The trick that Afrika is “overpopulated” is one that most people, including blacks, easily fall prey to and should seriously beware of. Yes, we mostly make such opinions feeding from the media, especially Western TV, and from stories deliberately blown out of their true proportion. In my view, even certain serious news around issues such as concerning HIV/Aids should sometimes be seen as “suspect”. Apparently, it is what they like to see, read and hear: An Afrika with diminishing demographic statistics. Of all the ‘respectable and innovative Westerners’ that “care” so much, day and night, about Afrika, I could imagine how some of them have gleefully imagined an Afrika without black people, being totally wiped out by Aids or war. Yes!

That’s no fantasy, but reality! Racism is the root of it all, and it is racism that successively manages to portray Afrika as “the world’s poorest continent”, cynically failing to mention who makes Afrika poor, how come Afrika is poorest, or what could make the world’s richest continent poor. But we aren’t wrong to know it is racism and greed that feed guns & ammo to all the “artificial” and man-made wars in Afrika. And yes, since it’s “war time”, they even encourage corruption covertly, only to condemn it overtly! So who—in Washington or London—should expect Afrikans to believe their masterful lies? Of course some Afrikans believe their dodgy, out-of-context, know-it-all “analyses”. The rest of us DON’T! The result can only be divisive, disorienting and devastating for us Afrikans.

REPATRIATION: I understand how, for Diaspora-born Afrikans in general, physical repatriation to Afrika wouldn’t be as easy as when a continental Afrikan living in the Diaspora (but with all family, relatives, friends and other contacts in Afrika) goes back to finally, permanently settle down in Afrika. The two cases are quite different of course, incomparable, and I for one am not one of those Afrikans—born on the continent—that limit “repatriation” to the physical aspect, or to anyone or anything in particular (AS LONG AS THEY ARE AFRIKAN). I’d say a kind of “spiritual/cultural repatriation” is a prerequisite for actual/physical repatriation. My own view is actually that MOST Afrikans born and living on the continent do need to make a “cultural kind of repatriation” themselves, a kind of “spiritual journey to Afrika”, a “journey to themselves”, for their physical presence there to make any Afrikan sense.