Last Memorial Day weekend, I watched Hotel Rwanda. This year, I watched Lumumba. If you are an African and you haven’t watched the following movies: Sankofa, Hotel Rwanda and Lumumba, you should be ashamed of yourself. And you should stop speaking about Africa for chances are that you do not know what you are talking about.

These three movies give you a complete picture of what happened, what is happening, and what will happen to Africa. Maybe if you think along with them you will know why they happened. Notice that I did not say read any book about any of the underlining issues for Africans do not read. Most Africans read their last the moment they get their diploma.

Who am I deceiving? Africans of today hardly have shame. Who am I kidding? Telling Africans to shut up and stop speaking about something they know nothing about? Who am I to say so? Who had born me?

Anyway, last weekend I watched Lumumba movie. As the credit rolled, I felt like a man who had been stupid all my life. I felt like I had been talking rubbish about Africa since time immemorial. I felt sad, the way I never felt before. I was scared. I was in tears. Of all the feelings I felt, the scariest of them was the feeling of hopelessness.

Africa never had a chance in the sun. Never. Patrice Lumumba had no chance in Congo and Lumumbas of Africa had no chance anywhere they were. The Lumumbas of Africa were young men and women who had a romantic view of where the new Africa should go. But their views were naïve even as they were authentic. In Africa that was still manipulated by those who enslaved it, the Lumumbas had no chance.

There was nothing the Lumumbas of Africa could have done. They were destined to die. All was set for them to be crushed and be vanquished. They were objects for sacrifice. And that was what happened to them. I had dreamt of the Lumumbas, emerging and assuming responsibilities in Africa. I had waited for their first coming without knowing that I should be waiting for the second coming.

The Lumumbas of Africa have always been with us. They have been endangered species since the beginning of time. Almost fifty years after most of Africa got their independence, the prognosis for Africa’s Lumumbas is a lot worse.

The Africa they thought was given to them to run was not ready. And it is still not ready. There are too many Moise Tshombes, Joseph Mobutus and Joseph Kasa-Vubu. What is so scary is that nothing has changed since Patrice Lumumba walked the grounds of the Congo. Moise Tshombe of Katanga died of heat failure in 1969. Joseph kasa-Vubu died on March 24, 1969. Joseph Mobutu, used and abandoned by the West died of cancer on September 7, 1997.

Just like the Americans sponsored Joseph Mobutu, gave him all he needed to crush Lumumba, the same scenario has continued all over Africa. There are people who for their selfish interest are propping up inauthentic leaders across Africa.

One particular incident in the movie will haunt me for the rest of my life. It was a scene where Lumumba was telling his pilot to fly him to the breakaway Katanga region and the pilot refused citing orders from above. And it struck me: there was the prime minister of the largest and riches African nation trying to tame the ravaging Belgians colonialists while his government plane, built abroad, of course, was being piloted by a Belgian. When the pilot refused, Lumumba was helpless.

That scene made me think. How many listening devices are in all the presidential fleet of African heads of state? What listening devices are buried in African embassies abroad? Weren’t memories of what happened to Lumumba one of the weapons that tyrants like Mugabe uses to deceive poor folks about what the actual line of battle is?

As I closed my thought on the movie, I knew that Africa needed a drastic paradigm shift. What that shift should be, I do not yet know. All I could think of as a possible solution is when descendants of Africans abroad get their footing in these countries that continues to ruin Africa, may be, maybe then, these policies of exploitation and subjugation of Africa will cease.

Until then, I see no hope. I see no need to be optimistic. I see nothing but perpetual doom.