Our masters left our fate into our own hands and handed us a withered freedom. Though we had been subdued and ‘tamed’ for several years, our culture and tradition we couldn’t recognize anymore, our names we didn’t respond to, the hope that the malnourished freedom promised was worth agitating and dying for. There was a rainbow in the sky, one that promises a new dawn. We couldn’t be like our masters neither could we go back to our nature, the life we lived when we were our own men, believed in our own ways and fought our own battles.

We just had to sacrifice a little time to think for our children. Almost sixty years later we are going to the polls to elect another man who is neither our slave master nor colonial master but one of us. One that knows where our journey began and where we are now. One who is aware his people are miserable and lack basic social amenities?

One who not only lives among us but also shares the same skin color. He will do nothing about the pride of his people but he will go back to his former masters for advice on a job his father’s fought to do themselves. He will not bother his head about the increasing youth unemployment, the old fashioned and useless educational system but he is sure to review the salaries of himself and cronies. Will he care that he will die soon and his children will never be free? Will he even care about the hardworking mothers who carry their baskets at dawn and return home to cook for their families only to realize the soup is spoilt because he couldn’t do the simple task of providing energy for his people?

This is what he will do, he will impose taxes on us till our backs break, ignore the long term stability of this sick nation and come back again another election year fighting with his opponent concerning who can fool the people best.

We can play victims or remove the sandals from the feet of these unworthy men. We can fight for our freedom from our own people. We can change our lives and education ourselves with our thumbs.

The only thing left with us is democracy we better not lose that!

With tears and love.

Story by: Benjamin Afful