With time, different faces of violence and cruelty have become commonplace in many African countries over the years.
There are millions of people who have grown up to their adulthood knowing active violence and cruelty as normal states of human life, and a basic way of survival.
It is seriously concerning that there are children born and bred in wars seeing people being killed day in day out.
There are children who grow up witnessing a completely hopeless state of affairs where those charged with protecting the people, oftentimes men in uniform, are instrumentalized as agents for violence and cruelty.
In the context of the African continent, those who have grown up with no direct experience of violence, cruelty, or dispersion, are considered privileged, because the statistics of violent wars of all kinds cut across all generations and places randomly.
Given the enduring intergenerational effects of such experiences of cruelty and violence, which oftentimes take decades to subside, after immense loss of human lives, we can without doubt say most people originating in the African continent have generational trails and traces of painful wounds of violence and cruelty.
These matters wane down the human effort and will to flourish, as all can be laid to waste anytime.
To begin with, there are undocumented and untraceable historical events in the background that have perpetuated the culture of violence and cruelty.
The recent ones are the century-long events of enslavement of Africans and colonization, which can serve as good reference point for the immersion of a ‘culture’ of cruelty and violence as we can nuance both the experiences and the practical implications.
In the grimy history we see the violence being socially constructed, and being gradually established as a justifiable and necessary form of social influence to induce subordination, a reality that is pervasive in the socio-political experience all over the continent.
Many inherited colonial state institutions have also been built in this way, such as police force, correctional service, etc. When we speak of the legacy of colonialism, we are not talking about centuries ago.
For reference, we are talking about a reality that was functionally present 7 decades ago, and which would never have faded on its own if not for the firm resolves of our then young and heroic independence champions.
As such, it really takes serious firm resolves to kill the roots of such a cruel legacy where one’s life is in danger for a simple dissonance with the government and its agencies.
Flourishing needs a variety of opinions and worldviews in all aspects, a prerequisite to which is the state of freedom and safety that is needed to express such opinions.
Where those with different opinions are marginalized and treated with cruelty there is a danger of a complicated monotony of dysfunctional ideas, as people no longer think freely, but only as allowed to! The most gruesome face of all this is the fact that people’s lives are ended, and families are left grieving.
The effort that is used for perpetuating cruelty and violence, especially in the political circles would have served so well to solve real problems, should there have been right motivations and genuine intentions in the first place.
We cannot, as Africans, build on cruelty and violence, and nothing positive can come from it. Being a young continent, with majority of population in the youthful age brackets, there are potentialities for growth in our young people.
Young people should not be instrumentalized as cruel mercenaries of oppression or violence, but as world change-makers, innovators, and global players making impact in different fields locally and internationally, just like their global peers.
Our young people have the willingness to help make things better in the continent, only if the systems integrate them well and allow them the space to express their ideas and participate in solving problems.
While politics will always bring different perspectives, there should at least be middle grounds where political interests are evidently for the good of the people, and not for protection of political persons or parties.
Politics should also operate on an equal base where all political actors are genuine, an area that for the most part the African continent scores very low.
At the moment even countries that were once reputed as being peaceful and safe have also become even more cruel and violent, shocking the entire world.
Africa as a corpus is a complex reality where people are extremely religious, and deeply cultural, and believing in ‘Ubuntu’, and yet there is unimaginable cruelty and violence against innocent people.
It is time we end this barbaric living where people’s lives are made expendable for the benefit of the powerful. We will not understand now, but we are creating a wound that will eat the fabric of our being over so many years.
