The Big Read: What price an African life?

Six years before he co-founded what we now know as the ANC, a young Pixley kaIsaka Seme delivered a memorable speech at Columbia University, where he was studying.

It was such a seminal piece that it won him the prestigious George William Curtis medal and propelled him among South Africa's small community of native intellectuals of the time to the status of visionary leader.

The speech had such a major impact that it is said to have been circulated widely back at home and in other parts of Southern Africa, where the then emerging intelligentsia was still searching for a voice.

In this 1906 speech, the then 25-year-old Seme articulated a vision of a great future for the continent, one in which the continent would take its rightful place as an equal among the nations of the world.

At a time when Africa was dubbed "the dark continent", he opened by proudly declaring:"I am an African and I set my pride in my race against a hostile public opinion.

"Men have tried to compare races on the basis of some equality.

"In all the works of nature, equality, if by it we mean identity, is an impossible dream. Search the universe. You will find no two units alike. The scientists tell us there are no two cells, no two atoms, identical.

"Man, the crowning achievement of nature, defies analysis. He is a mystery through all ages and for all time.

"The races of mankind are composed of free and unique individuals.

"An attempt to compare them on the basis of equality can never be finally satisfactory. Each is self. My thesis stands on this truth; time has proved it. In all races, genius is like a spark, which concealed in the bosom of a flint, bursts forth at the summoning stroke. It may arise anywhere in any race."

Seme's words have inspired generations that came after him. Perhaps the greatest modern acknowledgement of their significance to Africa's struggle for self-determination was former president Thabo Mbeki's now famous 1996 "I am an African" speech delivered at the adoption of the country's constitution.

To Seme, the "regeneration of Africa" meant "a new and unique civilisation is soon to be added to the world".

At the heart of his belief that "the brighter day is rising upon Africa", at a time when almost all of the continent was suffering under the yoke of colonialism, was his firm belief that its people were equal to other peoples of the world, and that they had as much right to govern themselves.

Some 109 years later, with all of Africa - except Western Sahara - now politically free, one wonders what Seme would say of the continent were he to rise from the dead.

He would be proud, no doubt, to know that colonial rule and racial oppression, among other injustices of his era, are now things of the past.

But Seme would be disappointed, one suspects, to learn that some 50-odd years since most countries on the continent gained their independence life is still not valued enough - especially by Africans themselves.

Much has been made of the different kinds of attention the West has paid to the brutal slaughter of 17 people in Paris and the massacre of about 2000 villagers in Nigeria this week.

The fact that the Paris attack dominated world news and very little was being said about Boko Haram's massacre of scores of families and villages in one go has led to accusations of "racism" against Western countries and their media, which are said to care little about Africa and her people.

But what about us? Where were our voices of outrage in those days immediately after the massacres?

In fact, why did we take up the "Bring Back Our Girls" campaign only after US celebrities became its champions?

As we were learning the full extent of the tragic events in the town of Baga, in Bono province, on the north-eastern edge of Nigeria, some of Africa's leaders were in Paris to express solidarity with the French while staying silent about what had happened in their back yards.

The less said about the African Union the better.

All of this points to one sad reality - African life generally does not matter, not even to Africans themselves.

A few days before the attacks in Baga, Boko Haram had kidnapped 40 young men in one of the north-eastern villages.

Not even a murmur of protest was heard.

Instead of wasting our energies blaming others, Africans must make African lives matter.

If the population of this continent does not make a noise about injustices committed against their own, why should the rest of the world bother?

Making Africans matter also demands that its inhabitants start putting in positions of authority leaders who do not treat their own as second-class citizens.

Leaders like Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan, who has been too occupied with his bid for re-election to worry about Boko Haram, should have no business running our countries.