7 Years a Slave - Our Humanity vs Our Economy and Africa’s Development Dilemma

"At forty I felt obligated to unpack my purpose and like Jesus taught us 2000 years ago when he died leaving behind only 12 followers, for your purpose to have real meaning it has to outlive you and the only way it will outlive you is if it has meaning beyond you."

“I survived turning the big 4 0 last month” is quite captive a reflection befitting the dynamics that informed its passing. My life was briefly turned upside down in a moment of madness but I survived enough to write this letter.

I didn’t post anything commemorative on my birthday, this year, for the first time since I started this journey seven years ago at age 33 - the age which Jesus died (very symbolic of my underlying objective at the time).

So this article is not only my first post 40 years reflection, but it is also a very befitting way for me to contribute to the reflections marking the end of Lent, central not only to Christianity, but almost all religions, as it aims to nurture restraint (sacrifice), the most critical ingredient to our continued humanity.

When hosted to an intimate birthday dinner by my family, a week after the day itself, as they could not let this specific year pass quietly; they asked me what turning forty meant to me?

Slightly thrown off for a moment as I wasn’t expecting such a question, I gathered myself and answered telling them that at forty I felt obligated to unpack my purpose and like Jesus taught us 2000 years ago when he died leaving behind only 12 followers, for your purpose to have real meaning it has to outlive you and the only way it will outlive you is if it has meaning beyond you. Almost as proof, he now has more than 1b devout followers even without being around in his own defense.

In my new book “Ubishi Komaa na Maisha”, written, in intervals, over the span of these seven years, but not out yet; I divide life into four parts, but in reality life can more effectively be divided into two parts when we consider the purpose of your life journey and the true meaning of sacrifice:
First 40 years. The first half of your life is greatly about you, your strengths, abilities and so on and using these to invest in manifesting your purpose.
Final 40 years. The second half of your life assumes that once you unpack your purpose, you will use it to serve others.

One thing that I learned very early in this seven year trek is that my life will come to an end and whether I like it or not I will ultimately die.

So if death is guaranteed, then why bother to live?

Purpose.

Purpose is our motive to live. Our purpose will channel either of two often competing paradigms that define our life - our existence (life) and/ or our survival (living). Our purpose will be informed by any combination of the two but almost as a principal, with one driving the other.

Given our inevitable biological demise, we are obligated then, in our humanity, to ensure that our purpose positively impacts on other people, whether it be family, friends or employees; we are obligated to live out our purpose in a way that positively impacts on others.

So how do we do this?

Invest in soul.

Soul is the engine of life. Soul is the drive you need to push yourself to survive economic pressure while staying true to what it takes to maintain our humanity. It is the one thing that keeps us from choosing death in as much as it may seem like an easier option to living on face value. That’s why we reinforce the soul with positive not negative messaging; because when we talk we talk to our soul.

The two halfs of our life (before forty and after forty) represent the competing ends of our lives (existence and survival), reflected through our humanity and economy, respectively.

Ironically, our existence is a societal interest, while our survival is more of a personal /individual interest and as a result, our first half of life is informed by societal forces (the sacrifices others make for us) informed by the humanity required to keep ‘us’ going as a society, while our second half of life is informed more by our individual pursuit (the sacrifices we make for others) informed by the economic need to survive.

This is ironic or better yet sad, because just when we are starting our journey out and are obligated by circumstance to do more for others and the continuity of our shared humanity knowing that we are soon going to die, we are empowered enough to obsess over what is ours as individuals not to notice or care for what is ours as a society. So consumed by the moment that we forget the meaning behind the moment.

This is the trap that has eaten away at Africa for decades now. Just when our nations need us most; we, especially those of us who are empowered enough to drive/inform the national agenda, are consumed with fighting our own battles even at the cost of our shared humanity.

I voluntarily exited the burgeoning corporate space of the time, arguably prematurely, as a spiritual sojourn to protect my understanding of this purpose against forces I know were gradually winning at defining mine (my purpose) outside of my own reasoning.

How did I do this?

Invest in conscience.

I invested in my conscience by subscribing to a life which compelled me to commune with those whose lives my purpose is best suited to impact, the voiceless ones. Those whose narrative we often use to further our own cause but often to their ultimate detriment not benefit. We act like we are speaking on their behalf while in reality we are speaking on our behalf while using their narrative.

We act impassioned by their plight but in reality we are using their situation and ignorance to simply fuel our struggle to survive. I did this as a way of reminding myself where it all started and maybe more importantly why it all started to begin with. We must never forget how important the plight of the people is to our overall narrative. We must never forget that before Nation States, there were people; ultimately it can never be about you it will always be about us.

Investing in your conscience is the most important protection against the potential abuse of one’s soul (resolve to keep existing as human beings) and/ or the abuse of one’s soul in the face of survival. When we die, our humanity (ability to exist as human beings) lives on through the values that informed it and our economy (ability to survive economically) dies immediately and depending on the investment we made in our humanity through others, even the ‘economy’ you leave behind will be at risk of perishing with equal momentum.

That’s one of the main reasons why wealth doesn’t last in this country beyond its creators. The generational handover of wealth in any society is a function of the investment we make in our shared humanity versus the investment we make in our shared economy. The former has to always outweigh the latter for both the human and economic gains made by a society to survive beyond the generation that made them.

This is where Africa gets it wrong almost always. The monetization of development, which I believe, is Africa’s greatest dilemma is a function of us coming to age at a time when the world was leveraging gains made after thousands of years of building almost exclusively their humanity so much so that it could afford them the room to make ‘their economy’ their focus; even over their humanity.

This came along with the industrial revolution and advances in computing technology that ultimately had the effect of making money look like it was King from an outsiders perspective. So when Africa (and most of the South South) were coming of age, through Globalization (quite unlike Imperialism that preceded it) money was declared king and anyone who spoke differently (like our very own Mwalimu) was simply written off. But unlike Asia, Africa bought in wholesale and quickly frowned on our unique sense of humanity (and consequently the overall concept of humanity overall) in exchange for the lures of building an economy as opposed to nations.

Nation States, as King Arthur, the foremost proprietor of modern civilization in the western world, said, are built on sacrifice.

Mwalimu’s Tanzania survived him simply for this reason. He defied the trend in an Africa seeking easy gains in a fast changing world and did it his way even it meant slowing that tides of time. By virtue of the authenticity of his mission, a western world quite against socialism/ communism, watched on with admiration and respect still as Mwalimu experimented with his daring vision, earning Mwalimu a special and permanent seat at the table of great Statescrafters. Mwalimu goes down in recorded as the only President to have effectively built a Nation State in this century.

The resulting time away from corporate merited a reflective working title for this piece of “7years A Slave” - a slave of unearthing if not keeping intact my God intended ‘purpose’; or as Oprah would say - my true North.

I am grateful to God in this moment for giving me the strength to endure 7years. Now at 40 I pray to him to allow to me to use my inherent strength to communicate, to have the strength to spread the lessons derived from my journey for the good of this great country.

As a country, we are favored beyond measure; but as a people we are conflicted as to what will really take us ahead.

The first thing we need to fix is our humanity as a people and recognize with unfettered resolve the importance to keep alive the gains of the work undertaken by Mwalimu and his generation in building it.

For today, I end here but look forward to literally hearing more from me going forward.

I end my long piece with words I shared with Diamond Platinumz, Tanzania’s foremost entertainer, who recently gave our country the honor of launching Songamusic by Safaricom in Kenya; an unprecedented feat. And the fact that ‘songa’ speaks to the progressive struggle that preceded his success is very telling of the weight placed atop Diamond’s shoulders to inspire using the struggle as opposed to the just the success.

I have said and will keep saying that one of the greatest lessons I have learned in life is that the struggle is our norm and success just a pit stop that fuels our soul to keep driving us forward.

We must always remember that our continued existence and humanity requires that we stay hungry but never become greedy; being greedy means taking even when you don’t give, while being hungry means giving even when you don’t take. #sacrifice and #struggle, #success is at best an enabler…