<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14pt;" class="">Dear All,</div><p style="margin: 0in; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14pt;" class=""> </p><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14pt;" class="">I have been following the discussions on the AFRINIC members-discuss and community-discuss mailing lists. I find it unfortunately necessary that I must send out this email.</div><p style="margin: 0in; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14pt;" class=""> </p><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14pt;" class="">I will not defend myself from the allegations made against me. Anyone who knows me, the history of my country, and my upbringing would know that I can never and would never support any call for tribalism or xenophobia. I know that even those who made such allegations against me are aware of how beneath them these tactics are.</div><p style="margin: 0in; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14pt;" class=""> </p><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14pt;" class="">I will however use this opportunity to remind all, myself included, that hate is never the answer. Destroying bridges will always be easier than building them. Attempts to divide and concur us Africans are as old as time itself. Unfortunately, these calls sometimes come from within and not from abroad. </div><p style="margin: 0in; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14pt;" class=""> </p><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14pt;" class="">AFRINIC was established as an entity that should unite us as a continent and build a community of like-minded people that care about the development of their land and does not focus on our differences, but rather take advantage of the robustness of our diversity and the strength in our numbers and unity.</div><p style="margin: 0in; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14pt;" class=""> </p><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14pt;" class="">I hope you, like me, see what really is at stake here.</div><p style="margin: 0in; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14pt;" class=""> </p><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14pt;" class="">Regards,</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14pt;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face"; font-size: 14pt;" class="">Eddy</div><br class=""><br class=""></body></html>