MyWeku

The African Cup of Nations ended today in Angola. Opinions on its success vary enormously.

MyWeku is privileged to have Koluki on as a guest writer today to share with us an article she wrote which was first published on her blog on January 11, 2010 during the African Cup of Nations.

The article offers some thoughts on how far Angola has come, in the context of the “The Year of Africa” albeit with some “hiccups” as was aptly demonstrated by the spurt of violence during the African Cup of Nations.

Koluki hails from Angola. She holds an MSc in Economic History and is a writer, former journalist and regular contributor with articles for Angolan and international publications.

She airs her views on “life, the universe and everything” @ Koluki (http://koluki.blogspot.com)

Here we are – in 2010!

The beginning of a new decade and of the celebration of a founding moment in History: half a century since 1960, popularly known as “The Year of Africa” – the year of independence for 17 African countries.

Angola, however, was not among them. There and then I was born amidst a host of spurring events that would lead to the 14-year long struggle for independence that ensued from the following year until 1974. Elsewhere in the region, in that year events such as the Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa were also to shape the continent’s 1960s decade.

Today, 50 years after “The Year of Africa” and on the way to the 35th anniversary of its independence from Portugal, Angola hosts an event that is also meant in some way to celebrate Africa and its achievements, in this instance in the realm of the ‘king of sports’: football and its Cup of African Nations (CAN).

Unfortunately, though, in an incident still reminiscent of Africa’s colonial legacy of arbitrarily drawn borders by the Europeans at the Berlin Conference , its start was stained by the saddening and indefensible event of a guerrilla attack, in Cabinda, to the participating team of Togo while in the bus on the road to their dreams of glory and victories at the stadiums so painstakingly built over the last few years for this continental event. Sad and damning.

Sad for all of us, but damning only for a faction of the FLEC (Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda) pro-independence movement. 50 years of so many bloody struggles for independence in Africa, and markedly in Angola, have surely left a number of profound lessons to be learned from for all of us. Among them, that indiscriminate, senseless bloodshed is hardly the way to achieve anything – certainly not immediate independence, self-determination or, perhaps most importantly, self-respect… But it has happened and all we have left is our deep sorrow for the team of Togo, the families of the athletes dead in the attack and their country.