The Constitution Gave You Rights to Vote and Rule But No Book Can Teach You Courage

 A Sudanese demonstrator at a protest in the capital Khartoum

 

By Alpha Amadu Jalloh | For Africa Publicity

 

To my fellow Sierra Leoneans and Africans across the continent.

 

This is not another sermon. This is not diplomacy in disguise. This is not a call to arms. It is a call to conscience.

 

A wake-up scream for a continent with too many books, too many rights, too many constitutions, and too little courage.

 

You see, the Constitution gave you the right to vote. It gave you the right to speak. To gather. To resist. To lead. But no book, no clause, no article, not even the most sacred parchment, can teach you the one thing you need most to change your destiny. Courage.

 

We, the children of Sankara and Nkrumah, Lumumba and Mandela, have inherited nations full of laws and lifeless leaders. The constitutions in our lands are not the problem. We have chapter and verse for every freedom known to man. In Sierra Leone, we can quote Section 33 on the right to vote, Section 25 for freedom of speech, and Section 15 on equality. In Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and many others, every law is there. But laws do not liberate cowards.

 

What we lack is not the right to choose, but the fire to choose rightly. We have the right to speak, but the silence of fear is louder. We have the right to remove the wicked, but we bless them with applause. We have the right to say no, but we say yes sir to thieves in tailored suits.

 

So we must ask ourselves. What is the use of a Constitution when the people are constitutionally afraid?

 

Look at my country, Sierra Leone. Once the Athens of West Africa. Now a textbook case in how to bury hope under ballot boxes. We go to the polls not with power but with paralyzed hearts. We watch the same criminals rotate power like dancers in a cursed masquerade. We protest on WhatsApp, we curse in private taxis, and we preach revolution from the safety of exile. But when it is time to act, we retreat. We ask, who will lead us, as if the next saviour must drop from the sky fully funded by foreign donors.

 

We blame the politicians, but we forget. A cowardly voter produces a criminal leader. A silent people author their own suffering. A generation that cannot say enough will eat the dust of dictators.

 

The Constitution gave you power. But the courage to use it, that is your job. That is your inheritance. That is your burden. And if you cannot carry it, then do not cry when tyrants drag your nation through the mud.

 

Zoom out. Look at Africa. From Cairo to Cape Town. From Conakry to Kigali. We are not poor. We are plundered. We are not weak. We are weakened by our own refusal to stand.

 

We say France is the problem. We say the IMF is the problem. We say America is behind everything. But tell me, who opens the vaults? Who signs the contracts? Who amends the constitutions to stay longer than cancer?

 

It is not the outsider who robs Africa. It is the insider who opens the backdoor. It is not the colonizer who still conquers us. It is our cowardice.

 

And the truth is bitter. No constitution can save a continent that refuses to fight for its soul.

 

We keep crying for democracy, but democracy demands more than voting. It demands sacrifice, vigilance, protest, and organization. It demands citizens who will say, you may wear the uniform of a president, but we wear the power of the people. It demands men and women who will stop dancing for politicians and start demanding from them. It demands youth who will not sell their futures for rice and T-shirts.

 

_“Our people are not free if they do not have the power to choose their leaders in a fair and transparent way.”_

— Nelson Mandela

 

You are not truly free because you can vote. You are free only when your vote means something. And for that to happen, you must be ready to bleed, not for war, but for truth.

 

Some of you have read Mandela. Some of you have memorized Sankara. Some of you can quote Malcolm X and Walter Rodney from memory. But what good is a library in your head if your feet cannot march? What good is knowledge if your spine is soft?

 

_“It is clear that we must find an African solution to our problems and that this can only be found in African unity.”_

— Kwame Nkrumah

 

The problem with Africa is not ignorance. It is indifference. It is a generation too learned to be fooled but too lazy to fight back.

 

You wear Pan-Africanism like fashion. You hold conferences with empty slogans. You post hashtags and feel righteous. But when they rig your elections, you wait for the courts. Courts that drink from the same cup as the crooks.

 

No book can teach you courage. It is born the day you say no more and mean it. It is born when you stand in front of a ballot thief and say, you will not rule me. It is born when you stop watching and start walking.

 

_“You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. It comes with the courage to turn your back on the old formulas.”__

— Thomas Sankara

 

You are not the leaders of tomorrow. You are the fire of today. And if you do not burn, this continent will freeze in the cold hands of tyranny.

 

Your job is not to wait for a savior. Your job is to become the generation that makes Africa honest again. Do not wait for the Constitution to defend you. Be the Constitution in action.

 

Be the protest that cannot be ignored. Be the vote that cannot be bought. Be the youth that cannot be manipulated by ethnic lies, tribal foolishness, or political crumbs.

 

When you see a dictator, name him. When you see injustice, confront it. When you see corruption, expose it. And when you are afraid, do it afraid.

 

Because let me remind you. Your ancestors faced bullets. You are scared of tweets. They walked barefoot for miles. You scroll past injustice. They died for freedom. You only repost it.

 

_“A silent generation is not just voiceless. It is complicit. In Sierra Leone, our pain persists not because we do not know the truth, but because we have grown afraid to speak it.”_

— Alpha Amadu Jalloh, Monopoly of Happiness: Unveiling Sierra Leone’s Social Imbalance

 

To my beloved Sierra Leoneans and my brothers and sisters across Africa. Let us stop crying to the Constitution like abandoned children. Let us stop praying for democracy as if it is heaven-sent. Let us stop pretending we are helpless when the truth is we are simply afraid.

 

The Constitution gave you rights. But courage, real courage. You must find that on your own.

 

No book will give it to you. No leader will lend it to you. You must become it.

 

And when you do, no force, not gun, not gown, not government, will ever rule over you again without your permission.

 

The time is now. The future is not written in ink. It is written by the brave.

 

Rise. Because if you do not, you will read this again ten years from now, still shackled, still weeping, and the world will have moved on without you.

 

Author’s Note: Alpha Amadu Jalloh is a writer, human rights advocate, and political commentator based in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of Monopoly of Happiness: Unveiling Sierra Leone’s Social Imbalance and contributor to Africa Publicity.