“I am because I am free; I am free because I am”

John Coltrane & Don Cherry play Ornette Coleman’s composition, “Focus on sanity” (full personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Cherry, cornet; Percy Heath, bass; Ed Blackwell, drums (recorded: Atlantic Records, New York, US, 28 June 1960)

Why and how does a state exist to dominate, exploit, and, in cases such as Nigeria, Rwanda, the Sudan and Democratic Republic of the Congo, for instance, attempt to destroy some of its constituent nations or peoples? As every school child knows, the states that Europe created in Africa, in the aftermath of its leaders’ infamous 1884-1885 Berlin-conquest conference, cannot lead Africans to the reconstructive changes they deeply yearn for after the tragic history of centuries of conquest and occupation.

Such changes were and never are the mission of these states but instruments to expropriate and despoil Africa by the conquest in perpetuity. This is the “curse” of Berlin. But, thankfully, just as in Berlin, states are not a gift from the gods but relationships painstakingly formulated and constructed by groups of human beings on planet Earth to pursue aspirations and interests envisioned and articulated by these same human beings. For the Igbo, Darfuri, and all other peoples presently besieged by the haematophagous genocide state, the message on the unfurled banner for their freedom march couldn’t be more confident and focused: “I am because I am free; I am free because I am”. Create your own state today. Now is the time!

The flourishing age of organically constituted African-own states to radically transform depressing African fortunes in the contemporary world has already begun.

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe