable states that promote peaceful co-existence and development potentials across all levels decipherable within that society. There is a possibility for social re-engineering, which eliminates the variables and factors that occasion negative social circumstances, while at the same time seeking for preferred variables and inducing them to combine reproductively and yield concrete substantial outcomes indicatively along significant masses within evolving social systems. 

 

(The stability of middle class neighbourhood as compared to the violence and despair within poor neighbourhoods is a result of the preponderance of a composite of factors that tease out the worst elements in humanity to be actively rife and domiant in the poor neighbourhoods. Yet poverty is an acquired state of comparative desirability. The poor have stringent rules for maintaining social semblance, that crumbles at the sight of the excesses of the normality of the wealthy. Thus the ground is prepared and verifiable, that system states at all levels, are an interplay between hard verifiable variable states, which themselves by their dynamic predisposition are constantly altering to yield differently, and highly expressible, yet dominatly sublime and inaccesisble emotional states. There is indisputably a common element that characterises well to do neighbourhoods, material wealth and purposeful life. The poor neighbourhoods with all their negative tendencies have a common element, poverty and lack in everything, including such feasible emotional contrivancies of prescient states as hope; existence by its very configuration within the specifities and provisons of that carefully contrived and imposed social setting, is purposeless. If it is so obvious that there are elements within social organisation that guarantee a life style of satisfactory existence. Then one begins to wonder if the very essence of social organisation is not to be focused around realising that for the whole society. That, it is possibly to attempt mass social reorganisation around the vaues and basic material provisions that guarantee a basis for meaningful existence, while enabling higher attainments, is within the capability of astute leadership. That they have decided to promote the faintly disguised social cannibalism of survival at others expense, is an indicative expression of their incomprehension of the task set before them.)

 

The people perish for lack of vision

The vision must arise from the darkness

pervading the inner sensibility

providing the clarity that removes the doubt

of inaction, providing a wide swath of clarity on the path untrodden ahead.

 

The market oriented society has designated the creation of wealth, based on the monetary medium as its greasing mechanism, to facilitate availability of needs, improvements and developments at the end of the chain of activities where some form of reward is merited for expended energy and to ensure the facilitation of complementary social utilisation of limited abilities in an efficient manner, however it has failed to adequately account for those who by no fault of theirs are denied access to having "money". These category of deprived segment of society have been labelled as poor and deprived and inappropriately discarded from the center stage of attention. The poor are shunted aside and made irrelevant by those who have been consigned the responsibility through favourable circumstances to prepare themselves to adequately cater for the less favoured. In their failure to be responsible to their natural designated tasks of being worthwhile citizens, they have created pervesions of normality in cloistered isolation of selected rich and common poor and hide their individial and collective failure in displays of gross consumptiveness that is gross in the face of penury and depravities among their brothers and sisters. Their joys are pretentious cavorting of sorrow and beguiling failure. They have attained their self-centered minimal glories of material accumulations in the mudpit of the dross of their own kind and have in the process become obscenities to the society's sense of decency, their achievements are grand proclamations of failure on the manipulated social scales of irrelevance, and they live their miserable lives in the miserableness of the embracing society, cowering in fear, they fear their own failures and frailties and pretend they must mount a defense against their only hope of secured existence, their own brothers and sisters, who they have cheated and stolen from, by betrayal and self imposed limitations. On the contrary the expansion in growth and consumption that will fuel protracted continental growth will emerge from these swarming masses seeking to find definition in a social system that is insisitent on priding itself on the demarcation of humanity into groupings of haves and have nots. The simple act profit making naturally focuses on those who have the means of enabling profit generation, thus it has in its basic expression a delimitation of focal interest, which delimitation has thus censured the obviating of any effort over and beyond its essential occupational focus of effectively reducing its essential profit making orientation to engage in palliative social restructuring, unless, adequate grounds and reasons are given for this deviation from primary purposes. The nature of the profit making organisation, poorly equips it to be engaged in the sort of protracted social expenditure in the monetised economy to bridge the social gap between the disparate social split. Even when the means and possibilities remain to wipe this shame of contrived differences among humans off the social slate of mutually shared existence, the easier choice and the one always exercised is not to exercise it. Their is a certain obscure element of conspicuous pride that flaunts its attainments in the face of the direly lacking, which obscure element has been a dominant aspect of the existing social system. Invariably the designation and realisation of society as a social system, implies common barriers of mutual existence that invariably creates zones of friction in this existing social configuration. The mind state must basically be lifted to redifine its constituent rationality to enable clarity of purposiveness. The acts of leadership has for far too long been circumscribed by 'truly insignificant' power dealers whose claim to prominence are acts of corporate success and rational economic manipulation that places self acquisition over and above mass social development. These ears of government are least suited to the task of true leadership that centers on the sort of social engineering that places profit making as a secondarily consideration to general social upgrading. Nevertheless there is no call to take away from or minimise the relevancy of individual and private initiative to generate wealth. In a petulantly serious platitude the continent lacks in a marked manner the basic infrastructure to develop any seriously sustaining capitalism, if the primary acts of social upgradement and mass social elevation through the facilitation of processes that position the society to effectively complement capitalist efforts are critically considered. Indeed the existing social gap will continue to widen and eventually swallow the whole social system into its yawning jaws of unrestrained and untamed savagery of yet undefined expressive anger and frustration. The frustration of unfulfilled wishes of a primary kind, needs, like access to unrestrained educational needs, skill acquisition, and free enterprise in prepared environments that enable high quality and satisfactory end provisions, as against the 'rag tag patch and strip' water world scenario of post industrial failure in societies that barely seem to be skirting the raw edges of technological growth. The sustained deprivation over the years of adequate infrastructural and service provisions that sustain the evolving systems have made mediocrity a standard acceptable and unapproximated. When rules have to be bent to accomodate the deprived instead of concerted efforts to upgrade their dismal states, there is an entrenchment process in progress of undesirables in perpetuation.

 

The neglected sections of towns, the neglected rural areas are the reservoirs of untapped talents and dreams bursting at the seams seeking to find a medium upon prepared platforms for expression. The undesired slums that have become the socially realised horrors of the regressive consequences of the assumed advancements of socio-ecomomic growth realities in the money game hold the last untapped sources of vibrancies, where the drive for radical change is undampened by the harsh suppressions of social betrayal. In the richer areas of town where all things are provided through individual effort and complemented by governments dutifulnnes there are hardly talents to be discovered  at the cultural creativity level. The society by not providing a pressure releasing hatch of appreciable, gradual and meaningful social development, making significant inroads into the stagnant patches of denied populace and thus seeking to alleviate through meaningful policy implementation the building up simmering heat of anger and frustration seeking to find escape from the poverty and misery throug feeble futilities, has provided a basis of ineffectual closed circuit latency in the governing processes, to transcend beyond the social realm, to infect the sublime individual emotion of languishing despair and tindered the patient endurance of hopes nourished to become self consuming conflagration of hopeless procedural existence into lethal uncompromising instruments of social disorder in the face of the pathetic lethargy of unexhausted blunders within the repetitous ineffectiveness at basic discharge of responsibilities within continental leadership.

 

The overall continental development process needs radical reconsideration at its core component levels at shorter intervals for effective repositioning of evolving variables of changing social priorities to be in concordance with the rapidly changing reality. The seemingly static governing machinery which defines social reality and creates the socio-economic environment within which individual and social grouping expctations and productive behaviour are realised, for explicable reasons, is at a severe retarded disparity with the existing system component definition of expected provisions. The disparity between constituents  correlation of expected and realised variables creates severe system instability. There is a requirement for a core component of stability that is positioned to adjust the components and the variable combinatorial outcome states of the general system as the basic formulations of social and infrastructural development undergo rapid transformation as humanity as a whole enters a new age. (This center expectedly should be a capable leadership role, positioned to mediate the transitional shift.) With regards to education, no matter how altered he format for the transmission of knowledge, as before and shall still be, the articalation of knowledge will remain the cornestone of social growth, and more than social growth and development, social reorientation. Education needs a medium of transfer, access to accumulated knowledge is a critical modifier that provides clarity and enables a basis for reconstructing changing reality. The mass of this articulated knowledge, that drives present day society has been engedered in external social systems, but the lessons therein accruing are nevertheless relevant. Relevancy in education has mutiple and diverse inferential determinancy, ranging from learning for creating awareness to the age old unresolved issue of the practicality of academia. Undisplaced from its centrality is the unwavering awareness that an educated society is a hopefully positioned society ready to take advantage of its changing circumstances. (The traditional educational modes like the rest of the traditional has for the main outlived its usefulness, and is applicable for moral rather than creative engagement of mind states for constructive realism.)  The physical premises within which these education takes place must complement the process of mind activation. In short the centers of knowledge acquisition at all levels must be physically upgraded to have creature comforts and the provision of material states that will facilitate adequacy of acquisition in the learning proces. Thus, there is a need for total elimination of crumbling infrastructures and dilapidated sheds that are painful reflections of disoriented systems in chaotic evolution with just that bit of restraint that prevents disorder from becoming mayhem. The society must set in letters and diagrams an agenda for raising the educational media to the high status becoming of it, transforming edifices of education into physical structures expressing exulted beauty in architecture, the highest possible attainment for the common good in educational instituitions, right from crechés to research instituitions. Education is needed complement to sustain social development and economic progress. The advancements in technology and the insights of the information age, need be applied with rigorous co-optation to educational processes. The societies must seek for and couple their feeble educational systems with willing patterns across the span of human societies, where, presciently there are willing minds waiting for assertive governments and leaders to ask for assistance and joint projects that by aiding and uplifting just emerging systems, enable the accessibility to all the latent talents wasting away, in forgotten paths of murky obscurity. Failure at leadership levela has intruded its effect onto the general populace as massed failure. As compassionate humans, acknowledging our grandeur as awesome feats of created intellect beyond comprehension, by failing to seek for and give expanded expression to idle minds in forgotten and forsaken desolation, humanity have have made possible an impossibly realised society of mind closure in a timescape of unimaginable possibilities. Education is frantically ancient in its conception and its delivery, it needs a quantum jump, in the process making adult centered skill improvement and acquisition standard formats within reach of all. The advantages of mutilingualism, the development of cross border shared economies, yielding mutual benefits, marketing towns and educational centers, designed to modern city state formats, will bring peace among societies stranded across coloured lines on pieces of papers and magnetised strips of plastic. Humanity is higher than any of its thoughts and the more society is pushed towards the realisation of ever high states of being, the higher the mind state rises to handle the petty fractious disputes that are sour aftertastes in the mouth of history. As society rises over and above selfish self-limiting destructive proclivities of social aberrants, and begins to dip into the traditional storehouse of social morals as existed in the traditional societies matched to the thinking tinkering of uplifted mind sets, a course is set for the attainment of the desired higher state, by eliminating the stumbling blocks of materially deprived and all the physical manifestation or the absence thereof of poverty and its entrapments on the social mind set. At that stage education acquires its actual role of a means of liberating the fettered mind to revel in the unlimited potentials of universal discovery; creativity revealed, unveiled, and multiplied without pause, for a good course; to acknowledge the awesome wisdom of the creator and we his handiwork. A true celebration that never stops as mankind engages in non-trivial pursuits of wholesome participation, where none is deliberately side roaded and fitted into a category of undesirable. Even at in its worst state, the individual human is an awesome testimony of fearfully created and incredibly beautiful expression of wisdom in harmonious disarray that must be retuned. Instead of avoiding the grim reality of being the the bottom of material development, African society must see this as an incentive for unrestrained experimentation of speeding growth, instead of hanging onto frail strings of weakly propped external models, the continent has nothing to lose from picking all the positive lessons of these previous trailblazers, activating its masses to indulge their creativity to transcend and supercede with an aim to social development, united with the mind set of the hurting, working peacefully towards relief on a grand scale.       

 

No matter how considered, there is an underlining simplicity that prevails through every good idea. The sort of advancements that have projected societies outwards and upwards, have been denominated on simple ideas with a humane face. Complexity evolves as a leisure pastime to occupy fastidious minds bent on stretching the viably simple. Those who dwell in the luxury of simple provisions that benefit a large swath of humanity at any one place in time appreciate the truth that stable society's are built on the equally available provisions of simple all encompassing required necessities. If all of the continents problem lie at the foot of that unfathamoble reality; poverty, then ideas must begin to emerge as to how to eradicate the social menace of poverty within the peculiarity of the continent's unique setting. Society needs to be distinctively split along two accomodating distinctive categorisations. There is the larger social responsibility of general social provisions and there is a wider encompassing reality of individually driven ambition to achieve attained states of social and economic success. The latter is a quinstessentially exploitative process that can be mellowed by the instituitionalisation of constituitional and legal provisions that enable the emergence of effectual benefits of competitive superiority through unhindered but regulated participation. The former is where leadership must on a continental level begin exploring the possibilities of far fetched ideas to convert desperation into creativity that liberates. The issue of physical deprivations, inadequate infrastructure, and dirty environments are the foremost primary indicators of poverty. The secondary layer indicators, such as, lack of education, unemployment and inadequate renumerations or incomes, are predicated on the former. The higher level expressions such as the absence of rule of law and the lack of application of the fundamental code of human rights, are aesthetics, the absence of which in implementation reduces humans to barbaric monsters. The higher level expressivity of lack of participatory democracy, unavoidably denies the provision of the afore mentioned, but monarchs are known to have been enlightened benevolents, providing their subjects with improved states of being. The obvious question that springs to mind is, what is it that poses such a difficulty to the continent's leadership that, they are unable to combine commonplace raw materials and sculpt out decent infrastructure? Why can't the leaders copy to adapt and implement on a grand scale the basic infrastructural requirements? And what are the leaders waiting for? The slave traders came from across the oceans, mixed palm products, clay and seashells, and left edifices of sterling durability, despicable memories of their acts of pillage and trickery, nonetheless stolid evidence that the resources for building monumental structures of everyday relevance and comfortability, is not the sole preserve of any economic system, but rather within the grasp of daring adventurous, ready to stretch their mind sets; people who are ready to take their destinies in their own hands and exploit their envinronmental resources to improve on their primary states of being. What has been learnt? What is keeping the continent from implementing borrowed knowledge to provide infrastructural needs and improve existing crumbling inadequate infrastructure, on a grand scale? Selfishness and a lack of leadership qualities that desires to achieve for the benefit of the weak and the masses, more than inadequacy of mental capacities on any grand scale lies at the root of the continent's problem. The fear that by improving the status and primary conditions of others one stands the risk of status usurpation, more than any other hindrance, has and continues to be the core factor amidst the unending stream of emerging problems that hinder continental growth and development at the relevant level of those 'marginalised weaklings' most in need of assistance, these are the rural poor and the urban desperates. It is clear that the truely great leaders are yet to emerge. Greatness is bestowed by the masses on the select, who have truly achieved, not for themselves but for their people. The great leader is the one who is conscious is sensitised to the sufferings of the weakest and situationally rendered most insignificant of their subjects and utmost responsibilities. By cutting through the tightning coils of never satisfied satiated selfish to address the needs of their most neglected human and social responsibilities they cut out their humble achievements in the minds of the people, renewed with each passing generation, till polished by the passage of time and embellished memory, they become immortalised heroes, engraved forever in the collective memory. Their emergence is made no easy when every person hinges his individual gain on same delimited patronising debt of political gratitude from elected office holders. The payment of which debt invariably demands some bending of official rules of conduct and appropriate behaviour on the part of a power wielder (yes, there is a set of unwritten rules that has as its base, staunch and unyielding respect for the weak and the denied in the moral standards that guard and guide a true leader's conscience and behaviour. Which rules, already unfair to the majority is further bent negatively to benefit selfish interests under inefficient leaders.) Certainly, leaders owe a debt of responsibility that in their acts of governing find recompense that yield benefits across the board. The question therefore that all the continent's leaders need to pose themselves is "are we in line to be heroes of the people or villians?"

 

Organisational psychologists contend that the effective utilisation of people in any organised effort has always been a pressing problem in society. In a typical complex organisation, the Chief Executive is constantly resolving the problem of defining a goal for the organisation, organising work to achieve the selected goals, recruiting, training, allocating and managing an equitable work force. Such an executive must also consider how to create work conditions, a reward and punishment system that will enable workers and managers to maintain high effectiveness and sufficient morale to remain effective over a long period of time. They have to contend with how to change the organisation in response to pressures arising from technological and social change, both in the external environment and from within the organisation. They have to cope with competition and other forces from other organisations, from units within their own organisations such as unions, as well as regulatory agencies, and unavoidably from their own evolving with time. These and many other questions are embedded in any organisation and have to be faced and resolved by managers, bureaucrats, politicians and leaders.

Such organisational questions can be viewed from two perspectives, these are the perspectives of the worker or individual employee who depends upon the organisation as a source of work, economic livelihood, membership, identity, social contract, and basic life routines, acknowledging the fact that most people in society spend the bulk of their working hours in some form of organisation. The second perspective is that of the manager of the organisation, who creates policies and makes decisions which affect the day to day routines of large numbers of individuals and which ultimately affect the destiny of the organisation as a whole. It is asserted that this latter perspective is a kind of organisational perspective, which clearly indicates that the organisation is not an abstract entity, rather it finds expression through the acts of individual members occupying key managerial and leadership roles.

Both workers and managers perceive the organisation as a psychological entity affecting them in any myriad of ways. The quality or quantity of work, research indicates is related to the individual's image of the organisation as a whole, not just the specific requirements and characteristics of the work one is involved in or the immediate monetary incentives. Yet psychologists do confirm that the system of rewards and punishments created by organisations have a major impact on effectiveness of workers.

 

Organisation studies indicate that the typical organisation is a complex social system and almost all questions related to the determination of individual human behaviour within the organisation have to be viewed from that unique organisational perspective and its social system. Recognition of this social system has given rise to issues not limited to individual behaviour per se, but the behaviour of groups, sub systems, and  the total organisation in response to internal and external stimuli.

Current interest, focuses on the non static nature of systems. Systems change and evolve in response to internal and external forces, the implication being that to obtain an adequate meaning of issues arising in organisational context from a psychological perspective, there is need to acknowledge the concept of total systems interacting with complex environments.

If the micro world of organisations can be compared with larger systems like nations, then efficiency in a national management will involve the active manipulation of all segments of the system components of the nation, just like in organisations.

 

Presently, the best conceptual framework for describing an organisation is in terms of an open system. A system is the arrangement and relationship among component parts that operate as a whole. By this conceptualisation, each component in a system is a subsystem that has some system properties of its own. The various components of a system form an elaborate web of causal connections, so that a change in one component will set of a chain reaction in other components of the system. The resulting change is not always exactly predictable for both the component that initiated the change and the other components because of the complexity of the relationships.

It is the case that those who have the responsibility of deciding the direction an organisation will take and who hold the authority to move it towards its goals are the single most important factor in determining an organisations success or failure. The quality of an organisation's administrators will determine its success; successful administrators will anticipate change, vigorously exploit opportunities where they exist, correct poor performance and lead the organisation towards its objectives.

 

 For the continental system, conceptualised as an organisation requiring committed effort, there are numerous severe lapses, and unexplored potentials, where successful administrators will have to reorient leadership initiatives to utilise hitherto underexplored potentials to promote the positively relevant growth of the systemic whole.

 

Flexible mind states that are adaptable, are the bedrocks for the emergence of a truly sustainable socio-economic system. The unique qualities of the people combined with the realisations of other mind states applied with unyielding zeal and diveristy to generate the sustainable enthusiam and pride to achieve as a society for all, yields definite and concrete results. The awesome diveristy of creative abilities and raw unexploited talent that belies the superficial grittiness of layered poverty will rinse off to reveal the diamond sharp brighteness of purified mind states that are unbreakable in their resolve to better their lot, only when the appropriate leaders begin to shape for directive focusing the diffused dispensation of unfocused energy in pursuit of trivial mundalities. The people must be awakened to the reality of true knowledge, true knowledge is simple and easily appreciated, its efforts and results contribute to adding value without limitation to the depths and heights of the diveristy of the human spectrum. The knowledge that has a guise of deceptive complexity yet in its wake has left suffering and pain, may traverse the known universe but its fruit shows its deceptiviness as the apogee of human intellectual attainment, in the wake of the attainments of those preceding knowldge have been sown the seeds of social immolation that is yet healing, the lessons to be acquired from those knowledge sources must be wisely discerned and selectively adapted to yield expected ends. The utmost application of the outcomes of general human mental development will be to make humans out of the restrained wickedness that is afraid of its shadow in the wake of its wickedness. More than anything is the need for awareness that all good things are emergent of the noble abilities enthrusted to humanity, the gifts of an awesome creator whose sublime presence in human spirits gives meaning to the universe humans inhibit and are striving to appreciate. In their appreciation of it they acknowledge the creator with reverence, yet seem to dismiss with a simpletons ease the underlieying principle, that whatever humans have sought to adapt and craft at whatever level of mental growth and development, they have with greed limited in accessibility to others so that a few can play 'god' above others, is nevertheless freely given and has and will continue to outlive any one person, and possibly all of humanity, whether in its original state or in altered states. In lieu of this, the continent and its people are limited only by the narrowness of their visionary capacities. All good things should be provided in acknowledgement of the creator who out of wisdom created all things out of nothing and set it before man, to be enjoyed in appreciation, yet man has set limits to the joy, by artfully, in crudity, elevating inversely to the depths of the heights of humanities depravity and wickedness and denying the majority so that the few can delve and relish in the accumulated misery of the masses, who have been blinded to pursue the same worthless ambitions of meaningless materialism and coverted power that imprisons. Even in seeking to break out of the delusion of miserly conduct that passes for governance and corporate power, humanity has postulated social theories that in their application frustrate the people in bondage entangling them ever tighter in a knot they have tied with blossomy relish in confabulating knowledge. Suffering and material poverty are mind states generated in physical realism of seeming deprivation(s) of access to some form of material provision. The unloosening of the knot, in a way is two fold, the benevolency of supervised access that does not deny, yet with a view to maintaining order and positive directive influence which enables unhindered and unlimited acessibility to the collective realisations of human acts and preoccupations. The second is the collective mind set redirected to appreciate the vanity of stockpilling pieces of materials that in a great distortion of reality have usurped the position of their creators and acquisitors, becoming centers of attention when in reality (it) they (is) are (a) facilitatory (medium) media of social coexistence.

 

Existence itself has assumed repetitious expositions of ungainly eccentricities bothering on the abnormal being accepted by the larger society as commonplace occurences that no longer cause costernation, so much so that first principles that form the basis of meaningful social organisation have been buried under pretence, layered in meaningless complexities that in twisting the giddy masses, who already unsteady in an evolving social system that has eroded the basic guarantees of meaningful existence, denuding simple desires and substituting a camouflage of ineptitude, that the masses in a haze of confusion, (like sleepwalkers pursue with ardent purposiveness only to awake to the sweaty realism of that gray zone between sleep and reality, realising with uncoordinated regret or surprise, clutching the vaporizing images with a willful desire of some displaced accomplishment,) reaping the futility of pursuing materialistic self centered, money driven goals that displace the centrality of humanity in all human affairs. While there is definitely nothing wrong with ambitious drive to excell, there certainly is everything wrong with making material acquisition the centrality of human existence, and money the basis for individual and social accomplishment, without conditional qualification. In the pervesion of normality, money an material acquisition has become an end value, irrespective of the means by which it is acquired, once successfully in ones possession, there is not only social acceptance but social approbium accorded. From the individual to the society and from the society embracing the individual, the basis for social acceptance is as aberrant as the valued substance of social attainment. In the emerging societies on the continent, the promoting of market economy, capitalism and the concurrent deriding of social welfare systems indicate without ambiguity that if there is any turning of social values on its head, there are many more spins in dynamic propulsion that will if unchecked not only slam the whole society against a wall, but the schisms of unjust differentials between the have and havenots will deepen the trickling despair into raging floods of unsupressable dissent in an ocean of grief. The rich and empowered will increase their poaching skills, and the resentment of the excluded by default, will ensure an athmosphere of all tainting insecurity and fear. In effect there is conceptualised in limited visions and realised in physical reality the unending nightmare of closed mind sets accepting without qualification and adjustment a borrowed concept extolled by societies that have set their major priorities wrong, centering money and sidelinning the essential fact that these pieces of papers and scraps of metals are meant to serve as intermediary variables of related relevance. In a way while these obvious realities of discarded idealistic musings underlie the very basis of the deception that perpetuates misery, humans in all their intellectual dissuasions choose to deceive and coerce an equally inane populace to accept and believe that there is a wayout of rut that ends in glaring dead end. (the brick wall of ineptitude has assumed invincibility, as society somnolently or ignorantly choose not to acknowledge a need for a retracing of the way back to first principles of human values and rerouting the way forward, while acknowledging the experience gained on the route traversed hitherto).

 

In the emerging economies of the continent there is a need to refigure exactly the process of facilitating adequacy of normalcy in the ease with which individuals approximate acceptably high quality levels of existence. To wit a child must be born to willing and capable couples. The child must have access to health care and supplementary diets. There must be in existence a financial support system for mothers and their children in families beneath certain income levels throughout the pre school years. Each child must receive equal support irrespective of the parents financial background. This is an ungetioated responsibility, held in check for far too long. To stretch the existing social welfare mechanisms available to secure this continental social responsibility justifies at a basic level society's tax liabilities. Children who are undernourished, deprived of meaningful existence and material provisions, because of indequate social frameworks that will ensure fair and equitable distribution of the commonwealth, can have little benefit from and yet still less to contribute to a free education school system. They are the potential talents that never find expression through massive and sustained system default. Working mothers must have access to creches and dayhomes of the highest quality possible. Liberating for improvement the unique intellectual and creative element of feminity, hitherto locked between the shackles of feeble febrilities of immatured male domestic hegemony and misdirected diffusion of feminine strength in pursuit of excesses of limited consequences.

 

"Until the children you produce and nurture in the blight of unrelenting deprivations; prepared for a future mapped in the blackhole of uncertainties, assume their proper positioning on a carefully mapped certainty of meaningful existence, woman, you labour in vain"

 

Clothing and child support must be provided to complement nutritious diets at state sponsored day care centers. The state and its provisos will remain center stage in determining the future outcomes of the continent's people, irrespective of how much contribution  private sector investment and iniative assumes in the continent's economic affairs. All must have access to decent, high quality housing provisions whether from one's own effort or through some form of social provision. The bottom line is that no one is denied the basic infrastructural provisions that are desired and need be provided by the government. The schools for the young, pre school, primary and junior secondary education must have the infrastructure that spurs creative budding of latent talent. There is a need to emphasise a required developmental improvement over and above iron sheets thrown over four pools on a dust plain that passes for a school. The deferred postponment of "riktiga" infrastructure, the provision of environments that effuse healthy beauty and inspires spontaneous poetic expressiveness of souls in exultation of the achievements of the mind set to a task is a standing standard requirement of human existence, an experience, denied the continental masses for far too long. To accept ugliness as an excuse of stunted mind processes that have instutionalised poverty as an accepted norm of a peverse society, pervesity forced down the unwilling throats of people hungry for the realisation of beauty in exploding diversity is tantamount to rejecting the glory of God infused in humanity to reflect his beauty in ourselves. These are states of minds, mind sets of bubbling hopes rising through to the top of the waters of illusionary impossibilities. Possibility and impossibiity exist as opposing counterparts, just like light and darkness. The two are incompatible and yet define their mutual existence, the presence of the one dissolves the seeming omnicient weightiness of the other. The beauty of worthy existence is not the sole requisite of any delimited segment of society, to be measured out by the largesse of any overlord, it is a gift of nature enabled us to be realised and relished in celebration of our worthiness as a collective entity. If the people are looking for inspiration, they need not look far, within the soul of staggering poverty, pain and desolate desolusion and restive spirits seeking for redemption from they know not what, belies an immense stirring of unlimited energy to create, creativity is emergent of dire circumstances, it is a reaching down deep in defiance of the odds, the odds are the challenges that quicken, to arouse, to seek for solutions that edify. The higher expressivity of achievements in the face of daunting improbabilities evocates from within the inner recesses of the respledent mind, which is equipped of a bottomless ladder of applicatory enhancements of coping and innovativeness, in a manner not unlike the base unrefined physical response of fight or flight. Every expression of that survival extinct is the end product of complex processes in detail and accumulated experience of generations of practiced and refined exquisiteness that enables an effectively quick response in exact sequence. On the other hand it is also a gift of creation in synchronous modulation with time and circumstances. In effect there is an unlimited possibility to readjust on the wider social level under the configuring directive influence of a socially rather than a self oriented leadership bent on realising for the whole society, acknowledging that the diversity of individual talents in a hyperdrive to achieve can be collated and chanelled to realise each individual inspiration in the context of elated and elevated social dimensions that (which social setting)  become the well spring for, a base, a well laid foundation where the hopes of the masses are liberated on the perseverance of individual talents finding expressive ability in the appropriate environment, and in reverse becoming pillars that support the average upward levering of society. While society cannot provide equality of abilities, it can enable the social organisation that in providing unhindered opportunities liberates that creative intellect to yield its values to improve and add value to the social systemic whole. The sought for equality is an approximation of acceptability available to everyone without being an obstacles for those who will strive when others are content. All children of school going age must draw equally from the child education support fund, until their years of education have been satiated through natural capability. The ideas, that set the pattern of what to aim for is not the sole recluse or preserve of capitalist market economy realisations. Social arrangements should ensure that, all its benefits prevail across the aboard, independent of socio-economic philosophic orientations of the preffered ruling class. The facilitatory social organisation that edifies the true value of life in each and every one of the species, takes precedence over superficial leanings that are temporary. This is the worthy idealism that should encapsulate the governing process. (If building a settlement within the emptiness that lies beyond the beauty of awesome life giving sustenance that humans inhabit is an imaginative reality realised, then how much more idealistic it sounds when the mind set, is set, to setting a pattern of wholesome existence, for all without exception, and taking the smug of the chin of the those who delight in the misery of the masses to boot. The accomplishments that signify worlds within worlds are minimised within their limited states of delusionary senses of accomplishment. In the midst of the heights of these infractions on the complemetary uniformity of natures rhythmic unity, suffering and despair of unimaginable proportions permeate the thin air of polluted purity in a dance of greed holding sway in the halls of power.) The worlds in worlds are layered into dissolving pains beyond the grappling minds of increasing inadequacy, emerging itself from the darkness of impositions that burden unrelentingly, widened in scope and passed on. Limiting itself by its limitations, the mind set narrows its self gratifying lenses into delimited space and peers outward with hopeless certainty.

 

                                    The Swing

(Inextricably linked in cycles that could be looped with gaiety, bringing joy in its stead or swung with wicked intent slapping -cutting- its pain on -into- crumbling shoulders.)

                         

The hyphenated negative connotations of deprivations that occassion the continent are the road signs of the way forward, not the "finitos" of an undesired end stage that imprisons. The third will like the second world borrow and adapt and refuse to be unhindered by traditions and beliefs that perpetuate mediocrity, garnering in its stead of changing evolvements, accolades applauding the creators of development based on humane factors at peace with nature. There is a need to complement nature as society progresses, rather than perceive development as ugliness that despoils the natural contours of natures' rhythm. A seemingly forceful departure from the complementarity that sustains natures balance, even if that complementarity is of 'a culling nature', has occassioned what passes for despoilation of nature without conscious remonstrance, what humankind has in for the larger part of the twentienth century extolled as the sings of progressive. The industrialisation process that passed for human progress was for its larger part an aggressive, immatured, experimental reaction, initially a radical survival attempt at nature engineering to sustain human beeds, then an expanded sophistication within its limited constraints of typefied economics and in its progressive adaptation a response to its detrimental aspects. For the continent entering industrial age at a time when there has been pressured conscious response requirement for industrial activities, development in terms of providing for the expanded needs of increasing populace, requires more than the acquired installment of outmoded technology. It is an active and persistent to match the needs of the times with the technological provisions most responsive to the complementary adaptiveness of the human-nature interphase. Therein lies the way ahead, to adapt to improve within the abundancy of natures provisions, firming the seemingly unlimited supply of iron laced sand into a firmness that is malleable in the sculptors hand bringing forth beauty that exudes excellence and reaffirms the hopeful desire to live in the shadow of minds that are in concordance with the grace of nature, artfully transformed and adding insight to the obvious, instantaneuosly transforming, achieving a replacement therapy of structural grace that edifies human existence and uplifts the spirit of the awesome creator within us. The whole of nature is a grand architecture of never ending diversity and awesome intricacy reflecting an aspect of human creative potential that the limitations of restricted minds and constricting situational limitations of underdeveloped societies has not enabled Africa to exploit in applicatory enhancement in dignifying aspects of human constructive realism. Though all of the continent efforts at rising above nature have been in humble adaptation to natures determinates rather than forcing nature into grotesque submission into grandiose hackings of natural rhythm in a brutish desecretaions of natures rhthmic contours. The availability of the means to 'rend apart' in an injurious way natures sublimeness in pursuit of short-term self aggranisement ends, has in its totality caused excessive stress to nature and enabled a few to wallow in short term creature comforts at the expense of the sustainable strength of natures supportive mechanism. The continent, it must reiterated, must seek for development in complementarity with nature. The mind must be freed from the garbled deceits of failed systems, grossly distorted, starving the graceful positioning of humanity in the scheme of things and cheapening the priceless quality of human life, substituting satisfaction short circuited to irriatate the majority of the deprived in the wastefulness of its limitations. Away with the ugly dispensations of the heights of the depths of human wickedness, extolled with pervese brashness in the marketplace of the extremities of deviance remodified to have a face of acceptability, in the midst of its handiworks, the woes of humanities anguish, celebrated and framed, shall ye acknowledge its worth. Awaken ye who lie in the darkness of depair and break free of the chains of suppression, set free the mind to realise new horizons. While preaching may assuage the pain of souls in spiritual anguish, and hopefully enable closing the gap between man and his/her creator. Yet, just as it is man who has distanced himself from a willing and benevolent creator, likewise can one realistically affirm that in every evolving human social arrangement there are emergent positive aspects that if isolated and pursued are likely to yield diversities of positive effects displacing and hopefully cancelling the negatives. Invariably there is within the very designation of human makeup, the aspect that exudes within the social evolvement of dynamic systems, an overflow of abundance of negations and negativities, there are often short term and immediate gratification from the preffered proffered advantages that some of these negations offer. (They are like the speedy highs of potent narcotics that eventually destroy the 'user abuser', but offer instataneous exhillirating effects so pleasantly profound from the individual emotional viewpoint, that it is easy to succumb to the succubus of inevitable destruction for the short term gratification.)

The slack of unutilised capable manpower wasting away, is more often a reflection of inadequacy of management skill at the national and continental level that cannot configure human resources into needed activities that yield gratutious benefits for the systemic whole, enabling these hitherto wasted and sidelined human capacity bleeding to waste in exasperating uselessness to expend their energy creatively within a social arrangement designed to expand to accomodate the dynamically widening society with its incrementally diversified needs. The span of activities that the people can occupy themselves with defy the puny imaginative capacities of any individual or group of people according themselves the qualification of defining the limits of social components capacities. There are no limitations to what task configurations society can designate to occupy its constituents. The task of creative leadership is reflected in energy directed towards the realisation of  socially self emerging designating malleability towards diversity in attained and presciently existing states of evolved social state that merely requires directive influence.

 

In a hypothetical state of being, the heights of absurdity are attained when production capacities lie unutilised, deliberately shut down when many are without the products such a manufacturing units are producing. Men have drawn imaginary barriers of wicked intentions and devised wise words and deceptive mechanisations to perpetuate their wicked intents in the midst of the abundancy, of freely given resources, they have set themselves as task masters of vicious stinginess. They sit "respledent" amidst the groanings of compatriots who water their growing and ever increasing wealths with others swelling tears of humuliation and shame. These are the worth beings configured into categories of varied usefulness, varying into vented ventillations of energy pursuing the wind in search of meaningfulness in the desert of want.  Men have taken to playing God with disastrous consequences for all mankind, they have desired to measure out goodwill and adjudicate mercy with material things. They sit in self satisfaction, presiding over the anguish of their compatriots, in acknowledgement of their inadequacies as men much more a higher a benevolent creator. The enlightenement of the developed is a qualified state of inhibitory idiosyncracies of minimalist perfectionism in constrained space. The whole technological and scientific advancement process is itself a class act of infantile puerility. The glorious acclamations of the apogee of its attainments are in terms of weapons of destruction. The majority of humanity are denied access to its positive aspects, supposed to project the whole of humanity higher on the evolving mental plane of assumed higher potentials. Its controllers have annexed its benefits as its sole beneficiaries and in the true light of its immaturity, which in itself is indicative of the whole of human growth, are tightening ever closer the bounds of inclusiveness that exclude and deny with a contrast that magnify the deprivations of those in need. There is barely elightment other than the imperfections of insignificant delusory insight into things beyond the comprehension of the unheeding. The continent has little of true value to learn, in terms of the development goals of the totality. In its bounded attempts of all compounding extension of equally desirable end goals, they have at the heights of this stunted growth, decried the welfare state and socialism, hyping the capitalist glory of denied accessibility, that pits the advantaged against the disadvantaged for the prize of worthless pieces of paper and bits of metal, in the realism of disparaging human worthiness, the object of unparalled value drained of its uniqueness and made to assume expendability with acquiscing humulity. The objects of our collective mind, created to facilitate ease of interaction have by an aberration of inconsequentialities of questionable morality and sensibility assumed center stage. Setting into motion a reverse process of destructive consequences.

 

Jesus called his disciples to him and said,

"I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way."

His disciples answered, "Where could we get enough bread in this remote place to feed such a crowd?"

"How many loaves do you have? Jesus asked.

"Seven," they replied, "and a few small fish."

He told the crowd to sit down on the ground. Then he took the seven loaves and the fish, and when he had given thanks, he broke them and gave them to the disciples, amd they in turn to the people. They all ate and were satisfied. Afterwards the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was four thousand, besides women and children. Matthew 15: 32-38.

 

Humility begins with acknowledgement of malfeasance. An openness to acknowledge gross deficits and a willingness to learn. Learning is seeking to understand with a view to improve on existing circumstamces, least of all to provide diversity. There is everything wrong with a world structured such that man's twisted mentality exultates in the wasteful abundance of others misery, credited as states of higher civility and driving ambition. The externally developed and yet evolving model is built on transient transigency of frailties that are disconnected from the true worthiness of humanity,  and must be adapted to ensure social equanimity, irrespective of how irreplaceable it is made to look, anything that goes against common sense (unfortunately clichéd to be uncommon) is a traversty of decency. The very art of social transformation is akin to- analogically depicting- the delicate rebalancing of hair weight springs and finely grooved wheels, perfectly tuned yet malfunctioning with a precision that is predictable, though imprecise in its wholesome adequacy. The society as it is, is functioning in all its existent componential constituents, as a delicately balanced network of viable interconnected and interrelated components, but it is an outmoded viability that is out of sync with its external reality, the external reality is the powerful, intrusive  emergent forces caling for extrusion of existent cultural artifacts and the redefinition of dependency elements. These elements are social artifacts directly affecting continental states of approbious existence and deliberately crafted to keep development under leash on the continent to manipulative influences controlling global financial systems whose activities have more or less condoned inadequate leadership roles to wreck massive havoc in the pitiable lives of the masses of the people. There is nothing wrong or manipulative about this 'control element' emergent from external sources, in that, for so long as the continent has been unable to be build structures, well established enough to offer viable acceptable alternatives to this external determinancies they have no choice but to find realisation within the definitions of these external instituitions. However, there is everything wrong when the internal continental system organisation is not pursuing a determined course to take advantage of the existing facilities and developments emergent from these external sources to design and set in motion a gradual but nevertheless, certain, self affirmativeness, in determining progressive policies independent of external determinancies. While the discussion is not geared towards moral philosophy, there can be very little doubt that the sort of concerned leadership required for setting this required progressive agenda, requires large doses of honesty and concern for the 'insignificant social elements' who by being configured prominently into any form of social reorientation set a target for continental development. The point becomes more meaningful when one considers that the individual elements of the continent, as stated elsewhere have by means of monetary facilitation grafted themselves into external social benefits and outcomes, but the society itself as a whole is lagging severely by all considerations. Any meaningful development has to embrace the poor and denied members of society. To seek to rectify the error of neglect on that analogically depicted time mechanism is a delicate task of rebalancing.

 

 Set forth straight simple lines of simplicity, in easily discernible form, let its beauty inspire to conjure forth the light sealed in the darkness of despair. Liberating the joy that seeks to enlighten and shine forth its message of hope, the seeds of worthiness sown on receptive minds taking root and yielding harvests of abundant satisfaction. The old in falling, fertilise the prepared land and enable the sprouting forth of the sturdy saplings ripening in the sun, sustaining the hope of the generations and the cycles yet unfolding. "Out of the strong, something to eat, and out of the dead something living." Let despair give forth hope in its unyielding resilience, let the light dispell the gloom, and let the filth fertilise to bring forth life and beauty. In the heat of the midday sun in the unending stretch of the deserts of tormentous heat, feel the dew of the dawn of the awakening day and taste the sweetness of joy exploding in the light breaking into living colours of hope, springing out of tiny bubbles of living waters delicately balanced on blades of greenery.

 

We retrace into the past and discern the lesson only to misapply them. Christ died and ordained the celebration of the death that opened the door to a future of hope. Humans live their lives of fleeting futility, celebrate death and remain in the same position.

 

Even while there is an obvious wallowing in the mediocrity of 'braked' development at the highest mental and psychic level of leadership. The gradualism of the eventuality of the inevitable has not seen a discerning acknowledgement for a reorientation on the 'road' into the blurry future. The clarity of the errors that commit humanity into a lopsided overrated depressive disillusionment of delusions of high attainment of fragile inconsequentials is not nudging the 'pointers' enough from refiguring priorities of human existence within the limited scope of present day dimension; the needed reevalauation of priorities from the perspective of the substance of the material basis and the emergence of the beginnings of a definition for  a new course, to serve as the foundation on which to plan an expected future for the evolving society. At present there seems to be in progress a 'knee jerk' random selection of self effacing measures in a directionless society refusing to acknowledge its basic primary error. Each autonomous 'knee jerk' reaction to internal crisis produces an 'adrenaline rush' of 'quick fix' immediate solutions, but what is required in this continentally comtinent sustained 'emergency syndrome' is total reevaluation from fundamental states and a proper diagnosticism, spread over a wider time stream which should enable the beginning of a course of treatment at the end of the assessment of the inbuilt frailities in these old and unsustainable internal structures that bedevil this very ancient piece of human grouping, stuck seemingly, in the senile mentality dragging a young body into a unneeded destruction. The mind must find renewal to sustain the rejuvenated body of the youthful dash into tranformed modernity. The febrile senility of weak leadership must seek to find expression through higher mind activities seeking to divulge the tenacious irrelevancies of selfish traditionalism to a more relevant social humanism as the guiding light of the evolving governing process. A sustained deliberately ingrained social inclusiveness in contradiction to vague and barely appreciable slogan touting preference for some distant and ineffectual identification with some experimental form of social organisation. The absence of an unambiguous philosophical grounding to focus the social definitiveness of the totality of aspired projections in tandem with bordering external worldly systems, leads to diversionary pausities that effectually detracts the whole society from maintaining a consistent pattern of growth. In its stead there emerges rickety, halting uncontinuous development that is more responsive to the whims and idiosyncracies of each batch of leaders assuming brief stints in the various continental leadership roles. Yet the continent requires for any sustainable development policies that have tenacity independent of individuals, rooted in deep seated belief and purposive directiveness, established and articulated as a socially relevant philosophy that bulwarks continental development against the buffetings of temporal hindrances. Which sidetrackings, in the absence of grounded directive social philisophy, to enable reorientation further confound an already pertubed continent, stagnating any hope of quick recovery in the organisational labyrinth of trials and errors, a situation which  may otherwise in sidetracking the projected expectations in realisation, lead to, as is presently the case spiralling decandence. Thus the question if posed, of what the philosophical foundation of the continent's developmental idealiams are and on what assumptions these ideas are built, which underlie the inadequately all embracing developmental policies, such a question will yield a regurgitation of mindlimiting closed circuit ejections of what has barely sustained other systems from falling apart, borrowed without systemic adaptation to fuse with a defined system specific idealism. If there is one thing that binds all the continents diverse societies together, it is variations of poverty and ample room for creative application ranging from the nonfeasible mind states needing to be liberated to liberate and produce creatively physical provisions for extreme states of deprivaties. There is enough initiative to delight all the quirky minds seeking for something to do and for the ideas to concretise into appreciable attainments of mind over matter. The 'pointers' of the evolving continent must as a collective, acknowledge their inadequacies (as positive invigorants that will propel) as a basis for fashioning an appropriate direction for growth.

 

Apparently there seems to be self centered satisfaction that posses the smirky self gratifying notion on the part of misguided 'pointers' that once 'I' have struggled and beaten the odds, then others could and should, but in the same thought process could it be suggested that 'you' were sustained to prevail against the odds so that others needn't go through the same suffering! Of what worth is any individual struggle to break frontiers of human barriers if it would not change the course of all humanity. At the height of achievement are the truly great ones most humble. The most difficult notion to accept  of these reasoning set, seems to pose the belief that suffering is inevitable to humans and human situations, certainly it is not, all of human progress has been in the direction of lessening the pain of brutish existence, (though the deviations to excell at technological designations that could bring the process to a close suggest differently, it is a choice of application of what can have beneficial effects all round and has served a highly qualified positive deterence purpose), it would seem a reversal to the same mind state if after overcoming the odds, the human entity then designs barriers in his cleverness to prevent the undeterred benefit of these developments from reaching all of humanity. That it is so, is an indication of severe limitations in the collective mind set.

 

There is a stalemating in the brute physicalism of societal motivation for remodification on the continent, there is a need to quickly, if quickly is a realisable concept in terms of achievements that have become commonplace, in infrastructural development and a beginning to refocus on mental pursuits of individual and social development. Errors need be corrected, but correction is an acceptance of viable alternatives that are more fitting to acceptability. Truth is a relative in the void of unending alternatives, mere approximations to the ultimate that is beyond grasp, yet proffered constantly as a single alternate choice to the unending approximations.

 

Organising social systems such that ease of accessibility to acquire the inevitable necessities of normal existence are within range of the populace is the fundamental requirement of leadership. These basic requirements have undergone transformation with the passage of time and the diversity enabled by technological developments. However the core components have remained unchanged. Human beings desire and need to live in decent environments and in the post-industrial age, the infrastructural provisions that enable these decent socio-environmental standards to be met can be provided on wholescale basis adequately through government intervention. The issue is not so much the fact that poor people are undesirous of these creature comforts, but the issue is that in the age of so called modernity, by far too many people are languishing for want of primarily everything that justifies technological development as a mark of human evolution and  higher mind states. That all are seeking to have and participate in these developments, is an indication of a certain parity in the dimensional shift that has occasioned human evolution. To evolve is undoubtedly an irrefutable syncopating of the circle of time and natural adaptation to fit in with the changes that occasion the lapse of time in motion. It is the basic responsibility of the societies and their leadership, or the leadership as such societies determine as appropriate, for harnessing the disparate individual energies to formative creativity with social relevance, to set forth a broad and all encompassing agenda of not only what, but also the quality of that 'what', which has been designated as the essential and formost pursuits of that society. Here it is only logical to assume that anything worth expending resources to realise, (no matter how those resources are configered and controlled to set limits to their availability as part of the game of organised society that for want of better becomes the focus of infusing excitment and meaning into the otherwise humdrum non spirituality lifestyle extolled as civilised existence) is worth doing well. This simple dictum implies a need for a major reorientation in terms of enhancing projects undertaken within any society, as previously briefly mentioned, there needs to be a significant aesthetic qualification in infrastructural development. It is that permeating element of the sublime beauty of God in the human being. Simple lines realised with an intention to complement the beauty of nature, rather than dumpings of pieces of blocks that are poor excuses of realisations that awaken the joy of being alive in man.  Good governance, in a sense thus has as its primary objective, the establishment of the conditions where every single person is positioned to activate the potential capabilities and the latent talents in each person, without necessarily facing an unrelenting wall of frustration at every turn. When the typical government is maintaining a meaningless status quo of uninspired ever tightening coils of dehumanising inconsequentialities designed by wily minds with an evil intention, there is a major gap betwen intentions and desires between leaders and the governed. There is possibly no magic wand to wave away the problems of insufficiency, but it is the depths of inefficiency when no attempt is idealised and pursued to break the tormenting bonds of worthless theorisations that in their deceptive finality has acted as huge chambers of unrelenting torment.

 

The diffusion of a barely emergent, clearcut, designation of the aspirations of the masses, for continetal directional patterned evolvement in societies in a transformation shift, consistently articulated by leadership due to system incapacitation to reorient and ensure balance of equanimity in equilibrating forces of incongruent subsystem constituent variabes, is in many ways a diffraction of leadership responsibilities, which, in its inability to refocus and focus the directional influence variables within the general system has led to critical core dysfunctional definition of priorities projected. The whole governing process spectrum is a wild dishevelled disjoint of wisdom in massive disarray seeking to tackle a diversity of split discordancies with conspicuously antagonistic end measures that by temporarily alleviating problems at one end and concurrently generating and worsening new and previously existing untackled problems at the opposite end of the social dimension, in effect lead to stolid social accretiveness in reactive structured problem solution and innovative social reorganisation. Conclusively, such breakdowns in what should be a linkage of clearly and cleverly structured strings of complementing social reactive response measures to anticipated and emerging problems, becomes in reverse belated, insufficient, inconclusive half-measures that in attempting solutions creates destabilising social angst within some significant segment of the social whole.  

 

There is a need for serious reconsideration of what social organisation entails beyond the vilified concept of the money economy. At present everything hinges on the economy, but the economy as far as the individual within the social system is concerned hinges on money meeting their available provisional requirements. The initiative of the whole creative mentality of Africa has been chained into a crisis state of stressed induced survival maneuverability, manipulated with destructive discomfubulation at various states of statal anxiety. But much as social organisation has over time congealed around this basic essentiality of social interaction, the concept is not by itself an inelastic contrivance of certainty, more so when it has in its present state perpetuated a humanely undesired state of greedy acquisitiveness in the face of primary human deprivations. In a world brimming with endless possibilities, the continents possibilities end at this fragile machinations of contrived convenience. The greater and more relevant issues of how to position human beings within creation such that each being is actively appreciative of all that is within its potential utilisabilty and actually coming into position to apply these resources to ease his or her state of existence, has been pushed further and further off center as the paramount primary nexus of all social organisation. The existing system may acknowledge this essential requirement, yet its acts focus on balancing the economy that by is by its very designation, an unbalanced state of inequality actively promoted to realise inequality as a cheerished end. There is nothing per se wrong with the social instituition of economic rationalisation in any guise, be it capitalist market economy or any other variation of social welfarism, the essential issue of consideration, is that there has been a deliberate holding back from the whole human society's benefit the fullest and totally unhindered benefit of collective human created worthiness due to the manipulatory barriers of economic theorisations and power brokers. Power applied to intellectual capabilities, exist to promote liberalisation of constrained souls. Yet by its works and its effectual espousals, is this systems power and knowledge identified as the perpetrators of enforced debilitation. There should be amelioration of economic theorisations and applicatory capabilities to widen the range of beneficience of human creative intellect, however in an inane and incomprehensible manner, the leadership are designating logic and reason as it were to endemnify a faulty social process, and pass on that error as the fundamentals of meaningful existence. In effect the short sightedness of imperfection has been parcelled out unchallenged as veracities of irrefutable, unnegotiated foundations of human, socially configured existence. For the African, while the temporary condoning of this primary error is inevitable in the absence of effectively articulated counterpart substitute measures articulated with clarity from a reasoning opposition disengaged from the narrow personality counter-cult attack mentality of the perceivable alternative fora. The efforts to begin a worthy social configuration for dispensing the existing effectual productive efforts of the collective creative intellect productively to instigate social equitability is an unnegotiated requirement for long term social development and individual growth unhindered by socially imposed obstacles, whether those social obstacles to full individual development of the self for social benefit is intended or the unintended consequences of foibles in the leadership role, presently existing on the continent. Else, the obvious deprivations and torments that this inefficient, yet highly hailed, existing, social organisation has exacted in terms of frustrated individuals perishing with their talents undeveloped (and continues to be promoted), extolled in smug satisfaction of thinly veiled vain gloriousness, evident at the heights of its limited attainment,  is nothing short of a dissipating effort that labels and denies, instead of seeking to uplift, by experimenting with viable alternatives. In reality set against the progressive developments in other viable external systems, what in terms of social organisation, on the continent is accomodated as acceptable devleopments, is a painfully abnoxious subsystem of irrelevant, outdated, inadequacies of introverted benevolence, a left over vestigial lingerings of dissipated overlordship of leaders with conditional consideration for general society only if it serves their personal interest. Embellished with the passage of years, modern society is still firmly within the clutches of a clique of closed minds untampered by the suffering of despairing humanity over whom they crack their wanton whips of wickedness, but why should these leaders not continue in their abysmal failures of unvarnished crudity, when their track record indemnifies their acts of leadership, through a quiscent public confirmation that mediocrity is acceptable. Parcelled out as hope, severely controlled, and niggardly dispensed with a beggarlly intent, doled out to a humanity burning with frustrated made believe inadequacy, in the midst of unimaginable possibilities. The rest of mankind have been deliberately lured into a tunnel vision of extolled ineffectiveness that has limited relevance. (Unless there is a masterplan with clever intent which the heights of cultivated knowledge are yet to reveal, it is perfectly normal to assume that there is a marked deficit that needs major rectification - which no single human grouping has sole insight to - Thus reference could effectively be made to gross inefficiencies, and major short circuiting in the assumed perfection of capitalist democracies, the defining social philisophical grounding of the leading social systems defining the general direction of the wider society.) While virulent criticism serves no end purpose, peremptorily, attention is drawn to the relevancy of the issue of contextual interest by pointing out glaring loopholes in assumed consistencies of tried and tested systems that have stood the test of time. The robber economics is a card game gone on for far too long. The game has become a tedious boredom sustained by the gatekeepers to the inner recesses of the darkroom, where the players in the darkness of illicit activities are out of tune with the demands of an emerging new day and its requirements. The economics of relevancy to desired social organisation, is the value laden economics of viable sustenance that seeks to allocate the unlimited abundance of human inventiveness, allocating roles and positions that adequately allocate humans to purposes in a grand acclamation of universal participation in human progress. Not the present rationalisation of inadequacies shored up by meaningless deferment to incapable leaders posturing in acts of gross pretentious infallibility. The subtle twist that edifies a culture of hoarding, placing barriers to accessibility, to create a meaningless adulation of irrelevancies in the midst of postponned immediacies is contrary to expected outcomes. Unless there is an underlying virtue that effectively explains such simple existing verities as the widening gap of the extremities of poverty and wealth, access to and inaccessibility to available modifications of natures freely given resources (right from the intangible inquisitive mind state of tenacious will to break existing barriers of bounded knowledge to the material realisations of organised systems), accepted and explained away with expounded adoration as the basis of a bold new world, there certainly is everything immoral and incisively desiring of correction. At what stage of attained growth in a dynamic system of unceasing cyclical evolutions will there be a softning of hearts that eschew greed and selfish suppression to maximise meaningless differentiation, extolled ad naseum to rationalise the heights of human stupidity (stupidity again is qualified to indicate bounded and limited knowledge in the face of ample room for improvement). The leaders at all levels of the wider society have failed at their task, at best they supervise mediocrity in the face of unlimited possibilities to extend the benign spread of desired, easily realisable ends. In their failure they have pushed their misguided tools of suppression and infected ignorant innocence to follow their path in pursuit of vain glories that do not edify. To wit, of what relevance is technology and development from which the masses of the people are barred from participating in, by the exact same process of mind liberation that has enabled these developments to become instituitionalised?

 

You are the light of the world.

A city on a hill cannot be hidden.

Neither do people light a lamp

and put it under a bowl.

Instead they put it on its stand,

and it gives light to everyone

in the house.

In the same way let your light shine before men

that they may see your good deeds and praise

your Father in heaven.

Matthew 5: 14-16.

 

When the accumulated knowledge of humanity's progress and growth is exhausted on the global resolution for alleviating human inadequacies, and establishing a platform of unhindered universal progress, then leadership actually begins to show the qualities most desired and sought for, in it, at the highest quality of rendition it is capable of. On the contrary when divisions, envy unwarranted, and the hoarding of material inconsequentialities of the irrelevancies that have assumed importance to the overall detriment of humans, continue to be the yardsticks of fractious attainment of limited insight to delimited groupings, gripped fiercely in vaunting the commonality of human differences and variously apportioned and widely scattered spattering of freely given talents to be utilised for the common benefit, then one can sadly affirm that there is a not only a fair amount of the primitive turf protection mentality belying these false façade of modernity and delicately balanced technological advancements that have raised human intellect one notch up, but the whole slippery process of civility and civilisation is a weakly supported mental structure likely to cascade down at a slight nudge. That the global social growth process is a thinly greased façade  of slippery, delicately constructed social reality that still requires rigid group definitive expressibility is as much a construct reality as it is a mind state cultivated, sustained and nurtured, that evidences its nature in the ease with which humans revert to brutish animal state, bestially tearing each other apart with fierce and unrestrained aggressiveness at the slightest provocation. In its benign state, it is a faceless, emotionless, hijacked growth that is self appeasing at its highest evolvement and has barely any overall social benefice over and above the monetary barrier and its gratuity effect. Africa need not pursue the same emotionless socially disengaged materialistic path to social growth, much as material acquisitiveness is an aspect of human nature, it must at all times be tampered by mercy and consideration for others, for after and beyond the materialistic nature and its fulfillment, looms the larger and greater fulfilling realisation that one has in some manner been of value to the species as a whole. The two are not necessarily opposing activities, for inasmuch as exploitative development has been extolled as the only way forward, it is barely a crude stage of finessing the full range of human potentialities. By the blaring inadequacies in existing system designations, a better philosophical orientation as a guiding principle should begin to be formulated, a social philosophical orientation, that is not self limiting in its expression, but a dynamic guiding principle, formulated such that it has as its foremost agenda for varied expressivity, the realisation of utmost quality in the transformation of raw natural talent, resources, and the processes therein involved, engendering within the end target and the social processes designated to attain it, infinite developmental and increasingly effective adaptive potentiality ad infinitum within the organised human setting - man and his environmental resources- for the general benefit at the highest realisable possible state at each time interval of the stream of human existence. Leaders or those who seek to assume the onerous responsibility of formulating a cohesive directional channelling procedure to bring to realisation the diverse interests struggling to find expressive outlets have no other choice than creative widening of the functional human potential utilisation base for adequate distribution of the commonwealth in whatever desired state of realisability commensurate with the requirements of the situational setting. They must have an appreciable formula that is inspiringly relevant over and above the managing of debts and the failures of previous legitimisations of uncertainties that wrecked sustained social havoc in teasingly creating half-measures that have effectively lighted the lamp of hope without any fuel to sustain the flcikering flames. In the obvious awareness of the general consensus that while monetary resources and wealth accumulation have their limited relevancy in limited scopes of individual centered activity in the wider social domain, and that by placing this limited activity at the center of human activity and social organisation and realisation, leaders and the proponents of wealth creation as the central activity of human existence have created a social nuisance of grotesque proportions, the continent and its emergent leaders must begin a recrafting process that places the essential invaluability of human beings and nature at its core, and the facilitatory role of money in their proper positions in the overall scheme of social reconstruction, such that just as water is a daily neccesity of sustainable existence, it does not become a resource that quenches the viability of diverse existence, unhampered by individual limitations of accessibility to adequate monetary resources, instead of just facilitating adequacy of normal existence, through social organisation processes that ensure meaningful existence within the wider social spectrum of different and varying talents.

The essential question that needs to be answered, could be posed as; what is the essence of human existence and what form of social organisation could be engineered to coordinate the fullest realisation of this essence?  As regards the fulcrum position of money and wealth creation as the nexus of societies in gradations of approximation to expected end states of desired material provisos of satisfactory attainment - inwardly, as self constituent entities in interaction with other systems of defined social organisations in bounded and identifiable territorial configurations of imagined, made believed, identifiable superiority - So long as there are significant reservations among a broad band of existing global society as regarding the adequacy of existing social systems that deliberately render redundant, otherwise productive talent, through deliberate manipulation of social mechanisms, rendering vivacious beings seeking to find expressive reality within designated social configurations practically redundant, preventing these individuals from meaningful existence by curtailing their productive relevance, preventing them from participating in the socio-economic structuration that permits meaningful existence. The existing social compartmentalisations of active contributory expenditure of the energetic life force that invariably delineate explorative creativity in the existing social reality is only partially individually fulfilling and overall, socially debilitating in its inability to adequately generate a closed linkage of end to end solutions that enable closed systems dynamic effects. And for so long as those social designations have an inbuilt limiting factor that unjustifiably excludes and in its appropriating influence of rendering value and worthiness within narrow constraints, society is grossly inadequate in its organising capabilities. The pursuit of the basic tenets of this social organisation will certainly live in its wake enormous wastage of priceless human resources. The premise of historic precedents of the utilisation of human effort and the expected profitable organisation of human capacities to yield social goals and dignify the individual worth, has hinged on the expropriation of the positive potential of massed communal strength to satisfy the deviant abberant desires of cliques of a tormented ruler class, who have utilised the destructive potential of the mind set in unrelenting pursuit of puerile goals, that places the individual acqusitive desire above the common well being of society in general. The mind set that is supposed to lead towards positive ends,  has found adequacy of utmost expression in selfish gratifications, made possible by the active manipulation of material benefits, that to have value had to be cleverly constrained from ease of accessibility to all without exception, enabling their imposed values to assume reality through limitation. Demand and supply thus become refined mental manipulables realised in a quota system that delimits through a skillfull chain of constructed reality of pervasive suffering to enable a 'financial kingclass' and their acolytes in 'pointer' positions, positioned at the very top of the social organisation, in positions that enable them to carry out their gatekeeping role of limiting the fullest participation of all in the progressive benefits enabled by the inventive element of human nature; for them and their favoured acolytes to play to the adulations of a deceived humanity, manipulated and entrapped in an enticing cycle of deception. ( It is not so much that reason needs to be made of it, but that these manipulable contrivancies of social organisation by providing no viable alternatives create a false impression of a taken for granted acknowledgement that suffering is inseparable from human existence. That even where the means exist to lighten the woeful burden of seeking to find meaningful existence, it is normal to pepertuate painful existence. Absurdity has found acceptability among the masses because the masses have been denied meaningful alternatives. Not that the masses lack perceptual acuity to call for redefinition, rather the directional finders have doubled back and diffused the leadership responsibility with vague socially irrelevant self centered interests.)

The functional responsibility of evolving leadership in Africa is not so much capital accumulation (the ridiculous effort to build foreign exchange reserves, in a projected perspective, for reconsideration, is indeed foreign to the activity of governement, government in end terms must dispensate resources created through an effective mobilisation of the resources both human and material at its collective control. Thus while there is little argument as to the fact that you need to accumulate to redistribute, there is a yawning gap of inadequate mind set, expressed unambiguously as a set of policies or ideas of expected governance, creating as it were an awareness of a gradual replacement substituition that becomes a sine qua non as the continental system disengages gradually from excessive foreign dependence and builds up its internal capacity to be self sustaining. To effectively determine its projected developmental outcomes, there must be clear cut openly debated purposiveness to broad social organisation themes of relevance across varied stratas of realisable expectancies, built into debatable philosophies that centers on the fullest realisation of human worth. There is an ever widening gap within the social consensus in the establishing of the philosophical underpinnings of what the exact nature of the expected outcomes should be for the continent, the gap basically has developed from divergence between the individual expectations and the leadership's articulation of the means by which there can be a bridging between actual leadership task realisations and the system's needs.

To assume that the thought patterns of the purposes of leadership is a sole prerogative of the idealistic musings of political entities serving their limited aspirations of reality grounded in fundamental principles of social organisation that are severely flawed and have common appeal by enticing the  base materialistic selfish interest rather than the general communal growth aspiration calls for remedial measures.

What needs to be at the focus of long term aspirations within the governing process remains unambivalently the organisation of society such that in its progressive dynamism it has ever widening scope of inclusivity, rather than the existing marginal provisions at the edge of the excluded and increasing improvements in the narrow inclusive segmentation of unfairly advantaged. As suggested elsewhere, the expectation that there will be 'fallout effect' from this exclusive band of wealthy in the encircling of deepening poverty, as touted by the capitalist theories of market economy is severely restricted by conditions, that facilitate 'a spread effect' of wealth, which nonexisting conditional provisions within the existing social structure, only increases the desire to exclude and protect the self interest. In which state there is not likely to be the expected overall social upgrading emerging from a solely individual initiative motivated by the profit motive.

To attain the goal of overall societal inclusion in continental drive for improved human states of existence, there is the need to assume a factual view of the underlying reality of the basis of existing state of intolerable deprivation in the larger segment of the social divide and from this source begins the emergence of definitive formulation of what all desire but many are denied due to system ineffectiveness in renegotiating the social adjustment process that is inevitable in the constant change that occasions the time and human social boundary interface.

The value systems set into place as the basis of assessing wealth and states of development is very much within the manipulable influence of society. Thus the wealth of a fairly successful individual within the dimensions of the present economic designations that places value on material wealth, may dispose an individual in a capitalist economy to have wealth calculated to be more than the earnings of a whole society of specified geographical configuration, yet this end measure begins to disintegrate in its relevance when the complex social dimensions of human consequences and expected nonarithemetical tabulation of mere summations, rather such outcomes as wasted lives, unnecessary misery, and profound dehumanisation enters as the multiplier effect in the social computational process. Thus governments may be absolutely useless in circumstances, where leadership focuses on personal monetary acquisitions through fair or foul means, yet that material acquisition becomes irrelevant to the actual leadership task, in the light of absolute human potential activation processes which have been substituted for self centered interests. In effect for the emerging African societies, the philosophical  assumptiom of social organisation must be considered from a perspective that eschews the all finality of money as the end worth. Here there needs to be an assessment based on the sort of social organisation that enables fulfillment at all levels of society. Money and wealth acquisition thus become incentive at the individual level, though not contrived to be the ultimate societal goal, thus enabling the leadership to be more focused on deriving governmental principles solidly grounded in non-specific, but adaptable humanistic principles that places the benign mercy of the divine principles of mercy and compassion in the exercising of power and the fulfillment of the provisional requirements of authourity.

The balancing of equitable distribution of basic developmental needs at individual and sociatal level, material provisions, employment needs, and an accomodating environment that does not dampen individual initiative, must be delicately balanced and firmly rooted to ensure viable and creative social millieu. (That some societies have approximated this idealism, without removing the restrains that will enable optimum participation of commonly desired ends is incontrovertible. There are lessons to be learnt but the continent will inevitably evolve within the reality of its unique conditions, without being in contraposition or in consideration of existing system influences.)

 

There is no greater calling than to serve your fellow men…no greater contribution than to help the weak. There is no greater satisfaction than to have done it well -Walther Reuther, as president of the United Auto Workers.

 

 

The incessant pursuit of monetary acquisition as an end and the absences and gapping lacks in task execution due to the dishonesty that occasions material acqusitiveness as an end game of the ruling class, is itself a sympton of the poorly developed economic infrastructure, which itself is a consequence of wider social chaos of improperly formulated social organisational priorities. In socially intergrated organised settings, where capitalist market systems are synchronous with effective social provisions and comparatively higher accessibility to individual development media, as well as creative realisation of personal desires with social worth, the central position of money as the central issue of economic organisation begins to assume a secondary position of a need to induce spending rather than hoarding. The problem with the developing continental systems are that, there has not been that adequatly prolonged period for the stabilisation of unrehearsed implemented or socially emergent developmental processes that are symptomatic of non agrarian traditional  presently evolving states of social organisation, loosely defined as modern society (the truth is that Africa is hardly a modern transitional society, rather a traditional society with individual pockets of fairly flimsy modernity) that will balance the process of social engineering with acquired experiential knowledge over time has not enabled that state of unlimited opportunities built upon adequate social infrastructure. Thus whatever is desired in terms of the social framework must find definitive expression, projected unto the existing inadequate social reality, with an intense machination to radically eradicate and replace, rather than assuming that as the society engages in a series of unconnected, occasionally disruptive, haphazardly evolved socially disconnected wild gamble stabs at disparate aspects of required whole instituitional reforms, there will emerge over some long run, the expected transformed (modern) society.

The rabid pursuit of capitalism must be tempered by the realisation that the exponents of this ideology of state organisation had a fairly prolonged period of liberal state provision of essential social requirements and infrastructural needs. When there was a saturation level attained in these social provisions such that maintaining the essential statal workforce that assume responsibility was a drain of resources on a redundant activity, they were then positioned to focus on the expanded opportunities that these foundations enabled private investment to supercede the quality of state provisions. It is therefore necessary for leadership in the evolving African situation to be fairly liberal where it comes to the building of the infrastructural requirements for effective capitalist economies. To remove this essential factor condition of social provisory preparedness for unrelenting capitalist profit oriented marketplace of crushing competitiveness, is less likely to yield the expected benefits for the majority of the deprived masses. Whatever benefits accrue to the open market system of capitalist oriented economic planning must be allowed to flower, however the required expectation of leadership to upgrade society by enabling the provision of the firm foundation upon which this socio-economic organisation can be firmly grounded to effectively add value to existing society must not be obviated. There is a not altogether valid fear that if the process is not effectively balanced, in the bid to match socio-economic progress in external systems, there will be a permanent large underclass of shadowy denied subgroupings from the edge of society seeking to find meaning and integration into a narrow mainstream of economically succesful grouping of socially advantaged.  Already emerging, it will make social co-existence tense and unbearably dangerous. The failure of mlitary governments was their excessive reliance on ad hocism as a revolutionary depletion of resources they had done nothing to accumulate, as quick-fix solutions to problems beyond their inflexible mind capacities, disciplined to be unanalytic responsive subservients, the military lack the tactical explorative inventiveness and were least interested in securing the qualified mind set to employ these skills from the society to evolve far reaching creative decision making, that can best exploited the continent's unique positioning in time and place. The problem with evolving democracies on the continent seems to be short gap, vote winning strategies, with real term economic maximaisation of inadequacies craftily manipulated to perpetuate continental 'underdoggism.' From 'the children of the land', the succumbing with far too much ease into the larger external system requirements that staunch staunchily continental ease of growth and improvement across the social spectrum. By grafting or seeking to find expressive creative leadership role within the narrow confinements of the dictates of these external dictates, larger society directly thwarts individual initiative, preventing enhancement realisation hope fulfilliment aspirations by depriving the society of the structural provisions within which meaningful individual achievement can be realised. Depriving society of the needed truthful explanations to explain their unending despair  and at the same time failing to provide the broad all embracing social road maps into a better future, while with practised ease and distasteful parlance leaders ease into lies and unrealisable rhetorics built on shaken foundations of nonexistent social frameworks just to win votes. There is an absence of a far reaching social philosophy that in mingling with the leaders ambitious drive, ensconced in some individual philosophy of fair play and hard work, will hone the sense of honesty within the collective responsive conscience. It seems that for now, the leaders having done a quick take of the miasma of the entangled mess that compound the politics of inefficient economic systems tottering at collapse, opt for garbled rudimentarism of toeing some ill defined line of expected leadership perfomance from some discomfitting external setting, leisurely formulated by idle minds musing within made believe mind states of assumed reality, and in applying the broad outlines of these postulation sink their societies ever deeper into the quicksand of social dissolution along patented lines of 'haves' and 'have nots'. They then adopt the easy way out, borrow as much money as the government can from the international funding agencies and allocate a sustaining quota for personal long term sustenance. Meanwhile the academicians who should be involved in the intergration of the common expectation towards the formulating of a grounded social philosophy that will frame long tern development, mapping the way ahead, are hindered from participating in government as an involved and rewarded group, but pander as individuals for political appointments as means of easing the pains of inadequate income. In the vacuum that is thus created, short term, ten year and five development policies are polished and rehashed as the basis of government action. Meanwhile the international community which itself is a faulty, constantly adjusting imperfect institution of stressed individuals perpetuating lopsided development policies, become the source of appreciable model for a projected future, of a setting that has conditional relevance to their existence. There are serious problems!  (While there may be no easy solutions at least making an effort to begin the slow process at rectification is apropos.) As to who lays the broad outlines of appropriate social development projections, it must be pointed out that making the assumptions that underlie development plans will benefit from insightful minds but it is not the sole preserve of any one individual, but a communal effort at establishing the ground rules and broad specifications that are responsive to changing circumstances. While foreign expertise is appreciably relevant in assisting in many areas of development need, such foreign interests lack the emotional and in a way "spiritual" link between the people and their society and its needs; and thus are severely shortchanged in ability to formulate long ranging policies with adequacy of sustainable solution, realised within the natural environments of the continent. It does make a difference to exclude local insight due to the observation that the locals on their own have been unable to provide solutions to problems engendered in their midst. It is enough to acknowledge that social progress proceeds at situatioanally instigated initiative to introduce novelty on a limited scale and at the larger social level of communal provision of desired structuration towards desired ends. This is the larger social consideration that revolves around the significant others who cannot exercise any initiative due to social constraints, and barriers that inherently impose limitations to the physical realisations of the highest ideals. Gradually, this begins to clarify the previously expressed cognition that there are no inherent inferiorities that markedly distinguish between superficially different societies. Each has the potential, that if nurtured, and provided for within the adequate environments find expressivity as capable appreciable creative ability that modifies the raw provision of nature, to sculpt reflective grandeaur that heightens natures supportive capacity to sustain humans and their complement environment at the highest level of attained mental capabilities, in time and place. Whatever solution that emerges to any peculiar problem requires local participation if it is to be sustainable and productively replicable, undergoing transformative upgrading with applicatory enhancement.

 

To reiterate an obvious observation, there are aspects of social designation that are ephemeral but have assumed a permanency that is stultifying and conclusively defective social mechanisations that thwart overall human progress and development. These appendages of external suppresive classicism, are in many cases obvious, since they belie the underdevelopment and unnecessary suffering of easily realisable end purposes that is keeping humanity in check. They may have served their purposes in some suppresive and dark period of primitive state 'of survival by any means', but in the expanded possibilities made available in comparatively liberating times, - from the limitations of brawn and the inexpansivity of the hindered mind states primed to survival instincts- their presence and influence are detractive to the fullest and essential ultimate utilisation potential capability of the existing collective mind. Thus the palpably attained possibilities enabled by the liberated mind set needs to be freed from the excessively emphatic trivial pursuit of basic material exigencies of acceptable and desired comfortability in the light of realised transformative diversity of manufacturing processes. Rather the liberated mind set must make the required general provision of these material consumptive aspect of the human nature as an intermediary provisional step to the actual utilisaton of the full range of the human potential in the quest of continental human transformational processes. (To the controlling influence of leadership that minimises the fullest impact of the worthiness of this processes to the larger masses of humanity in distress, there is a need for humble re-appraisal of the obvious (reality) that there is no need to misplace the vaunted pride of accomplishment through uncomplemetary unsophisticated economics of limited consequences focusing on excessive materialism and its acquisitive nature. For Africa and the people have found utmost realisation in higher ideals, albeit crudely, of derived satisfaction, in naturally lately developed materialistic orientated social form, from higher mind states of communally derived consequences, that in being adapted to changing circumstances, where the introduction of monetised materialism inserted as a middling part of the transformational social organisation in progress will eventually lead to a stable, contented society set on the higher mind task of unhindered human explorative processes.) The very basis of modern social organisation, the exigency of market economy and capitalist oriented economic policies as the foundation upon which society founders of floats is a gross misconception of indequately conceived and misperceived social linkage.

 

The process of capital infusion as a philantrophical approach of abridging inherent gaps in social development in all its faulty fealty of associative overemphasis on the monetary factor rather than the human element as the core axis of appreciable evaluation of accomplishment, indicates conclusively a need for reconsideration of the foundation of human social organisation in concordance with the emergent reality. The intermediary role of money that is effectively detractive, must be minimised in its impact, in the linkage between needs and the provisions of those needs as the productive capacity and the intellectual creativity that effectuate diversity has developed to the stage where human technological and social organisation skills effectively eradicates supply restrictions of real limitations on production and enablement capacity. The restrictive obverse self interest of closed minds have dorned the discarded robes of controlling power that destroys and are holding humaniry in retrogressive check from mass onward progression of higher mind states by inflicting the contrivancies of complexities of truncated over sophisticatory of national economic interests pursuit. The is a need to begin the construction of accessibilty instruments of social exchange media that regulates the greed of the defective human excess while not hindering the access to provisons that embellish existence within meaningful boundaries. Thus, the social organisation becomes more focussed on the application of advances in micro electronic data cards that regulate access to uncensored product and material needs, while deemphasising contrived limitations to accessibility that underlies poverty and deprivations at the core of social instability in developing systems. When accumulated wealth due to varied productive and creative efforts is indicated in a value system that find limited exchange at higher levels or more precisely, relevant levels, of inter instituitional exchange, the exchange modality at individual consumer need level will then find a proper positioning at a feasible exchange mechanism that faciitates social coherence without detracting government effort at stabilising around the equanimous organisation to realise common needs at a fairly adequate basis without inbuilt processes that favour subgroupings unfairly. To achieve this sort of social organisation the continnt must begin to rethink the basic foundations of inefficient modalities that perpetuate social 'split'.  The 'split' refers to the aforementioned unparalled growth and development within the social mass the favours the materially and monetraily robust while providng little or no room for the poor to improve on their existing states of nominal existence.

 

The unique opportunity of well funded governments at independence (where the passing of power was peaceful) enabled the continent in its early state to define the axis of its social-evolution with a humanitarian intent at leadership level. The changing times and quickly depleted coffers, presented another set of realities pari passu the continents barely scratched transformational infrastructural provisions. The idea of conjuring a continental setting of unlimited possibilities predispose Africa to reorient and set a humanely radical fast-forward, progressive, human centered social development goal. While there is a common aspiration seeking to find expression within the constraints of existing chaos. There is little doubt on any mind, even the most ignorant at the worst extremities of the superficial social class designations built on the unfair distribution of accessibility to human enhancement avenues that the reality of realisation in concrete terms is far beyond mer idealisations. For the majority of humans the issue is not mountains of stashed wealth in the midst of unmitigated suffering and limited opportunities; the issue is not comfortable positions of employment avenues in the midst of crippling delusory underutilisation of human potential capability; the issue is not a desire to occupy positions of influence for the realisation of merely selfish interests. For the average man the issue is the sort of social organisation that enables the creative manipulation of leadership skills to catalyse creative thinking cutting across the society to realise meaningful existence by sharing equally with the option of a choice in the available existing reality, realised at the highest level imaginable. It is a sort of desired for social organisation that cannot be realised within the contingencies of existing systems of economic and social disposition to glorify lopsided materialism as an end. Even for the few who are lucky enough to become beneficiaries of excessive wealth in developing societies in Africa, there is a dearth of lack at the general social level that makes meaningless their overall wealth. Wealth thus becomes an entrapment of frustration, it can be obscenely displayed with deep reservations even in the most greedy in the midst of poverty that leaks and stains with sticky adherence its emotional outpourings of despair, sucking away all the joys of simpe existence; even escape to pretentiously spend such wealth in external systems is a flight of fancy in the grip of ridicule. The African leadership apparatus has no choice but to embark in conjunction with external systems instituitions, a renegotiated social agenda of equitable development that not only centers on equitable distribution of wealth, but more importantly the opening of doors for all to participate in the development and continental construction task meaningfully.

 

The whole basis of inequality is based on limited access to expected ends. The end that lies presently at the beginning of human deprivations is money, money itself is not the source of the problem that creates social inequality, though through its mediatory capacity it underlies the evetual expression of it. It is a social configuration that to all intents has outlived its usefulness in where seeking social balance becomes a focal issue, it has placed greed that exploits and abuses as a desirable end goal, over and above the essential human appraisal of dignified existence across the board, that eliminates the variables that breed frustration and engender violence and desperate acts of social destabilisation. To wit most people are indifferent to their location in place and social setting, so long as they are content with the provisos that sustain stable, normal and respectable existence. Within the context of aiming to realise this fundamental condition, of decent existence society wide, the continent and its leadership have to set at the fore simple clearcut moulds for society's construct reality. Mankind in general has been on an exodus of displacement over time and that journey has taken them across known geographical locations in search of expected realisation of social equitability and justified  existence. In their strive they have broken boundaries of restriction that impoverish the very spirituality of God's awesome glory in his handiwork. It seems difficult to appreciate that having won the fight against the suppression that intimidates, quenching the fire of the light that liberates the masses huddled in fear and despondency. They have with ease denied the fruits of their labour to compatriots and limited the gains of their effort to those who need it most. Power liberates to empower the weakened and affirms its worthiness in the sights of appreciative intellect by its positively valued constructiveness. Just as the freewill of man given by a benevolent God exalts the awesome grandeaur of God's wisdom in the sight of appreciative mankind, so must puny human leadership acknowledge with great humility their position as enablers of the goodwilll conferred on them with great honour by their people, and set to task to liberate man from the superficial limitations of contrivancies that impede progress, and constrict its worthy capacity to delimited insignificance of petty relevancy. Across the board, one must question what sort of mind set establishes an exploitative social mechanism that consistently pursues a sustained agenda of denying the benefits of development to every member of society, seeking in the light of its inventive awareness to keep others in the darkness of ignorance? And, then in a transigent immorality of normalcy projects a grainy irritation of perpetuating class differences across regional barriers of limited relevance; in effect a replay of the things that are generally accepted as obnoxious and unpleasant, has been centred unto the middle stage of the extolled economic theories of assumed currency that is eroding faster in its conceptualisation of reality the favoured expectations of its human setting than the bare denuded hills of an overfarmed, eroded countryside. The fight having been won, the gains are delimited spoils of a select grouping. There is a noticeable lack of maturation in global leadership as a whole. In the era of expanding possibilities, there has been a setting of faces to the stars while the significant masses of the majority swelter in the deprivations of natures vagaries and the impositions of limited minds setting artificial barriers of limited relevance but widespread consequence, the consequences no matter how varied evetually congeal as  poverty of one sort or the other. (It could be a poverty of deprivations or a poverty of denial to realise one form of desired expectancy or another). Of what relevance is  expounded theorisation on a developmental gap to a woman whose cosmic reality is foreshortened to intense labour, sweating buckets of pain, giving birth to a child whose survival chances are numbered in hours, and his only solace is the salt browned corrugated iron sheet roof of a dingy clinic, when the means exist to upgrade standards to dignify existence, in this God given beauty, despoiled and sucked dry of reason on the anvils of a reality that is surreal in its objective expressivity. (There is no hope in limited opportunities, and a teaspoon of water cannot but tease with annoying irritation a scorched desert of postponed desirabilities and perpetual bestiality). In the midst of this obnoxious posturing of irrelevacies of worlds within worlds, the least the continent expects from itself is excellence at the highest level of social organisation and the governing processes that activate the concrete manifestation of the desires of the people. The continent must create relevancy within limited configurations that should instigate the desire for the citizens to carve out of the raw provisions of nature a higher and more rewarding existence. Enabling out of that drastically altered continental perception the realisation of long nurtured hopes. The actual process of detailing the complex processes of continental building needs to firmly anchored in renewed mind states of commitment to the weak and the total inclusion of the whole society in progress.

 

"I desire mercy not sacrifice" Matthew 9:13a.

 

The people are a consequence of their unique setting in time and the formative realisation of the events that congeal indicatively to define the existing realities within which they find meaning and realisation. The evolution of a technologically backward Africa, in the presence of an aggressively progressive external system, is a transient state, presumably, however the sort of future the continent will realise for the broader spectrum of its populace remains undiscernible at best and in its existing state places far too much emphasis on exploitative individualism, an individualism for  wealth creation that pays little attention to the social consequences, determined by men straining at the leash of the excesses of the pains of incompetent leaders and unsupportive environments, has been the defining social format within which the continent, still, inordinately, excessively, is influenced by a barely modified external system's rapacious leadership's mind set. Finding definitive expressivity of system focused relevance can hardly be assumed to be a fait accompli. At best there can be a prayer for a change of heart, and an internal focus of enlightened souls freed of the gluey infectious greed of easy material satisfaction in the face of an undesirable alternative of desperate existence of a short life time. The alternative of brutish existence pertains because unbalanced social development has created an alternate class of suffering people who are denied by leadership failure of a better alternative throughout their lifetimes. Survival is the issue at stake, historical relevance of social innovation of far reaching proportions that sets a determined course of commonly realised goals in some hazy uncertain future, pales before the realism of the clawing demands of immediate family and bare self protection interests.

 

(If only a fatherless child can steer this tottering ship on an ocean of stormy untempered despair, then it will require an army of dedicated bachelors and spinsters to enforce and supervise the ground  rules of expected behaviour in the face of adversity).

 

There is however immense possibility for the emerging societies of Africa to turn their underdeveloped states into a potentially poised state of readiness to transform the core definitional categorisations of its social configurations, to embark on a course of development that has at its core the essential human element in complementary relation with his natural environment, as it were presently, existing reality clearly indicates that previously attained states of development, that has been mainly rudimentary agrarian societies with inept technological advaces, have outlived significant relevance. As the centers of industrial development go through a developmental shift upwards into new definitional categories of core technological elements. There is emerging a realistic hope -that needs to be firmly and widely effectuated within the developing societies- that just as the process of cultural absorption of external developments have moved other civilisations through and into hitherto nonexistent states of development, so there exists the welcoming respite that the continent's growth and amelioration process is capable of adaptive capacity along lines determined in the interest of the masses and to the extent that its constituents desire it to be. Africa (south of the Sahara) is set in isolatary demarcation by natural forces of creation, its inhabitants have been secured generally, in isolatary noninterference and survived in natures conforming realm maintaining a uniqueness of identity and values. There are certain perculiarities in that separation which will and have come strongly into play as the continent awakens to its sublime potentialities in gradual self discovery quickened by the pain of its labouring rebirth into a new era. The post agrarian traditional era, will be defined by forces and circumstances over and beyond the existing reality, resulting in a differing semblance to waning external systems. The onus lies on the people awakening to the reality of the new dawn and setting their course in deeply layered defintions of higher mind states expressing themselves in enigmatic physical constructs; an inner focussing on internal relevancies, in conformity with traditional respect for natures supportive role to be embellished rather than rapaciously assaulted, to realise social sublimation at an exalted state of the greater acknowledgement of God's benevolence at the centrality of human existence. Reflecting that benevolence in honourable leadership realising common goals at the highest attainable states of  complementary co-existence, within the human groupings and between the active human force and the animate and inanimate physical environment. (of nature enhancing complementarity).

 

The whole mind set guiding the development of educational curriculla needs to be reevaluated not merely as an academic exercise of official responsibility, but there is a need to redefine at the earliest stages of knowledge acquisition, specified clearly, what purpose the acquisition of knowledge is to serve in developing awareness of a constantly evolving reality of unlimited dimensions, the sublime infusion of analytic interpretability of quick and easy discernment of knowledge acquisition as an active appreciation of the defining variables that determine certain outcomes, the revelation of the obvious in the midst of uncertainties, must be defined, refined and infused into the whole range of structured knowledge acquisitive process. Such that in the structured format, at the earliest stages of the educational process, creative awareness is engendered and fostered to be an active element of formative thought processes. Nursery school children must recite mindlessly nursery rhymes and made to fantasize in their own compositions of stilted meaninglessness. But the inner peace to enable the opening of the inner mind sets will not be facilitated in physical structures of open shades, peopled by beddraggled youth, dispassionately shuffling through a miserable existence of serialised sorrow, in the midst of awesome natural beauty. Somehow, a way must be found out of the frustration and desperation of existence on the continent, a fusing of the raw edges of human frailty and desperation and the vagaries of nature must be attained and in the process enabling physical expressivities of the gentle nurturing fusion with and in imitation of natures rhythmic beauty. The development of the mind through formal education requires the complementary enviroment of physical structures and provisions that will enable the fullest growth and explorative activities needed to cultivate a viable vivacious culture of creative diversity.

 

To provide for the educational needs of the youth and the adults in instituitions, a suggestion for calibrated cards is made. The calibrated card for facilitating exchange can be pictured in terms of a manager who pays his workers with a credit card. There is no physical exchange of cash but there is facilitated an exchange capability. Assume that every retail outlet has a teller system that is capable of processing this calibrated card. ( A development that will positively enable the effective control of acceptable standards in retail outlets) or that purchases involving calibrated cards can be made at outlets that are amenable to its usage. Then in a carefully contrived dispensation of regulated availabilities of purchasing ability made available through this card everyone without exception is able to obtain essential resources for expected academic needs. Thus a certain specified percentage of usable value weight of the available regularly upgraded calibrated card is usable only for the acquisition of a certain grouping of food items, thus while there is no social imposition on specified usage, control of abnormal and socially unacceptable expenditures on this system of acessibility to purchase is controlled with good intent. Higher purchases that will require spread out payment can be gradually deducted on specified regulated basis, such that, alloted portions of for the purchase of costlier items, are not denied, one cannot have a second or additional piece of costlier items for the sake of a collective interest on the basis of the calibrated card. There are bound to be points of weakness in the allusion, where there will be a breakdown in straightforward and simplistic idealisation, but this points of weakness are the essential joints of needed flexibility where adjustments can be modified with changing circumstances to ensure the sustainable viability of responsive social construction. But if this social dispensation enables all without exception, from school children with cards fitting their needs and requirements to adults - who have all been configured into aspects of the social organisation that enables their effective realisation of their human capabilities for the common benefit - to assume semblance of normal existence across the board. There is thus ensured effectively, the minimisation of the excessive preoccupation with the pursuit of money that preoccupies all of the mind capacities of the majority of the people living virtually no room for creative idealisation needed to expand the existing base of society's development. Then a remarkable headway can be made that will focus the freed mental resources in sustaining society at a level where higher ideals can be realised. It is only worth to indicate that what passes for reality is what has been carved out of mind states to become definitions of reality, thus in seeking to bridge the gap between existing social provisions and desired states of existence, a realisation that must permeate the decision making processes is that often times the existing reality has inbuilt limitations that cannot be reconfigured to become amenable to aspired future states without some form radical departure from existing reality. Thus, for example just because existing states have made the cost of building materials excessively high does not prevent a government bent on upgrading housing conditions from exploring alternative materials and making it available at much lower cost to meet expected ends. The future is in many ways the transformation of existing reality realised in predictable patterns deriving from the existing reality or the drastic reorganisation of the fundamental constituencies of the existing reality and their expression in new hitherto unrealised states of conjured realism in idealism.

 

The biggest challenge facing African societies in the emerging era is equitable social distribution, but for social distribution to become focal issue, there must be adequate resources facilitated through some effective productive process to be made accessible to all, in the absence of the resources to be distributed, equitable social distribution becomes equitable social responsibility. Which requires policy making responsibiltiy to have a wider scope of concern, embracing larger masses of the inhabitants.  Reference is not being made to strangulating social management akin to prison supervision, driven by unrelentless tyranny. However there is a call for correcting the imbalance in the distortion emerging from the negative external influences that is gradually pushing social balance off center into a lopsided categorisation of haves and have nots. Both are the result of the social designation and find definition within the narrow social realisation on ground. Leveraging the social system does not need to set oppossing ends of social groupings against each other in the futile hope of realising short gap measures while what it will take to realise the adequately satisfactory ends are stretched and expanded minds, pushing beyond the pale restrictions of known reality, to realise the common place by exploiting untested grounds. The sort of society that is evolving is overly dependent on the cultivation of one worthy aspect of social organisation, which in itself is only minimally realised, the perseverance of individual intiative to realise rewarding ends, while neglecting the basis of social provisions and infrastructural developments that serves as the identifiable evidence of societal development. In and by itself a worthy pursuit, but in unmitigated circumstances, it often means depriving the weak and the needy to sustain and maintain existing unfairness. There is a need to put in place the social mechanisms that guarantee that while individual initiative continues to find adequacy of expression, the tired and the weak are configured into the social system where all become appreciative constituents of a dynamic rewarding social constituency of progressive citizenry. The challenge is not in a pitted race to access the outer margins of known universe, but to maximise the knowledge acquisition and enable optimun participation in its end benefits across the board. Leaders who cannot effectively articulate this basic ideals and their concrete realisation, while excessively harping on balance of payment deficits are essentially confused by the distortion of reality within which their reality is effectively defined and realised. They need to take a step outside the mudpit of incoherence and seek for clarity of purpose from outside the clinging mudpit. If external systems had approximated the state of a form (and their are variations to the basic form) of social organisation where the means exist to enable the fullest realisation of a society of balanced provision of basic material needs, and then held back, to perpetuate their conscribed nightmares of social class distinction, one wonders whether the satisfaction with their societies will have provided the impetus for imitation of such societies. One wonders, all the same, whether that is where Africa should be seeking for inspiration. There are worthy ideas emergent from such societies that could be borrowed, and taking off from where they have exhausted their goodwill in pursuit of frivolties, continue to create the desired society for the continent and its unique needs. The inner compassion for the undertrodden, the deeper appreciation of natures supportive role, and a bonding desire to attain heights of expressive beauty in our midst. The joy of the freedom that knowledge brings and the motivation that grips all of society to farm the mind and yield its unlimited harvests of possibilities that border on the absurdities of fantasy, should spur the society to acknowledge the awesome value of life without exception and to seek to cultivate its sustenance. Barriers that benefit selfish interests of greedy acquisition and exalted status may have their motivational benefit, but in the midst of so much poverty, such social acclamations of achieved excellence are pervese and indicative of collective malaise of gross inadequacy. Again, one needs to pose the question as to what aspect of implicit social designation prevents the easy pursuit of a maintained course to remove the existing barriers to make available without exception to the collective, the worthy states of achieved excellence? (If the barriers to growth are identified, next, effort must be made to explicitly project a framework that encapsulates a sustained verifiable direction of expected growth that supercedes transient processes within the body politic and existing social reality, and by its ingrained sustained prevalence at the cultivable mind state, mould the evolving social system in expected outcome stages of flexible adaptive progressiveness). From basic requirements of daily social maintenance, such as medical provisions, information technology hardware to all school children without exception or just the general notion of enabling the development of orderly social arrangements within existing context, seeking to maximise whatever resources are accessible and amenable to transformative adaptability, to realise enhancing capability, with an inbuilt self improving designation, that evolved framework, is the suggested social philosophy, that at its minimal state of expressivity demands a progressive social orientation that is all inclusive at its highest state of social philosophising rooted in the values of this ancient society responding to changing needs and in its baser physical realisation as physical constructs. The society needs to express a flexible deterministic guiding philosophy of social designation, aspiration and realisation. The emerging definitive and powerful individual and non central grouping aspirations are far too varied, noncohesive in terms of generational sustainabilityand by their very nature far too dependent on the central authourity actions and decisions of leadership to over time congeal significantly enough to become a sort of natural social philosophy serving as the bedrock of future developmental policy, such influential views arising from within the diversity of interests and viewpoints that constitute the variegation of cultural grouping that constitute continental African societies are transient, inarticulately related to broader social issues, have economic influence as the power base of the sources of the views, and in totality lack the deliberate concerted pro- academic situational uninfluenced futuristic insight required for formulating a stable directional discursive documentary rationalisation of Africa's future agenda that is totally immune to momentarily pertubations of the forces of social dynamism, inasmuch as such a clearly articulate document of deep reflection acknowledging the new paradigm of continental transformation and its criteria of reoriented socially determining variables is responsive and adaptive in shaping a clearcut future of expected realisation that is all encompassing and evocates the continental communal interest.

 

An essential aspect of social organisation is the need to coordinate evolving internal states with external social system variables of relevance, thus bringing to the fore the issue of what to borrow from other trans-continental societies, in what form and how to adapt them to local peculiarities. Rather than assuming that there is a falling into place without deliberate effort to engineer society to absorb without regurgitating these borrowed knowledge, there is expressive need to plan and realise this plan consistently at the higher leadership level. Indeed the widely dispersed individual interests constantly infusing foreign, albeit, amenable knowledge forms, be they technological products or non physical knowledge forms,  become socially more relevant when these diverse incorporations affecting the systemic whole, emanating from the individual level find definitive form, fitting as it were, into a broader societal value system of broadly but productively interconnected clearly defined expectancies.

The need to maintain a semblance of synchronous coexistence between separate but interferring states demand an intermediary supervisory influence between possibly, but not necessarily, opposing interests in constrained spaces of limited viability, viability itself mediated beyond the exertions of wielded ability with an intent to realise subsystem focused interests, but based on shared resources negotiated for mutual benefit. In the wider spectrum of varying ranges of diversified activity, supervisory responsibility with mutual benefits across sub-systems is the delicate balancing act of governance; a process of focusing on optimum states of common interests in the midst of distractive influences of asserted differences. A balancing act which by its inbuilt ease of disintergration of cohesive coordination at boundary points of opposing internal interests makes social coordination of varied interests in the delivery of expected ends a daunting task. For the mediatory role position regulator of these disparately constituted, fiercely independent, self designated constituents of self-serving interest to prevent the subsystems delicately balanced in mutual coexistence of fraying but barely tolerated acknowledgement of mutual coexistence from causing a massive disintergration of the multi bounded boundary definitiveness of social coherence, it must find a center of balance that guarantees mutually realisable ends irrespective of peculiarities of specific sub-system interest. It is a daunting task in poorly formulated circumstances of indistictiveness across several levels. Left unstructured, such systems tend to find self defintive formation of priorities around commonly desired ends, however, while such unit centered definitive realisability of desired ends, in and by itself is commendable; within the wider medium of interacting social influences, there remains the unobviated reality that weaker systems as opposed to systems that have an inbuilt strength of comparative advantage are locked in thinly veiled competition for limited resources. The more advantageously positioned subsystems stand to benefit by exploiting the weaker subsystems in their acquisitive drive, of mutually beneficial ends. in converse the weaker systems exist resiliently maximising their minimum acquisitions of the commonly desired end benefits, bidding their time, and in the course of time their is a dissolution of subsystems differentiation in the weaker subsystems and a formative congregation into a larger subsystem with a common shared designation. The designation of the larger weaker subsystem is a contentious reactive accumulation of potentially system destructive emotions sublimely playing out in the daily drudgery of self sustenance. Within the weaker system of restricted abilities across a wide spectrum of varied ends, there is a common factor that is at the focality of the controlling determinant of their needs, basically all needs have a limit of acquisitive significance and more importantly relevance. To approximate that level of preferred material acquisitiveness that guarantees meaningful existence (existence per se is a state of being alive; meaningfulness of that existence finds definition within existing realities of what constitutes adequacy of expected state of being) the individual constituents exercise expendable purveyable resources at their control, their physical or mental strength, to ease their way into means of remunerative employment, with the aim of acquiring means of enabling meaningful existence. The process is a straight forward segmentation of individual reaction to socially determined outcome states, that if functioning efficiently ensures social tranquillity (the efficiency is a responsive determinant state of adaptation in complex dynamic recombination of variables in constant rearrangement response to changing circumstances and in their rearranged composite response to changing situations have been structured to effectuate expected ends within meaningful boundaries). But there are several zones of brittle fragility that if improperly negotiated causes collapse in social organisation, the wisdom of managing the social balance is to turn these brittle points of potential collapse in civic organisation into flexible zones of social adaptation, a process that in its simple presentation is in its realistic operable maneuvering a tasking mental agony fraught with the frustrated anguish of negotiating invincible barriers that seemibly multiply in rapid geometric proportions with the rate they are painstakingly subtractively eliminated, especially so if the social balancing effort is uncoordinated with the emerging variabilities in developments of significant determinant  external bordering systems whose active variables and the specifities of their combinatorial determinancies of complex intrusive effects are not effectively monitored, analysed and integrated into the core systems evolving deciphering effort of internal state determinant variables and their combinatorial outcome effect, with an aim to integrate for end purposes determined to enable goal realisability across the social stream. Society is composed of subsystems of varying interest working in concordance to realise common goals or in opposition to realise subsystem centered interests, irrespective of the favoured prevailing arrangement, conflicts of interest centered around scarce resources and its distributive accessibility are inevitable. The task of social organisation has been in flux in developing societies, the internal arrangements are imbalanced by gross inadequacies in provisions to safeguard the proper act of individual dispensation of energy in a productively fulfilling social framework. It is the availability of this designated social framework that enables the sustainable development of the provisions of the infrastructural requirements that enables equal accesibility to the foundation needed for individual idiosyncratic dispositions and their desired direction of expressivity unhampered by the social inadequacies in organising capabilities reflected in barriers to socially enabling environment to foster individual talents and promote social tranquillity. In effect  there is a pursuit of monetary adequacy as a means of finding individual sustainability.  But the absence of the facilitatory basis for the realisation of the medium of money, (in the absence of educational facilities, inadequate employment training and retention facilities, the inadequacy of social facilities for absorbing redundant latent human resources, the lack of facilities for developing sustained system widening capacities for diversity in the labour market, etc.) makes mere acquisition of money, or the availability of money half way measures to a complicated social issue. The issue is not resolved by infusing money into the system, (much as it might offer some temporary relief compounded by inflation that eventually worsens an already dire situation) but by a social reconstruction orientation that begins at the mind state and devolves to the provision of physical infrastructure across the board. Basic needs like housing, as previously mentioned, schools of accpetably highest quality, complementing blackboards and chalk with information technology's hardware that opens the knowledge of the world to be interpreted for mind liberation to create, decent environmental layout that blends nature and concrete edifices, the elimination of slums and the upgradement of physical infrastructure in rural and urban settings, are the basic physical realisations of  creative decision making that configures a social infrastructural framework sealed in cogent social philosophy reflective of the unique condition of the African reality; a sort of cognitive ethology at the human level, so to say. In the absence of that essential cognitive awareness that structures the society's  purposes in straightforward realisable steps for the benefit of all without exception, there is nothing but subsystems at polarity sealed to each other and working adversely at cross purposes for the realisation of common ends,  a contradiction that eventuates in system implosion and dissolution with appalling consequences for system constituents and the existing system.

 

Since there is a separation of society along two lines, the haves and the have nots, and the medium of determination of group constituency is material wealth, it is the case that society is seriously impaired by the state of prevailing deficiency in one category which undermines the reality of normal social existence, it is imperative that some coordinated effort at remediation is in order. The resolution of social problems must focus around the critical issue of removing the requirements of the have nots, without drawing the haves into the position of have nots. This simple solution is the outer shell of a complex social organism that is environmentally adaptive, constantly changing to enable survivability without undergoing the total reorientation in the basic building blocks that will in chaging its appearance ensure a more viable organism that equally facilitates the adequacy of provision of essential requirements processed to ensure the supply of required vitality to all its cellular composition. In its present state of existence it is a primitive living organism that in its adaptive evolution has favoured the development of its more favoured active components without transferring stored energy or adequate resources of growth and maintanance factors to less favoured inactive components, which nevertheless are essential in its total realisability as a functional organism. That is where the analogy breaksdown, in viable system states such as society, there is a possible structuring capability that is an essential aspect of social designation at the leadership level that realises the eventual social designation. In effect this implies the making of clearcut specifiable formulations of altering the existing reality to assume the shape of desired outcome at the leadership level, a complex malleability of shifting reactivity to external developments; which external developments are effective upon the whole social organism, but the social organism itself by some self designated weakness is incapable of balanced adaptability across its totality. A tentative structural resolution of the system deficit is to rechannel resources such that there is adequacy of acessibility enabled by a restructuring process that streghthens overall existing framework by balancing the excesses of oversupply to one sector by creating avenues of resource transfer, conducting by determinance to weaker parts of the overall structure to increase their basic structural requirement of adequate states of existence such that the overall system finds stability of sustenance in balanced states of determined existence that by design are dynamically conforming flexibilities that in their adaptivity do not weaken the framework of basic social organisation by excessively eroding bearing capacity and undermining the balance of distributed weights.

 

God is a fundamental state of being, a basic awareness, God is the highest state of being, an awareness of order realised at the extreme edge of the conscious individual mind state. An acknowledgement of unquestioning fealty in the midst of the closed mind state of unexplored reality; a dawning of awareness that supercedes reality at the end of discovery; a closeness of limited abilitites at the heights of unshelling reality again at the highest order in the diversity of the unity; the closure of infinity at any one point creates awareness of a higher order of being permeating to minimal states of being. God is a responsive realisability as the simple balancing factor in uncertainties. 

 

Focusing on one end of a multiple realisable phenomenon  is a definitional characterisation of primitive or primary states of being. The broad structural definitional format is realised, but it is in a crude state of unrefined rawness. An appealing invocation of untainted virginity, it has enduring appeal, but exposed to the vagaries of infectiously tainting environmental influences of unrelenting intensity and an unnurtured inner effusivity of barely contained outpourings of unrestrained expectations. Social organisation in this context supercedes or has a depth, over bare technicalities, it is an emotional configuration into physical provisions generated by far sighted decision making processes. There is need to refine and diversify, to realise functional states of sophisticated expansivity that sustains a vastly changed and changing state of being. The tendency is to follow the natural flow of easily realisable states, but there is a potential flaw of thus bypassing potential far reaching benefits of unexplored advantages in equally satisfactory adaption of drastic but not necessarily sudden (offbeat) off the normally trodden path that heightens creative intellect and remodifies the existing reality around essentially new dimensions of variable states with an intent to realise better states with less system disruptions in the process. Any change process that does not have an inbuilt shock absorbing capability to cushion the shocks of change, so as not introduce previously nonexistent variables, that on their own are powerful enough to pull the evolving change dynamics in directions that detract from the realisation of expected ends or ends in the general direction desired. The essence of innovativeness in diffuse malleable states as social systems with varied interests and goal aspirations is to explore new approaches that have a general benefice and preferably, built in laxity to enable adjustments with expressed and extolled addition to existing states within the cross section of society. Thus taking acquired resources from a hard working advantageous class to provide for a weaker underprivileged categorisations is inappropriate as it is in the long run ineffective; likewise jeopardising medium and long term abilities in one category as an attempt to create social balance is unimaginative. In the process of creating a conduit for effective accessibility within the core framework of the social structure, is in many ways an intelligent openning of ineffctive channels of social distribution effort that discovers previously unexplored latent capability that has lain waste because the critical mass in social activated pain has not catalysed its utilisation or there has been an excessive focusing on narrow constraints that underutilise the existing capacity at its utmost productive level. It is in effect a widening of the scope of existing boundaries of social operable capacities, expanding the barriers of formely defined reality. It is an outcome that is only realisable within the realisable configurations of carefully planned and systematically social design. The excesses of accumulation in one segment of existing social reality is more often than not an accumulation of effciency organised at one level, while a defectively realised or non-existent activation capacity for full exploitation in the segment lacking leaves a significantly large aspect of potential latently realisable but realistically unexploited.

An aspect of social organisation that is basically indusputable is that developments instigate further discoveries for exploitation, while a restricted constriction to existing states lives higher states of exploitation in check. Assuming that the benefits accruing have a general effect, one would thus argue that, resources that are stored because of their existing value within the definitional realisations of existing state are better used in realising higher states of wider dimensions which are concurrent with the introduction of new values. There is no progressive stepwise approach to developments and influences have the appearance of geometric progression where the catalyser influence from external system into the system of interest has a (realisable) potential of changing the axis of the determinances of social progress in general. In Africa, the effect of change has been indisputably catalyser influences, which have projected their influences into existing societies and changed the basic orientation of social organisation, a process where as is, if inadequately controlled and chanelled effectively creates lopsided development centered around the accessibility of the essential realisations of these intrusive catalyser influences. Thus it is the case that traditional values and material realisations such basic farm implements, mud and thatch houses, traditional apprenticeship as a means of education had found comfortable centers of balance in fairly stabilised agrarian societies, where the dearth of differences between the wealthy and the average person was not wide enough nor apparent enough to push society towards imploding. The reorganisation of society around externally emerging material and value systems and the inadequacy of leadership (or more realistically, the immatured state of leadership to appropriately appreciate and reorient the traditional systems to enable effective accessibility creatively to enable adequate absorption efficiently across all social levels is the basis of social instability). Their is not being assumed any rapid delivery but a consistency unscrabled at the higher mind level, specified to reflect the existing dimensional transformation into a new state of social existence. A specified delimitation of higher thoughts that is directive rather than a frail wishy washy response reactive to undefined states in response to rapidly evolving external states, that in confabulating the confusion has created a genre of questionable academics of underdevelopement. Underdevelopment is an intolerable state of manipulated underexploitation of natural and human potential in response to changed prevailing reality, while the reality of defined variables had undergone a transformation, a part of the system remains operating at the previous state which is incongruent with the evolved state. When expectations match existing reality then there is an attained state of social growth. If the existing social reality has no use for the functional basis of what defines external systems, they are irrelevant to that systems essential state of being and thus finds no relevance in its growth determinance equation. If on the other hand they constitute significant variables of external intrusive influence then, there is a need for internal system modulation to ensure amiable matching of internal resources and these external variables of significance to ensure system equanimity and the highest realisation within system elements.

 

The existing order of global communities is very much reflective of the internal order evolving in African societies, it is a situation which on a smaller scale resembles families of different meanings living in close proximity, sharing common resources but experiencing different family environments. In the well to do family there is abundant supply of necessities, while next door is a poor family barely surviving on a shoe string budget. The whole effort at social restructuring is not to take from the rich to give the poor, since it is only normal to maintain a course of individually initiatitive that enables a stable domestic environment devoid of the fear of want, but it is to ensure the viable exploitation of the endowments of the society to enable adequacy of access to all its individual components to live above a standard of general provision that enables the realisation of a desired quality of life across the board. It is this basic realisation that lies at the center of the concerns and worries of the mass of the people who despair at the ineffectuality of task execution of their leaders to harness all the willing energy of a restive people to transform nature to yield desired ends. The problem however is that the leadership mechanism has been totally lacking in an anchored set of pricinciples, a socially relevant philosophy to set the tone of direction for society's evolvement, expressive idealistic musings from the higher mind state that underlies the superficial changes in day to day administrative activity of the governing process. The governing process is excessively overwhelmed and incapacitated by adhering to patterns of execution that have long outlived their usefulness, thus there is a disparity between adaptive administrative processes and innovativeness that is consistently pursued as an end. A situation that has displaced the establishment off the firmer foundations upon which to realise relevant day to day activities. There is also indisputably a focus on puerile concerns of negative general social consequency, displaced activities that need not be the preoccupation of leadership. Which acts of conduct by themselves are indictments of a lapse in defined characterisations of who constitutes the leadership class, a definition not so much in individual idiosyncratic self allocation into some social grouping as an establihment of certain required sets of qualifications and expected background experiences not underemphasising the realistic understanding of the actual role of leadership in the peculiar situation of the continent and its expectations. A situation not helped by the creation of escape avenues for inefficient and generally defective leadership, who distort their responsibilities from a dicharge task for the common benefit to that of an acquisitive display of agility to 'pad' self interest to the detriment of the general society. However even if the criminal element were completely eliminated from the leadership process, there is an inbuilt lapse in the social construction process that until identified and remedified will thwart all efforts built on shifting sands of rapidly changing realities to construct a society that realises the common expectation. The solution does not by any means lie in unmitigated imitation of external systems, which systems have built sustainable systems that even at their heighest level of realisation desire with a tenacious acridity to maintain an underclass of socially underpriviliged; albeit there are great lessons worthy of adaptive application to societies in social transformational shift. A principal reorientation of social values as regards leadership is a necessity; power embodied self decency in traditional societies, of which the changing society still identify with, in the turbulence of the change there was bound to be an upheaval that in settling down must assume a discernible directive shape. The emphasis is on directive influence which underlie varied patterns of activities in pursuit of a common objective of the social constituency. Power that realises practical construction that benefits the society is long enduring; power that has limited insight abuses the real power source, the individual-weaklings that by acquiscing to the directive influence of inversely devolved authourity from individual to a central authourity for the realisation through a harnessing process of commonly aspired to ends become victims of their creation. When the idea simmers and settle in the collective intellect that there can only be socially good leadership and not leadership that interests parochial interests and sets a fraction of the society against another, power then reverts to its real source the people without whom it is socially nonexistent. In a necessary awareness process, that should be cultivated and filtered into the collective intellect, the role of leadership is rewarded by the honour of being of use in implementing by a directive influential process, speedy or gradual social modification efforts that have general non group specific interest. Material rewards must be cmmensurate with the task of leadership, nevertheless, the role of leadership is a position of honour rather than the means of furthering personal ambition. The only ambition truly furthered in the role position of leadership is the facilitatory role of social enablement, it is a powerful transference of activating potentials without direct personal benefit to the leader but a permeating social benefit of the opening of opportunities. Those who misunderstand this concept need to realise their ambitious drive of material acquisitiveness in the realm of business where their true mettles are embelished by their acts that have a self centered interest as its ultimate goal. The true leaders are cast in the image of chancellors of universities, rather than heads of profit making organisations. The great leader is a benevolent social influence whose reward in the wisdom of the experienced is the benign joy of the facilitator of unimagined boundaries. Leadership is a collective realisation that is close to its subjects, and at the same time on the edge of positive innovativeness ideally located in the mind of creative and innovative individuals. Capable of realising social reorganisation realities that in being beyond the limited expectancies of the collective, sets the whole society one step ahead and are widely appreciated and broadly acclaimed. All the efforts at collective realisability in national and continental projects coalesced at instuitional and organisational levels, where task execution is effected. The nature of the exact outcomes of these instituitions and organisations, have yet to find a common committed expressiveness, in the vaccuum, exploitations and abuse have been, at various times crafted into normative art patterns of official responsibility. These organisations have a diffused objective, that is often expressed in the conflict between individual interest and national interest, and even where national interest dominates, there is an absence of commitment that is reflective of a gap between the society as a feasible reality of individual construct reality and the individual's emotional dispositions and self expressed perfomance value, which often times

reflectibg the times, is at odds with the actual needs of the society's expectations of official perfomance and responsibility.

 

Expanding the economic base requires expanding the acqusitive capability of the larger segments of the society who have hitherto been sidelined and denied by the restricted, economically actively enabled populace. A responsibility of the governing process, economic and educational empowerment is at the core of governmental action, even if inadequately tackled presently. (What seems inconspicous, at best deliberately ignored is that, every physical man made structure, at one time resided in the immaterial mind state, thus the difference between assumed states of underdevelopment and better and more acceptable states of restructuring nature to accomodate human needs is likewise in the minds of great leaders. Leadership extends all the way from the nuclear family of responsible and adaptive family organising to the continental inter-nations adminstrative processes). While free, unhindered, individual, economic initiatives will benefit from governing policies that permit free trade activities and ease of realisability of individually instigated initiatives, it is most unlikely that this will enable the full realisation of total economic empowerment of the socially marginalised. (To be 'totally economically empowered' makes sense in a situation where even in the midst of abundant natural resources people are starved of basic essentialities of daily existence, because the leadership has still not fully understood basic principles of the money based exchange economy, in some of these, there is the need for innovativeness because there are no lessons to be copied from anywhere else). As activities like industry and manufacturing find increased adequate outlets under the private sector, government must become more active in the upgradement and transformative process among the populace who are still in the traditional agrarian states of daily existence that is no longer viable, its sustainability fallbelow its functional capabilities in the light of the times. The establishment of large scale social transformation process commensurate with the existing configuration in town and village planning and the provisions of modern states of existece needs should become the greater focus of government activity. If the continent is to find the center of stability that enables optimum utilisation of its human resources potentials. It is not so much the case that these transformed states of existence are negotiated luxuries, they are required conditions for social growth and meaningful social development. People living in darkness and sharing pit latrines with reptiles are hardly disposed to find acceptable self satisfaction if by no default of theirs they have been marginalised by an economic policy that pits society in a meaningless menagerie of imported cultural appendages of untempered foreign values of what constitutes the appropriate economy. The economy is the management of the collective resources in interaction with external systems to yield benefit to all equally and without exception or undue favour. That there have been severe lapses in realising this end of the economic equation comes as no surprise, but a painful reminder of the gap between reality and expectancies, albeit the expectancies are much more genuine than the achieved reality. Within this conceptualisation can essential elements of social imports find accomodation. What is reffered to as poverty is a lack due to manipulatory processes that limit access or ineffective exploration of the environment and natural resource base to support meaningful existence, due either to immatured collective mind states that limit enviromental manipulatory capacity, gross defects in distribution of the commonwealth or ineffective directive capability that inadequately matches existing capabilities with natural endowments. The demystification of technological growth is a minor necessity; the revolutionary progress of the past hundred years, have in more than one ways, been, a purely application of structured mind sets to nature to realise higher states of being, but it is a process built upon accumulated build up over thousand of years, suddenly it would seem, gathering speed, but it is in more than one ways a superficial coating of human states of being that have basically remain unaltered over the aeons, the group is dependent on each and every member playing its role to sustain its survivability, likewise the tribe expects bold and socially conscious elders. All that has changed has been the expanded role, but the role expectations have hardly changed.  The more there is a deemphasise on vulgar materialism as an end rather than as a required enhancement of living arrangements the more the restrictive barriers that occasion the provision across the social system of basic requirements of adequate living state come tumbling down. The society will reward excellence one way or another, but destructive greed and inefficiency in role position has far reaching consequences, over and beyond bruised pride and vaunted ambition.

 

On the whole, if there a systematic reorientation that refocuses the essential position of the individual as the core focus of governmental activity, which the whole machinery of complex social arrangement seeks to complement through a resource management process; the existing obtrusion of the governing process, where there seems to be a process of maintenance of an amorphous entity, the governement machinery, that seems far removed from the most essential members of the social composition, the socially deprived, leading to a situation where in effect government is attempting to manage an economy that is over and above, and totally unrelated to the majority of the people whom the economy is supposed to serve. With a devious intent, the agility with which that minimal utilisation of the collective energy is pursued in edifying the restricted conceptualisations of limited relevance, (the economy), is wrongly lauded as the foremost expectations of the highest activities of leadership. In effect while there must be balanced account to enable the procurement of social provisions, at no point must the instrument usurp the importance of the user. (A lance can be sensitively used for medical procedures or under the guise of appropriate usage caused to inflict malicious harm.) The economic management process and other relevant social controls and facilitatory fora are meant under all circumstances to gratify and uplift the human state, in so long as they are improvements in primary states of being across the board this counts as an approximation of the actual expected outcome of leadership. Where these auspiciously higher states of evolved social states on the contrary indignify the human state in their expressive states, there is a need to question their relevance, and activate a process of determining an improved and better facilitatatory realisations of worthy ideas wrongly or inappropriately instituitionalised in social paradigms that constrict general social growth. All the existing efforts in developing systems to find sustenance from dependence on external systems, are within existing reality appreciable efforts to improve the general welfare of their populace. However, beneath all the delusionary hope that excessive reliance on attaining internal transformational shift construct reality across the social stream is unqualifiable dependent on this form of economic orientation is a joke of humoungous proportions. However the joke falters on the ground that it is causing severe human suffering that is unnecessary in the light of the hope of general human growth and intellectual expansion, a gloom is being cast over the human landscape that is spreading, taking hold and leaving uncalled for hopelessnes when al it takes is open minds reaching out and taking hold of the light and lifting their people from the bondage of limited mind states. There are established patterns in social systems that are generally predictable, and unavoidably realisable in every social system. If the existing world powers had pursued a path of dependence on the previously existing powers, heeding their benign call to be in check of economic states and assumptions of the flow of power that determines their outcome states, certainly the world will be a motononeity of 'benign despotic' domain, which breeds the people as cannon fodders in wars fought over women. The whole purpose of leadership is to enhance the existing state of human existence by harnessing collective human capacity, liberating the creative intellect to find expressive purposive for social benefit in diversified forms unhindered by the limitations imposed by the crudities of primitive states, engaging man and nature in a nature enhancing process that borrows from external systems in an effort to increase self dependency and improve society's access to its natural endowment that could be malleably transformed through a processing format that is mutually beneficial to human state and nature's productive process, resulting in beautiful states of high attainments that is all benefiting. This first and foremost is what leadership was intended for, before the lust to kill became an embelished art form acclaimed as the heights of bravery and manly expression, way before leadership became a domain of greed which exploited its imposed or forcibly acquired status of self aggrandisement for perpetuating suffering and deprivation, that was before in the chaos of vacuous fear and despair abnormalities that permeate torment assumed exalted states of noble achievement, indeed before the commonality that held all human in unity was smashed on the anvils of industrial economic and the manufacturing economics, splintered into pieces of papers and bits of mint that effectively dismembered social harmony into collective differentiation of the monied society and its class systems and the disengaged and sidelined who waste away made to feel in a pervese and wicked way as the inconsequentials of creation. Yet they are the masters, placed at the fore of the creative effort, take away the foibles of their collective effort to add value to life, appropriated and squandered on the edge of mental abberants posing as the masters of their fate and pillaging the hopes of the generations in the misery of their wickedness. They are the ones who have set imaginary barriers and boundaries to the aspirations of the masses held in check, checks of tears, barriers that have held as strong in keeping a check and a control of the way out of these depths of deprivations they have dug in ugly defiance of natures benign beauty and impartiality. At the heights of their attainments they inflict the joys of their attainments as pain raining unto parched tongues. They are the fathers who give stones to their hungry children, and look to a God they desecrate in their acts of wanton acquisitive accumulation that degrades humanity, for bread and showers of relief in the wake of the heat in the light of the fires they have ignited. Africa lives in the wake of the fire, its anguish has been a long drawn howl in the presaging darkness of the ongoing torment that has left too many people languishing in the midst of the distortions that cloud reality in disabling lack of initiative and discernment. There is a larger world that defies the any individual interpretation of expected reality, but at another more relevant level, that world begins inward out, at individual and systemic specific level. All the existing processes of intellectual development and all the accessible outcomes of human inventiveness exist for one purpose, a purpose that must not be responsive to any external interpretation of reality, but around which reality should be moulded, designed to realise without hindrance an interpretative realisation of reality within beneficial configurations. In simple terms, development and inventive technology is of little relevance to a farmer in some isolated village whose existence and primary live issues are as far from central government as central government is far from being involved in the realisation of their expectancies. Their expectancies are probably better houses, power, furnishing, schools, and the list expands from things realised at individual level to socially shared facilities that add value to primary states. The extent to which these are realised as close to their source of usage as possible using resources close to the natural endowments of the society the closer government becomes an existing reality and the higher government's activity can be rated from the relevant perspective of its social location. The requirements and provisions that will establish the transformational shift process that is an inevitable consequence of contact with external cultures are basically realisable within realistic virtual independence of external determinances, if the adaptive mood in directive leadership is shifted into higher gear. The inventive mind must begin to be guided to find application in increasing amounts of abundant local resources and increasing reduction of permitted influence of the distortions of external trade influences that lie at the base of rational economic distortion by consequential irrelevancies of external system demands. Strip away the pretensions around reality the unpadded clairty is depicted in simple straight lines of unambiguity. It is not totally out of place to assume that what passes for problems are indequacies of analysis that are unable to lay bare the obvious, and are befuddled in the sophisticatory of ignorance. If leaders in evolving African societies can get behind the illusory hype of antiquated modernity that has and continues to saddle it with the excessive burdens of intolerable suffering, they have more than dealt with halv of the problems underlying their inadequacies, if on the other hand they also focus on reaching out to upgrade the living qualities as enabled by evolve states for the least of the society and in the process creating a solid foundation for further growth, they have dealt with more than three quarters of their task focus identification problem. If all the disparate societies combine their energy to create an effective unhindered base for development, their dependency problems have been far and large and resolved. The remaining minute external intrusion needed for system balance can be easily accessed by appealing to either the sense of kindness (virtually non existent) or the sense of greed to exploit a poised, ready and cultivated profit making base. The complexity stripped to bonebareness, is only the essential first stage, the realisation process requires the mind set and the intellectual bias with the sense of societal benefit rather than enriching foreign banks, another useless appendage of the befuddling money game, instead of focusing on their set task, and simmering in the appreciation and honour and gratifies the very spirit in man.

 

The issue of privatisation and realising of state industries to the private sector is an essential progressive step in overall social evolution, Government undertakes a project that it is better equipped to fund, it is run for a period of time under inspired and committed management team or incompentently run into demise; in the elapsed time there has simmered into the social system an acquired capacity for private sector management of the government funded and established industry, it must then be divested to private ownership where there is more commitment to sustain profitable management for much longer than under government control. The underlying rational is that the government machinery is not suited for profit making ventures. Government is in a way a higher realisation of individual aspirations and must realise for the common bnefit without easing itself downwards into the niche best exploited at a more centered level of driving individual ambition. When the thin line between social foundation laying of governement as a facilitatory agent easing individuals into pursuits of their natural inclination or diposition is substituted by total governmental control which is nothing more than the hijacking of the government machinery by questionable leadership element, society is set on  disaster course. The obvious free spirit of humaneness must be positioned to find free flight in socially acceptable ways, or in ways that do not unnecessarily disrupt social states of normalcy. But that freewill unncessarily restrained under the guise of some questionable state controlled determinancy of the creative intellect tends to stunt social diversity and expansion in the base of growth possibilities. A standard of expected base is required of government without government becoming an impediment for individual growth and creative diversity.

 

In its supportive task in the effective restructuring of society to realise expected standards of changed states, their is a need for increasingly creative adaptivity on the part of the governing machinery. How does one raise the traditional market into a modern food supply chain with adequate health standards and packaging standards met that will increase employment potential and improve the earning capacity for the market mammies? This are the fundamental daily acticities around wich social growth revolves, and its from this basic considerations that real social change is appreciated in daily existence. Here is a pervasive reality that requires a market economy solution at the stock exchange level or strong government directives with initial state capital infusion. Government can fund the construction of food retail outlets, improve packaging and storage, and in a mutual co-operative investment fund absorbtion process create a viable, functional modern food retail outlet around an existing traditional market. The whole effort provides a basis for social elevation within a low income group that otherwise will nevr have attained the move that approximates a state of social evolution that seems to be bypassing a significant mass held in reserve by the lack of intiative and innovative awareness of infinity unexplored possibilities. For every single person by passed there is a loss of potentially exploitable consumer if one is promote change within the existing greed paradigm of the monetised economy. Thus in providing the base for facilitating growth at the individual level, rather than ignoring into classifications of poverty large segments of the populace, the actual and most meaningful growth of the market economy is based on positioning people in increasing numbers to be financially enabled to activate and expand the money game. There is a significant contextual element to development and growth that needs be kept at the fore of leaderships planning. There are certain easily accessible elements of development that cannot be utilised unless the appropriate environment is provided for its realisation. For instance while in the medium term education may benefit society by the enabling of global access to information sources and educational support materials. This desirable mediun for the transfer of knowledge cannot be realised society wide within the existing educational structural provisions especially in the deprived sectors of society, like the slums and rural communities where there are willing minds ready to be activated to discover, yet by some social coincidence have found themselves at the wrong side of the invisible social fence. What is difficult to appreciate from the individual standpoint is why there is so little effort being expended in infrastructural provisions that enable developoment internally as compared to developments focused on accessibility to enable exploitation of natural resources for the export market. This is a chain that international economic distortion has made the cornestone of the development agenda, but what people expect of their government is development focused on realising direct benefits to the society as a whole. Rarely are people outside government very interested in appreciating the national government as 'storekeepers for the world', 'astute wholesalers' who ignore the general welfare of their families. The people want to be enabled out of the store to explore their potential in the freedom of their God given inheritance rather than chained to the drudgery of warehouse loadbearers.  All societies have advanced by freeloading on developments attained elsewhere, Africa must not hold the rest of the world back by conceding leadership responsibility to self limiting leadership that in realty is denying the rest of the pack that has exploited its weakness and beggarly sustained it in its primitiveness backwardness, its about time that they also facilitate the development of its essential human content to provide the rest of the world with ever expanding knowledge base. Come to think of it, forced into corners where the African is constantly seeking for self worthiness, the individuals are stretched thin, they can hardly find sustenance among foreigners and their roots are starved of sustenance of hope of something to return to. Hope can never come from outside when the problems are in-house, this is a fact not lost on anyone. Self-worthiness as a people facing a future to be mapped in the present is certainly not desired merely as an acknowledgement from outsiders as a recommendation of capable social beings, self-worthiness is credited in deeds by the society to itself. If an African mask can provide an exploitable idea for inclusion in the generation of the cinematographic depiction of space societies on the cutting edge of imaginative visualisation, then, it is not altogether out of place to advocate radical, far reaching, exploration of dramatic (in the existing context) alternatives as substitutes of meaningful hope for the existing despair by struggling to explore whatever potential lies unaccessed. Logically, idealistic musings within the film industry hardly qualify as a basis for drawing correlations of whole societal activities in a real world hell bent in ensuring maximum suffering. However, if logical reasoning and emotional pleas, will not quicken subservient minds into adopting expected measures, then fantasy may open the minds eye to the possibilities barely submerged beneath the existing surreality. The initiative must begin to come from inside out, a proposal of what is desired from willing hands ready to help. The quicker that becomes a continental wide phenomenon the better the rest of the world will be. The continent has burdened the emotions of the whole of humanity with its outpourings of sorrow punctuated by leadership acts of barbarous extremities, even if the instigation is orchestrated, doubtfully, from external sources, the leaders complemented it by playing out the chorus of death and desperation, with their harrowing choirs of the innocents waving ecstatic desperation through spitting rods of death (even in death, where material relevancies are inconsequential, the dead are even deprived of the decency of peaceful burial, a people gripped in the crippling 'mass dementia' of materialistic pursuits in the filth of unequality and injustice, and the solution is leadership's extollation of policies that widen the gap, how can the dead go in peace knowing the painful future they left in the present? ). Now in singing the requim's refrain of healing and peace, let it end on a high note of hope revitalised.

 

There must be a predetermined course boldly laid to be followed and clearly indicative of what these 'misunderstood collectives' (Africans seen from other societies point of view) desire, foremost, and exactly where they as a people are they heading. It is not merely rephrasing the dictates of some recognised body(e.g. world bank), but it is creating a defined social mind state that finds acceptable recognition among 'international bodies' as ideas emerging from a society intent on reaching out to a better world, a world defined from their own perspective, founded on clear expectations, in tandem with the other world, the external world, in the commonality abridging the dictates of the external world and the African postulations, in the finding of ease of accomodation between the differing world views, there comes a relaxation knowing that there is a similarity in the thought pattern underlying the ongoing reality. It is nothing new, the Ashantis were not only rampaging and conquering, they were assimilating, creating an expanded brotherhood of different tribes, and subjects who maintained their identity but owed allegiance to the Ashantihene. Transfer that to the transformational shift situation and let it find expression. The world may be seemingly drawing ever closer together at some levels, each day takes all ever closer to the 'new earth', yet the fact remains, unobviated, that Africa is a distinct identity seeking to find establishment in situational definitions of reality of which it is by no means the author, the solution to the continent's problem will be complemented by external contributions, but such contributions will only fit into a continentally defined expectations and their expected patterns of realisation. It may be arguable, but it can assumed that no one wants to remain as paupers or to be reffered to as the lesser beings all the time, but changing that state will be a totally committed effort emerging from the continent's own resources and complemented by the benevolence of trans continental resources. 'There is no one that is insignificant in any society (much as imperfectly co-ordinated social arrangements that are unable to support their weak and needy may try to indicate) and to prove it in social coordinating efforts, lies at the core of good governance, realised on the continent by ensuring the laying of social foundations of deeply rooted equality, where irrespective of their idiosyncratic peculiarities or social standing all of its human constituents are positioned to realise their utmost capabilities. Let all drink from the same well of education and dwell in decent environments and live in concordance with the dictates of the times, all without exception.'  For so long as there is one person who feels government has failed him or her, for so long as there a feeling that there are locations for lesser humans, for so long as people feel inhibited in expressing their creative intellect through socially approved and appropriate ways; for so long must the governments accept that they have not delivered on their expectations and must continue to seek for creative ways to provide that essential foundation. The African society is a driven society of achievers, a small percentage have attained and surpassed the desired foundation level, the rest must be gentlu nudged abreast to this standard to enable viable social growth. The only responsibility for the existence of government is to undertake the essential task of exploiting its domain with specifiable objectives that have an end benefit for the governed. External concerns are secondary considerations, for exploitative utilisation as a complement to the benefits, governments  endow on the governed. This has been the basis for the economics of external relation in external systems relation with other societies. Probably as the utility value of imaginary barriers that demarcate loosely bonded humanity lose their importance and there is a diminishing of differences between different systems, their operation as synchronous complementarities will dictate the emergence of an overall globally beneficial system that seeks to exploit the individual within a global setting rather than exploiting 'excluded' societies for regional self centered  interests. Until then there is the need to focus on internal upgradement of existing facilities as a means of enabling global integration. The latter is consequential on the former.        

 

A poor man's field may produce abundant food,

but injustice sweeps it away. Proverbs 13:23.    

 

If there is any controversy seeking for resolution in Africa, it is the big why as what could possibly account for the all round lack of vision within the leadership rank. The precedent of great leadership feats of amazing achievement in other time settings, prevailing against the odds of nature are constant steely reminders as to the fact that far from being a nation of unidentified directions, the African has a capability to overcome and not only find a center of reality but actually to set the course for a new direction worthy of imitation. If individuals could emerge as pace setters for society, why not transfer the individual field defining capacity into a social asset; the novelty that drives social change is often the effort of individuals finding acknowledgement within a discerning society. The question, therefore is, when is this era going to awaken from its suffering induced stupor state of dazed bewilderness and begin to set straight courses for social reorientation. There is a need to refocus on priorities, taking a positional view from the recent past era and identify a course for the future. Whatever value accrues to the society will not emerge from a partial realisation of preffered states determined by some self serving order of parochial interests. The value will come from inside out, the more a wider stream of society is enabled through effective organisational directive influence and the establishment of appropriate conditions to improve on existing dismal states of existence, the more the African social system approximates expected states, irrespective of how closely the society in attempting to fulfill some externally generated model of limited relevance, approximate some expected standard of frail economics of exploitation. To the most important member of society, to the individual components of society, a system of knowledge is only relevant if it imitates desirable reality, inasmuch as negative realism finds effective interpretation, there is always the underlying desire for resolution. For people in deprived states, as it has been proved over time, there is an emphasis on contextual interpretation to the relevancy of knowledge. Knowledge must serve a purpose in explaining their state of being and presenting applicable solutions. With this bent, it is not unusual that a favoured approach finds overuse and continues to enjoy extended applicability even when their actual functioning relevancy has been usurped by the changes within wider society. Substituition needs are not by any means automatic response patterns, as much as they are a response to awareness that warrants a reorganisation of fundamental system elements to effect modification. Thus even if the extent of linkage of local economies to external system is a minor outcome for the external elements, and is of greater relevance to the local economies. Its outcome effects are not inevitable, as much as they are manipulated realities with a benefactor, definitely the manipulator of the economic configuration within which external trade is realised. Above, that if there is a need to apportion blame, which there is no need to, it is more a need for an awakening call to local societies to become more creative and less dependent. It implies that for the focal system there must be set in process a radical reorientation to enable resort to effective inventiveness to improve on continually worsening states. The leaders need to open the collective intellect, exposing the information stream of creative energy surging freely begging to be used, tapping into this pervasive knowledge stream and using it for continental development. No other social system can realise this fully for Africa, when the leaders awaken from their intoxicating power drunkeness and begin to appreciate their full responsibilities, they might suddenly find truth in the adage that knowledge is power, it is a power that the continent requires in its existing state of listlessness. What better setting in time than now, for lifting the deadpan of stiffling traditional inhibition and the leaden weight of imposed realities from the outside world, and attempt a reconfiguration that enables unhindered possibilities to build on and diversify the relevant existing base of available knowledge for humane purposes.

 

If the rest of the world is willing to assist the continent, the question in how well prepared and capable is the existing framework to filter resources to the socially most disadvantaged and most farthest from the activities of existing government benefices. These very ones, who have been bypassed by present governing processes and sidelined as the economically socially marginalised are the ones most likely to bear the brunt of the pain of market oriented economies that are the focus of attention of existing preferred ideal upon which to establish a firm social foundation for the continent development. How can a society on its first step into an undiscerned future, begin by affirming the exploitation of the weakest of its citizenry? If there is inadequate base development for expanded and untempered open market economics as the centerpiece of the devlopmental process, government must admit the inadequacy. And in so doing, create a forum for foraging for ideas as to how to sculpt an appropriate social theme for enabling full development across the social stream. Presently, because humility is lacking within the governing process, leadership is finding it difficult to accept that the whole of the social organisational process is contrary to the wellbeing of the majority. Instead of re-evaluating the society and re-assessing its priorities and how to realise these priorities within changing circumstances, pride is placed rather placed on irrelevancies that have no benefit for the ralisation of the masses locked into states of crippling poverty, focus is on selective development that emphasises increasing benefits to comparatively advantaged sectors of the society and attention is on wealth creation through individual initiative. The appalling truth however is that the majority of the people in need of help lack even the ability to initiate the means to improve on their existing states without some major effort from central authourities. Generally, there is a major problem of unresolved inadequacies in central govenment machinery that needs to be remedied. When there is a lack of clarity in conveying the exact circumstances by which government effort begins at the level of the deprived who by their existing states of incapacitation need more attention than any self sufficient successful social sector, but who by their incapacitation do not merit any attention within the configurations of the capitalist economic agenda being realised by present governments, there is without doubt a major gap in policy making which existing system definitions of priorities and factor variables to considered in realising expected ends are ill equipped to resolve. What is needed is a total re-orientation along major definitional lines of what constitutes priorities and what goals the society should focus on realising. In obvious circumstances, it is undebatable that any policy that begins with a focus on the weakest of social designatees will enhance more than necessary the already well established sectors of society while the reverse is not true. The existing reality on the ground is that national economies revolve around balancing budgets through feeding markets that have manipulated the terms of trade such that the continent's economic standing is permanently weakened, debilitated, and ludicrous by all standards. In the definitional constraints of these restrictive social organisation, improving slums and providing information accessing hardware to rural educational systems will evoke around of healthy laughter at the higher levels of government. But it is precisely for these reasons that there is a need for the articulation of the full emergence of alternative states of social organisation along the major paradigms of social structuration, where in sorting for system dependent growth, not only is their a lessening of the external determinancy but more importantly how the new social organisation will enable the least of the weakest as the continent emerges fully into a new state. So the issue goes back to the question whose interest do national governments' serve? Beyond the principles of representatve government, the merits of party politics and representation. Beyond the higher enlightened theories and principles of appropriate government. There is only one concern that cuts beneath the excess, overflow of words, delivery! People in their  everyday lives, in and out of the continent care very little about what theories are articulated and what economic principles are currently viable. For them there is only one issue, deliver, by whatever means, what is expected of leadership. Thus over and beyond the refinements of academic theorisations that were birthed for the most part in evolving system states, lie a crucial social philosophical issue which to date remains inadequately articulated in Africa. The delivery issue is a social philosophical issue of unresolved clarity. It must begin to find adequacy of definitional formation to cut through the mass of leadership inadequacies. Every organisation that attempts piece meal, to face off and resolve a segment of its expected outcomes that has been delayed is working within the undefined unconfigured issue of what is actually expected in the light of its inadequacies? How is the expected end to be attained? And what changes in core operative functionability will enable successful delivery on its goals ? Considerations, that need to find expression over and above time and situational peculiarities, such that they become roadmarks and measuring rods of the direction and approximation of expected states in differing circumstances. To wit, what are the expected indications of social growth and development in evolving Africa? Is it spreading urban slums? Increasing select neighbourhoods of wealthy segments of the general society and increasing poverty among the already deprived? Increasing numbers of shops? Increasing deindustrialisation? Or increasingly impoverished rural areas?  Do half way measures of feeble attempts count as problem resolution and delivery? What combination of all these is -not- to be pursued? The delivery issue is a collective requirement of leadership, to realise the common objectives of society. It is not a beggarly desire for help, but a specified  requirement of leadership to exploit all the available resources that society has placed at its disposal for expected ends. That, this, obvious responsibility of leadership has been left unfulfilled, while unacceptable acts of social plunder and demoralisation have been and continues to be the modus operandi of leadership role players is indicative of a major default at a crucial level in the structuring process of social organisation. In this defective social set up, the hierachical structure has proved to be socially self limiting. It is far too distant from the important segment of society. (In effect it is analogical to polishing a brand new shoe over and over again, while the shoes needing actual polishing attention lie gathering dust. Seemingly, the two pairs may never have any influence on each other, but the common value that holds them together is the human entity that is wasting resources on a shoe that is unneedy of the extra attention, while the needy shoe accumulates increasing layers of grit.) It is to those who are comparatively and increasingly incapable and incapacitated, becoming unacknowledged social liabilities that governments need to focus attention on if this continent is to have a worthy future, from poor children to poor adults wasting away, when society has disenabled them by shifting determinancy of outcome from the individual to the society. There is a need to restructure the leadership locational format from a pyramid structure reminscent of hierarchical organisational arrangements to a central locational format that places governing role in a central location to society, rather than at the top. Central government is thus redesigned to be central to society, radiating its governing effects in rebounce to its constituent elements, giving central government a new organisational outlook, rather than being at its top. This system designation of government realised in social structuration, realises on the ground a process which makes government accessible to all sectors of the society in soliciting opinions and effectuating ideas emanating from the core of society, while facilitating society's identification with the government machinery. In society's increased awareness that government is not an isolatory imposition of the elected or some leadership clique utilising available position through effective and agile manipulation of social control mechanisms, there is ever increasing need that governments become relevant not only in opaque grandeur, but as individually relevant forces that impact daily existence positively and constantly. A central position will enable a realisation that is essential that government is a reflection of the collective mentality, realising ends at a pace mediated by the overall society. A failure in the governing process is as much a lack of leadership capabilities as it is due to society's faults. To project the creative intellect, setting forth broad patterns of functional conversion of existing resources to meet their needs is as much an effort on the part of society as a whole, as it is a failure of effective organisational and management capabilities at the leadership level. Yet it must be a concept that finds realistic expression in the everyday details of the governing process. In short, the leaders, must not be distant from their subjects, just as much as the society must not permit the power of government to become too detached from their effective control. High ideals emanating from the leadership to be realised among the people is as welcome as leadership sourcing for worthy ideas from the people. It is not an issue of pointing out defects in a young, weak and unsteady system, but the fear is that the African system is not making any effort to begin walking, it is too comfortable at a level that is depriving essential human components of its constituents otherwise, easily realisable and available facilities, and excusing the whole lapse in delivery on an unfavourable international economic system. Granted that is the case, there is an expectation to see far reaching meaningful effort to create a viable, satisfactory state of existence for its people. Presently, even if more than necessary monetary resources are made available; because of a lack of adequate social infrastructure, founded on a sound social philosophy of desired end states and the way of realising them across the whole social spectrum, there is more than a high likelihood that private accounts of 'responsible individuals' in leadership position will take precedence over the common man. The filth and the dirt that are identifiable landmarks of African townships in runaway, uncontrolled growth, has basically nothing to do with internationally manipulated economics, but it has everything to do with incapacitated leaders hooked on meaningless outmodedness of irrelevancies that in the vapidity are clear indications of incapability and ineffectualness (within existing context). Outmoded, the arguments may be, but sadly to admit, these depressive reality, contrary to expectation is not fading, barely appreciable organisational modes of hierarchical lords of inefficiency seem to have taken root and are flowering fruitless trees of despair. It is not an individual defect, it is a major system flaw. Bitter and painful as harsh criticisms will sound to hardworking, committed leadership on the continent, little can be said for improvement over the years, that has meaningfully brought tranformational shift change facilities at the level of the marginalised in society to the level desired, realised elsewhere and not even approximated in Africa. Since independence, the economic and tax systems has worsened, corruption has increased, medical facilities have deteriorated and the gains made have been qualified gains and of limited import and impact. That the issues at stake are far too complex to be explained from a simple linear perspective does not by any means render ineffective such observations and the consequences they bode. What is even more difficult to appreciate and accept is that the whole society has been in a slowly disintegrative state of regression to basics. Leaving many to wonder, whether there is a need to revert to post-colonial primitive states before finding a way out of the miasma of despair that despondent, unimaginative governing processes have wrecked on the continent. That many in the rural areas affirm that independence took away whatever little hope of improved states colonialism fostered is the deepest and most shameful indictment against people who given the opportunity to help their kind, have become highly effective pilferers of pieces of papers and trinkets; gigantic  and massive abominations on the landscape spreading a cloak of deception that steals the light of hope by a trickery that confounds those beneath the cloak. While they that wield the cloaks of mischief are far too busy with their degenerative acts of plunder to appreciate and utilise the light. The cloak must be cast aside with the disdain it deserves and in the light, revealed, the awakening to reality and to the task of the day, left for far too long undone. A traditional proverb says 'set the load upon your knee and help will be offered to lift it up to your head'. Even if there is a help forthcoming, it will yield its utmost contribution when there is some indication of seriousness and above all honesty that belies humility and concern for the weak, tired and hungry. The true assessment of government's effort, it must be reiterated, in the light of the unique setting of Africa and its needs, must be in terms of the extent of social provisional efforts rather than miniscule concerns of irrelevant economies that wield a tight bond of meaningless strive against artificial barriers to utmost human realisability. The economy may be central to existing social organisation, but what is most relevant is a moral philosophy specifiyng the ethical requirements of leadership responsibilities to all, and more significantly to the marginalised. If the little that has been achieved over the years is reflected in the 'tainted' (tainted because, a sizeable number cheated and stole, denying in association with incompetent leaders in discharging their social responsibilities with honesty. But that said, there is no point flogging a dead horse, now the societies must continue the task of social reengineering, a task which is by no means fully defined.) emerging middle class, a lot more has to be done to push out those left behind the first time around.

 

More than anything there is a lack of a deep seated, generally shared, awareness on the part of society and its leadership; an intangible absence of a certain cultivated, articulated and consciously absorbed proclamation of expectation in the early formative years and constantly presented to always assume a fore position in the shared reality of what incontrovertibly permeates the diversity of variations of shared destiny. It is  a social deduction that calls forth duty and responsibility, an awareness that infuses automatic dedication to the cause for realising general social well being through honest discharge of duty in whatever position of responsibility one occupies in society. When this mind set is cultivated at the level of leadership, projected into the mass social mind set and made to assume the cornestone of existing reality, the foundation upon which each person is constantly reminded that they owe a sense of responsible discharge of duty in their accomplishment to their society, then the foundations have been laid for stable progress in dynamic environments where commitment is undisplaced by petty distractions. For if there is one indisputable fact that by now is evident, it is that, there is only one place where the African can find his peace of mind and live in the fullness of his spirit, his short individual existence on this earth. The faster it is made a commonly shared joy for all without exception, the quicker will the Race find its focus to define a reality of appreciable states of existence. Growth and fullness of existence, within the definitional expression of existing reality, is based on the provision of a certain basic foundation, that foundation can best be laid by the very society to which it is relevant. It is only from the inward search for realisation aided by the insight of external relevancy that any progress can be meaningful. Enabling for the millions lost in meaningless states of diasporic haze, hope of return to the motherland, land that has been carefully nurtured, embellished and offered to these 'vain, simple and disoriented people' lost in timeand place, seeking with bewildering abandon to find solidity on the shifting grounds of changing times, as then, and still now, a place offering nourishing sustenance. To those whom responsibility falls, there are no better times than now when honourable discharge of duty is a place assured in permanent collective memory.

 

African has nurtured the world on its strength and resources, Africa knows the pain of rejection and it is an abomination to practise within the 'continental house' what the people suffer in the streets of the world, it is the only place left where they can take of the mask and share a laugh together. Whosoever assumes a leadership role, by whatever means, bears upon his or her shoulder, the weight of centuries of loaded history and the unwept tears of the years of unfulfillment. It is hardly a responsibility to bear with unsophisticated intellectual triviality and disrespectful disregard for the people who by their tolerance have kept their hopes suspended in inanimate states of postponned fulfillment waiting for leaders who came not to light the torch held up by the masses but to take their lights of inner sustenance, these leaders the very children of the land, point at their mothers birth place with their left hand. They are not only social aberrants but but their wicked departure from the path of true leadership laid out by the accumulated and collective wisdom stretching deep into the dimness of the past and borne far into the light of the inaccessible future, which is that the true leaders bears with their subjects their sufferings and work with them to find reassuring escape, have become blights upon the landscape perpetuating hopelessness by their vaunted acts of despoliation. For a people who have borne with patient tolerance the unrewarded burdens of the frailties and insanity of humanity, the only thing that is uncommon among its commonalities is its repudiation of human value, and in the reversion  of progressive improvement, it, the human values must not be taken for granted, for it is the respect of it, that acts as the last string of the shattered strand holding societies on the brink, together. For the normal leadership in pursuit of generally acceptable government, meeting the expectations of the governed, it is enough to approximate the expectations of the society and the processes within a social organisation that does not distance itself from the collective. It is indeed a rarity, when there comes one who in leadership position, not only express the common purpose, but redefines the reality by converting the collective energy to realise creative diversity at levels higher than the expectations of the collective mind, and in doing so, is buoyed from the midst of the masses onto the higher platform of achievement that uplifts all of society, such leaders are lifted by the collective acknowledgement unto an eternal plane, of a place in the collective memory of not only gratitude for a job well done, but for keeping the doors of opportunity open through the exercise of malleable governing mind sets that enable, multiplicatively. The roots of great African leaders is misty with outstanding achievements, dripping from the past to nourish the present. It is not that the people are not capable; they are, they have yet to find the appropriate sources of directional influence that is commensurate with the individual energy fighting to find expression, in the turmoil of radically changed situational definitions of reality. The continent looks with stupefying bewilderment at other systems struggling to perfect social engineering process that are faulted, but the solution will come from within, with assistance from without. It is a solution that is as old as time, and a definitive spirit of human nature; to enable all within any specific social configuration to maximise their innate talents and acquirable capabilities. Concerted effort monitored at leadership level which places high value  on not only hardwork that has immediate individual benefit but also such highly placed social values as honesty, trust, social awareness and social responsibility in reciprocation of a society designed to be responsible for its constituents. Such high extolling of Godly principles, replete with acts of supportive kindness, enabled presently great societies to enter the wilderness of uncertainties and with staunch hearts and strong minds carved from the physically nonexistent mental idealisation the existing rugged rawness waiting to be tamed and conformed to yield comforting rewards, and in their success have become models of social organisation worthy of emulative adaptation. The continent has been raided, exploited, laboured and watched with expectancy to implode, the watching persists, now even the labour being offered after the people have dragged themselves to the slavemasters is turned down. The watching goes on, the times have changed bringing with it different sets of variables, yet the watching certainly goes on. Have the people become pale ghosts reflected in the mirror of time watching their own funeral unfolding?

 

 What is poverty? Should the poor always remain with us? ("The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want". Mark 14:7 Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible.) For the society at large this is a thorny issue. Poverty, non-spiritually, that is, is the lack or inadequate means of financial needs, in one relevant sense. But if the means exist, would not the provision of adequate means for all to sustain themselves at a reasonable decent level of existence not alleviate this burden of human social reality? By deliberating manipulating social reality to reward work effort in any viable direction and then limiting the means for effective realisation of this work output effect, through deliberate gaps of carefully contrived social engineered lapses, human society has over time, found it convenient to allot value based on a devised mechanism, but like all things human, superlative excellence in one area of mind exploration was not able to fully run its full gamut in its expressive realisation, and there has been a severe shortchanging at the other end of the viable employment idea, thus, while in a sense, rewarding employment is an essentiality of social organisation, it has left in its due, by a process of 'half cooked' gulping down of a meal in preparation, the full realisation of its intricate detailed wholeness, the essential supplementary process that would have ensured a balance in the social mellieu, where rewarding work is concerned, by excluding and leaving to waste human energy that is unable to find sustenance through lack of employment. The monetisation process has stopped at a level that is not commensurate with the required totality of its social exigencies. Creating a vacuum of exploited misery, that seems to be widening, even as the polarity of uncensored means of acquisability that preferred states of social organisation adulate approve of its worst aspects in terms of its exploitative element potential. Of the existing instrument of facilitating commercial exchange and thus determining end states of well being in terms of material provisions and required needs to sustain existence, other than what the individual makes by himself, the continent without any dalliance is ina state of barely contained chaos, it is an imbalance that derives from a system structural weakness of extreme severity. In many places, the struggle of existence is invariably a dismal occupation at piteous and harsh living, irrespective of the value placed on money or the value it gives its hoarders. There is, in these harsh settings, a limited base due to situational restrictions on available possibilities of inadequate bases for utilities, that the means of purchasing could enable through improved states of existence. Thus in agrarian societies, the prevailing issues of what constitutes social basic needs, the lack of which, causes social strain and the suffering it imposes on society are totally at variance with the emerging and ever expanding list of what constitutes basic needs within existing social paradigms; yet the established requirements of shelter, food, clothing and work are still the dominant needs of normal human sustenance. The specificities which constitute these core needs like the rest of the society has undergone a developmental growth improvement. The issue of interest is, if the existing social order puts government at the center for the realisation of these needs, and in the midst of existing possibilities, government is severely self restricted or otherwise restricted by circumstantial circumscriptions of existing social definitions. One begins to wonder if there should not be a redefinition to refocus on what is at the core of the needs of the masses and the poverty it occassions. There is a natural tendency that in the expressive divergencies of individual outputs most people seek to find definition of reality and the appropriate within what society defines as the appropriate choices. Over time, retrospective reflection indicates that the choices that are defined and articulated at the social level by the channels of authourity through which society finds expression, are not necessarily the best or the most viable among a compendium of available options. Thus if there is one location that requires a remodification of the social intellect to find a socially more relevant modus operandi, it is Africa, where poverty is beyond barely material considerations. There is a straggling inadequacy within the highest levels of social organisation to conceptualise the existing reality in simple and easily appreciable terms and evolve solutions that are tenacious and multiplicable. The fog of ignorance cloaks the whole system in needless and meaningless complexities of inadeacies parading as intelligence and binding the people to the solutions within easy grasp, while excess divergence evolves upon farfetched outmodedness. There has been a tendency to slight models that aspire to realise across the social stream viable options, as grandeurs of social idealisms, but in a seemingly jarring indication of the controversy that belies what is normal and abnormal on the larger scale of human designations and leadership expressions, there has been a distortion of social capacities to minimise human output capability through deceptive mechanisms of social and economic imposed barriers that lack logical conclusions. Logically, there will, it will be assumed maximal exploitation of any existing means of upgrading human quality across the scale, with the emphasis on those most in need. That there is an excessive energy spent on a social exclusion from participating in a physical realm where all is freely given, while greedy consumption at one extreme of the social spectrum is avaraciously cultivated as an obscene expression of flaggrant disregard of the spirit of humaneness, which spirit has at its core an empathic desire to reach out and help sustain life, is a clear indication of gross soial malaise and a yet immatured mind state at the societal level. The touted forms of social organisation, such as the variegations of capitalist market orientations, is not per se inadequate in meeting some needed form of social management process, but it is an aspect of the malleable social monster of distorted realities of monarchic vestigialities which in its strangulating offensive act of social transfer from the "king" to the "people", which people have become cliques of self oriented centers of authourity, exercising their power with a cruelty that lashes across the bent backs of shackled humanity sweltering in the despair of unfulfilled needs and an expanding void of meaningless existence that authourity is supposed to alleviate, but in failing to ease has created a barely contained social angst of diffused emotions, that holds the whole of society on a tightrope of pulsating stress and dissolving edginess. In a world where the potential for a calm and profitable exploitation of the mind and its creation could be pursued in the beauty of peaceful existence. The choice and the path of closed minds in pursuit of vague vanities of pieces of papers and bits of metal has turned society on its head and left mankind breathless in the great chase, sanctioned by leaders whose very purpose, directions, means and realisations is in massive disarray. The African society is faced with the option of what choices to make, the choices are effectively made at the leadership level for the rest of society, the options are the same for each member of society, the option is that which edifies human existence by effectively harnessing and transmitting the collective intellect and mind to realise ends that are beneficial to all without exception. Thus, material poverty begins and ends at the mind level. Its physical manifestations notwithstanding. Its physical manifestations are inarguably severe lack and unmediated suffering in the physical deprivation that occasions it. But it begins at the level of the incapacitated mind state, and must be solved at that nonmaterialistic level and expressed by the provisions of the material realisations of mind deliberations. (The intellegent and curious mind applies its diverse imaginative capacity to mould pliant nature, initially as a response to critical human needs, and later as an aestheticism to break the tedium of boredom, anyhow the acts of the expanded mind have been brokered and stunted from their utmost worthiness by lesser minds , the  guides on the path have become gatekeepers, setting toll gates of irreverent suffering, dispensing wickedness by default and constricting creativity, role reversals of power drunken mindlessness, grovelling in the dirt of their emptiness and starving their weakened and tormented liable dependants.) The creative effort must project from priorly erected platforms at continually higher levels, the basic nature of creative intellectual activity has nevetheless remained the same; to diversify and venture beyond the existing reality. It calls for a projection beyond the presciently existing reality in search of unexplored realms of palpably possible but hitherto unaccessed. In the exploration of previously traversed terrain unilinear tracking leads to "groove syndrome" repetitous renewal of errors. The essence of education is to learn from others, and seek to diversify by utilising existing knowledge base to explore previously untested but potentially viable options. For the masses on the continent, relief is within palpable accessibility but the entrapments of the dervish deviouness of abnormal hoarding behaviour  that has set the whole society in a twirling discordancy of flailing wasted energy in pursuit of the chaff that is elusively transient, ahs and is holding everything that is desired in check. That which is desired is common to all without exception, and until that realisation fully settles in, piecemeal, sectorial growth is not gradual development, as it is an expressive indication of perveted exercise of social immaturity which promotes societies splintered along degradations of haves and have nots. In effect these are exposed fortresses of illusionary joy in the mud of soul sucking poverty, poverty not of the material deprivations, but of the forclosure of hope under the awning of unlimited possibilities. The trappings of existing material wealth and the relentless pursuit of temporary irrelevancies, (in the light of the greater social responsibility, that qualifies centric effort with rewarding essentiality in the wider social realm)  that detracts those best positioned to rally their communities to evolve more sustainably satisfying forms of wealth creation, that does not leave in its wake abject misery in the larger swath of expectant humanity, more than the actual accumulated wealth, is the issue of concern. For the majority, the individual's accumulated wealth makes little difference, for so long as they can find meaningful adequacy of means of sustaining a respectable existence in their brief span of existence. It becomes a difficult cycle to break, of self centered pursuit to acquire a better and improved status at the expense of the systemic whole if necessary, in the midst of appalling denigration in one sector of society, if the evolving social system does not make a concerted effort to reorient the mind set to put all embracing social growth as the center of social developmental effort rather than individual based success expressed in monetary wealth, which wealth is innapropriately placed as the utmost expression of the human effort and thus becomes an end usurping other ends, the existing meaninglessness will become in due course falsified wisdom upon which is erected a 'society of cards', swaying and unsteady, a creation by denial of approriateness rather than by desired relevancy.  The transformational change situation provides a flexibility to remould emerging social reality in its existing state of ill conceived and blurry states of conscious long term clarity of clearly carefully contrived plans to yield expected end states of reformulated priorities to set forth a pattern to be followed as a means to an end, the existing weaknesses and fractious zones of discord warrants a reconsideration of system priorities, to be reviewed under leadership immersed in the minds of the people, projecting to set itself to the proper task of expansive mind states unhindered by the spritual poverty of empty souls in pursuit of ungrounded fleetingness of frivolous preoccupations.

 

The wicked draw the sword and bend the bow

to bring down the poor and the needy,

to slay those whose ways are upright.

But their swords will pierce their own hearts,,

and their bows will be broken.

Better the little that the righteous have

than the wealth of many wicked.

(Psalm 37:14-16).

 

The effectiveness of leadership roles and grand individual achievements of the children of the land are inavariably dampened by the continental physically realised inadequacy. The contentment in one section of the social whole has not necessarily enabled the expected overflow to the other section who have borne their indignities of deprivations under a false hope of a spread effect from the overbalanced end of society that will tip the scale, and enable a leveraging of the social balance for the benefit of the systemic whole. The underdevelopment of the mind state that will enable the expected social spread for mutual benefit in many ways account for the continual deprivation in sectors of society that have had no meanningful improvements from their traditional agrarian states to improved states. When Europe was devastated in two wars that leveled all forms of meaningful infrastructure that indicates development, it was only the governments that had the resources to engage in the sort of major rebuilding required, a rebuilding process of society, at least at the infrastructural provision level that is in many ways not different from the continents existing needs. If they could manage it when they were emotional and physically ravaged as a society in the severe and climactically limiting circumstances, it is not altogether to criticise the lack of innovativeness in leadership that often times seem to be operating at cross purposes with its primary responsibilities. There is a wrong assumption, that a leader is only an econmic administrator, but the leader is more often than not an inspirer and an exhortor. Since the continents leadership lack transparency, they cannot even appeal to their people towards meaningful and truthful sacrificial effort with a desirable end. There desirable ends lack a foundation of reference in the collective mind, because colonialism brought different tribes together for its own ends, independence was a form on incomplete self assertiveness that has yet to forge the higher mind aspirations defining a direction and a common future. The process has been halting and disconnected efforts, appreciable in its achievements, but lacking common acceptance and consistency of linkage of purposes and a defined future expectation. The prevailing economic focus emphasises further fragmentation without having first established coherent adhesiveness. The United States of America were united in purpose of a better place where men shall be free in spirit and soul, liberty and being white united them in common effort realised at various levels. Africa has individuals seeking material achievement by any means possible with no unitary high philosophic aspiration binding the individual drive. (Their aspirations are in imitating outsiders). Leaders are mistaken in thinking that merely emphasising tribal differences, the commonality of poverty and favouritism, as being fostered, will ever dissipate to automatically create the future that all desire but is differentialy being realised.

 

The poor, for the most part are delicately balanced on the edge, for a few it is an entry into the joy of expectations being fulfilled, for the majority it is the untempered perception of the stinging exasperation of seeing a few exultate in despondent desploration in an orchestrated deprivation of the masses that bristles and pushes reason beyond comprehensibility, where  reason as a concept of social tolerance, is pushed beyond the borders of tolerance and tips the scales into the chasm of spurious bloodbath of meaningless sacrifices that taint and stain without purifying. Meaning has fled the realms where social consciousness has been subsumed by materialism.

 

The people seek to find joy in the weak lights of lighted hope in the midst of the gloomy clampiness of the pervading depths of denied dearths of darkness that has caught a hold of the bouyant of souls and held them in the grip of the wanton lust of wickedness and crudity. The high notes of their sad songs are the high ends of wailings of the life that has been cheapened and made so casual by the trites of the circumstances that in the face of the weightiest solemnity of evocativities of the human essence, essence has become the emotion starved drama of the sustained intensity of bare survivability in the tense reality of the ordinary and mundane. It is a world within worlds where humanity has been stripped of all elegance and the ugliness of crudity is not polished but hazed over to become barely sustainable acceptance of a reality that has been denied its fullest expression. Being human is expressive of the highest poetic expression of excellence of expressed creativitity. Those who are the voice of the announcer at the dawn of the breaking day, chattering the quietitude of the silence of the waking day with their harsh sounds of croaking stick against metal, announcing the departure of local folks to ignonimity or mythical permanence of ancestorhood, proclaim the declarative right of accorded delegative authority to rouse the somnolent public to badnews. The light of the collective intellect seeking to find and give the right way must seek the right of way by dancing to the solemn tunes of the drenching agonies of the hapless futility of bonded humanity shackled by closed minds, and in singing the tunes of soul sucking sorrow, light the fire that kindles kind hope of refreshing awareness. There can be no joyous exultation for so long as a single human entity is denied by system failure to enable utmost realisation of the highest possible attainment of innate capacities. The task is far too enormous to allow the wasting waway of precious human energy in a middling state of delayance occassioned by the inability of those to whom power has devolved to clarify the extensiveness of the task laid before them. The people wait with a muddled sense of individual failure for the kingdom of God, but each in his own heart is beset by a benumbing awareness that in many ways they have failed their God in their collective act of inadequacy; inadequacy of  effective implementation of  harnessing to yield optimum benefit, in the true spirit of each man being his neighbours helper. Help is best appreciated by those in need, and to those who seek it, it is given, yet there is an arcane obscenity in preventing people from gaining the mind set to seek for a way out of their morass of debilitating want, and it is more biting that its source is from the society and the very ones who have been consigned the task of leading the way out. In seeking for help, the people have become beggars instead of ready labourers seeking for fulfillment in rewarding occupation. They are not only physically denied, but their very spirits are taunted and beset with doubts of self worth. 

 

If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 1 John 3:16.

 

He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker,

but whoever is kind to the needy honours God.

Proverbs 14:31.

 

Everyone without exception is lacking in some essential requirement that qualifies human worthiness,  at a very deep level on the continent. There are the incontinent wealthy who are in a soporific stupor of greedy constipation of overindulgence lacking of the required expanded mind state that travails the trivialities of minimal individual growth acquisitve accomplishment in the midst of the yet untouched, unimaginable weighty task of social upgradement. In their lack of discernment their accomplishment at the individual level and their inability to use their potential at being levers of society's elevation from the grinding gnashing despoilation of unutilised resources running to waste in the face of great need is an exemplary indication of their lack and their spiritual poverty. These are the ones who set by fate to yield value and glorify the gift of God in humanity have set themselves as cretinous abberations on a gluttounous splurge of unending revelry of bestial proportions where the actual task of leadership remains unaccomplished, leaving in their wake the other half of society that is lacking by acquiscing their willpower to be trampled and discarded, leaving them naked and dehumanised. Together the abuser and the abused by commital and condoning have become liabilities lacking assets that they need to recover to redefine reality and fulfill accomplishment within the redrawn boundaries of reconfigured spirituality belying humans dwelling within the light of a new dawn. The reprieve from self inflicted torment through denial to submit to consensual social discipline based upon humane consideration for enabling equal gains across the social spectrum has been vaguely veiled over as an ambitious drive for individual achievements, which drives are faulted along primary lines of the unequal foundations upon which the drive is initiated. 'Social salvation' is premediated upon a needed sensitisation to begin the quest for justice and equal rights from collective consciences that are pricked to awareness of the futility of lopsided system dynamics self correcting to yield expected ends rather than fracturing along seams of weaknesses and visiting chaos through system disintegration. Desperation begets violent acts that in remonstration of the abnormality of the social arrangements that give rise to these acts of spontaneuosly approved aggression against the society from within the society indict acceptable acknowledgement of the exceptional unusualness of the times and the people who make it a surreal reality of the reversed phantasm of naiveties. The existing social evolution and its configuration of determinant variables, is a brooding recipe for disaster invetably. The criticism of the existing continental system and its expressive exigent ramifications and tolerated albeit not accepted values are not intended to blame sections and individuals as much as it is to depict the folly of resilience resolution to extol existing frailities as grounded progress upon which to base future growth. The individuals and the sectorial beneficiaries of the ineeficient system configuration, stand to be criticised because they benefit at the expense of the whole systemic beneficial improvement, and given their ability to wield influential power at their control to change existing reality are compliant with the failures that benefit a select minority while at the same time ensuring the perpetuity of hopeles despair in the face of force that the denied can not effectually instigate to change in their curtailed mind state of calling for creative redefinition of reality. These select minority are as much results of the system as they are its perpetrators, since in the absence of concerted effort that calls for minor sacrifice for an improved all round social system designation, the limited exploitation of potential that stunts social growth will remain stead fast, much as the eventual social upheaval that will upturn their thinly protected imaginary security within the provisional manipulations of wealth that is immoral in not only its source but serves as a means for curtailing the expected hope of socially uninhibited improvement in the living standards of all. Their are no common people, much as their are no higher class humans, stripped of the material creations of the collective mind set, misappropriated for limited expendability, society has created an imaginary absurdity that has gripped the fanciful nature of the society and found credible instituitionalisation, that human worth is measurable and sustainable in material acquisition and or ability to access materialistic indulgencies of absurd profanity. While there is no intention to set a measure and limitation on what each individual should effectively indulge in as a means of expressing their fullest possible realisation of the human spirit, be it material or otherwise. That expressivity should not by the social system the collective mind embraces through forced acquisence, be contrary to the spirituality of humanity, that in being denied, builds pressures of resentment, that burst forth in acts of massed dejections of the profanity that denies mirror the very processes they react against in their extensive orgy of 'contra-humanity' profanity of destructive impulse. The human spirit cheerishes and seeks to fulfill common aspirations at a certain socially acceptable level. These aspirations as stated, uplift the essence of human creativeness and embelishes life from a basically primitive state. Its actual expression is contingent on the specificities of time and situational conditionalities. But the great moral debate that remains at the core of social instability and remains unresolved in the era of greater social definition of individual expectations is should society permit and create social systems that manipulate to limit the fullest expression of the benign spirituality of humaness by enabling access to potntial ultimate realisability to some while effectively denying for others? If there are no innate qualifications within the creative element other than the base limitations of fully unexercised mind set that perpetuate suffering by not enabling equitability at a level commensurate with the realities of social expectations, then it is only to be expected that the more any society deviates from this expected equanimity within its social configurations the higher instability is infused into this system, no matter how conceived and realised their can be no all round satisfaction within such systems, not even among the favoured, for their material dispositions are contrary to their spirituality, which no matter how twisted and contrary to normality it is, must seek to find stability through two acts, protection of contrary states of being or diffusion of material acquisition as a means of enabling inner spiritual harmony. The absence of which harmony diffuses outwardly from a veritable individual inner perspective of benign emotional instability of immaterial states of being to gross social instability of total chaos. Society is the massed energies of individual mind states coordinating activivties through a carefully balanced orchestration of disparate individual viewpoints seeking to and unnegotiably bonded to find common grounds for expressing and finding realisation in a collective millieu. The essential role of leadership to shape the disparity therein to find generally satisfying ends, is the crux of social balance, betrayal and or ineffectiveness in this role, invariably leads to the unravelling of the carefully patterned social arrangement of contracted individual strengths, a messy process that in light of the unconditional requirement of society as the physicall defining realm of individual existence, is fraught with extremes of heightened emotional acts contingent upon failures at levels of social organisation that effectively makes life a meaningless existence of intolerable and endless misery. It seems the gradual awareness of the failure of society at the leadership organising level leads to radical acts of desperation in a bid for major restructuring through total destruction. A process where meaning is suspended as the anger suppressed for prolonged periods attempts to sapient itself through organised fragmentation of core social values-indictment of the social essentiality of human existence even in chaos.- The excessive pursuit of social engineering configurations that place excessive emphasis on individual effort without providing the socially instuitionalised system states that ensure unfrustrated individual effort is critically lacking on the continent, thus while leadership is en a way emphasising the appropriate self motivational ambitional drive expectations, leadership's call is being made within a vacuum of expected provisions, that render inappropriate the expectations that anyhow are needed, (if this is a complex thought process that is ambiguous it is an exact reflection of the social reality) in the process frustration is engendered and unrelieved builds to an explosive level of barely tolerated irrelevancy of leaders who have not only failed their societies but have devolved failure through incontinent improvisations and creatively renewal social organisation processes that set the society at par with the evolving internal and external influential processes. In many ways the evolving social system is at many stages, a fractious malleability of flexibly redesigned model or brittle dissolution of organised structure. Thus systems that are unable to restructure their core system end state defining variables through repositioning and incorporation of hitherto nonexistent variables, are likely to be led by leaders exercising authourity in a manner such that that their objective and actual situational realisabilities are completely irrelevant to overall constituent desires. They are so to say "flogging dead horses." The entity that defines the actual expression of leadership behaviour and yield must be reinvented and infused with a new vitality concurrent social constituent expectations. Though it remains without doubt that some inherent system strengths are best realised in the midst of noninterference from central government, it is also unarguable that systems require planned realisations that by their very designation necessitate a well formulated and implemented constructed base upon which inherent system strengths must find their natural expression. Thus the natural element is boosted for utmost realisation through a preparatory groundwork intended to benefit the systemic whole. The pattern of development within African societies has been an uneven attempt at delivering even development across board, it has yielded positively valued growth and improvement in limited sectors of the society, the preparatory ground, thus, enabled, those sectors of delimited social advantage to be the vanguards of individual progress; they are in a way an indictment of the surety that given the adequacy of preparatory efforts at the larger social level that is all inclusive, individual creative energy directed and facilitated at the larger societal level, within delineated social configurations with the amenable control and manipulatory effort of social beneficial leadership of all inclusive social segments, (despite the appeal of common and equally comprehensive approximation to the required elements that when available catalyses social growth aspirations, society is by its natural designation, self preferred segments of varied interests, which cannot be wrongly sought to be coercively conformed, to enable a uniform society. A uniform society is a social abberation that stunts the diversity of creative energy along forced lines of incomprehensibility that engenders a feeling of excessively controlled states of being, which is contrary to the human desire to live in an orderly but unconstrained society). But realisable at the massed energy level of broader continental configurations, such standardised dynamic provisions, spreading and covering within expected desirability of time and quality will usher the masses into their preferred zones of optimum creature comfort and potential realisability of natural and acquired talents within the definitional conformities of the times and their specifications of what is possible and desired. Individual lifes are brief when set against the vast expanse of human existence and future, but within each lifetime, there is set in motion strong and unyielding drive to realise the utmost value within the existing reality. Even when seemingly placcid and unexercised, that human energy, continues unabated at a sublime mind state in acts expressed or displayed, where there is invariably the continual fight to give value to latent potencies through acts of self motivated constructive effort or socially directed destructive expending of assumed socially instigated frustration. Whether at the individual level or at the social level, the acts of experienced frustration with an overall destructive effect, have a significant social element and responsibility accruing to the social system that in the midst of validating the individual drive for creating self value with a social worth often finds obstructing and frustrating. With this at the fore of the collective mentality, those set the task of realising the common aspirations must bridge the gap between expectations and the availability of the medium which they are amicably realised.

 

The solution to the 'social rut' of assumed normality of ineffecient states of being is at the mind level. (The mind level or state is an embodiment of solution derivation within existing social reality that seeks diversity, continuity and diffraction from the existing reality of general dissatisfaction and its infectious disaffection on the general systemic whole. With an assumed hope- the unverified emotional component of feasible but unaccessed states of prefered existence- of a better more satisfying socially engineered configurations of reconformed variable states of social existence) Articulated purposes emanating from redeemed mind states within the social millieu, (most relevantly at the leadership level where its permeating effect will have wider effect and preferably whole system effect with general positive outcomes), boldened to challenge existing reality with intent to realise expeted ends, lies at the center of the solutions that paves the war for unexplored social orientations. (renewal processes that need not neccesarily visit chaos as the cleansing fire of renewal- renewals that often lead back to the dead ends of previously travailled paths in the quaint continental setting). To find solutions to endemic problems of stagnant systems sinking into dissolute states of nonessentiality to their components constituents, requires an appreciable capability to understand the phenomenal powers sited with leverage to jostle whole systems unto better locations where their reconfigured inner constituents and their dynamic system variable constituents are capable of recombining to yield expected ends. The ends that are are contingent of the leadership acts of governance are all embracing, but not presently all desired, the dearth between the ends of existing governing processes and the expected desired ends that effectively leadership should facilitate within existing reality is wide enough to call for major system reconfiguration with a refocusing on the whole system benefice rather than sectorial benefice with whole system exploitation. The reason why detailing of an assumed solution will be transient is the dynamism occassioning transitional states. That transitional states must be conformed to specified all inclusive social engineering at its core system categorisations is obviously that in the absence of this all embracing social rearrangement of variables operating within and across major system componential levels, not only will the existing overemphasising of partial componential advantages create massive social imbalance resulting in lopsided systems evolving dynamically out of synchrony, but the lopsidedness will enable the destructive outburst of assumed corrective balancing effect emerging from the other extreme pushing an imabalanced system completely of balance with consequent total system collapse. Societies by their their interrelated fusion of independent entities co-operating towards ends that are of social relevance with preffered individual realisability are by their very nature tensely, delicately, balanced. They cannot realistically find perfection in uncontrolled states of being, but worse still are social control mechanisms that convulsively undermine the delicate natural balance by a delusional partial system benefiting, focusing, on one aspect of a section of the segmented whole, to the disadvantage of the other components.

 

 A chieftain fleeing the heat of a local war finds himself dying of thirst beside a fresh spring, Far in the forest away from the safety of his court. Traditional upbringing has thought him that he must always take his water from the hands of the cup bearer. His deep seated upbringing wages a prolonged inner conflict with his biological need to quench his thirst. By the time he resolved to scoop his own water this time, his unslacked thirst failing to find any succour in the inner conflict resolution process in progress, had let loose the calm of death over turbid immaturity parading as royal mentality.

 

Africa has put  its system's priority in discomforting disarray, thus while there are improvements in limited sectors there does not seem any sustained 'pull along' effect in the excluded sectors. There is thus created internal disharmony centered around common interests. Thus while there should be unity of focus on pursuing commonly benefiting end purposes. There is a system created internal conflict, that basically, wastes collective energy otherwise focused on pursuing common pursues, that yields graded results with eventual widespread effect. The existing inconsistencies within the system will not be resolved by any external interests. When this system defect that permit the existence of a denied class of a section of society is left to assume social normalcy, any external aid and assistance will only go to streghthen their social resilience. Their must be a fundamental reconstruction at a level that defines existing reality that will ensure that all will have the same preparatory granted basis for ensuring their human adequacy in their own societies. There is a certain delusional deception that social systems can and do in the course of time self adjust to ensure system sustenance, but the reality is that unless deliberate deconstruction and reconstruction efforts are made with tenacious intensity to yield desired states, deplorable aspects of societies increase in a negatively directed intensity and eventually suffer massive collapse in the absence of effective forced effort to rectify the inherent weakness. Thus there will not be any likely improvement in the deprived sections of societies other than increased suffering and worsening states of existence, while the waiting and lack of initiatives at the levels where it matters assumes proctracted chronicity. The continent is standing by the pond of endless possibilities and self defining opportunities in the light of progress and developments elsewhere and must be catalysed to improve its existing state through socially conscious leadership with a creative agenda. Presently, for large segments of society, there is only a waiting without avail for some charitable samaritan to come and rearrange their priorities to enable them dip into this desired resource, yet the awareness is pervasive that the society will have to recreate itself along all approving lines for newly realised ends. While existing system designations enable optimum efficiency for maintaining the vestiges of poorly adapted colonial minimal industrialisation and stagnant technology manufacturing sector's labour intensive production processes. The rate of development to bridge the gap between these minimal technology and the adequate provision of production processes have created the unsustainable government policy that over emphasis private sector investment as the way out. The actual way out has been inconclusively tackled, which is the hyper level of ordering and projecting the expected and planned developments to closely approximate realised provisions on ground, which at the same time should be broad based enough to plan system accomodation for the total population with enough slack built in to absorb surges beyong medium term projections of population growth. The all inclusive plans it must be reiterated must enable adequate infrastructural provisions at system wide level without exception to enable actual human perfomance and productivity at levels that are economically attuned to sustaining the self and enabling the expansion of the transited society. The existing society is characterised by leadership barely governing within severely restricted limitations of sustaining semblances of civility that just about holds the nation states together, but generally of little relevance for the desired future for most of the populace. The call for radical reorientation is unarguable if the concept of modernity is to have relevancy within meaningful time period. Otherwise, the awareness needs to assimilate the whole society that modernity is an option not a given for the whole system. Much as that awareness is within the collective mentality, due to excessive lapses in effective execution at the leadership, it must be obvious that the lacks and hardships that occassion traditional forms of socio-economic organisation, indicate that, unless there is a concerted effort to organise society such that the whole system is adequately upgraded to the expected levels of organised transitional shift, the imbalance due to the existing of disparate components pursuing the same ends within a desirably balanced system will eventually lead to system collapse one way or another. The simple implications being that diversified society should exercise all the options at its conceivable ability, with emphasis on the means that enable significant achievement, to enhance system balance, through the establishment of the core essentialities at the feasible materialistic infrastructural level and the educational and training provision level to ensure that the aspects of the system that create severe imbalance are corrected in qualified time to ensure the balanced stability in the stressed joints in the existing social infrastructure, by alleviating the pressure that are pushing towards system fragmentation by elimination of needs and provisions of templates of sustainable dynamic adequacy. The stresses that occassion existing society are due to myriad factors, yet the obvious reality is that while the  concept of modernity has gained ascedancy within select segments of the society in meaningful ways, the government's have assumed that traditional and backward sections of society are capable of self development and thus enabling the completion of the development gap. But if there is an assumed irrationality in the wider system, it is immaterial to the day to day outcomes of the people who are seeking immediate relief. The people seek for self defined rationality emerging from within addressed to their peculiariaties to facilitate comprehension of the problems that need solution. The solutions must reflect the problem and not merely the vague postulations of some fancified theories struggling to find real world definitiveness in some nether world of little relevance to the people who bear the daily brunt of imposed sufferings of postponned realisations. Within the philosophic framework of social orientation, the adept society must generate diversity within defined reality, thus much as the society is composed of segmentations of varied interests and degrees of need provisions, there must be agility in diversity, as the social directions responds in correlations with the specifities emergent of sectorial interests. In the end the purpose is to realise for the whole system an equity in social provisions that equlibrates the diversity that occassions every society.

 

The nature of formative structure is all inclusive and not selective, thus while at some levels sections of the society that have taken early advantage of social provisions and have become a comparatively advantaged section in some narrowly configured state can consider themselves through some manipulatory mechanism of social functioning to be better placed than others, there is inevitably a common bond of effectual and eventual mutual interaction among all the constituents of any society to realise the existing ends of that society. There are some 'head in the sand'  ostrich exponents of some vague social relevace accruity theory who wrongly assume through short sighted expositions, of some ill defined economic postulations, that some sections of society are by their advantageous location within the social spectrum, more relevant to the sciety and therefore deserving of more consideration for the allocation of the common social wealth than other sections. But then, the reality is that, society needs to direct more energy and resources at sections of the society that through inherent weakness or lack of opportunity, have been sidelined over time to become unproductive and overly dependent (which is not possible on the continent) to be positioned and socially energised to become effective productive elements in the social mechanism. (The energisation of the people, who after thriving against the odds and obstacles of dysfunctional social systems, seeking to find niches for the expression of the economic viability and finding no such means, but levels of ever sophisticated frustration, is crucial, if those in that category of resigned redundacy are not to be wasted, by a social process that first fails its constituents and then ignores them, treating them with ignominy.) The broad assumption can be made that the material needs and requirements of humans are exhaustible at a certain definite level of provision within specified time periods and that the specific social designation of the governing machinery through which government effectively yields its results, should enable this basic level of accessibility of the individual to their material needs at all segments of society, across all levels, right from the cradle to the grave; while not imposing barriers on individual creative effort and energy expenditure to generate additional gains to satisfy their hoarding cravings. The effiecient social framework should by its designation provide an effective system for utilisation of existing resources to create the productive structure that not only focuses on providing sustenance to all its constituents, but also enabling unhindered realisation of their contributory latent talents within a well defined individually satisfying and socially appreciable  state of commintment, in an environment adequately adjusted to meet the aspirations of its constituents. That the existing society is able only to effectively utilise a minimum percentage of its existing capacity in human and natural resources, while desperately attempting, a wild, generally irrelevant to the mass of its constituents, exercise in social stability of narrow actualisation, to find an equitable balance,  (it is more an exercise of self contained admiration at minimum success at minute levels, of a society that has besieged itself in a cataclysmic failure at leadership level. The leaders with an initially socially relevant agenda, have found themselves midstream, struggling to find task identity, and broad socil relevance to their leadership responsibilities, in a severely altered environment, where the indequacies of  poorly designed initial social frameworks, compound the increasing difficulties of adjusting system elements in tandem with the evolving inner system and intruding external system influences. The weakened and increasingly irrelevant unrevised social framework, thus unable to provide the hard definitive framework around which social realisation is adequately expressed, becomes further weakened and the controlling role of leadership is further narrowed in the expanding diffussion to delimited  delusional 'relevant sectors of economic importance'. The increasing constriction in leadership 'direct impact relevance' as their actual influence diminishes is in actual fact, nothing more than the diminishing influence of the government in its inflexible inability to adapt as its sectors of influence expands dynamically, leading to the widening gap between incongruent elements of the systemic whole. This creates a situation where, unrequired devolving of definition of individual states in the social medium is expressly confirmed at the individual viewpoint in contradiction to the general social balancing effort which attempts to blend conflicting interests by ameliorating excessive disparity to enable general benefice. The later response, which by itself is an automatic self sustaining response at the individual level in socially diffused unclarified settings; activated in the absence of individual self realisation within existing system configurations. While within the managed provisos of the systemic whole, such individual expressions tend to find actualisation within carefully planned mediums that complement the society's general agenda, left on their on, uncoordinated to blend with the social growth agenda, they tend to be wild, unteethered individual acts of bucaanery self-benefiting acts, with a secondary consideration for the general society. However, every individual end must need find exression within a social medium, thus government's that emphasise and create social situations for exploitation that emphasises individual and group limited beneficial ends at the expense of general society, must supplement their market oriented policies with adequately, improving social provisions to complement the social balancing effort.) The absence of an effective leadership agenda within specified accomodating social framework to equivocate the dynamic, vast, continually expanding, plane of required direct social influence, the lack of government approximation to rapidly expanding social interests has led to dismal social demise set in motion by the earlier stated irrelevancy of the leadership interests and those of the governed, an essential requirement of common ground for trust between the government andthe governed; it is also an indication of the low level of social development that the continent has attained. In some social systems models, human resources are deliberately rendered redundant not for lack of effective system integration into the productive mechanism, as much as for low intensity disregard for unanimity of human values, and thus can hardly be seen as worthy models of emulation. The extent or degree of graded transformation of raw nature must be expanded to provide system sustaining activities that occupy the constituents at a level commensurate with the requirements of the system state at any particular period. The inability of the governing process to provide basic provisions and essential organising schemes in system infrastructure that will effectively ensure that all system costituents are fitted at all times into socially sustaining configuration of productive capacities underlies the existing dismal state of the continent.

The provisions required to balance the social scale, are bare time mediated aspects of the totality of governing responsibilities, but their provision is necessary to accelerate the individual intiative that continually frees government from actvitivities that are better pursued by the sustaining drive of individual goal achievement motives and frees government to be concerned with the higher responsibilities of orchestrating social balance to be responsive to the evolving systemic whole. Development must be a combination of internally driven innovative initiative in combination with maximum access possible to external resources and innovativennes. The external factors become an important comparative consideration owing to the uniqueness of the continent's positional disposition in reference to global development. The actual measure of real developmental growth is in terms of what percentage of internal developments are instigated from within the system, rather than from without, and capable self sustenance without recourse to external support. Unihibited and easy access to the external world is unconditional to continental evolution, but it does not eschew the required gradual or accelerated decoupling of continental developmental efforts from external conditionalities and the faster there is an establishment of the basic infrastructural and system designation procedures that effectively establishes a system wide realised transition rather than the existing select sectional preferential growth strategy, the quicker there will be te ready accessibility to unleash the gradual opening up of the vibrant minds budding with exciting ideas, to interact with the provisions of the nurturing environment to release their fullest potentials. Individuals as member of society are predisposed to activate their life sustaining work energy in directions that will support the individual life for the general social benefit. Society is designed at the leadership level to provide the social climate within which social viability is sustained by employing the directive energy of governing processes to effectively the social constituents for desired ends  an for sustaining social viability. There is a required commitment from both aspects for realising commonly supportive ends, this common ends must be solicited for, and creatively engaged to yield mutually benefitting ends. The common denominator is that humans are occupied in role positions  at both ends of this viable complementing positions, to employ and apply resources, to realise mutually sustaining existence.

 

The next day Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people, and they stood round him from morning till evening...why do you alone stand as judge while all these people stand round you from morning till evening? Moses ansewred because the people come to seek God's will. Whenever they have a dispute, it is brought to me, and I decide between the parties and inform them of God's decrees and laws. Moses father in law replied, "What you are doing is not good. you and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone. Listen now to me and I will give you some advice, and may God be with you. You must be the people's representative before God and bring their disputes to Him. Teach them the decrees and laws, and show them the way to live and the duties they are to perform. But select capable men from all the people-men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain-and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. Have them serve as judges for the people at all times, but have them bring every difficult case to you; the simple cases they can decide themselves. That will make your load lighter, because they will share it with you. If you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will go home satisfied."

24   Moses listened to his father-in-law and did everything he said. He chose capable man from all Israel and made them leaders of the people, officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. They served as judges for the people at all times. The difficult cases they brought to Moses, but the simple one they decided themselves. -Exodus 18:13-

 

The larger part of social improvement is concerned with not only enhancing existing productive activities but innovating to invent new means of adding value to human existence and in the process infusing a system wide increment in desired and desirable output. The improvements in agriculture and nature related ecomonic activities, are not excessively far remove from existing practices, but what the people lack is an organised integration of traditional practices with the mainstream modernity that define existing social reality. The absence of the slight improvements required a an aesthetic measure to abridge the infrastructural inaequacy, has created a seeming unbridgeable gap of existing states between the traditional society and the modern society. But in reality when efffectively tackled and the proper controlling guidance inserted into the the social medium, it is, but a little jump into the future. The existing social designation is a creation of the inquisitive mind state and it can only be sustained through active application of continued diversity at the mind state. This is especially difficult to realise where the artisitic intellect has created barriers that set a limit to total comprehensibility of the full dimension of what is assumed to be normal evolutionary expression of social growth. The artistic expression of the mind state expressed in consistency and sustained and maintaned to find solid definitive expansivity, is a surreallity that must be fully comprehended to facilitate the utmost expression of the deired modernity in traditional systems. Art is fantasy findng expression in meaningful fluidity of a blend of the purely inaccessible mind state in outward blend with the physical reality to realise itself in a format of physical state that is unique to the mind state finding expression in the physical object of aopted expression, but capable of having a crossover appeal that can be of a massive social acceptance. The bare essentials of existence that sustains the life form are crude and basic in comparison to this engagingly consuming ecstatic individual mind exploitation that in its ingenuity captures the common mind and adds value to life. In-between the artist and the realist has evolved a stable driving element of the growth and expansive development of huan social organisations, that Africa is attempting to replicate. Development and infrastructural provisions are neccessities as much as they are evocative desires to complement nature to realise physical states over and beyond mere essentials for sustaining existence. There is a critical level where the combining of relevancy and artistic expressivity when realised across a broad stream of the society is bound to create indicative change in systemic whole and could be geometrically improved to affirm the directive growth of society in ever increasing dynamic improvement. Development as in all cultures borrows extensively from existing knowledge base, but its essential configural nature is that it must find local expression at some level of its realisation, it is this which makes, adaptive growth a worthwhile desired global end, the diversity in the expressive art of added values, rather than a motonous unvaried monochrome photocopying effort. The sort for development is a speedy replication exercise of what is existing in internal system states, it is a grounded mind state exercise to generate continuity in higher quality systemic planned and fully realised strategic alteration of the natural evolutionary process, in situ.

 

All developmental efforts without exception must compliment nature, no matter how radically the transformation processes involved are. Thus, the pervasive attraction of nature, is in its sublime infectious emanative calmness and the consequent induced reduction of stress that it facilitates upon the social collective and its contructions. The ruggedness and rough provisions must altered to enhance maximum accessibility and increased benefit therein emerging. In that process, nature's untainted beauty in its original state must be engineered for increased value, contrary to the existing dismal state.  The existing free ranging encroachment on the beaches, (The beaches must be completely free of unnnecessary human structures for at least 800 metres from the wavelines, to ensure that the beauty of untainted and undisturbed peace remains as a common location for relaxation) the river and stream basins, the lake front despoilations; these are the inability of governemnt's to effectively regulate and structure the only beauty left untainted by the mediocrity of the inadequate administrative procedures set in place in place to manage the modernisation process and its social machinations. In the midst of inadequate social framework, the growing cities in many places, are but unrestrained land gulping menageric unmediated removal of the sublimity of greenery in large uninterrupted space to break the concretisation that passes for cities. In the midst of the one place where a blend of trees and infrastructures would have created utmost beauty; inadequacy and incompetency have limited city planning to limited spaces of irrelevancies, where the land title battles eclipse the higher and more relevant city-nature blending that will ensure future cities in yet evolving societies of planned realisation that evokes the sublime beauty of nature becalming effect in the midst of the masses. The false assumption there could be a recourse to temporary development until creative room could be evinced at a later more comfortable stage of the collective mind growth state, is a faint probability but all reason indicate that it is best to have high quality at each implementation of the development agenda that will undergo modification and improvement with the progres of time as such implementations age with grace, rather than allow the ugliness to permeate and suffuse the landscape with suffucating abandon. It would seem that there is a lacking of the delicate finesse to mediate in the midst of the raw, untendered energy, that is driving the individual motive in the socially uncohesive shamble of disengaged leadership, such that while, the leadership relieves itself of core definitional activities that it is supposed to provide and prepare the private sector to take over through shared responsibility between the collective interest and the ownership interest, through a gradual preparatory shift of responsibility. The speed of disengagement is nit being matched be the active effective implementation of supervisory policies that will monitor and mould the emerging hitherto uncensored individual centered social growth spurt. The excessive implementation of rules and static state controlling laws definitely will stifle growth and individual explorative desires, but the ineffieciency in control methods will instuitionalise chaotic development. Social expression must be moulded within limited bounds of acceptability, lest there be a massive outpouring of individual idiosyncracies causing distortions in the ordered social semblance. Pointedly, not all that is individually convenient, is socially beneficial, thus the mediation between the government and the society's constituents must be maintained at an extremely high tempo. The reason being that all forms of social expression must find meaningful structure within defined social framework. The nature of that framework requires extreme sensitive, rather than the forced marshalling of the individual freedom to conform to some ill-fitting generalised social strait iron. The viable individual creative energy must be harnessed, controlled to find expression through socially acceptably and system developing constructs, lest, in the midst of the noisome irascible nondefinitive changing transformational shift, it, in frustratation, turns on itself, and become a socially disabling force, of infinite devious inevntiveness in its crudity. It is the responsible leadership role to invent the social environment where all energy are directed towards positive ends.

 

Dancing by the fire, he learnt soon enough.

He had come along way, far away from somewhere

With hopes and a pulsating energy to fulfish a wish

'If wishes were horses, beggars would ride'

Riding the high horse of honest thought

He was thrust into the fray

Stinging flames lashed out

Rapacious tongues licking in long abrasive strokes

He bore the scars and learnt, real quick

Hopping with one foot over burning coals at the edge of the circle of flames, he stood his ground with patient resilient.

The warrior has faced his test, in the heat of the battle

Steady heads carry the day

And what a long day it turned out to be.

 

The easiest solution to a problem is to 'sweep it under the carpet.' To pretend the problem is not the and silently wishing it away. The sad truth for leaders and social architects is that social problems are not only stagnant if left unresolved, but they aIso tend to multiply, thus delay and false pretence hardly solve the great social problems it only deepens them, entrenching them firmly in the social landscape and widening their effects. Thus by pretending that ignoring attempting bold solutions to irritating problems works by keeping the irritant out of disruptive view, and thus eliminates the consequent emotional upsets at both the problem source and the solution end. In the wider viable system of complex entities in complex social configurations there is only increasing ramifications of the problem. This error complicates simple problems to become major social accretions, and creates the ground for severe social disruptions. The leadership role position is the only one centrally located enough to engage in problem sourcing and solution generation, adopting an interactive strategy of resorting to involved rather than standoffish approach. In a rather sad, but nevertheless amusing manner, leaders have been garnering expertise at problem dodging than a gradual one stop problem elimination strategic orientation. Thus there is a shift from actual and expected problem solving to a devious artform of camouflaging process. Translated to real terms, there is not an increment in the expanded activities of the government, but the growth in government has been minimising direct impact on the severely deprived in society, while at the same rate governing has become a social status role rather than am exercise in social welfare, a deviation that has focused on the individual benefit of the persons in leadership role and a decrement in concern for those that need to be positioned in social upgradement effort. In the absence of a reversal of activities that will refocus the acts of government in directions that have widespread social benefit, the entrenched poverty will prevail and expand in its scope. For those outside the sphere of beneficial influence capable of taking advantage of their existing states to exploit capitalist economic organisation, it will get only worse and worse. In the absence of concerted government effort to enact and implement far reaching and drastic policies and administrative measures, the continent will be a mass of poverty of seething seas of slum and poverty dotted with islands of taunting wealth. In both worlds there will be no joy, or only pretence and fear. Just because the few who are capable of bringing the required solutions have attained their own ends does not merit a disdainful disregard for their compatriots, while the majority appreciate the reality that in a world structured around money and its supply as a control for development, what is required is a mind state and a spirituality of enagaged concern that in the effused social philosophy reassured the populace throug overt acts of concerned effort, that their leaders are not only pursuing their tasks with qualified ability but perfoming in expected directions. In its absence, their seems a surrealistic exercise of barely tolerable social robbery, its acts are evidence of its crime. 'Run the government such that it is just about socially sustainable for the indvidual plundering to continue.' The crime is not only the acts of commital but the acts of ommission that deny the present and the future constituents adequacy of expected states of existence. Unless there is a forceful departure to securing the individual interest and security, unless the leaders are enlightened realists stretching their suporific minds drowning in the elusive reality, stretching their imaginative creative mind to create a new artform of social designation that dignify existence. Together, the desparate and the sated are walking the same path of pain, pain of the things that could have been, but are not, because no one is ready to rise above himself, from the sucking pit of irrelevant clamouring catching hold and drowning the brightest ideas in the murky darkeness of a people strayed of the path of truth and honesty and lost in the grasslands of falsified deceptiveness. That which you can truly enjoy and fully delight is what the hard work etches from the flimsy firmness of the idealistic mind. Idealism must find social worthwhileness in enabling departure from the existing pain.

 

Adaptation is the essential cultural component of development, the raw and unadapted technology stripped of its social relevance and cultural enhancement, is nothing more than a foreign implantation in a diseased body. Much as the body will benefit positively from absorbing and accepting the foreign implantation, the social body like the physical body finds itself in auto self destruct rejection of the foreign graft into its ailing body. Thus the acceptance and amiable adaptation at the individual level has yielded more astute transfer of technology, while at the higher social level of government and leadership processes, there is a lack of appreciation of the full workings of the needed foreign imports meant to facilitate the social transition transformation process. The failure to fully adjust the leadership processes to facilitate smooth growth, is reflected in the existing society where barely restrained chaos veils the restless masses, struggling in the absence of the required social framework to find the individual expression in the unsupportive social system. All evidence indicate unambiguously that social growth on the scale required to enable full approximation of the modern state desired across the social stream will never full emerge unless massive system alteration accompanied by the needed inputs are injected into the system to realise the desired state by the statal apparatus. When the society is weaned adequately enough to assume individual control for the social benefit, the government can then begin to transfer responsibility from state ownership to private sector ownership, where apparently there is more commitment to sustain over the long run. The returns for government is an expanded base for taxation and system sustenance. The poor are stripped of all their active contributory capacity, and whatever the society can benefit from them is left to waste, value emerges from quality in a sense, and it is society's responsibility at the leadership level to infuse value into its human potentials and derive benefit for the whole society in return. The awareness permeates the society that the initial investment and effort to uplift the larger ignored mass of the society does not have any direct profit benefit and thus has little relevance to profit oriented private sector investors, however as stated, in the absence of the prepared bases upon which the private sector can increase and expand their activities, the whole developmental processes is a fluke. Indeed the provision of the needed infrastructural provisions for rental occupation and usage is beyond immediate relevance to the masses languishing in poverty, irrespective of how critical these provisions are to the long term system development. The society is lagging severely, displaying the extremes of all the characteristic associative aspects of poverty. That poverty is a mind state reflected in physical deprivations is inarguable, the poor segment of society has stagnated by choice or denial, in a state where their needs are not met by the provisions available, whether those provisions are mental upgrading through education or material provisions, in the end the lack impacts the end state of the individual retrogessively progressively. Beyond the infusion of the needed technological base, the contribution that the continent makes to that technology is adapting it to local conditions by complementation. The appropriate adaptation process endears and nurtures social identification, the disparity between the government and the governed is assuming annoying proportions, to the extent where all government activities are interpreted as detrimental to individual enjoyment of their God given natural benefits. The truth that has receeded with reality is that the apparent distance of government from the people and their interests, to that of a parochial interest serving body of absurdities is an indication of the transitional phase, rather than the permanent reality.As society progresses the rulers only distance from the ruled is in their mind utilisation capacity rather their self serving capabilities. It is up to the governed to elect mind states rather than vocal rabble rousing capabilities in their leadership choices. Leaders who cannot articulate specified measurable end achievements within the broader social framework (yet to be articulated) are not capable of realising these unstated and well defended ends. Thus illiterate voters who desire literacy for their children must seek for how an elected government will realise this within their backyards, rather than some vague, ill defined and poorly articulated economic pronouncements. If the people living in the savannahs want aircondiotioned busses or aircondiotioned houses, they must see their desired leadership aspirants expressing not only this wish but how it will be attained within expanded mind states applying existing  and unexplored resource potentials. Thus a major jump is made from empty political posturing to serious application of existing data, resources and potentials, in a focused effort from potential leaders to project realistic ideas that will whet the appetites of receptive citizenry. When standards are of expected political posturing emerge from within the people, it should put a brake on dimwitted pranksters who by their gamey political ignorance and the indiffirence of an apathetic public, together sustain the existing state of continental decay. From the trivial to the crucially important, the people must desire improved conditions and coerce their leaders to awake from the slumber of inefficiency. From clean towns to clean waters, from continental inter-university contacts to continental tourism, from green cities to accessible beaches; the people have the power in their votes to demand specification from their leaders. Much as the virtues of far thinking and imaginative creative ability in social organising capacities are extolled virtues of leaderships, in most cases the visionary idealisations of the leader must be in rhythm with the general trend of desired expectations of the governed, even as it transcends the common mind in its far reaching visualisation visionary capacities. Thus leaders and the led must complement each other in the social organising process. Whatever that is desired would have to be struggled to be attained, any developmental projection over and above the existing demise, of truncated growth, stagnated before it could set actual course, would come through a concerted effort to refocus the continental psychic energy of the united mind set in far reaching combination of bulk energy and salient mind set. The longer there is time wasted purveying dead beat policies as the future, the longer the masses will remain in states of drifting deawoods in the sea of global progression. This is the time to be sourcing for talents and geniuses, not the time for brutish torment of tired children and wearied mothers. The rest of the human community are headed upwards and away, forging a path        they have no patience or interest in being dragged to the past in the present and all its worrisome toils of closed minds. Not only must the leaders seek for help, but the must achieve in real time and real terms to warrant any interest. Who wants to waste resources on unpromising inconsequences, that the continent has defined itself to be. In a way the belief has been created and by realising by the leadership, that whatever resources are worthwhile will depart to find sustenance and development elsewhere and expend its created values their, outside. The solution is within the masses, who must be rediscovered by their leaders and put to all embracing use. The efforts of a few individuals following their interests have changed the scope of all, but their idiosyncracies found effective social platform, carefully contrived by perspicuous mind sets to enable widespread effect and sustained development. These individuals achievements have become grand acclamations of extolled pride by society at large. If the narrow social spectrum is not effectively widened to embrace the whole society, the parochial parodying of external, all embracing reality, passing for status quo of select benefit and distinctiveness will keep the continent in backward suspended animation of futility. The bonds of restrictive constraints must be breached, forcefully rent and forced to yield to the expanded mind state realisation, which combines intellect with desires to realise a new continent of dignified existence across the social stream. Enough priceless life has been wasted, the next revolution is the application of active, adept and agile minds adapting to conquer ignorance, in grandiose acts of achievements, bringing budding hope to maturation. The struggle to overcome ignorance is merely highlighted pari passu the developments and advancements made in other societies, invariably, it is a struggle that is inseparable from humanity and the search for secured existence. Preparing the society for the way forward. There is a repetitious cycle within each level of attainment, beyond which the mind must traverse and bring into being ever higher levels of achievements, each with its soon established cyclical repetitiveness. For the larger masses, of the continent, they have not even made it up the first rung of applying the mind state to seeming ambiguity. Therein lies the rut within which the cycle of poverty is activated in ever tightning loops of hopeless frustration. To be able to break the iron grip of that tightning loop will require great ingenuity, capable leadership skills and adaptation of external resources, rather than any form outpouring of donations from some assumed sated external grouping. Social orientation is ever evolving, and there will never be any stage of satisfactory attainments, where total attention will turned to any other grouping lagging behind in the social evolution scale. Even if this awareness permeates the continent, the leaders seem in no hurry or worry to speed up their act, even begging requires skillfull maneuvering, how much more wealth creation, this time social wealth reflected in general social improvement. The people are not only starving for material needs, they are begging for the appropriate social framework, where their minds and talents can find expression, that is why for the continent, the developmental needs supercede economic self sufficiency; that is barely the beginning. The actual liberation is that which liberates the minds crying to find expression. Facilitating infrastructural provisions that enable accessing the expanding flow of information and providing structuration processes within which they can be understood, applied as learning tools, adapted to create diversity is certain to be the core responsibilty of the more relevant education format at higher levels. Levels that are within the common grasp but made inaccessible by leaders preoccupied with petty irrelevancies (Any effort that centers on self interest at the level of leadership, is petty and irrelevant to the greater task of realising society's expectation). The continent will have to 'pluck in midstream' to the rest of humanity's development, beginning from graded states of primitiveness is a non-viable espousal of defective defunctionalism. If the continent is going to be of any use to its self, it must begin to unwind itself from the lure of under-development and face the more difficult task of how to create relevancy for itself that keeps it abreast with its needs and their provisions.

 

If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor

he too will cry out and not be answered.

Proverbs 21:13.

 

The poor have closed their ears to their own cries, they have attended with barely suppressed excitement to their leaders, wishing to hear the proclamations of hope amidst the gloom of despair, and all they hear is their own faltering heartbeats.

 

Between the blazing flame

and the freezing cold

there is only one certainty

a chill that burns to the bone.

 

People wanted so much to give something of themselves to the emerging societies, the nameless, faceless individuals, spread across the landscape of the transitional society were ready to be patriotic even when the fatherland was lost in transition between primitive traditional society and post independence meaninglessness. The leaders in response, not only vacuumed the limited wealth of relevance, but sucked the aspirations out of the populace by creating intense vacuums of functional indequacy in task definition and perfomance. Without regret and without pause they have created instituitions of famed incompetence. Thus, while there could be pride within the continental community in the little that has been done so far, in the light of the gapping lapses and incoherent future outcomes, unanimous pride in societies actually developing have converged on individual achievement, while the system frameworks unsteady at best, often times topples over in many places, plunging an already dismal state of affairs into seeming oblivion. There is sequestered displacement of nonavailable funds in debts that have sated the wane appetites of selfish ineptitudes who have tossed the common inheritance in games of dice and brought heartaches to their 'sorrowing sibblings and infantile responsibilities', both sets of dependents are inavoidably totally dependent on a social system that by all  indications is incapable, not by natural limitation of endowed nature, rather by willfull exempt or total inadequacy in appreciating comprehensively, system potentials and capabilities in its fullest and most effective applicatory engagement. There has not been evidenced any significant variations in patterns of effective social organisation in any trans-continental social grouping within any defined geographic configuration, that being the case, the essential role of government as the influential orienting core of viable system development and sustenance is unobviated and unnegotiable. Government and central leadership role in the continental groupings will remain the determining factor in ultimate realisation of the individual aspirations and desires, and until the leadership role is fully awakened to the full responsibilitites of their role requirement, the lopsided ongoing social development process will become a future catalyst for social dissolution.

 

From a wider perspective of the continent within the scope of other cultures and social systems. Internally weak and undeveloped structures, create a potential accpetance of the infusion of projected inadequacy that in gaining widespread acceptance will instuitionalise failure as a continental realiity, rather than internal inadequacy that need be isolated and resolved. The external societies have by dint of variations in socio-environmental pressures taken a jump leap in development and mind state development, it offers for the feeble start off the continent myriad advantages, the strongest being that, earlier stated, of learning from the mistakes of the pathfinders, while not neceassrily walking in the exact same tracks, the will inevitable head and are headed in the same direction. That of constantly improving the state of human existence through the development of applicatory enhancing procedures and products to improve states of existence across the social stream. The continent can look to the external social systems, but there is no hard and fast approach that decrees a mandatory obeyance to these external societies. For the continent, competitive growth is not the way forward, while complementary development is recommended, in terms of the development of broadplans to improve the existing states of social organisation. Just like a giant multinational corporate with enough financial resources to control and significantly influence its environment, no matter how powerful it becomes, such a behemoth is constantly recreating and seeking from smaller entities the cutting edge knowledge base to remain an agile giant, rather than a lumbering dinousaur. While the continent is like a complacent elephant savouring the afternoon sun, baking its tough hide. It is about time there is a recourse to borrowing the social ideologies of the efficiency of the ant's social organisation skills, which necessitates a role for each and every member of the society, in ensuring a viable and self sustaining ant hill. The elephant counts on its individual strength and ability to forceful obtain from its environment, to cater for its small group. The ant is  commited to social dependence and joint effort to ensure its sustenance. Excessive capitalism, in a society in transitional transformation, just like excessive or all out socialism, lives far too many human detritus in its wake. These uncared human social consequences of ineffective social organisation, are much too expensive and unaffordable in terms of wasted talents and human resources. Indeed no single human life is discardable, much more so on continent where so much remains to be done. The individual effort to prove their human intellectual capacity and productive labour, falters in the face of the lack social support at the higher levels of leadership, thus excessive labour and mental effort is severely shortchanged.

 

"Because of the oppression of the weak

   and the groaning of the needy,

I will now rise," says Jehovah.

  "I will protect them from those who

      malign them."

And the words of Jehovah are flawless,

  like silver refined in a furnace of clay,

purified seven times.

 

O Lord, you will keep us safe

   and protect us from such people for

            ever.

The wicked freely strut about

      when what is vile is honoured among

            men. Psalm 12 :5-8

 

The mind activities that lie beyond the materialism that has stunted activities on the continent are the zones where there can be unlimited expansion in the range of human activities. When the material requirements that money economy facilitates has been met, there remains the greater and barely touched blossoming of creative intellectual capacities displayed through the exercise of wide ranging individual interest exploration, involving the application of physical exertion to the realisation of higher intellectual activities. Thus, even governments that provides all the needed infrastructural requirements of modernity, have to grapple with the greater, yet fully unrelsolved task of putting into place system structures designed to facilitate the awakening of the fullest exploration of ideas emanating from citizens in comfortable positions of daily existence where attention has shifted from the 'money motivated struggle' to sustain basic existence to explorative exploitative states of teasing mind creative abilities to generate dual purpose human enhancing effects, with the greater weight being on the non-materialistic derived satisfaction of adding value to the self and more importantly to society. A situational zone realised within amenable social configurations but intensely individualistic, personally realised, self satisfying, but dependent on organised social systems, where after the fundamental material needs have been sustainably engineered into the daily stream of social existence, the mind is enabled some reserve energy to engage in creative thinking that attempts to realise what starts out as idealistic musings, to wishful thinking and eventually additive inventory leading to discoveries that supplement nature's provision to enhance and expand the scope of existing human activities. These idealistic musings in one instance or the pressured pursuit in search of diversity or competitive urge with a finacial interest are all a step above the existing  search for sustenance that grip the masses on the continent. There are pockets of 'cultivated mind activity' centered around formal designated arrangements, that by their very nature, are gripped within the restraints of traditional forms of task realisation and thus by commission self-defeating groupings of sustained frustration, (until in despair they allow their intuitive curiosity and search for diversity, unexploited and untested, to dissolve into the sweltering pool of tropical ease and acceptance). -but- This minor sector for the larger part is caught firmly in the grip of imitatory and subservient mind discovery processes with a thinly veiled layer of local authenticity. Like all other previous systems, and as mentioned elsewhere in this essay, their approach to discovery is an adoption of promiscous borrowing. A tactical combination of  existing knowledge with a view to situational definitiveness that is at once unique and reformationally introductory in being instigants for diversity. There is a need to create inherent quality in local production, taking the manufacturing sector as an example, that builds trust and respect for continental initiatives, a not so easily realisability. The assumption that 'certain things' are naturally occuring in society and social organisation processes is an effective deterrent to progress, inasmuch as whatever is naturally occuring is predicated on well-thought out plans instituted with clear cut expected outcomes, structured to definite ends. Thus whatever the continent desires begins and ends with deep commital at the higher mind explorative state. A gradual de-emphasising of external preference and an incremental preference for user emergent products is a free choice realised by through leadership effort to create conditions for its realisability. While the process will naturally realise itself, it must be structured with a definitiveness that will be realised within the social millieu by leadeship acting strategically. To get to this point in significant measures, there must be set in place, the social guidelines and the provisions that liberate the active mind set to shift from primary survival states mediated by money and material needs across the wider social stream, thus liberating the mass mind capacity to be creatively engaged with purposive intent to be imaginatively productive with an intent.

 

A social system can, by some flimsy, formally grounded free uncoordination process with a thinly veiled pretense of formal planning yield all the temporarily desired benefits of the desired expectations, but like a poorly built house with a beautiful façade collapse when unpredictable forces of powerful storms descend suddenly upon such a structure. Thus, the hitherto expressed need to sewn a tenous linkage through the existing system variable components of continental systems, is meant to ensure a thorough rethinking of constituent core component varible dynamic states to ensure social sustenance, and a required reanalysing of aspects of the grand social computational process to identify, rectify and correct glaring and hidden faults, that left unresolved become future menaces of embedded structural defects exposing existing social system to a sort of layering, delusional progression that attempts to enhance system defects by ignoring them creating unaviodable threat to future stability and uniform development, within the existing near failure.

 

The difficulty of evolving from the existing reality a firmly grounded directive articulate expressibility or sets of patterns of thoughts that reach deeper than short and medium term development plans, debt relief and economic plans, and from such deep seated foundation enabling a worthwhile projection into desired future states, belies the reality that there are no easy remedies. But like all things of such seemingly complex nature the best approach is the adoption of simple, directly relevant themes, that by their responsive adaptiveness become thematic mind stimulants instigating sector relevant self definitive idealisations in response to system requirements. The existing problems are least likely to find solution through existing knowledge, much as the dramatic departures through extending the flexible mind states are rooted in past preparedness of the mind to be capable of radical departures in seeking extreme responses grafted to meet ailing and stagnant system needs. The most difficult path to negotiate in the existing continental transformational shift process is the flexibility for diversity in unitary pursuit of commonly held desires mutually realised for each and every one.

 

The majority of the masses are circumstantially configured individuals acting out improperly understood role occupant positions with pretentious bluffy self assuredness of underserving or deserving inheritors of progress or misery as the case may that, they have come into. In most cases the past has little to do with the present nor does it define the future. In other cases the past is a straggling hindrance bogging down the future in the present. The momentum of developmental shift is not a totally irrational uncoordinated social upheaval. Understanding this truth is essential for the appreciation of the idea that 'the radical' is often times highly controlled, modulated and strategically realised.

 

One inconvertible truth that continues to haunt generations of radical forward thinkers seeking to spark off the great mind shift that will usher in the true independence of the continent from restrictive and destructive traditionalism, one that has been mentioned heretofore, is the seeming dependence of the continent on outside systems. No matter how conceived, it must be acknowledged that dependency and its consequences are consciously manipulable essentialities of the developmental process, where better organised and by coordination stronger social systems, having gained economc ascendancy and by creating value out of the non-material mind state position themselves to be transiently powerful determinants of the outcomes of weaker systems. Weaker systems are by natural designation opportunity social organisms, playing dumb, snivelling, borrowing and improving upon their existing positions, with a hope and a pursued aspiration to improve upon their existing states. Social systems are multi component dependent composites, the componential constituents are varied by role importance, but the wholesomeness of the whole organic being involves the well being of all constituent elements, even the vestigial or seemingly irrelevant. It is a basic assumption, that any and every leadership role must integrate into its organising scheme to sustain system viability. The extent to which leadership on the continent attempts to play this non-partial supportive sustainable role without discriminatory favour of providing the nourishing provision that disseminates unhindered to be utilised as each and each component is disposed to utilise the determines the eventual outcome state. For the continent, having discarded the earlier held assumption, that just by dint of their positional role as financial-economic regulators and controllers, outside system have the last say on continental outcomes, next comes the more important responsibility of how to position the leadership practices to lock into these superior social systems and project to continetal desired states. As changing global realities deemphasise the prior pursuit of one up policies that favour deliberate stemming of self-emergent growth effort, the glaring inadequacies or general non existent of the philosophic grounding of designated social frameworks will reveal the dearth of inadequacy in leadership ruling strategies where existing vacuous states and aspects of leadership virtually crumble and collapse due to exiting blocks of excuse that propped up defects in the continetal social organisation system, these blocks that propped up inefficiency did so, by providing easy and uncontestable escapes for leaders that were and are out of loop, one thus defers failure to some unverified external grand conspiracy. Even if there exists a grand conspiracy to frustrate the aspirations of the continent since cultural absorption is dynamic, one expects leadership processes to nimbly find full realisations within new expressions of old patterns. Thus how about boosting local eco-agro products like 'brukutu' by transfering and transforming informal social meeting places into informational dens. A state sponsored cybercafee joint with a slightly different slant, will enable people to enter 'watering holes' to utilise technological gadgets that keep them in touch with their parliamentary representatives, while continuing such ageold activities as meeting informal to socialise. The idea is to break new grounds but not necessarily distorting social semblance more than is necessarily. For even positive changes can be rejected if they are out of sync with the natural flow of social activities. Thus, in another instance while city planning and infrastructural provisions are intensely desired, it is irritating to merely build beautiful apartments that are not occupied because the people most in need of accomodation cannot afford them, or people in working age will be frustrated to distraction if they are provided with all creature comforts and are then deprived of opportunities to make honest living through the expending of their energy. What must become a constant awareness to the leadership is the fact that every social construct is a deliberate attempt to make nature accomodating to human needs, that being the case, for the most part as said elsewhere, the activities of government, which in recent times have focused on profitability, in a renegotiated definition of reality, must shift back to primarily creating social relevance and when efficiently run, self maintaining. Thus while the earlier push towards industrialisation expanded the economic base over and above traditional agriculture, creating social relevance through providing employment, most of the industries failed for reasons that can be reconfigured as an inability to balance the desire for independence with a sustained effort to establish the environments within which growth is additive. That fundamental lack of a directional philosophy has not been filled because for the most part the governments have been unstable bunches peddling petty inconsistencies of either no relevance or short term relevance. Leaving the larger complex task of linking the growth chain through the systemic whole and drawing the whole system along the growth path. Societies are extremely complex and there are no short cuts to consistent well formulated guiding principles to direct the course of their developments. The existing social agenda is lacklustre at best and nonexistent at worse, excusing that vacuum by extolling capitalist market economics as an end solution to all social ills will only further distort an already vague scenario. Thus there must be a matching of physical provisions with subtler inconspicuous needs to enable complementarity that extends from physical provisions to balanced emotional and mind states for sustainable social coherence.  Benevolent despots have marshalled redundant and passive humanity resigned to a listless existence of inconsequentialities, set definite tasks that extended for their life times and built society's that have become models worthy of emulation at some levels, or have engaged abundant energy in meaningless bloodlust and wasted precious life and stilled social progress. For the continent, there is the benefit of hindsight, which in being overlooked has created a strange repetitious cycle which needn't be of wasted lessons. (The circuitious speech patterns of traditional societies, was a mark of great wisdom which kept certain discussions to deeply discerning individuals of the elderly class, they spoke with deliberation and a seeming lack of haste, indeed, traditional society recognises the need for thoroughness in arriving at decisions, they matched thorough deliberation with clarity of thought to link decision making as an exercise in higher mental faculties. Thorugh deliberation is so important in traditional societies that haste is recommended to be embarked on slowly, to emphasise this aspect of social comportment, they recommed that never interrupt a man in the middle of a meal to deliver warning of an imminent invasion by marauding enemies. Certain things need to be thoroughly elaborated, but deliberateness is no excuse for conspicuous lapse.) The essential point being made here is that while the appreciable acquirables will invariably permeate society, there is a need to structure responsive social systems that will facilitate the easiest saturation of growth provisions without unnecessary social upheaval calling attention to problem areas and areas in need of attention. That this has not been the pattern does not imply that it couldn't be achieved if the right minds are set to task. The social change phenomenon is in some cases inevitable or going to be inevitable, the implication being that general society is not going to wait for segments to go through the same developmental stages with the same faults to approximate existing states, rather, with the appropriate framework, innovative infusions will make ever deeper inroads into the social fabric. Presently, even the very nature of that 'social fabric' apart from its being in tatters, is yet to be fully analysed to yield its intricate constituent components and the weave pattern(s) that holds the fabric in place. Thus the argument being made here is that, one can dye 'the fabric' or patch it, but the best alteration can only be undertaken if one has acquired a fairly deep appreciation of not only how the existing fabric is intergrated and interconnected, but also how in reweaving this colorful social garment, the threads of varied qualities are brought together to recreate a perfect harmonious blend of complementing qualities. Thus, even after technological hardwares of information technology and the masses of available information is made accessible by the benign provisions of the information age to all without exception, a perfectly crafted social philosophy is needed that directs the application and directive influence upon which turns the palpably feasible instrument into creative tools for regenerating active minds with a responsive agenda, rather than another means of stiffling growth. The reason that a flexible philosophical advocacy is being touted instead of the strait laced developmental policies format hitherto preffered is that (such developmental plans are specified time related constructs to realise materially mediated ends, that often get bogged down and keep the social progress in negative time lapse 'provision-need' mode states, as against real time developemental variable states, where on the contrary there is a 'quick jump' social organisational orientation that enables 'graft jumps' to enable adept response potential capabilities matching social provisions to the exigent states in real time.) the appropriate response  is mainly the need for flexible responsiveness in totally progressive systems with an all inclusive 'block segment' shift adaptiveness.                                                                                  

The 'block segment shift' enables a society to progress through blocks of changes where each block is a segment in time with specified ends being approximated for the whole society and as massed variables that determine system require another 'block shift' the whole society is ushered into the next phase of growth. This stands in contrast to disparate stream change processes, where individuals within the society by dispositional preferential location of states of ability enjoy a certain advantage, which became a desired pursuit for the rest of society who are then pulled along. Pure capitalist economic states reflect this type of change, they are expositions partially focused on a segment of the society and on wealth generation within that section, a process stripped of the emotional reality that society is made up of people who must be positioned to take full benefits of whatever human enhancement provisions that society makes available to its constituents. Whereas, the 'block shift' change evolves in social systems strongly structured around social inclusiveness as a society's mode of social organising principle, every major social progression thus is a wholesale orchestrated movement that by all its inclusiveness nature moves society en mass.

 

The unresolved dilemma, one that needs to be re-assessed, is who takes responsibility for those who have been bypassed in the unrelenting emotionless passion of the rapacious competitiveness that pits the overindulged strong against the deprived weaklings? What kind of society is the continent evolving, when in the house of poverty and deprivations, in the arms of hungry mothers, the cries of the deprived do not nudge the leaders awake from somnolent overindulgence, touching their minds, pricking their emotions and setting their passions alight to establish foundations of hope on the strength in the midst of the weakest of their composite composition and by so doing raise foundations of growth that will never crumble because they are established on the light of pure minds borne by the higher states of full insight sensitive to the accumulated pains of the generations, pouring forth as the prolonged wails of the masses quietly being bled to their slow deaths? Let the leaders be constantly conscious of the sea of the masses of suffering humanity in the midst of so much, let them toss and turn in the 'sweat of their failures' and in the soaking comfort of their beds of pinful failure, beds metaphorically, dripping with the blood of the wasted lifes dripping to waste because of their failures and the collective torment their failures visit daily on the innocence lifting its head looking for succour where there is none, let their restlessness set them to task seeking for a way out of the misery, the times are disproportionately aligned with the needs of the people. Out of the emotions aroused, let the leaders arise to the greater and truer task ahead, set their collective mentality and work out a plan, instead of excessive preoccupation with base material pursuits with limited benefits.

 

The continent cannot ever evolve self sustainability by depending on an economy that is structured around the benevolence of the outcomes of others economic well-being, a dependency mentally that is incontrovertibly of critical concern, especially, when the "supposed benefactors" are themselves attempting to grapple imperfect systems to sustain their viability as productive society, generating values for their inhabitants. Much as the existing situation may seem inevitable, it is again a bondage of the mind that must be freed of its dependency mentality and seek for refreshing basis for continental sustenance, idealing and instituting economies that are grounded upon continental determinancies. The outside world will remain a treasure trove for hunting worthy knowledge with a selective bias, but the desired outcomes of the continent can never be fully attained if they are largely determined by forces beyond the control of the system. A weak, fault ridden internally controlled system can seek for assistance to remedy its fault, but by allowing its self to become manipulable pawns, their essential relevance will be a consequence of forces seeking to better their own societies. Such external systems have conditional concern for the well-being of the continent. That there is little lee way for economic independence more than anything should give room for joy, for it implies that the leaders have manifold unrealised tasks that will occupy the existing generations and the generations to come with full employable activities. It now only depends on the continents leadership to define and elaborate the nature of their tasks and set in motion the means to engage the rest of the society to be employed in fulfilling these great assignment. A position that will spring forth hopeful joy from the midst of the masses as they toil to build a future, even if its full realisation is beyond their brief span of individual existence. The leaders cannot and should not be complacent, attempting with painful failure to resort to minimal mind exertion with maximal brutishness to build a future out of the existing ashes of past relevance. There is a need to pursue a course of redefining fundamental variable states, to forceful eject energy into dormant states and push the limits and the barriers of existing futility, by forging out hitherto untrodded paths, by carving reality out of the parched deserts of knowledge and bringing fulfillment to the masses hungry with unsatisfied expectations. The undefinability of exactly what passes for appropriate leadership task behaviour, no doubt, reflects in the lack of concreteness in even the expressions extolling change. Change is all desirable but what, how and by what means, remain as the stumbling blocks. The blocks must set upright and surmounted, and in being overcome the new beginning sought for will begin to take shape and discernible form. Basic and difficult questions are necessary, more important is seeking across the span of soceity for answers and practical solutions. The most primary needs are material needs, and here the most vexing problem is that why is it, even within the continent is there an adoption of inferior quality as a conditional embellishment of poverty. A poor society must be geared towards high quality and durability, so that limited resources have equitable usage. In anycase, wealth derives from society and the source of creative wealth generating lies unexplored in the continental social systems, held in postponnement while the continent is held in tow by trans continental power bases whose primary concern is anything but the people who sleep while their farms breed weeds. The society is responsive to the actions of its directive forces, and its outcome is inevitably linked to the mental dispositions of its leaders and management bodies. A nation in Africa, compared to an individual, has more resource bases to create, within the dictates of the times, a succesful organisation, which in its yield has social relevance over and above monetary gains, but many large wholesome communities are without a single employment source, this is basic, even if it is a community centered agricultural effort with an emphasis on individual drive and ambition, many places are just deserts of imaginary poverty gripping the masse in the irrelevancies of the past and holding them in place and time. The people have a clear mind as to what they want, they have a misplaced sense about how it is to be achieved, and they have accepted their existing despair as their reality. The leaders are supposed to clear the mental cobwebs of the past and seek for greater clarity in improved states of being for the continent. Everything begins and ends in the social organising realm with humans, God has adequately equipped humans with the capacity to achieve their own exalted and edifying forms of existence, otherwise man will not be so bent. The existing challenges that face the continent and its leadership is exactly the expected and the norm, the challenge is needed to spike the workers to be creative in meeting the obstacles the ask poses. That we have been created with a mind that is curious, seeking to find meaning and consistency in the befuddling existing realm is undoubtable. Humans at all points in time, are limited by their own insights, the future has been established in consistent patterns waiting to be discovered, the rest of the world have made some inroads, but in the infiniteuos planes of reality to be accessed, there is so much more that Africa can realise for itself, itself being the people, the constituents and the landmass. The people seemigly lost in a haze of uncertainties must awaken to their responsibilities, they have been allotted as caretakers of an ignored great responsibility, when they awaken to the reality of their actual task, then they will blossom forth in beauty, the dung of present degenerative self deprecation will begin to make way, in the light of the concern for the weak, bringing expressible beauty that uplifts the human spirit, Africans are a God fearing people, even if at times or through the times, their worship has been misplaced through idolatry. The essential focality of God and the principles of decent social organisation that His word demands have and will remain at the centrality of acceptable social organisation, inasmuch as human create social relevance and utility by expanding that primary knowledge base, society is on an even keel. That primary knowledge is built up from the mundane moral ethics that regulate social co-existence and tolerance for others other than the self. At its centrality is social justice. From seeking to improve the basic states, knowledge pushes beyond self satisfactory imaginative engagement in the lull between basic instinctual behaviour and self preservation and survival concerns and seeks to provide expanded basis for enhancing the quality of social existence. When the continent is incontinent with despair the flushing out of the effluvia of disreputable behaviour is an act of required contrition to enable the creative mind set to be engaged in an athmosphere of honesty and trust, where by the uplifting of all, the fear of falling into the mire of misery is completely eradicated. But there is order and consistency already within creation, thus all it requires is to push beyond the existing reality and a beginning to redefine reality in a manner that edifies the whole of humanity.

 

Our people have sort relief in reality

In reality there was only despair

They turn to their ancient past

But they found only suppression

They turned outside seeking relief

But they suffered affliction and oppression

Their very spirits are shedding tears of hopelessness

They have sought for meaning but reality is meaningless

The have turned to God

In Christ reality is cast in benign humaneness

Out of the stiffling despair and desperation

A new world of hope is being crafted.

 

From a self-confessional admittance acknowledgement of  severe lapses and inconclusiveness in problem delineation, hopefully, a philosophy of development begins to take shape, from simple, but essential considerations such as what passes for such mundane considerations as, a public housing policy;  why should anyone incapable of not putting standardised residences  not be denied a place to live, to reasons such as why individuals desirous of ownership but incapable of meeting housing standards must denied from littering the land with the inadequacies of structures that stress the human sense beauty and value. In other words value and emotional laden considerations in opposition must be compromised with general and out of centrality to individual interests such that the evolved laws are responsive to individual philosophy that becomes infused into the guiding principles of what a society desires and how it should be accomplished. Out of diaphaneous, seemingly unrelatedness, a linkage of harmony is established that fuses hitherto conceived inconsiderate legislation as only normal self-regulation that defines states of disciplined existence. In the individuals action in providing a place of residence should the housing and building regulations be strictly enforced or overlooked, and how current are those regulations with the existing trends? By taking one infrastructural need area and deliberating and articulating on core and fundamental principles of human normalcy a theme is evolved that is an underpinning of social evolvement and transformational shift realisation. (For example society could begin by specifying that a member of society up to twenty years of age, up to the first univerisity degree level or unemployed is deserving of a single room, with toilet facilities and a kitchenette, unless that individual is capable of self provision over and beyond this all applying regulation; a married couple need two rooms and a guest quarters and or a study room, and families must be provided with accommodations needs commensurate with their needs, has set into motion the initial deliberation process which stretches across a wide range of related issues until it comes down to how to realise our normal needs in a state of low creativity, and crosses over and reaches into unrelated or broader issues of settlement developments, employment accessibility, thus the chain of social linkage earlier mentioned is being forged through creative intellectual idealisations to be transformed into structural realities, a process that places the philosophy over time and changing governments, legislations and rules and regulations, but the expectations of that society have been set in dynamic deliberation which the lesser more concrete expressions realise and regulate. This the socially oriented philosophy to underpin social transition and evolvement, that the transitional continent lacks and by is its lack, in a state of constant turbid uncertainty that must begin to be addressed. The people must have a reference source for affirming their rights, the idea has been within the collective mentality, but is lacking expressive clarity of articulability and thus has remained at the fringes of the individual mind (and central to their needs) and the society, coming forth as the constituition in a minimal form and developments plans in attempted incomplete resolution at a structural level, issues that have not been defined in detail at the massed mind level of collective conscience articulation, beyond place, time, individual and segmented interests, yet is inclusive of all these and more, in establishing principles conceived within social reality that is all considerate. The constituitions are regularly suspended and have little meaning for the definitional reality of daily existence of the masses, development plans are appendages of the military and their wild and incoherent interruptions in the governing process and their inconsistent administrative processes. The verity is that, anyone from any section of the society can lead, but their failure is guaranteed in that their actions are 'hiccups' and strangulating forceful ejections of 'fits of coughs of implemented actions' in response to larger and deeply permeating problems being dealt with superficially, when in reality it should be one prolonged 'uninterrupted song' punctuated with tactical deliberate pauses, with a repetitive chorus. This is why in a way, while a part of the appreciating mind acknowledges that developing the village of the head of state by unilateral decision has added some infrastructure, it is an act out of place by some fully unexplained reason. That reason is the elaborate delineation of the mind set of this diverse land mass defining in clear and simple terms what it is that, they, are deserving, as individuals realising themselves in a society in dynamic transformational shift transition, attempting, as it were to find yet unresolved realisations, to enable a full settling into a new social reality from the previous agrarian society where the focus was more on the individual ability to a new and unsettling state where into the forseeable future the individual is held in check by society's amenability to concede to the individual desires. The individual's desires no matter how high minded and noble are conditional to social permissiveness, social permissiveness is under leadership ability to not only express it and engineer society to realise it, but conceive it as ideals. The leaders like the people are just ordinary people in more than ordinary situational settings; the crossroads of societal transitional shift, how they act has far reaching consequences, sustaining hope or sinking all into despair and futile existence. The old ways have finished their purpose, they are merely of use as historical references. The new way ahead must be forged taking into consideration the past, the present and the undiscerned future. It requires bold initiatives and concern for the weak and the poor, the very ones who by being uplifted will eradicate the scar of past inadequacy in leadership abilities, without taking the individual initiative and the individual drive to achieve unhindered by social restrictions, for this there are no existing models in previous social systems to be followed. The poor, socially isolated and denied weaklings, whose position has been established by some inconclusive monetary and economic manipulation of social organisation must be at the focus of the continental leadership task, forcing a need for an earlier expressed concern, the reconfiguration of the monetary economics rather than individual focus as the ultimate determinant of social outcome and expectations. Since this has been a thorny issue at the core of continental organisation, much as there would seem no way around that problem, it is by that very difficulty that minds must be set to task to redefine that issue and derive some more generally satisfying arrangement, rather than stupidly and inanely following, passively in the leash of acceptance of inadequacy, passing for sophisticated aproximation to inadequate system configurations that have been the bane of the continent's insufficiency. The poor and the sidelined are the very ones who in being catered for will enable the emergence of some of the most beautiful expressions of the malleable human mind in concrete productive production. Since every human activity involves mind activation procedures, one begins to wonder why there is so much emphasis on "the mind state", the reason is simply that, the continent's future outcomes does not lie in the existing patterns of social organisation and the repeated failures they have occassioned, the required social organisation and its forms are beyond simply importing foreign ideas of one 'ism' or another which by themselves are not pure forms, and in their applications have failed in many and some of their aspects. The continent requires an untried radical model or sets of hitherto untried agendas,which will require the application of existing forms of knowledge with pure mind manipulations of effecting an expected end using non existent ideas to bring into being concrete reality of desired ends, realities that have long been expected but have been denied because the continent has not been able to 'jiggle' itself out of the ruts of existing possibilities. The existing has been birthed by bold leaders and thinkers refusing to conform and to strike widely, seeking for solutions in strange places within the malleable mind. These strange places are strange only because they have not hitherto been accessed by deep thinking and creative ability, as pressure mounts in the concrete reality, the push change instigates responsive solution seeking from deep functional thinkers in rebellious isolation to the accepted norms and 'ways of doing things' that in being inadequate to the society's needs and increasing problems have become abberations. The existing 'normal' is its past contextual realisation 'extremely unusual', in providing the desired solutions they have become normal through acceptance or tolerance and in their nonadaptability to changing circumstances, restricting. There is the assumption being made that the governing processes over the years has lacked depth and perspecuity, and certainly there is a broad assertion being made that the solutions reside in revisualising the problems from unexplored solutional perspectives. There is a vast difference between a social structure that ensures that every child is accounted for and eased into a school system, and stating compulsory education as a right; and excusing children loitering in the market place as being due to national economic malaise. The difference is as far apart as seeking to find solutions to putting all the children in school and seeking to update their educational support material needs and infrastructural lacks as against first seeking to provide all these needs and then putting the uneducated children into provisions lagging far behind their needs. Thus problem perception, innovative solution seeking and radical transformative decision making are related. If the problems are not set within the appropriate perceptiveness the attempted solutions are unlikely to yield the expected solution.  The educational policy is priority issue in all the continents various societies, however, there remains the unresolved dilemma, as to whether, partial solutions in such sensitive and far reaching affairs as human devlopment and the future of the continent deserves the lacklustre insignificance it assumes. Indeed if there is one sector of the continents developmental effort that should be pursued by approximating and superceding the rest of the world, it is in the area of education. The continent is unable to proceed beyond simple and crude initiatives that throws resources into unappreciative or 'post-training ignored' brilliant youth who then spend the rest of their miserable lives toiling for other societies. The rest of the world seems to appreciate the value of the continent resources right from the natural to the human resources more than the leadership of the continent. An especially difficult to comprehend reality, since if there is any sector of the world in need of high quality human resources to work under primitive conditions to abridge through innovative social organisations processes and structural provisions, with an aim to improve the states of being of its people, it is Africa. Thus though the individual African acknowledges their positional location in their hiearachy of nature, their leaders in a strange, difficult to comprehend process, have been caught in a limbo of incompetence, that not only distances them from their own people, but set them, by their very acts in oppositional destructiveness of  most absurd kind, against the very societies they have been role positioned to lead.

                                       

The sins of some men are obvious, reaching the place of judgement ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them. In the same way, good deeds are obvious, and even those that are not cannot be hidden.   

                                                         1 Timothy 5:24-25.

 

The act of realising the social collective expectations enabled through the directive influence of leaders, can variedly be construed as an excessively complicated process of working through dimensions and layers of differing variables to realise miniscule insignificancies, which by their ends need to disguised under equally complex explicatory defence or failure (the path of deceit the continent is extolling with brazen display of faked adequacy.) Or it could be a streamlined process of clearcut unambigous focus on common-ends realised without compromise to all the social constituents. The factor around which the difference between the two processes differ, is the seeming inconsequential moral  concept of 'honesty', mentioned in passing in an earlier chapter. There are probably tomes written on such concepts of morality, but the central concern here, as far as leadership and continental outcomes are concerned is that, social organisations that operate around the survival instinct and fear, create incipient chaos, that puts the individual interest above social responsibility, not as selfish interest but a survival response. The approach to problem definition that occassions such social malaise that occassion the social survival primitive transferred response of instinctual survival reactive responsive reaction to threat to protect the self by any means when under threat, even at the expense of the species, may assume any of a variety of complex theme oriented theoritical expressions, but like everything that has made existence a maze of hazy fear, when a length of string would have served as means of reassurance, they with the agility of arcane magicians evoke all arguments but the simple truth. Every complex process is a conglomeration of simple, single building blocks, to understand the complex is perceive the constituent building blocks. Thus before thinking about solutions the threat scenario should be eliminated to create reassuring athmosphere of stability, where the leadership in full control are able to demystify assumed crisis of imminent disaster based on prior evidence of social concern and caring.

 

The ability of a leader to redefine existing reality and match to an expected common well being, is one of the critical axis on which the direction of the continent' s future (will) swings (s). To be able to see through the made belief reality of incapacitated dependability will require a lot of prayers for God's intercession to grant leader to enable wisdom to the leaders. It also require leaders at least indicating a leeway of hope in their pre-determinancy positions as continental leaders. That, against all expectations of normal behaviour from intelligent humans, even the people have sustained their leaders charade of pretense, have extended into the meaningless emerging democratic cornerstone of the transformational shift of elections or acceptance of potential governments with no clear agenda other than trying to prop the existing inadequacy of economic systems draining the strengths and the resources of their societies and chanelling it down a narrow tube of frail sustainability into the abyss of despair. The economy is critical to social organisation because it is the theme around which social distribution of commonly held resources, managed by governments revolve. The economy is not a complicated incomprehensive processual manipulatory tool understood by a select group and modulated by events far from the continent, much as that is the configuration that prevails. Yet sight must not be lost of the fact that that which is presently accepted and defended is itself a dying ligament of the colonial heritage, and once the external world has developed resource processing capacity where their dependence on base materials in inconsequential to their peoples welfare and the stability of their societies, like slavery (Africans offerring themselves for pittance in the outside world have lost their value as sources of labour and are derided with a humiliatory rejection that is bruising the unused mental capacities that their ineffective leaders have failed to activate), what the inept continental creative leadership mind deem unegotiable variable in their development goals agenda, will be made redundant after it has served its use to its designers. Thus there is a choice, the continent must as a unitary collective of poor and mentally sef incapacitated pathetic excuses looking up at some surreal master class, wake aand begin to farm its resources with creative and focused intent. At least the have the benefit of others travails aong the same path and can easily avoid some of the inevtable pitfalls of the trail. What the leadership fails to realise that the actual realisors of the hope long buried of this potential prime continental asset, are not within the leadership, but the leaders by creating the conditions where all the potential talents are tapped and active in the social systemic whole, enable a means for those talenetd potentials to apply their God given gifts to building a whole new societal dimension realised in concrete reality. The new Africa will be very much unlike anything previously existing and that is inevitable, what it is awaiting to be birthed are the appropriate conceptual minds to set into motion the mechanics of its realisation. It is also inevitable that as the society enters the phase of the second awared leaders, akin in their stalwart unselfish determinacy to usher in a re-oriented social organisation, the consequent openning of the society to accomodate and ease its human resource potential into mind awakening and quickening avenues, while lead to the longer more sustainable period where the African continent will be guided by high collective idealisation realised through well conforming social arrangements that includes all, in the dynamic improving nature-human sustainability social equation paradigm. This is the future where the diversity of the complex formats made available in that age and time, evokes of a distal past of communal social agrarian communities, thus bringing the cycle to closure. Enabling another upward whole system transformational shift. But while the future waits to be discovered, the path therein lies in the here and now, and some bold efforts to break the cord of self imposed inadequacy and forcing needed change along the muti-dimensional folds necessary to achieve the expected ends.

 

The two major systems met for a chat over coffee:

"So, we hear talk you don't want to tow the line, ehm?"
"You may be right you may be wrong, we just don't know for now."

"You don't really know anything, do you?"
"I wouldn't be so sure, we are learning."
"It'll take time, for the time being, learn to be obedient, that way, we would threat you like good children."

"We are bumbling adults, not innocent children. We know your tricks."
"I woudn't call them tricks, it is the way things are, first you learn to crawl and then attempt some fumbling baby steps, then you begin walking, and one day you may find the way. Hm!"

"Maybe, maybe not. We are capable of determining our own affairs."
"Are you? Are those not the same infamous words, that has plunged into your existing mess?"

"Ehm, it is a position we are yet to regret. Much as we regret our existing state of being, but you have made that a sure outcome."
"How so? We have always propped you up, when you falter, haven't we? Where would you be without us, eh? Still hopping branches probably."

"No insults, we are all humans."
"That's what you say. We don't dispute that, we realise it for ourselves."
"We are trying, too."
"No, you are deceiving yourselves, show all of us something to back your verbosity."

"Its not exactly like what you are acclaiming is all that exceptional, its fault ridden."
"Yes it may be so, but you don't have anything to replace it, ahh! You are just a bunch of overfed lazy goons, and insensitive too."

"Not so fast, we are not the ones, fighting major wars."
"We are not engaging in any speculations, you are not exactly tame lapwardogs."
"Whatever, we are still maintaining our stance."

"What stance, C'mon boys, lets just admit, you have fallen on the wrong side of the human equation, we'll cheer you up with some petty cash to set your house in order. One of your proverbs, you have so many of those apt snap wisdoms, what you need to do is to stretch and widen their scope."

"You may laugh but we are serious about establishing our own system."
"Worthy idea, worthy idea, but its a long way from saying to doing, if you know the difference, that is."

"Coffee is too strong, care for palm wine?"
"Even if you can come up with that type of wine the occassion is inappropriate for it."
"Who determines appropriateness, our culture says otherwise."
"You tell us, who determines that."

"Well, will you grant us the loan then, our bridges are collapsing and our railways are in need of refurbishment."
"Ohh yeah? Any local technological input? we could add some technical support with the loan, we mean for managing the loans, not the technological content of your problems."

"How about those?"

"You were just mouthing off about self assertiveness, that's a good starting off point to make your stand, ehm, Don't you think so?"

"Well it is afterall a global village, we need to help each other."

"Yeah sure, we know, we invented the concept, didn't we?"

"Dire straits!"

"The rock band? It is ours too."

"No, the reality, we perfected it."

 

A man stood before the parliament house, he raised a 'gong-gong' struck it thrice and in the din of the awakening silence, presented his case.

 

"Corruption and greed are powerful forces emerging from individuals with devastating social consequences. - albeit, society is the medium within which validation is sought for and affirmed for these and all social ills- These two indications of severe moral lapse and the total lack of honesty, has been, over the course of history in other trans-continental cultures, been at the root of wicked acts perpetrated to the detriment of societal progress and well-being. Corruption is like a diseased nut that infects the good nuts and causes all round putrefaction, that poisons communal spirit of supportive social co-habitation. The underlying basis for the existing differences between global communities can be traced to greed and selfishness, which measures out relieve with malicious intent and makes believe it is good hearted assistance. It is the acceptance of false faith that accounts for excessive dependence on these external systems, when working and forging harder, may enable incremental self dependence, building upon the independence effort. That independence effort was more of an emotional release, which at this latter stage must be complemented by actual executions that establish firm social foundations for social development. The actual process and the resources both material and immaterial-vis knowledge and information-can be freely accessed, as and when available, and needfully, intensely sought for, with one primary intent to build consistent system self-dependency, while complementing external co-existence with trans continental systems. That this is not being realised on ground, validates this bitter social commentary. Major social systems have collapsed and against all the accumulated wisdom of the past, the wicked intent of coarse and insensitive leadership wasted lives to build sandcastles of deceptive worthiness and then corruption and greed blasted away any remaining hope after the waters of time had dissolved the sandcastle of grand social artifactual system designations. The continent has a unique disposition, that for many years had been a painful awareness that in this age one would have assumed would have ensured ultimate commitment from the leadership. The colored man can only find self acceptance and social recognition among his own people. But at the dawn of a new time cycle, all too sadly, our leaders have found thin, vague acceptance in other people's toils and tears, and are ridiculed, among their own people, their acts have left bitter aftertastes of disgust. The taste lingers, long after the despicable failures that have tainted the seats of such high, honourable and sacrificial positions of leadership that society accords them, whether, they forced their ways into the positions or it was bestowed on them. Worse still and more frightening is the behaviour of aspirig leadership, not only do they lack a philosophy to share with society but they have devolved the honour of vying to offer the self for sacrificial leaderhip roles, but assuming low and unhonourable approaches of verbal abuse and vaccuous accusation, seeking to undermine their opponents instead of focuing on effectively articulating what they can marshal society to achieve in their directive roles. These are sad times, when the dawn of change should be occasioned by the winds of change, blowing with strong gusts of hope, we look to the recent past and in its failure there is reflected more hope than the undiscernible future. Our children languish in strange places, pleading their cases before unconcerned courts of social ridicule, our best minds are lost in the deceptiveness of solace that consumes our creative tools leaving us hopeleesly incapacitated.

 

Meaning is lost when men are sharing the spoil before the hunt is over. Today the primary item on the agenda is allocating cars to parliamentarians. These are expectant representatives focused on important issues. The years of toil in the political game is about yielding fruit, these are no times for highvaunted philosophising. There is a time for everything. Today, is the time for failure. Life is short and wealth is comforting, so what if all cannot have it. That's life, keep the good times rolling. Its just another day. Paradise will come on earth and then men can think of equality and social justice. For those who have it so far so good, for those who don't its just 'bad karma'. 'Ride the storm and let the good times roll.' No amount of long winded philosophising, criticisms, calls for change or pretense at intellectual posturising will change existing reality. "My Brother, this is the way things are, accept or die. You've got to be tough to make it through this life. It is a tough, tough ride down this alley, its just a slice through time, an inconsequential slipstream in the grand universal infinity. We can't know all things, so we do the best we can and hope for the best. Better than hope we just live it to the full." And the rain pours through the broken roof on the lifeless bodies down below.

 

The reality lived, worthy of emulation, has been the outcomes of serious minded determination to realise a worthy existence. It is not the outcome of presumptous and passive indifference. It is the concerted efforts of bold men and women, complementing God, the Creator, by engaging the mind capacity, activating the gift of wisdom and intelligent minds to grasp at reality between the light and the dawn, and finding in the wildest, unmapped regions of the wide vistas and untouched plains of hitherto undiscovered mentalscapes, a reality so impressive as to be unbelievable, but they were and still are men of faith, delighting in the things hoped for and yet unseen, they are men in control of their present as they carve out the future in simple lines to realise the deep complex three dimensional reality constructs that birth hope. For all things that are conjuctured out of the creative mend, are accomplished by acts of faith that apply knowledge and ability to change th existing reality to conform to some desired expectation. For the majority of the people on the continent, their desperate situations, the wretched poverty, and their general lack, will be remedied by leaders believing in a better, realisable reality and persisting in their determination to birth that desired reality.The slant of human nature and the gradually emerging social disposition being forced upon Africa by the forces and influences, foreign to the culture, but that in finding easy accomodation indicates a continental disposition to such attitudes, is that, only the rich are worthy of consideration and the poor can be ignored, better still be turned into lesser beings to adulate the cultivated 'smooth plunderers'. But the truth is that the society has provided a medium where the endemic poverty is becoming instituitionalised instead of being dealt with as a social problem and gradually diminished, in looking outwards for direction, the problem is becoming entrenched instead of being solved. This is frightful, especially, considering that every African leader or any individual in leadership role bears the guilt of the past and the failures of the present. The leaders, be the Chiefs or rogues, had in the memorable past plundered their own people, people just like them, and condoned to turn them into slaves, the leaders of the present in their failures have pushed the brave young hearts into foreign fields of torment, to seek for the meaning and fulfillment that their own societies have failed to provide, to configure them into. Together the past and the existing guilt rests upon every single person who assumes any role of leadership, right from the village chief to the continental chairman. Until by their actions, they begint to heal the open sores of the past dripping with depressing anguish into the present and begint o close the gap, they are like their past accomplices in the leadership roles, responsible for the woes of this most worthy of habitable places in the knwon universe. The people know that they are responsible for their own outcomes, they know in their hearts that it is possible to forge a better state of existence out of the existing misery. But their leaders have failed them and continue to be painful reminders of 'hopes cheerished held in ransom and gradually being destroyed.' What a pity that this proud people have become'unworthy entities, dropping their failures on the pearls of unlimited possibility and blaming themselves, when it is the leaders that should be blamed, when it is the people themselves, who by accedding responsibility and power to pussilanimous cowards unable to force out of potential reality and dim the hopes of the led. How the truth hurts! and how much more assuaging the healing is, when a cure is discovered. The song has been sung and will be sung again, over and over, till there is an awakening, in this gloom of despair.

Just because evil has assumed the disposition of normality thus not justify its acceptance by discerning minds. In Africa the successful and the wealthy are together in one impossible situation. The individual wealthy does not make a society and the failures of the individuals in positions of great responsibility, exact widespread human cost. Together they are a bunch of miserable consequences of their combined ignorance. But even if there is any wickedness in inefficiency and lacklustre wisdom, it is wickedness that can only be blamed on the leadership. There (as has been stated) nothing wrong with being rich and the creating of enabling conditions for success among peservering individuals is actually a sign of good and capable leadership, that is why for the most part, the people positioned to rearrange the social realisation process stand accused, for the rest of society that is woefully, inadequately catered for. It is not that the public is oblivious to efforts being made, it is just irritating for most people that for what the efforts that the leaders seem to be making, it will not torch their lives directly, probably not in their lifetimes anyway. This is where the discontinuity in structural linkage of system compositions impacts failure most significantly, and for so long as the leadership is considered an elite class, instead of matured and capable individuals, sacrificing with honest intent for the well being of their own, the issue will remain central to the weak system configuration. The deliberate ignoring of endemic failures it must repeated will not automatically resolve the consequent problems. Thus in improperly structured systems, haphazard attempts only create additional problems inthe long run. Without a carefully patterned social remoulding outline of ideas and ideals, underlying the direction and expectations of realisations of the inevitable transformation process in progress, the executed solutions, partially realised, cannot guarantee social stability. Deeply underlying social change, many of the problems currently, being superficially explained and partially solved with the seemig end solution of market economics of external dependency remain, sated and congealingly resistance to change increasing in accretive strength at the societal level as the society struggles blindly against the massed forces of sources lost in the bewildering energy of the stormy social circumstances within which meaning is being sought for; while only partially, miniscularlly addressing the core issues underlying societal defects, which defects will reemerge as larger complex problems at a latter period if left unresolved. The presently touted economic idealism of captalist market economy is only a weak, defective, partially, system sustaining effort, that opens the societies up for the required interaction and exchange along commercial grounds of partial interest, leaving unresolved, the larger problems of realising social relevance and meaningful existence in acceptable social environs, the interface of painful reality between social forces and individuals ends, in a miserable setting of delusions, despairs and fears undefined.

 

The anger has long given way to a resigned observation of this vain futility that is inevitable in its expression and bitterly distasteful in its realisation. Compromised resignation has barely left the collective bereft of seeking for meaning and of lifting up the covers of darkened ignorance seeking insight. The discovery of meaning has left many bewildered because understand is incomprehensible, they cannot understand the centred existence on individualism in the midst of the need for concerted social effort. They cannot understand the depth of the width of the scope of this massive failure when the individual will is waxing so strong for definitive establishment of meaning and hope in the midst of the emotional wasteland of hopeless existence. They can least comprehend the adulation of petty roguery gowned in the deceptiveness of material wealth. They experience and can appreciate the gnawing reality of the need to satisfy the non physical hunger eating away at the middle of the lives of their times and turn to the side in the presumed secretiveness of their glaring emptiness to wipe away their tears of painful shame at their total societal failure, at the hardiness of the formative aggression tempered to countenance the necessary social dependency of this tormented horde of angry beings cavorting a wild existence on the edge of civility, a civility they had no hand in definning, one they covet and seek to posess; of the futility of their weak and weakened effort in the midst of the enormity of their problems, enormous in their portentiously simple resolvability. But it is the conflict at the meeting points of changing reality marking this grand social transformation that is impressive in its incredulous effect on an unacceptable resignation to irresolvability.

 

Collectives of frail hopes in clustered gatherings of futility, seeking and often failing to find hope in ordered scatterings of seeming chaotic spread castings of identifiable groupings, spread in this tepid grip of endless consumptive finality in cold places. Living the lies of self sustenance in the enduring struggle to hold the dissolving self in this ordered meaningless existence of brief pauses of joy in the stiffling sadness of the lingering grip of postponed achievements.

 

These are the people who have perfected the art of social posturing, deferring social re-organisation beneath the grand pretense of individual success. These are the people who build white houses of gilded monetary achievement in the sucking dampness of putrefying filth of the decadent poverty of hopelessness beyond individual failure, that layers-in the landscape, making pretend everything is fine, they sweat the tears of labour in the coldness of relentless taskmasters and harden up like the sweet soft waters of raindrops falling unto frozen landscapes, -10 and below. Their callousness had long superseded the pretence of images of assumed hardiness adorned to protect their soft sensibilities from the harshness of unwelcoming homes, the reality has seeped into their undefended sensibilities, till hardened, they play along, cheating and being cheated together with glee, in the bright new world. The strangers leaving in a strange world have defined meaningful existence within the larger framework of economic realisability and self sustenance in the organised world of structured existence within defined parameters restraining in its economic liberating capacities. Standing in awe under the awning of this sheltering of pain beneath the massive overwhelming edifice of some vague achievements edified in stone, they stand aghast at once at their presumptuous hopefulness in these fields of seeded bitterness ready to flower their flowers of consuming wrath. They have the craftily carefully cultivated agility of alley cats, exposed to constant danger and numerous hiding places. These miserable pretences of freewill chained and constrained by the bread chains of daily existence and materialism live on the harsh streets of these cosmopolises of taut anxiety wasting away in waiting or overuse. Absorbing the inciepeint seepage of despite that worms its way through their carefully crafted fabrics of desensitised sensibilities, reactions in reverse and under tight control, they have lingered in these domains of despicable despite. The hold of the empty futility cultivated in the vacuum of failure sowing the deserts of meaningful aridity clamping tighter the economic collars of uwanted ever tighter on slumping necks, my people, these are the veracity of the failures they are made to believe. Their laughter is raccous mockery of mirth on the emptiness of the broad boulevards of fitfully granted pleasures in the world where they are the shadows on the background of the fast pacing masses, stretching long and dark into the darkened alleyways. And they are the lucky ones. Finding release in the confines of this 'iron lungs' of civility and debasement. They are sustained by a need for self sustenance, a belief to create their desires on a small scale on their own piece of their God allotted place on this gift of a pace, a life rooted in some faith, hoping and realising aspirations grounded in the simplicity of a purpose by a creator. This random meaningfulness constantly expressing itself in predictable outcomes is a rehearsal of the greater reality predicted on the smaller scale of wavering belief and sobering doubt. The goodwil on undiscerned hope sustained on faith decisively accurate in its expression of love; that meaningless relevance that epitomises human fraility in strength, and harsh bravado consonlingly sustaining in its strength. The purity of religious philosophy sustainable nurturing and all pervading in its defining of the social organisation consideration of putting one person in unselfish consideration of ones own pursuits, in its crudity has refined the Godly principle in all.

 

In between the waitng period, waiting for the completion of that transformational shift that will redefine reality, ushering a new system on the continent, the terse exasperation of the million sullen shadows caught in between worlds in transition have found pressured outlets of glowing spurts of individual expressions. Expressions of elegant achievement measured on the scales of unrelenting merchants of depreciation. Expressions of suppresed violent volatility of destructive urge in response to the seeming excessively long waiting period, the burning frustration of imposed restraint immobilising the driving individual initiative. The slow burning fury providing a fuel of hope that propels the individual will into a hopeful zone of belief in first the self and the people, as a collective set apart to seek, to find identity, resolve differences and set a course of definite solutions. Yet the weary tears of despair and forlorn hopelessnes waters insufficiently the dry savannahs and the forageless unsustainable deserts of cruel acquisitiveness, holding in a tenacious grip the unrealised hopes of the people.  The tenacity of the faith of the massed belief that has held together this severely frayed social garment of 'tossed and trampled garment' passing for a continental system, is the micro sub-atomic blooming of the expected times undiscerned far beneath this arid surfaces, yet, the flowering of this seeded desire sustained by faith in the collective constructive will to see its manifest beauty, pushes anticipation with a verve and a hope that transcends normal social interactive rationality to an undefined race consciousness bothering on extreme fervent spiritual experience of sober and deep reflectiveness that is unnerving in its contemplative calmness in the turbidity of the ravenous times. There is a calm resolve in the midst of the turbulence that is critically analytical and painfully realistic in its expectations, a contemplative resolve that in its resolution of ends and new beginnings, absorbs the pain of the momentary sufferings with an irritating contenplative ease, yet the labour of the labourers is an absorbing engagement of dissolution of the self in the consumptiveness of the task that opiates and shuts of the unease of the seeming finality of obvious certainties frightening to accept in its firm constancy in layers abounding.

 

I saw the tears of the oppressed-

   and they have no comforter;

power was on the side of their

     oppressors-

and they have no comforter.

And I declared that the dead

   who had already died,

are happier than the living,

  who are still alive.

But better than both

  is he who has not yet been,

who has not seen the evil

   that is done under the sun.

               Ecclesiates 4:1b-3. (RSV)

 

The funeral of the great man had proceeded well past the wake keeping, it was a few hours before the funeral cortege set off for the burial ground, through the narrow streets of Keta. Thousands had come from far and near, for this was a man of substance, who had sent his children to the universities of Europe. He had established his name into the future. In that sudden lull in the milling crowds, where a silence of impressive proportions descend and grips all in instataneuos unrehearsed awareness, a short lithe character wearing pointed red cap, his small face reflecting the commanding reminder of harsh experiences or a flowery life, spoke, he sung a strange dirge, a strange plea, "there is one among us here, a short man in pointed caps who has a portion, an ancient knowledge, a herb of immense powers that could have waken this great man from his sleep of death, but alas, the wicked little man, he would not give life to this fallen giant." At three thirty the cortege winded its way down the narrow streets, the casket was bedecked with flowers and ribbons, laying half exposed at the open backs of a large American car. The people stood silently along the walls and watched the slow winding parade as the worthy children of this little coastal town send off one of theirs.

 

Then he had one of his dreams. A real nightmare of tormentous anguish that pushed sweat sprickling out of the pores of of his sweat glands leaving him clammy and cold. And the heat never relents.

 

The crowded  cage of bamboo held many people in a sweaty prison, their arms reached out through the slits and waved in the wavering  hot air above the red lateritic earth. A lonely figure hurries by in dismay, casting furtive glances of fear and wonderement at the strange spectacle, seeking to escape the fate of this strange people, along the way away from the frightening spectacle, he wonders how they came to be their and while not knowing what lay ahead of him was grateful not to have been entrapped in that hideous prison. -The lock is outside the paddock, out of dread from tainting the self in the cretinous mud lashig out desperately from within reaching out with flailing arms into the air, the passer-by flees in haste, a pretentious self enhancement of righteousness in the setting for the emergence of the hero. They thrash and trample, wriggle and squirm, shout in outrage and weep hot tears of humiliation that cascade down cold lifeless cheeks of resignation in the midst of the burning overwhelming crowdiness, their rage echoes in hollow tones of absorbing rebounce amidst the clamminess of offensive flesh, the light is all but a teasing haze beyond the shifting haze of congealing mists of moist breath rising i this pulsating animated mass of desperation. Even in the futility of the cagey existence, there is always a desire that hooks hope to life. This hopeless existence of expired aspirations waiting to passover, in the interim making sure of a certainty of continuity, a new breed of fanning and expanded minds capable of greater exquisiteness in their appreciation of this havens of picturesque ineventuality where the oceans of deciphered and exquisitely calibrated despoialtion of humaness lap at the feet of the new born in multiple layered multiplicity of directionless all-encompassing reality of gradual realisation. The insiders have gained access the outsiders, the outsiders are the unending constriction of unmitigated woes, birthing sorrows in the lethargic heat, warm embrace of suffering entangled with the cold clasp of death in a gentle swaying rhythmic dance of life.

 

As collectives, representative of our congealed definitive characteristic, the human being is all-together sceptical, sarcastic, mean and unkind. There is a sustained tendency to consolidate friendship by scathinghly taking sling shots of scarring slangs at others. A repulsive attempt to cut 'them' to the individual's despicable moral size. The deeply satisfying inner smirk of 'one more down', in a way humans have a broad and deeply evil nature that permeates their whole thought system and personality, a disturbingly strong and cleaving aspect against which rational and moral behaviour struggles to find expression and definition, an aspect that forms the huge dark canvas against which some concerted directive effort manages to create a pattern of 'good' in the all permeating evil, yet humans were the very essence of all that is good. Through it all, it is the speaker, the actor, the artist of spite, rather than the intended object of spite, who reveals their deep seated inner dissatisfaction with the manifest blessings of beings thinking and capable beings, set at the very top of earthly creation. The high positioning of mankind is self-repudiated by the savagery with which each glimmering day of abundant hope and beauty is diminished by the darkness of the souls that refuse to be lighted and visit the wild unruliness of their unsettled minds on creation. The depth of wickedness and complacency to dissociate from goodness that underlie human suffering is incomprehensible, when the freewill of humanity to make a choice to pursue a positive value laden existence or nagative self destructing existence is fully appreciated against the choices mankind often makes, be

they aggressors or victims. Pictures of gloom in the pretense of glimmering hope fully realised, narrowly demarcated and provincially defended, in the true spirit of the darkness lying just below the surface and running deep. Or maybe, on the offset, inconceivably true, intense noble lights of goodness suffused in sarcophagal sheets of contaminanting evil. The persistent parochiality of the mind sets that rule, propound upon the limitations humans have imposed upon themselves and project it forth as a message of certainty, the certainty being that in the independency of dependency as individuals, the social coalition of unnmediated dependency is the basis for independency, and the extent to which that social responsibility is managed and realised will determine the individual need satisfaction.

 

There is a sublime awareness that change that transfuses the collective benefits of cultural-will one way or the other permeate the masses of the continent, sometime. The issue of redefining and upgrading the individuality that constrains the collective interest will however remain barely scratched at the higher leadership level, because the essential theme of 'living the words you preach' may very well be unattainable. The hoarding behaviour is seemingly addictive, but worse than that, as one individual collects, he wishes and will manipulate to deny others access, here is the human mind at its most devious cunningness. Heroes are deviants who sacrifice their worthy beings for an unappreciative participating audience.

 

The human being, it would seem, has a sublime nobility, a nobility that at the individual level contains the consumptive rage and the crippling despair from becoming explosive forces of destruction or disassembling dissolution, emanating from the self to the collective, providing instead, a somber reflectiveness to seek for a solution and a faithful hope sustaining experimentalism for alternatives, ejecting at times, forceful, resolute unmalleable contrivancies of he active mind, powerful transformational manifestations of the interphase between the individual and collective minds resonating to yield values that re-enact the social drama for mutual benefit. From the margins of isolated individualistic active mind sets, fighting, resiliently refusing to yield defeat, the overwhelming urge of 'the lash out' of that one final cataclysmic self anhilating destructive response in which society finds rebirth and continuity is tempered to yield sustenance. Reposing in the individual is the hope of the society, that even in its shattered dissemblance nurtures in its collective embrace the definitive configuration of the individual reality upon a social background of fervently vague hope.

 

The 'great man' stood up with the manly air of the warrior. His coil of dark hair had long gone an ashy gray, now it was cut a low crew cut . His white 'agbada' embellished his impressively massive structure, his hard eyes, took in the view; packed all over the large public space, in the bright, African sunlight were row upon rows of dark skins glinting with briiliance as of light cast off precious stone. The silence was awe inspiring, every eye was focused on the leader, a worldly man of rich experiences, he overcome the odds of individual afflictions and for many years dangled expectant hope like carrot before a donkey before an expectant and hungry public, the bait had been taken, the populace believed in the dream and nurtured hope through hard, abbrasive task, nation building is a delicate task of unimaginable robusity, this day as he stood on the podium, before this crowd of church goers, assembled for a national day of prayer, something in the air, an incomprehensible force of the massed faith of thousand upon thousands singing praise and praying  prayers of faith, in an ordinary day of unsual circumstances triggered a part of his being that he never even knew existed. He had been known to depart from his carefully scripted speeches to give vent to his annoyance and anger, at what he considered others weaknesses. But as he began speaking, the speech fluttering in the stiff breeze, his words had a source, that commonplace as it was, astounded first the assistant leaders and then the gathering:- "When I was a child, I spoke like a child. When I became an adult . . ." words spoken many times in the christian congregations, but coming from the man of such deep seated worldly reputation!?

 

He stood, at the edge of that gathering, hearing the words roll like thunder through the voice magnifiers making an impact on all notwithtanding, and in a way it was not altogether strange that when politics and feeble industrialisation had failed to deliver meaningful existence, the substitute hope that seemed capable of rectifiying the foibles was religion. The cycle in an upward loop. . .

 

There was no peace then, and there will be no peace now, or ever, in any place through time where justice and consideration for truthful existence gives way to greed and selfishness. The words of the events of the past are branded into immortality in the secret and sacred places of God and given unto men, that they learn, yet how miserable are men in their own founded knowledge and tainted wisdom. Thus they repeat the past errors and sure enough they reap the grapes of wrath. The fathers have eaten the sour grapes, sure enough, and the children's teeth are set on edge.

 

"But as for me, I am filled with power,

   with the Spirit of Jehovah Almighty,

and with justice and might,

to declare (to this present day)

Jacob his trangression,

To Israel his sin. (wrongdoings)

Hear this, you leaders of the house of

   Jacob,

you rulers of the house of Israel,

who despise justice

   and distort all that is right;

who build Zion with bloodshed,

  and Jerusalem with wickedness.

Her leaders judge for a bribe,

  her priests teach for a price,

and her prophets tell fortune for

     money.

 

(You rain down misery upon your weak

and fatten yourself in the anguish of your

people. You exalt wickedness and perfect

wrongdoing.)

 

Yet they lean upon the Lord and say,

  "Is not the Lord among us?

  No disaster will come upon us."

Therefore because of you,

   Zion will be ploughed like a field,

(Sown with misery)

Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble,

(Established on your injustice and disregard).

 The temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets.

 

Your land is your Zion, you are the leaders and Jerusalem is your earthly crown of glory.

You sit on your seats of rulership like priests in temples, unheeding of the torment your actions wrought.

 

Like the prohets who led that nation astray

Our leaders proclaim peace to those who bribe them, and wage war against those who seek justice. Therefore night has come over them and they lack vision, they are without visions.

 

The voice of the people is the voice of God. All they desire and ask is that you act justly, with mercy and love.

 

But it seems like the godly have been swept from the land; and not one upright man remains in leadership. They have all become greatly skilled in doing evil, they demand gifts and accept bribes, shamelessly. The powerful dictate what they desire- they all conspire together. The best of them is like a brier, the most upright worse than a thorn hedge.

 

But, some, like the prophet Micah, speaking unto time without place or boundary, but a concept of attitude and social despair, intone "But as for me, I watch in hope for Jehovah, I wait for God my Saviour; my God will hear me."

 

. . .And the leader said with deep conviction, "I do not believe in religion, but I believe in God. Naturally, of course, adversity draws man nearer his creator. . ."

 

He visualised with that clarity that only people like him were capable, the astute observer; the wispery white cladded inspired prophet, standing at the juncture of time flowing in unbroken stream of eternity, the wind of unheralded change blowing the flimsy apparel of hand crafted human effort clothing him and clinging to the lean hardened structure, faced raised, voice raised, his eyes blazing with the seemingly vacant preoccupation of a holy man, standing conspicously on some naturally enabled platform lifting the spirits of a dispirited people in some far off past times, speaking unto a future undiscerned and incomprehensible. The prophet spoke the words, as enabled him:-

 

"Behold, I will create

   new heavens and a new earth.

The former things will not be remembered,

   nor will they come to mind.

But be glad and rejoice forever

  in what I will create,

for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight

 and its people a joy.

I will rejoice over Jerusalem

  and take delight in my people;

the sound of weeping and of crying

will be heard in it no more.

 

"Never again will there be in it

  an infant who lives but a few days,

 or an old man who does not live out his

   years;

he who dies at a hundred

  will be thought a mere youth;

he who fails to reach a hundred

   will be considered accursed.

They will build houses and dwell in them;

  they will plant vineyards and eat their

       fruit.

No longer will they build houses and

   others live in them,

 or plant and others eat.

For as the days of a tree,

¨ so will be the days of my people;

my chosen ones will long enjoy

  the works of their hands.

They will not toil in vain

  or bear children doomed to misfortune;

for they will be a people blessed by the

  LORD,

they and all their descendants with them.

Before they call I will answer;

  while they are still speaking I will hear.

The wolf and the lamb will feed together,

and the lion will eat straw like the ox,

but dust will be the serpent's food.

They will neither harm nor destroy

  on all my holy mountain,"

                               says the Lord.

 

The vision was reassuring of some better times in the foggy future, he was a practical mind and knew that while waiting for the grand fulfillment, humans will have to scratch and hatch, expand and push their creative intellects and work to improve on their existing dismal reality; as well as pray for direction in this murky misty swirling of profound despair and heraldic breakthroughs.

 

His fertile mind set to work, envisioning a time when great leaders will call forth for the millions of Africans locked in the prisons of diasporic existence and in the actual prisons of the worldy prisons. These are the bold, rebellious and angry, kept under lock and key, bidding their time and wasting away. They must be secured and brought home, their anger dissipated in the motherland, these stalwart 'madmen' and uncontrollable women must link hands to rebuild the ancient homeland. . . . And the whole land moans under the burden of the incapable task masters.

 

Deep down in those nether regions of the

subconscious, is a nudging thought,

an awareness that is profound.

No matter how much man tries

he always comes short.

The answer is not in concrete designs

though it thus help-

True peace is yet realised,

it is beyond the limitations of man,

all mans effort is a constant reminder

of what is left undone-

Still, there is nothing wrong with trying.