Africa: dispossession across the board

There are many happenings we don’t notice because of multiple and diverse reasons, some that we have control over and others that we don’t. But whatever our position towards those occurrences, they impact on us either directly or indirectly. Dispossession across Africa is one of them.

Firoze Manji, in the first article [The courage to invent the future] of the book – Africa Awakening The Emerging Revolutions -, explains the context and scale of that phenomenon of dispossession on the African continent. If you are African, relatively informed of what is happening in your own country, you will certainly be able to relate easily to what Manji is highlighting in the following extract of the mentioned book.

Rwandan Democracy Day removed from official celebrations

On January 28th, 2012, it was normally the 51st anniversary of the proclamation of democracy as a principle of governance in Rwanda. Unfortunately, apart from the spirit which inspired the national celebrations held on January 28th, 1961 at Gitarama, as times tell us, the country was going to fall into autocratic regimes, first under Kayibanda [president 1962 – 1973] and Habyarimana [president 1973 – 1994], and even criminal, under Kagame, each one with their own specificities. All these regimes left a narrow space if any to dissent voices, contrary to what usually prevails under democratic institutions.

But what really happened on that day of 1961 which has made the Rwandan Patriotic Front of Paul Kagame, which is today ruling Rwanda, go all the length to destroy everything, – historic references including desecrating graves of Hutus nationalists of that time, related to the first ever Democracy Day in Rwandan history ? F. Rudakemwa explains the context and significance in the following article which was published in French in Rome on 22 January 2008. Its English translation is mine.

January 28, 1961: Democracy Day

Africa, as a continent, should stand firmly for a right to veto UN decisions

Libya, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, and Somalia, these are African countries’ cases where in recent years, if the black continent could’ve been able to veto some of the UN resolutions, things would’ve turned differently.

The following text, which in a way points particularly on the weight of Africa in international politics, was extracted from the recently published book ‘African Awakening – The Emerging Revolutions.’ Jean Paul Pougala is the author of the article [The lies behind the West’s war on Libya] from which the extract is.

What lessons for Africa

How the Diaspora can help to create an AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT PLAN

By Cecile Johnson

This note was first published on Facebook where it appears in the Founding Members forum. 

In 2001, Nelson Mandela asked, “Will the legacy of our generation be more than a series of broken promises?” 

It will be if we fail to plan and take action. If we fail to develop a fifty year African Development Plan that addresses the unique needs of our people. It is a choice.

In 2008 ago I attended a World Poverty forum in Denver Colorado and heard one of the speakers proclaim “that in the year 2050, the average income for the US would be $90,000, the average income for China and India would be $45,000 and the average income in Africa would be $1800. And that Africa had the richest resources in the world.” How could that be, I asked, that forty two years from now the world expectation for Africa would be so low. That the richest continent would continue to lose its resources and have others utilize it rather than the people who lived there. That Africa’s children spread all over the Diaspora had no place to call home.

And there was born a desire to understand more, to understand why such a thing could be said in public and no one challenge it. I felt the spirits of my ancestors calling me to this challenge. Asking me if all they had done for me to create my current reality was not enough for me to now do something for them, for the future generations of Africans all over the world. Would I not waken the sleeping giant and help my people to regain their destiny. Would I not help them to see who we really are. That the cradle of civilization, the breadbasket of the Roman Empire, the labor that built the west and the resources – oil, gold, diamonds, precious metals that the world currently benefits from, should be benefiting us not just some “leaders” in Africa. 

Prejudice towards the developing world or story of Bwana and Muntu

From a conversation of two passengers on an internal U.S. flight to the sad reality of how Africa and developing countries in general are ripped off, one can understand Western prejudice that countries labelled as developing are victims of. Field Ruwe describes accurately on his blog the scenery and how such state of things is experienced.

If Africa wants to develop, meaning uplifting living standards of its population, the continent needs to stop working with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, but finds in itself solutions to its problems. Please click here to read an interesting overview of capitalist strategy towards the black continent, but also the responsibility of Africans in their misery.

African Awakening [the emerging revolutions] deliberately ignored by Western media

I recently finished reading George Orwell classic, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’. There is a section in the book where O’Brian, the Party officer, is supervising the torture of Winston, the dissident. While inflicting pain to his victim, the perpetrator explains to the prisoner the motives and context of what he is doing to him.

‘We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable. Or perhaps you have returned to your old idea that the proletarians or the slaves will arise and overthrow us. Put it out of your mind. They are helpless, like the animals. Humanity is the Party. The others are outside – irrelevant.’

Irrelevancy of calls for change in many parts of Africa appears to be the attitude Western media and the neoliberal capitalism system have decided to adopt and portray in the general public which consumes daily their vision of the world through their multiple channels of propaganda. One can oppose change, but no one can stop it permanently. It is embedded in the nature of things.

Victoire Ingabire’s second anniversary [16.1.12] back in Rwanda

Many people, who are not familiar with the Black American civil rights movement, may not recall who Rosa Parks (far left on the picture) was. She was an activist born Louise McCauley Parks on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama, U.S.  The U.S. Congress called her “the first lady of civil rights”, and ”the mother of the freedom movement”. She died on October 24, 2005 aged 92.

Leon Mugesera’s extradition: are Canadian judges alien to Rwandan realities?

Over the years, the narrative about the Rwandan genocide has radically evolved. From Hutu as bearers of the entire responsibility of such atrocity against Tutsis, and what such crime implies, things have changed in the way that it is presently reasonable to picture Paul Kagame, the Rwandan president, as the main instigator of that abominable crime.

Despite many years of tergiversations, mainly providing a victor’s justice, even the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, started recently making some sense out the true context which characterized the period during which the genocide was committed. It is under such loop that some convicted perpetrators the tribunal had saw their sentences significantly reduced.

At the time ICTR seems apparently obliged to review its initial perspective of convicting its suspects, even those who were wrongly presumed genocide master minders, it looks surprising to note that Canadian judges consider Rwanda as a country where any justice can be done for a genocidaire who is presumed innocent until found guilty. This notwithstanding the fact the Rwandan government represented by Paul Kagame is itself accused of acts of genocide against Hutus in the Democratic Republic of Congo and crimes against humanity inside the country.

In his article that was published online in French on 8/1/12, Christian Mutware of Jambo News explains how the Rwandan community has been outraged by Canadian judges of extraditing Leon Mugesera to be judged in Rwanda.  The following is my English translation of the initial text.

Extradition of Leon Mugesera: The Rwandan community is outraged

Paul Kagame is sent another French report on Juvenal Habyarimana’s assassination

French judges Marc Trevidic and Nathalie Poux have finally completed their report and sent it ‘To Whom It Concerns.’

I only have two questions I would like some answers about regarding responsibilities in the assassination of Juvenal Habyarimana, Rwandan former president.

1. How many judiciary investigations and reports will be necessary to prove Paul Kagame and his men as perpetrators of that crime?
2. How many Mucyo reports and denials Kagame’s government will have to produce to be not taken seriously, but instead brought in front of a court of justice?

As a reminder, the Mucyo report was produced in 2009 by the Rwandan government to denounce similar accusations of Kagame’s responsibilities in the assassination of his predecessor. These were included in the Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière report.

Source: Chimpreports

The African quest for its development’s right partner

Jean-Paul Pougala, a Cameroonian professor, argues that as times go, China has become the best partner for Africa. He is not alone in that league of supporters of the flourishing relationship between Africa and China. The professor highlights the significant amount of dollars Chinese authorities are readying for African development against their access to its resources. However, many of the critics of Chinese partnership with Africa including myself point at the fact that China is for Africa only a different imperialist new economic power seeking the black continent minerals. Chinese are no more than using an altered and relatively improved approach.