Refugee exodus in post-independence Africa: a colonial legacy? Arbitrary colonial borders are to blame. But also, post-independence leaders’ incompetence, especially in the African Great Lakes region.
Post-independence Congo had peace for only 3 months. In Rwanda, instability started way before Independence Day in 1962. King Kigeli VI became a refugee after attending celebration of Congolese independence in 1960. Belgium punished him for association with Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. In Burundi, the first post-independence African genocide occurred in 1972. In Uganda, semi-literate army General, Idi Amin Dada, performed his putsch in 1971 against President Milton Obote.
The predicament of resettled African refugees in American cities is what led one of these African asylees, Celestin Nsengiyumva, to take the reader on a tour of life in African refugee camps, along the long trail of illiterate refugees to America, and into an insider story of refugees’ new existence away from beloved Africa.