'In dreams begin responsibilities': Ola Sheyin reviews the past year and hopes that in 2005, Africa and its peoples will not waste their energies persuading the West that we are not as hopeless as they suggest, but rather concentrate our efforts on getting to where we need to be.

There is an emotional excitement which comes with the commencement of a new year that the erudite mind sometimes misses. In truth, the time frame between the last day of the outgoing year and the first of the incoming is the same as every other day and its precedent. However, it is not the mathematical facts that people celebrate, but the hope--rightly or wrongly--that somehow things may be different this time, given the opportunity to start afresh.

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I have reviewed the happenings of the past year, and it all seems like a serving of what had hitherto been. There were wars and rumours of war, elections and the cancellation of such, floods and disasters that begged international relief and topics that pushed the edge of humanity.

As it is usual with the bulk of the domineering Western media, Africa continues to be the "basket case". The indices, they claim, show this much: Aids is rampaging across the continent. Sudan is ethnic cleansing. Debts are insurmountable. People empowerment and literacy are largely lacking. Bad governance and corruption are endemic. Natural disasters are truly at home, and the gap in poverty has never been wider between Africa and the other continents. First, the object of this article is not to agree or disagree with any of these views, and if truly these are the only problems Africa, and indeed the world at large, faces, then we must see ourselves as really lucky and blessed.

I have learnt not to regard as personal, the Western media's attack on Africa. I don't condone it, neither do I see it as being morally just, but I do understand the unavoidability of its necessity. I have been fortunate to live portions of my life both in Africa and the West, and neither is perfect.

In the West, however, many people are deeply unhappy and dissatisfied with their lives. They work all the hours they can, earn all the money they can, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. They yearn for happiness, peace, acceptance, and relationships, but have virtually given up hope of finding them. For so many of them, life appears hopeless. They have nowhere to turn, neither anything to cling to. The brave new world has turned out to be worse than the one they left behind.

For comfort, Africa has become the global palliative (after all, one's life seems better off if consistently reminded of people whose stock is worse off than one's own). Personally, I believe it is largely for the general psychological feel-good factor of the average westerner and ultimately to deflect a build-up of pressure on their leaders, that Africa is consistently picked on and portrayed as a desperate case. I may not be correct, but yet again this is not the argument.

If this premise is however true, then we must realise that the portrayal of Africa and it's people as a lost cause is not going to abate or change, no matter the quantum of effort we put into explaining that riches in the African context is not measured by GDP or how much in dollars you earn each day. Neither is it going to help to explain that many children go about shirtless because most people would do the same, in average temperatures of 33 degrees Celsius.

We should also not expect any let in the consistent media portrayal of the Western world to the African continent as paradise as long as there remains the need to entice a steady flow of immigrants whose toil can guarantee the sustenance of the Western population's idle on benefits.

Is this a new form of slavery? I don't think so; for we have become full and willing participants in this consistent decimation of our fortunes, and the term "accomplices" might serve this situation better. What seems consistent in all of this, however, is our inability to effectively decipher the scenario into which we are regularly thrust and react appropriately to them.

Like most people, the destruction of the entire Ivorian air force by France, struck a chord with me. Unlike most, however, I thought revenge was futile and would be a loss of the capacity to be welcoming to even the most obstinate visitor which forms the base of our hospitality and happiness. The question of "what French soldiers are doing in Africa in the first instance", is also fine rhetoric which in the long run wouldn't alter the global agenda or direction.

Of the stories we ran in New African in 2004, it was Baffour's Beefs on the Bilderberg (Jan-Aug issues) that amazed me the most. It wasn't the fact that there now seems to be a documented exposure of a few powerful people exerting more influence on global direction than most of us combined, but that it has taken us half a century of the existence of the Bilderberg to realise this.

The Bilderberg may be the most recent and possibly the last of such bodies, but it definitely is not the first to hold the real power behind the cosmetic global organisations unto which we pin our hopes for equity and justice. An attempt to create our own "Bilderberg" can not also be a solution, as there is currently no vacuum where we want to put such.

As human beings, we are natural hoarders of nuances we have sublimely gathered without most times even realising it. Those who orchestrate what is imbibed, control the mind, and subsequently, one's reactions. It is either we have been programmed to be echoes of other people, or we just enjoy this status of diminished responsibility, where we conveniently blame everyone else but ourselves for our woes.

Why, for instance, do we need the African Union? I am not saying we don't need one, I am just asking why; for it seems to be just a mimic of a global trend. If our answer is economic integration, political clout and global relevance, then we totally miss the point of what we are attempting to copy.

It might possibly take another half century but soon we will discover that the European Union is not about economic integration and global positioning at all. Even if it is, how much joy has this economic positioning that we so strive to copy brought the generality of their own people? We cannot jump on any ladder and climb simply because others are climbing. It will serve us well to know unto which wall the ladder is leaning before we commence our journey, lest we continue to consistently wrestle with smoke.

A relevant instance is President Robert Mugabe's recent "sufferings" which seem no more than punishment for moral statements he had made that hit at the core of the agenda of the masters of the new world, but to which the world is rather fed the diversionary tale of "land grab". Once again, the question is not whether Mugabe is guiltless or if his government has been the best his country could ever have. Rather, it is a pointer as to what the real issue behind his recent travails are, and who his real adversaries truly are. It is not enough to mine and collect this type of data, if we are not going to exercise equally advanced capacities in interpreting them to our collective advantage.

Concisely thought-out actions produce better results than confrontation does. If we need to partake in the new world, our perspective must change from the current litany of complaints, to articulating what we can bring to the table and indeed devising ways of getting back what we deem to have been stolen from us at that table.

China has made itself the world's factory. India the world's office. Pakistan has had a huge chunk of its debt cancelled by being an ally in the war against terror. We can't just keep plying on about how they divide and rule us, the evils of unfair trade or that things would have been better were Nkrumah still to be alive.

The point of articulating why we shouldn't dispense our energies in convincing the West that we are not as hopeless as they tell the world we are, is not a call to victory and cessation of effort, but to free time, so we can concentrate our effort, some of which we expend in explaining ourselves to the world, into getting us on the track to where we need to be from where we are right now.