Mayibuye iAfrika: A Dream Worth Our Collective Sacrifice!


By Musa Mdunge

“I come as one but stand as 10 000.” Last night as I usually do, I browsed through YouTube and came across Oprah’s Soul Sunday interviews. In this case, it was an interview she had with the late Poetic giant, Maya Angelou. 

They touched on various topics but this quote from Maya Angelou on how being who she was called to be, she carried not only her ancestors but all those whose destiny is connected to her own. 

It struck a chord with me as I reflected on my own purpose and journey from the township of Soweto in the heart of Johannesburg to the small city of Dundee in Scotland. 
As an avid historian, when I think about the wars of resistance against colonialization and apartheid, it moves me to ask the question of what my footprint in the sands of time is but more so, what is the role for my own generation. 

There is no doubt that the challenges faced by a new generation of Africans are complex, we are the generation who are travelling abroad for work and study purposes but our continent continues to deal with the hangovers of a colonial legacy that remains a part of our collective reality. 

Moreover, while Africa’s integration into the global economy picks up speed, many people remain excluded from the mainstream economy and this poses a challenge to leaders in all sectors and walks of life who call Africa their motherland to think about how to create an environment where opportunities that beak the back of poverty, inequality, and unemployment is made manifest. 


In conversations with fellow African scholars in Dundee, the common question we are faced with is how we take what we have acquired in the UK and go back to the continent and build a sustainable partnership for African development. 

It is privilege to be able to study overseas and often the challenge is the choice between living the American or European dream verse being co-constructors with all other Africans on the continent to only creating and but make reality the African dream. However, I believe that when we move from the premise presented by Angelou, that even though we come as one person, we stand as 10 000. 

That it is pursuing the noble cause of purpose that brings along so many people to live out their purpose. 
Yes, there is a lot of wrong happening in our beloved continent but there is a lot of good happening too. What we ought to focus on is how do we harness that collective African magic and excellence to rid ourselves of the legacy of an oppressive history and failed governments to an Africa that is one with itself.

How do we ensure that we rid ourselves of borders imposed by the oppressor and view the dreams of a child in the hinterlands of the Transkei as a dream just as worthy of pursuit as the dreams of a child who walks the streets of Lagos? Now more than ever Africans of all walks must rise to the collective command spoken through the ages, mayibuye iAfrika! It is a command shaped by the legacies best articulated by former President Thabo Mbeki that “are the jewels in our African crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana to Khartoum, as Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of Ghana, as the Berbers of the desert.”


Fellow Africans ours is a DNA of resistance, ours is a common struggle to improve the lived experience of all our people. We dare not let short-sightedness, individual greed, and egocentrism move us from this vision! So long as there are people dying of starvation and there are child-led households, aluta continua! If diseases such as Malaria, HIV/AIDS, and Polio continue to release painful tears of death, the struggle continues! 
Today I call all Africans to reaffirm their commitment to a continent that has given its soul to the ordering of human affairs. This is after all the continent of the great pyramids; this is the continent of Mansa Musa the Great.

This is the continent that gave birth to the sounds of jazz, blues and yes even rock ’n roll calls Africa home! It is on the backs of the African slave trade system that two global empires were built, the American and British empires! If it were not for African bodies, the wealth enjoyed under Pax Americana would be null and void. If we could bequeath the world so much, imagine what we can do for ourselves if we put our collective interests first? 


It is time to come as one but to stand as 10 000. For when we each stand in our truth and our identity as Africans, it is then that the story of the African dream will unfold before our very own eyes! Forget Wakanda, we are the magic and the greatness we seek! Africa forever!

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