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It is time for Africa to move away from the colonial trauma: Leymah Gbowee

  • Leymah Gbowee speaking during a panel discussion at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban.
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  • SABC-News-Gbowee-SiphoKekana
Reading Time: 4 minutes

Nobel Peace Laureate, Leymah Gbowee, says African leaders need to stop hiding behind the colonial past for their lack of care and their ineffectiveness to provide basic services for their people.  

Speaking to SABC News at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour currently underway at the Durban International Convention Centre, Gbowee charged that the current crop of leaders didn’t measure up to former leaders like Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, accusing them of rather being preoccupied with self-wealth and everything else that seemed to exclusively benefit them. 

This comes a day after the 2014 Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi attributed problems Africa was experiencing, including increasing numbers of children in child labour, to discriminatory world order.

Gbowee says with most of the countries in Africa having attained independence, African leaders are is in a position to do better for their people. 

“They have governments; they have systems and structure. Beyond that, we have the most resources in the world, yet we continue to struggle to provide the basic needs. We continue to make decent life (sic) for our people.”  

The Liberian peace activist who was instrumental in ending the civil war in Liberia 19 years ago, says, “How do you continue to blame colonial powers when some of our leaders fly to exotic hospitals outside of their countries and leave the poor people to a state where they cannot afford even aspirin or paracetamol? Who do we blame?” 

Gbowee is in the country as one of the delegates from around the world who have gathered at the ICC to share good practices and to push for accelerated action towards the elimination of child labour as well as to assess progress made towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) regarding child labour. 

She says it is time for Africa to move away from the colonial trauma. 

“Even instances where there are negotiations and there is funding that comes to the community where our natural resources are being exploited, how much money do you see go back to those communities? How many hospitals are built in places where golds and diamonds and all these different things are exploited?” 

The Founder and President of the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa says a lot of the current leaders cannot think beyond party politics and self-wealth. 

Earlier, the President of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Zingiswa Losi pointed out that there was power in Africa uniting and applying African solutions to African problems.  

“Africa has always been seen as one continent that doesn’t seem to progress but agrees on how the world should look like. And at times, you would realise that the reason we seem not to move forward in addressing our own issues, is because we have lost our own identity, as who we are as African people. We seem to think South Africa is on its own and the rest of Africa and the whole continent operates differently and as a result, we don’t have African solutions to African problems.”

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