We are not safe, Clarence, we are not safe

It is not that I am not fearful, I am. If I show it less, I probably feel it more than others. Because I am convinced that there is nothing we can do about it: it is our destiny to be destroyed. We are Africans and doomed. We have never been fate’s favourites.
Even our leaders, the men we suppose have the power to save or destroy us are themselves victims of greater forces, imponderable, unalterable, unchallengable forces that draw us downwards. We are all, from the president to the pretender to the peasant, just so much driftwood in a whirlpool.