Before making considerations for this article, I asked someone what they think about the title. He asked if by people coming together as one I meant the people of my country, Botswana, and the people of his, Zimbabwe. I retreated. It was his own impression, but there is need for an interpretation.
If ‘our’ people, who are the people of this world need to stand together as one it is important to understand and hear what the ‘one’ is about. So what is ‘one’? I would think of the first number in the order of natural numbers. I would think of an aloneness of something or someone in counting. I might even think of it as a separation of something from other things, such as to thaw ‘one’ full chicken from the rest for cooking. Or perhaps even to set someone aside for some kind of duty, such as to take ‘one’ male child from his fellow male siblings for him to be sent to the market place for some groceries. This can be the idea of ‘one’. I doubt here this is the kind we search.
In this particular context an ‘one’ people we speak of an undisjointed unit. Apart from the numerical value of one, we also delve into the adjectival form of one, which means being a single or unspecified thing. Here one means solely existing as a human race, only us; a whole and entire people. And to be this is to be the same, like-minded, and in agreement. By agreement is meant the kind where we first and foremost acknowledge that God created MAN and not MEN. We come first before animals, we being the most important in rank among His creatures because we are made in His image, where we have spirits (for He is a spirit). This means we are number ‘one’ to Him. And if we appreciate that man was made and not many men, we already realise we were made from the onset of creation to be ‘one’. One may wonder why we have not been ‘one’ if we have not been, and why only now we see the need to be united. We possibly could have been ‘one’ before and got separated as we went lower in the abyss of the world and more familiar with bad than good, and now see the need to return to where we came from and how we were designed to live with one another. We see the need to return to the former way because our ways are failing us, hence we see the ways set for us are best. It is for your independent thought.
One day we may be found standing as ‘one’. In that day will there be no divisions nor contentions. I will not say “I am a Motswana.” while you say “I am a Jamaican.” while our neighbour says “I am a Chinese.” I will not say “I am a Christian.” while you say “I am a Muslim.” while our neighbour says “I am a Jew and half of me is Buddhist.” In that day one nation will not be divided and called South Sudan and North Sudan. There will not be threat to border the North from the South in one country because the North is of one religious affiliation and the South subscribes to another. In the day when our people stand as one, we may have no boundaries between our countries and continents. Perhaps we may even have one monetary value, depending on what the motive is. How about a one language, maybe? Maybe. Certain people once tried to build a temple reaching heaven so they could arrive to the habitation of God, and He simply caused them to speak different languages and confusion reigned, so the mission was destroyed. Now where there is no understanding no one project can be a success.
Our people need to stand together as one. It all comes down to love. Love is a government which has a language exclusive to it. Whoever subscribes and has the identity card of love knows the mother tongue of it as one relevant to all humanity, inherited from the Creator who was there before the beginning began. We were always meant to stay in unison as people, where a human being is a human being and not a diverse species in race, nationality, class or colour.
