All the pharaohs in Africa, go now!

If anyone doubts that Egypt is flying today on the wings of the cities of Cairo, Alexandria and Suez, they must at least acknowledge that Egypt is on fire. We saw Tunisia before. Jordan decided for an early attempt of baptism of water rather than fire. Yemen moved with Egypt. Something happened in Khartoum but was only briefly analysed. There is heaving discontent in Sudan and below. Analysts who were surprised by Tunisia now agree that this is an Arab world uprising. They continue to talk about the Arab world fighting oppression and dictatorships. The Middle East and North Africa we may speak about but in the world today, unless you are not seeing it, boundaries are melting under the pressure of the power of communication.

And yet, a BBC documentary only a few weeks ago was the first in which a journalist interviewed African victims of trafficking stuck in the Sinai Desert. There was an eerie moment during that broadcast where the presenter said that nobody knows how many Africans are caught up in the desert.

He was speaking to a woman who had been raped endlessly. Her husband had died from the anger and frustration of seeing his wife thus abused. With all our pride in the internet, Al Jazeera and these brave journalists, we have got to ask ourselves why some places remain so hidden from the world. They are silent forgotten graves.

It’s immoral. We, as the world, especially the progressive world, cannot allow ourselves not to be proactive in knowing what is going on that should shame the earth if it were exposed and continue as if all is well, only stopping when the people risk everything and scream on streets and die for change. In some places oppression since Europe divided up Africa like a pancake during the Berlin Conference killed all voices.

The complacency in peaceful nations that have progressed until fire burns in troubled nations is incredible. The indifference of some of them when the fire begins to burn is shocking. In places like the Nordic countries, you would be forgiven for thinking anything was wrong in the world. Their media is constipated with their own little world. From time to time, you will see this criminal refugee as the face of black Africa especially.

Darfur in Sudan was and is. It is almost buried from our history because this poor, torn nation, which gave birth to a new country last week, could not muster the kind of people action steaming on the streets of Cairo on international channels and TVs just now. Who supports Omar al-Bashir, a president indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC)? Omar is not in trouble with the law because South Sudan wants its freedom! Why are we washing his diapers and covering bloodshed with him?

What do we do when a people cannot rise up in a clearly unjust situation? We sit and wait. What media is covering Central Africa these days? Will Twitter save us there, or in Somalia, Madagascar and Guinea-Bissau?

We wait for thousands of young Africans who will want to leave Africa and come to Europe where we will deny them entry most of the time because we still think this part of the world is ours and that other rich but unstable one theirs.

And this happens too to poor countries of Europe. In France, Nicolas Sarkozy just sends the Roma home to be more homeless. He gets them arrested. But Africa.

I feel the pain of a voiceless Chad, Mauritania, Ethiopia and Eritrea as the world sits and notices a major crisis. We act as if those places are far-away and worse, exploit situations through diplomacy as we benefit before the people wake up or never wake up. We trade in resources with the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) as 200 women get raped, even by the United Nations soldiers that we sent there with our money. In Washington DC, we even hear out Muammar Gaddafi of Libya because his country is quiet. He has been in power for 42 years. What does the vote mean here, that he will save us from terror?

The International Criminal Court tries to seek justice, but even then it is losing support because the same pharaohs have sworn against it in Africa ever since it sentenced Charles Taylor and others. They are killing it in the pretence of questioning Luis Moreno-Ocampo’s ability. They are pretending that we poor Africans have never understood the difference between the sovereignty of a country in Africa and injustice. Governments in most oppressed worlds blatantly overlook international conventions and keep the people down. Libya was staunchly behind supporting Kenya for a deferral from the ICC for a year. Thousands of refugees within Kenya are still in camps after the post-poll violence of 2007 that caused the people to seek recourse in the ICC. If the rest of the world in the UN supports the African Union in this, we might as well agree not to have a UN or anything that binds us to protect justice.

We should be ashamed to take pride in the people of Egypt now if we are waiting to be surprised by events, as we were by the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. It is not just a matter of suddenly hopping onto the right side of history. No. We know that Kenyan civil society is agitating for change and increasingly feeling repressed and frustrated for the creation of change, even if Kenyans have a new constitution. We know Zimbabweans are still suffering.

You know how Ivory Coast has been of late. Nigeria is often in tension. Kenya and Nigeria have elections in 2012. The oppression being fought in Egypt exists in almost all of Africa’s 50 countries. One may choose to see a neat division of the so-called Africa south of the Sahara, but one should like to take less for granted. People power as witnessed in the Philippines has influenced, if not always in action, many processes in search of freedom in the world. WikiLeaks before this, our own progress in communication in the last decade should wake us up to a different world. The last to understand will always be the oppressors, but history is not on their side.

Let us not look at what is happening within narrow lenses. We cannot afford to. Many analysts in the West and other thinkers worried and worried about this being Al-Qaeda at work before waking up to the realisation that this is about the people’s undying love for freedom, as it was in the days of Martin Luther King Jr in the One Million March in America.

Egyptians had to keep reminding all that there were Christians and Muslims on the streets. I pity those of us who would remain narrow. I pity the USA and Europe if they fail to see that the world, not just the Arab Middle East countries, has changed. I pity them if they do not realise that there must be more solidarity today with the people of Eritrea rather than with the corrupt and overbearing leadership entrenched in present-day Eritrea. I hope they can hear the heaviness and pain in some countries where they are still supporting terrible leaders, even if it is because of fear of fundamentalists taking over. I hope those working for the release of writers and journalists in such lands – they are usually the first victims – will see how much more they must work for better leadership if they are not just here to make careers on poor situations. The same goes for us, human rights activists.

The only way to go in order to also quell to some extent radical terror attacks is in fact that all the people get their freedoms back. It is easy to radicalise people who live in as dastardly conditions as we have seen existing in Egypt as we all just did normal business supporting with billions of dollars and snorkelling as usual at Sharma el Sheikh.

Things should not be the same again after this.

Does the world care today about what is happening in Ethiopia with regard to freedom? What kind of power is the West supporting there? Have we not just seen the ‘au’ – which from the day it has decided to support Kenya against the ICC we now will only spell in small letters – is incredibly supporting impunity? If the UN endorses this decision we shall also call it the ‘un’.

January 2011 in Tunisia and Egypt has been not just as many have been saying, history staring at us from Facebook, Twitter and the TV screen, but also a great reminder to the so-called world powers that life has changed in the world. It does not matter that China has suppressed demonstrations in support of Egypt. It does not matter that a Nobel Prize recipient is locked up in China, freedom will surge in people’s minds and hearts and will ultimately win.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Philo Ikonya is a Kenyan poet and activist.
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