He has awakened

Macubu had spent all his life in the colony, and so had his parents, and the parents of his parents. The only life he had known was one of work, where the village elders would send him every year to work in the sugar plantations of different white masters. Life was tough, but bearable, and he, his wife and his children were loved and cared for by their community.

But his life changed when the Empire of Kaubon defeated the Royal Navy, and took over the colony. They were a black people, just like him, and they hated the white invaders. But their actions came not from a place of justice or of love for their fellow man, but from a deep, furious envy. They craved the power that the Europeans wield, the wealth and glory that comes from their advanced methods of exploitation. They too had developed self-serving theories, to quench their moral compasses and justify their dark desires.

Those were hard times for Macubu, of even greater persecution and abuse. But it was in those days when the seed of a hero landed on his heart, which defined his life and ultimately his death. It was not the cruelty of Kaubon that planted this, for this seed would continue to grow long after the Europeans had crushed the Empire. The trigger was something simpler, more human, and even more dangerous.

He saw white men, now enslaved, working the land, while their black Kaubon masters watched them with the same interest of one who watches a fresh brick dry in the sun. In all his life, Macubu had never seen such a thing. Not even his kindest white masters, those who in his own mind he would call friends, had ever lifted a single finger for as long as there was an empty black hand. Years later, the father of the nation would write: “All my life I had only listened, foolish like a bird, trusting like a dog, innocent like a child. But that day I received the gift of doubt, and now I am the truth. I have awakened.”