I have also been quite motivated by varying perspectives on the nature of freedom. Followers of African Skies may have read one or all of the following pieces I have written on freedom. It would be fair to say that I am very preoccupied with the idea of freedom, what it entails. When we know we have got it. What it means. How we define freedom. The thing is that we often think of freedom as an absolute – We are either free or we are not. I do not agree with this. Which is why I describe freedom as a becoming.

On the tenth of March 2019, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, travelling between Addis Ababa and Nairobi, fell out of the sky, leaving 157 massive holes in the universe. Spaces never again to be filled. Cracks never to be mended. It is now the 11th of March 2019 and I am yet to come to terms with a particular death. Prof Pius Adesanmi. Kogite. Nigerian. African. Academic. Intellectual.

At the time of writing this piece, I was putting together reading for a lecture which asks the audience to think about the meaning(s) of freedom. In preparing the lecture, I have found so many different definitions of freedom, that I begin to realise that freedom may be a nebulous term. Primarily, it should be noted that definitions of freedom and demands for freedom are often a reaction to unfreedom. This is why it often seems that freedom is not found when the mechanisms and overt structures of unfreedom are removed, because the ideologies and imperatives that created it still exist, and the removal of unfreedom just provides an opportunity to destroy its clay and reform the unfreedom into more acceptable and less recognisable shapes.