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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Tue Aug 31, 2021 1:31 pm

Libyan Political Parties and Movements Condemn Efforts to Extend the December Presidential Election Schedule
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 30, 2021

Following allegations that surfaced yesterday in the media that the US was proposing a new schedule for Presidential elections that would extend it to Autumn 2022, a consortium of Libyan political parties and movements issued a joint communiqué this morning warning against “ongoing attempts to obstruct and disrupt the holding of the upcoming simultaneous direct Presidential and Parliamentary Elections.”

The communiqué, which was signed by 12 Libyan political parties and movements, said that “confiscating the inherent right of the Libyan people to choose who represent them and assume the tasks of managing the Libyan State” would have serious repercussions that would lead to renewed violence and anarchy across Libya.

AlMarsad publishes here the English translation of the full letter which was issued in Arabic.

Statement by Libyan Political Parties and Organizations Regarding the Elections

Libyan political parties, blocs, political forces and movements, signatories to this communiqué, follow with great concern and caution the ongoing attempts to obstruct and disrupt the holding of the upcoming simultaneous direct Presidential and Parliamentary Elections, and delay the issuance of the necessary legislation to implement them on their scheduled date on 24 December 2021, and warn of the consequences of this and the repercussions of confiscating the inherent right of the Libyan people to choose who represent them and assume the tasks of managing the Libyan State.

The political parties, blocs, political forces and movements affirm that the executive, legislative, and incumbent oversight bodies have no legitimacy whatsoever as their tenure and mandate are legally expired, and that the confidence of the Libyan people in them has been completely lost. Consequently, their mandate can no longer be accepted or extended beyond 24 December 2021. Therefore the ongoing miserable attempts to prolong the life of these bodies will be categorically rejected by the people, and this will further complicate and exacerbate the volatile political and security situation in the forthcoming months, and may be a major reason for a renewed pan-Libya violence, fighting, and wide spread anarchy in the country, God forbid.

The political parties, blocs, political forces and movements, hereby, reaffirm the importance of electing the Head of State through direct suffrage by the people without any procrastination or obstruction whatsoever, to preserve the unity of the country and ensure the smooth running and organization of the work of executive authorities, and to prevent a recurrence of the disastrous results of overlapping competencies between the legislative and executive authorities that the Libyans have been suffering from for a decade, and that any internal or external attempt to disrupt the second round of electing the President of the State, should the need arise, exceeds four weeks, shall be a deemed as a perpetuation of the status quo that the Libyan people will categorically reject, so as not to be a pretext for further postponement or cancellation.

While we stress the importance of the international community standing with Libya and its support for its unity, sovereignty and stability, and for the choice of its democratization path, and for the return of the right to the people as the source of authority, we wholeheartedly reject that this support be contrary to the will and aspirations of the Libyan people, or in concordance with the position of an opportunist clique hat has spoiled the political scene, and wants to perpetuate its illegitimate monopoly of power.

God Save Libya

Signatories

1 Civil Democratic Party 8 National Movement for Democratization
2 Ihya Libya Movement 9 December 24 Movement
3 National Forces Alliance 10 Libya Elects its President Movement
4 Center National Party 11 Derna Women’s Union
5 Youth Tomorrow Party 12 Libyan Network for Supporting and Empowering Women
6 National Will Gathering
7 National Movement for Libya
Issued on 30 August 2021

© ALMARSAD ENGLISH (2021)



US Proposes Elections To Be Completed by September 2022; Dbaiba Pressuring for Extension

An article by The Africa Report claims to have seen documentation that the US has proposed a “staggered Libyan presidential election” with first elections on 24 December and then the second round in Autumn of 2022. The article claims that this is a bid to salvage the Libyan Political Dialogue (LPDF) Roadmap, but news of this proposal is likely to cause anger among the Libyan public, most of whom demand elections after 2.8 million voters registered with Elections Committee.

(LIBYA, 29 August 2021) – The Africa Report revealed a proposal it claims to have been proposed by the US which it has presented to the other P3+2 countries—namely, France, Britain, Germany and Italy— which “would have Libyans commit to a first round of presidential elections on 24 December, along with parliamentary elections, and then a second and final round on 15 September 2022.”

The report said according to officials that the Prime Minister of the Government of National Unity (GNU), Abdul Hamid Dbaiba, “has publicly insisted that he wants to hold elections on time, although the UN-mediated roadmap would bar him and other office holders from running” but that “privately, he has resisted the idea and has pushed for an extension since his appointment last February in in a UN-mediated dialogue.”

It also claimed that during a meeting in June with the French President Emmanuel Macron, Dbaiba was “forthright in his opposition to elections in December.” Furthermore, it said that Dbaiba has “also relayed the same message to other countries, although not directly to the US, which had insisted on sticking to the schedule.”

Furthermore, the Africa Report said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the Libyan Foreign Minister Najla al-Mangoush that Dbaiba should stop sending “mixed messages.”

The report claims to have see a new US proposal that it “notes” opposition to the 24 December elections but certain parties and groups, and therefore “suggests that after the first round, the remaining candidates should complete lists of presidents, vice presidents and deputy presidents, if they jointly won at least 10% the vote in the first round,” and then they “would have to commit to monthly televised debates addressing the economy, pandemic and other challenges.”

The article said, the “US suggested the Dbaiba be allowed to run in the election, but that he, and any other office holder, would have to quit if he makes it to the second round.” According to the US proposal, the Parliament would have a month to decide on a “new interim executive” and an election on 22 September for a second chamber of parliament, and a constitutional referendum by the end of 2022.

Candidates above the age of 21 can run in the first round, but the new parliament would prepare a constitutional basis before the second round, according to the document”, said the report.

This proposal, according to the article, is opposed by both France and Egypt who want to see simultaneous elections on 24 December.

News of this “US proposal” was met with anger and ridicule by the Libyan public and expert commentators. Mohamed Eljarh, a leading Libyan analysts said on his twitter page: “Another disastrous proposal! this time by the United States. The aim is to find ways around the political roadmap/UNSC2570 & deprive the Libyan people of their right to choose their leaders in the hope of appeasing political elite/figures who refuse give up power.”

© ALMARSAD ENGLISH (2021)

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/08/ ... -schedule/

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Libya: 1951 Colonial Plan for Three Governing Divisions Moves Closer to Reality
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 29, 2021

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التطلعات المعلنة لقيام النظام الفيدرالي تخفي وراءها حسابات الأحزاب واللوبيات وأمراء الحرب والأفراد ممن يرون أن تأثيرهم في محيطهم الإقليمي يتجاوز بكثير تأثيرهم على مستوى الوطن

Behind the declared aspirations for the establishment of the federal system is the agenda of parties, lobbies, warlords and individuals who see that their influence in their regional surroundings far exceeds their influence at the national level.

December 24th will mark the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the United Kingdom of Libya. The situation today does not seem different from what it was then, except with oil and gas, political Islam, and the overlapping identities of external parties. And on another important matter; as much as the fathers and grandfathers were inclined to solidarity and unity under the cover of a sweeping Libyan nationalism, the current actors seem inclined to fragmentation and division to prioritize ideological, regional, partisan, factional and personal interests over the public interest.

Last week, it was announced in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, the formation of a new political body under the name “Tripoli West Region”, following a meeting hosted by the Policy Support Office at the Cabinet, in which representatives from the cities of Tripoli, Misrata, Al-Zawiya, Zintan, Zliten, Sabratha, Gharyan, Jado, Qasr Al-Akhyar, Rishvana, Msalata and Shwerf participated. They are divided between mayors, tribal leaders, warlords and militia leaders.

The participants affirmed, after extensive discussion, that the meeting comes in response to what they called the necessities of the phase that requires the establishment of a political, economic and social body that meets current needs in negotiating on behalf of the people of the region, considering that the UN mission was not impartial in dealing with the Libyan file and the launch of its movement from the Skhirat agreements was based on a triple division according to a colonial plan. They also demanded defining the borders of the region containing all orientations and blocs, calling for building the region of Tripoli in the West through the creation of a legislative and executive body according to departments approved in the selection of the National Congress, provided that clear goals are set, in addition to communicating with those in charge of the Supreme Council of the Amazighs of Libya to convince them to rescind their claims to establish a fourth region.

Activists denounced the meeting and considered it an attempt to perpetuate division and fuel separatism, accusing the Brotherhood and its allies of playing on division to secure its centers of influence in the west of the country, to maintain its penetration of the joints of state in light of the defeats of political Islam in the region, especially after events in Tunisia .

Attempts to divide

The Brotherhood is attempting to pre-empt the elections by establishing isolated authorities in the west of the country.

The announcement of the formation of the Tripoli region came when the High National Elections Commission, the House of Representatives and the Political Dialogue Forum are preparing for the presidential and legislative elections on the twenty-fourth of December. 31 members of the Political Dialogue Forum requested an emergency session and presented a list to the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations and Head of its Support Mission in Libya, Jan Kubis, in which they justified their request to “address the grave breaches” in implementing the roadmap emanating from the forum, in addition to the dangerous developments affecting the political dialogue, the country’s unity, stability and civil peace. They also highlighted that the demand for holding this session was to ensure the achievement of a just peace, the preservation of stability, and preparation for holding the elections within the deadlines set for the preliminary stage.

The announcement came within the context of events in the country facing a struggle over the triad of power, wealth and weapons and multiple regional and tribal fanaticicisms. Behind the declared aspirations for the establishment of the federal system, are warlords and individuals who see that their influence in their regional surroundings far exceeds their influence at the national level. Therefore, they are trying to create a political framework that achieves their goals within a limited social framework.

In July 2020, a group of activists in the city of Sebha announced the establishment of the “Fezzan Regional Council,” stressing that the new entity would “heal the national components of Fezzan, including Arabs, Tabu and Touareg, away from tribal and regional strife,” hoping that it would “be a nucleus for the reunification of Libya, which does not accept division“.

The founding statement included the basic principles of the Fezzan Regional Council, including the affirmation of Libya’s unity and territorial integrity, which “is the base of the pyramid for the decentralized entity ruling Fezzan,” and the need to “transform to decentralization through the creation and settlement of a decentralized entity governing Fezzan that has broad powers and an independent financial edifice.” It explained that “the national capacity of the Fezzan region lies in the presence of a fair political representation for it, in accordance with the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly issued on the twenty-first of November 1949 and in accordance with the historical reference emanating from the Independence Day on the twenty-fourth of December 1951, which is that the Fezzan region is geographically distinct and his sons have the right to full representation – at the rate of one third – in any political process, or economic, military or security arrangements, and breaching this or not implementing it prejudices and weakens initiatives for political settlement and national and societal justice.

The statement stressed that the people of the region “have the right to be within its decentralized entity without excluding or marginalizing anyone,” and the new entity’s keenness to “lay the foundations of societal reconciliation and peaceful coexistence among all the people of Fezzan and to renounce violence and hate speech, passing to comprehensive national reconciliation.” It continued, “National unity, decentralization, freedom, equality, democracy, peaceful transfer of power, separation of powers, citizen’s rights, children’s, women’s and youth rights, respect for the cultural diversity of society, transitional justice and equal opportunities, are national constants guaranteed by the decentralized Fezzan entity, which will be keen to include and implement them in the country’s constitutional document and all relevant charters, stressing that “the equitable distribution of wealth, equality in assuming sovereign positions in state ministries and institutions, delegation and representation abroad, respect for the role of competencies, the presence of cultural components, and the participation of women and people with special needs are essential pillars for the development of Fezzan and are considered as consolidating the principles of community participation at the national level.”

In September 2020, a grouping of social and political forces, experts and academics in Cyrenaica announced the establishment of a political and social entity under the name “Cyrenaica Supreme Council” based on several principles and goals. The founding statement affirmed that Libya is a complex state consisting of three regions: Cyrenaica, Tripoli and Fezzan, linked by brotherly ties. Considering that “the Supreme Council of Cyrenaica” is the representative of Cyrenaica in any political dialogue with the country’s partners in Tripoli and Fezzan, and at the regional and international levels.

The assembly pointed out that one of the goals and principles of the Council is to demand the political and economic rights of Cyrenaica stipulated in the 1951 constitution when the Libyan state was established, stressing the right of the residents of Cyrenaica to choose the form of the state that meets their national and local aspirations and regulates their relations with the rest of the country’s regions. The statement said, “The Libyan state has gone through several political stations after its establishment, the last of which was the central system, which contributed to the concentration of all state institutions in the city of Tripoli, which helped a group of individuals and outlaw militias to seize power and monopolize state institutions for their own interests, wasting national wealth, collapsing the economy, deteriorating the living conditions of the citizen and impeding development in the country”. This situation of chaos, administrative and financial corruption contributed to increasing exclusion and marginalization of the rest of the country’s regions, in addition to signing agreements and treaties outside the framework of national consensus, which contributed to the growing state of mistrust.

The statement said that the establishment of the Supreme Council of Cyrenaica arose due to the current circumstances in the country, and in response to the calls of the people from various regions to take the initiative to present visions that address the increasing exacerbation of the political and economic crisis, stressing that the social and political forces in Cyrenaica, conscious of the importance of the role placed upon it, calling for sound rules and pillars that establish a state that preserves the dignity of the citizen, and meets aspirations towards freedom, development and social justice.

However, these declared regional entities remain outside the contexts of real political action, and they do not have powers of actual social influence, especially in the face of the main tribal actors that often assert their rejection of any attempt to divide the country. The region of Tripoli, declared a few days ago, was welcomed only by some activists in Cyrenaica and Tripoli. Historically, Tripoli was at the forefront of the forces calling for unity, and Cyrenaica echoed its calls. Fezzan was the solid southern fortress, whether for the federal state or the unified central state.

After 70 years, the United Nations is seeking to restore its role in Libya, the country that was founded on a resolution the General Assembly issued on the twenty-first of November 1949, proposed by the delegations of India, Iraq, Pakistan and the United States, which stipulated that Libya should become independent before the first of January 1952. 48 countries voted in favor of the resolution, with Ethiopia opposed, and nine countries, including France, and five communist countries abstained. The resolution stipulated that a constitution for the new state would be drawn up and decided by a National Assembly that includes representatives from the three regions in consultation with each other as a single body. The resolution also stipulated the appointment of a special commissioner from the United Nations to assist in drafting the constitution and establishing an independent government. The Libyan constitution, which was adopted by a decision of the National Assembly, was issued on October 7, 1951, and on December 24, 1951, Libya declared its independence under the name of the United Kingdom of Libya with a hereditary constitutional monarchy. The constitution was approved by the Libyan National Assembly in Benghazi on October 7, 1951.

The decision of the United Nations came in time to block the way for the Bevin Sforza project, a secret agreement made in March 1949 between British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin and Italian Foreign Minister Carlo Sforza that Libya would obtain its independence after ten years, and that its three territories would be placed during this period under international trusteeship. Britain assumed the guardianship of Cyrenaica, Italy administered Tripoli, while France would take over the administration of Fezzan.

At the United Nations session, a member of the Libyan delegation succeeded in gaining the support of the representative of the State of Haiti, thus making his vote the most likely one that led to the fall of the Bevin and Sforza project. That moment was the starting point for building a state from nothing. Tripoli, Cyrenaica and Fezzan were independent provinces from each other, whether under the Ottoman or Italian occupation, and in November 1918 the establishment of the Tripolitania Republic was announced as the first Arab republic, but it did not last, and in 1934 Italy adopted “Libya” the old historical name of the country (which the Greeks used for the regions west of The Nile Valley and North Africa) to be the official name of its colony in North Africa, and the features of the Libyan state did not emerge until 1951 after the independence of the three regions by a decision of the United Nations and the establishment of a federal system bearing the name of the United Kingdom of Libya led by the Emir of Cyrenaica, Idris Al-Senussi.

When Libya gained its independence in 1951, the population of the Kingdom exceeded one million, most of them in the state of Tripoli and the rest in the states of Cyrenaica and Fezzan. In 1954, the first official census of the population was conducted in Libya, and its results were announced in 1955. According to the census, the population of the Tripoli region was 1,090.83 people, the Cyrenaica region was 290,328, and the Fezzan region was about 54,438 people. At independence, the Kingdom had no natural resources before the discovery of oil, and it also lacked trained labor, while 72 percent of males and 95 percent of females were illiterate, and despite all the economic challenges, the Kingdom relied on its agricultural sector as it hoped to pump investments to increase agricultural crops and expand the agricultural area. During the fiscal year 1951-1952, Libya received $4 million to support the budget deficit, while the Fourth Point Program provided $1 million. In the 1952-1953 budget, revenues were estimated at no more than 3.6 million pounds, corresponding to about 5 million pounds in public expenditures, and the United Kingdom provided $4.2 million to support the budget deficit, while the US Fourth Point Program provided one million dollars.

In 1963, the constitution was amended, the federal system was abolished and a central system was built in the name of the Kingdom of Libya. The situation remained as it was until the overthrow of Colonel Qaddafi’s regime in 2011, when the divisive discourse returned, and it was perpetuated through political consensus through the adoption of quotas in executive and sovereign positions. The announcement of the establishment of the Cyrenaica region in March 2012 was the starting point for a wide debate over the principle of going far back. However, the vast majority of Libyans stand with the dedication of local government to a fair distribution of wealth and building a strong central system that preserves the sovereignty of the state and defends its sovereignty.

Any federal system in Libya will be distorted and will end in failure, because it is founded on the basis of factional and individual interests. The real solution for Libya is a just, strong and open national state that benefits from its capabilities and the energies of its people, consistent with its cultural and civilizational uniqueness, location and role.

Al Arab

Translation by Internationalist 360°

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/08/ ... o-reality/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Thu Sep 02, 2021 1:34 pm

AFRICOM in the Congo
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on SEPTEMBER 2, 2021
Kambale Musavuli

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Its immeasurable mineral resources has made the Congo the victim of a long history of Western greed, plunder, and genocidal violence. AFRICOM’s recent arrival in the Congo — ostensibly to fight ISIS — will only extend this history; we can be sure these military forces will do more to support the US looting of the Congo’s wealth than stopping terrorism.

On the night of August 13, 2021, a US Special Forces team arrived in Kinshasa, the “Democratic” Republic of the Congo. In a press release, the US embassy in Kinshasa notes that the US soldiers are in Congo at the invitation of the Congolese government. The ostensible goal is to fight the invisible and fabricated ISIS-DAESH, which the US State Department and Pentagon insist are in the Congo, even as multiple reports, including the UN Group of Experts, have categorically rejected that any ties exist in Congo between rebels called Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and ISIS.

The press statement was released on the same day the US soldiers arrived. It is also not available as of now on the U.S. embassy website. It is only on the embassy’s twitter page as an image, and in only French.

It has been fascinating watching the escalation of violence in my family’s hometown of Beni since the discovery of oil in Lake Albert in the mid 2000s. Lake Albert, at the border of Uganda and Congo, is said to be containing 2.5 billion barrels of oil, most of which are on the Congo side.

For the past 15 years under the Kabila regime, there has been reluctance in exploiting oil and giving out licenses in that lake, with the exception of the licenses given to Clive Khulubuse Zuma (Dig Oil affair) and Dan Gertler (Israeli secret service asset in Congo). On the Uganda side, Total (the French oil company) has been successful in securing most of the licenses for oil exploitation. As the geopolitics of the region changed, and Tullow Oil collapsed, French oil interests started to dominate not only the Central and East African region, but also Mozambique where Total is also present.

There is a plan to build a long oil pipeline from Lake Albert to the Indian Ocean which will go through Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and of course the DRC. The pipeline has multiple stakeholders, including with foreign countries, with countries who have been involved in long time regional conflicts, and, importantly, with China. The former Tanzanian president John Pombe J. Magufuli, though his position on COVID-19 was non-scientific, was right on the pipeline deal and refused to get the project moving forward seeing it as an exploitative measure being imposed by French interests in the oil reserves in the region.

Since Magufuli’s death, the project is moving much faster and it’s becoming obvious what everyone is trying to do in the Kivus.

Let’s keep in mind that thousands of people have been killed senselessly in Beni (North Kivu), very often by assailants speaking foreign languages and sometimes even speaking Lingala, per the findings of the UN reports. We have seen the displacements of thousands more in the same area where we know that if not displaced, the people will benefit from the oil exploitation. We have also heard one of the biggest lies of the 21st Century: ragged-tagged Ugandan rebels called the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in the Congo since the late 90s, with no capacity to overthrow the Ugandan government, have been somehow connected to ISIS. This “connection” is being made by the US government and, to some extent, a Texas organization called Bridgeway Foundation, a charity arm of a US hedge fund.

From the day the U.S. State Department listed the Congo as a country harboring Islamic terrorists tied to ISIS, I have been consistently debunking this myth. Though Muslims are less than 10% of the population, we understand that it is ludicrous to think a group of people will want to convert a nation the size of Europe to Islam by beheading people. Only the gullible can trust what the US State Department and US Department of Defense are saying after their lies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We do have a serious problem now as international and regional interests collide. Kenya, which now controls the financial sector in the Congo as they push out South African banks, is sending their special forces in North Kivu. Uganda is building a military base in Beni, North Kivu, becoming the first African country to build a military base in Congo and arguably the first African country to build a military base in another country. Rwandan special forces have been operating in the Kivus without any official documentation, as exposed in the 2020 UN Group of Experts report, which notes that these soldiers are operating near the area where the Italian ambassador Luca Attanasio was killed earlier this year. The French president Emmanuel Macron promised to Congolese President Felix Tshilombo that he also will send French troops soon to the DRC to help fight “Islamist Terrorists.” This promise took place during the latest Africa summit in Paris where African presidents went to beg for debt forgiveness, including Ghanaian president Akuffo Addo, since Ghana now receives tremendous support from France (and Total) and is now a voluntary member of Francophonie. And last, the US soldiers have now arrived in Kinshasa.

What does all of this mean?

I’m certain that the US military coming under the umbrella of AFRICOM is there to secure US interests in the Congo. In the Kivus, it is the oil in Lake Albert and around Virunga Park all the way to Beni. I’m also clear that there is a huge attempt to counter Chinese interests in the Congo. People do not realize that Jeff Bezos could not go to space for 15 minutes if it wasn’t for Congo’s cobalt, nor could South African Elon Musk do the same. But this cobalt at the moment, in the Congo, is in control of China after the US mining company Freeport McMoran sold it to China. Freeport controlled the largest cobalt reserve in the world and had it (with Canadian Ludin) at 80% while Congo had 20%.

Watching the fight between US and China, I believe the US is going to try to take that mine from the Chinese using Felix Tshilombo while playing on anti-Chinese hysteria on the African continent.

Just study the visits of China and U.S. in the past 8 months in the Congo and the tweets by the Chinese ambassador to the Congo. That will show you what’s unfolding geopolitically with military ramifications.

Mao said “whoever controls the Congo, controls the world.” As Congolese people struggle to control their destiny, we know we are not alone. Lumumba reminded us of this. And we will not remain silent as they create their lies to control our land and resources.

We want to control our land and resources. We want to exploit them for the benefit of our people and not the Washington lobby firms, the mining conglomerates, or western powers! We want to better the conditions of our people!

We know why the US special forces are in Congo… and it’s not to stop ISIS!

Note: The US military has operated in the Congo for a long time. They have had their soldiers in Camp Base, near Kisangani, doing covert operations in South Sudan and Central African Republic. Their current engagement is not covert and highly arrogant after being the military that has trained Rwanda and Uganda, countries that invaded the Congo twice and unleashed the deaths of over 6 million people.

Kambale Musavuli, a native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, writes on issues affecting the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has served for the past decade as the national spokesperson for the Friends of the Congo, a group that raises global consciousness about the situation in Congo and provides support to local institutions in Congo. He is currently an analyst with the Center for Research on Congo focusing on Kwame Nkrumah’s legacy in the development of Ghana.


https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/09/ ... the-congo/

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U.S. Escalates Threats to Ethiopian and Eritrean Sovereignty

Ann Garrison

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Elias Amare and Glen FordElias Amare enjoyed a long friendship with Glen Ford, who was Eritrea’s only media ally for many years.

U.S. Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman recently returned from a tour of Ethiopia, Djibouti, and the United Arab Emirates. On the following Monday, the U.S. State Department issued a statement that it had imposed sanctions on Eritrean Defense Forces Chief of Staff General Filipos Woldeyohannes. Several days later, the UN Security Council (UNSC) met yet again about the Ethiopian civil war. I spoke with Eritrean American peace and justice activist Elias Amare about these developments.

Ann Garrison: Elias, what was your takeaway from the August 26th UN Security Council meeting ? Did you hear anything we haven’t heard there since the TPLF launched the war last November?

Elias Amare: There was nothing new. It was a continuation of what the US has been trying to do at the UNSC. The US and its Western European allies have been trying to pass some kind of resolution censuring Ethiopia that will lead towards military intervention, but so far, they have not succeeded. Why? Because China and Russia have been blocking it. They say that this is Ethiopia’s internal affair, and we shouldn’t engage in any undue interference. Everyone is saying the same thing they have been saying all along.

The only new thing I heard is that now they are going farther with the “African solutions for African problems” angle that they keep talking about. The African Union is going to appoint the former President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, as the High Representative for the Horn of Africa to try some kind of mediation.

But this is not really new. When the conflict started nine months ago, for example, the South African president tried some kind of mediation, but Ethiopia was strong and adamant that this is an internal matter. So what will Obasanjo accomplish? Not much, in my opinion, but we will see.

AG: I heard some Western members of the UNSC call on Eritrean troops to withdraw from Tigray, as usual. But I didn’t hear anyone say that they have withdrawn. Are they still there? Or do you know?

EA: I don’t think Eritrean troops are there. I’m not on the ground, but all information is that they withdrew in June. They are, however, continuing to monitor the border with Tigray in case the TPLF attack.

You remember how the TPLF started this by attacking an Ethiopian federal army base last November. Then, in order to widen the war, they launched rocket attacks into Eritrea. Not once, not twice, not three times, but 15 times. They fired rockets at civilian targets in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, 15 times. Thank God the rockets didn’t hit any civilian population and no harm was done. But they tried and that pushed Eritrea to take measures to protect itself and to neutralize the heavy weaponry in the hands of the TPLF.

Once that mission was accomplished, Eritrea withdrew, in June. The latest statement from the US State Department says that Eritrea withdrew in June, but that now they have reentered, but look at what Samantha Power’s been saying all along: Eritrea must withdraw! Eritrea must withdraw! So how is it that they now acknowledge that Eritrea had withdrawn in June and yet for the past three months they have been harping on this withdrawal issue? I don’t think they’re serious. They’re just creating a pretext to punish Eritrea.

AG: They’ve been demanding that Eritrea withdraw, but now they’re alleging that Eritrea withdrew in June and it’s re-entering.

EA: Yes.

AG: A week or so ago US Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman returned from a trip to Ethiopia, Djibouti, and the United Arab Emirates. Then, on the following Monday, the State Department announced that it was sanctioning Eritrean Defense Forces Chief of Staff General Filipos Woldeyohannes. What do you make of this?

EA: It’s just another bullying tactic. The target is ultimately the Ethiopian government. They want to frighten the Ethiopian government into accepting the TPLF as an equal and sitting down to negotiate with them, so they are adding sanctions on Eritrea first. The EU already sanctioned officials in Eritrea, but now the US is too. Basically, the language is, “If you don’t oblige, the same thing will come to you.”

AG: The US has already sanctioned Ethiopian officials.

EA: Yes, but this is a threat that there’ll be more sanctions, and maybe an arms embargo.

As to the consequences of these Magnitsky Act sanctions on General Filipos Woldeyohannes, their immediate impact is nil because the general doesn’t have any assets to freeze in foreign banks. He is a poor man, like all Eritrean leaders, who live a very modest life, a clean, corruption-free life, on their salaries.

AG: It’s hard to think of wars that were ended by negotiations rather than the victory of one side or the other. Do you think this push for negotiations is real or just another form of warfare and interference by the US?

EA: It’s intervention or ramping up for a humanitarian military intervention, as they call it, preparing the pretext for war. How can Ethiopia negotiate with a military force that attacked it internally? That was a treasonous act. The Ethiopian Parliament passed a resolution condemning it and designating the TPLF a terrorist organization.

The TPLF is guilty of heinous crimes, and no nation or political system would ever tolerate an attack on one of its army bases. Negotiation would make Ethiopia vulnerable to more terrorist acts from all corners of the country.

Ethiopia is in transition. It is consolidating its nascent democracy. The TPLF was in power for 27 years, from 1991 to 2018, and during those years it committed massive atrocities, horrendous crimes against the people until, finally, the people forced them from power.

Now the TPLF are attempting to seize power again, and to widen the conflict, to involve Eritrea and other neighboring countries. This would set a very dangerous precedent, not only for Ethiopia but also for the whole African continent. Why the US is insisting on this path is beyond me, but their immediate objective seems to be resuscitating or rescuing their longtime puppet and proxy, the TPLF.

The TPLF are criminals who must be brought to justice. Many of their leaders have already been apprehended, but some remain in Tigray or on other battlefronts. The government forces withdrew from Tigray and declared a unilateral humanitarian ceasefire in June, but the TPLF continued to fight and encroached further beyond its home base into the Afar and Amhara Regions. They are continuing to commit atrocities against the civilian population.

In the West, the crimes of the TPLF are hidden or glossed over, while the Ethiopian government and army are the targets of a massive media disinformation campaign.

The Western corporate media is incredible, outright brazen in the way it continues to manufacture stories of massacres and rapes and what have you, the same way they did in Libya and in Syria, where they manufactured the White Helmets, chemical weapons attacks, and what have you.

The pattern is the same and it continues.

AG: Have you seen any evidence that the TPLF actually want to negotiate?

EA: Why should they? They’re being protected and coddled by their Western backers, with Samantha Power in the lead. Their army is being sustained by food aid meant for the needy. Their troops are found with high energy biscuits meant for malnourished children. This is food aid that they snatched away from the population.

They have political and diplomatic cover from the West and the Western press, so they’re continuing their brazen, belligerent attacks. They may say that they want to negotiate but that they have preconditions. Outrageous preconditions .

Then they turn around and say, “We will march all the way to the capital, Addis Ababa, overthrow this regime, and then settle accounts with Eritrea.”

They have raised a huge army. They are forcing children into conscription, and the West is looking the other way. So this is their last gambit. In the past month, they have tried everything they can, but the tide is turning on them now. They are on the run.

We hear these cries to negotiate, to give the TPLF respect and protection, whenever they are in danger of being decimated. Then the humanitarian interventionists call for a ceasefire and negotiations. But the TPLF are committing horrendous atrocities and nobody says anything. These double standards have been there for the past nine months since the TPLF ignited the conflict.

AG: Do you expect any kind of US or proxy military intervention beyond what’s already happened?

EA: Well, all the signs are there. I cannot ignore the warning signs, the rhetoric seems to be heading towards that, but the population of Ethiopia and Eritrea are determined, and they have stood united.

After the Afghanistan debacle, the shambolic retreat, the US may want to create yet another war. The actors are the same in these forever wars that benefit only the military industrial complex. So with the ending of Afghanistan, they may be looking at the whole Horn of Africa. Who knows?

AG: Afghanistan doesn’t seem to have ended, though it may be a drone war going forward.

EA: Yes, you’re right. It’s an ending that hasn’t ended yet. That might make them hesitant to get overly involved in a new conflict, but again, who knows?

I think the public can have influence, but the corporate media is hopeless. Before the wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, there were massive disinformation campaigns from the corporate media, but we in the peace movements have to continue exposing these lies. We have to bring the truth forward to make peace possible.

AG: Thank you, Elias, for speaking to Black Agenda Report.

EA: Thank you. I’m glad we’re able to continue the relationship with Black Agenda Report. For many years, Glen Ford was our only friend in the US media, as I wrote in “Farewell to Glen Ford, a True Friend of Eritrea.”

AG: One of the last things Glen said to me was that he was glad I was staying on top of this because he’d been too sick to, so I’m glad to carry it on.

Eritrean American Elias Amare is a journalist and a longtime peace and justice activist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He and his work can be found on Twitter, @eliasamare .

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How Paul Kagame Lies to the World – Rwanda’s Neoliberalism and Pleasing Private Capital
September 1, 2021
By Takudzwa Hillary Chiwanza – Aug 30, 2021

Rwanda is often touted as a “success story” in international media coverage, with the architect of such “success” being its president, Paul Kagame. But little is said about Kagame’s ideological standpoint, one that has widened income inequalities in Rwanda. The country’s political elite amass wealth unabatedly while the majority are mired in endless cycles of poverty. This is coupled with Kagame’s insatiable appetite for power under the dictates of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).

The almost miraculous transformation of Rwanda is laudable. Here is a country that was ravaged by the 1994 genocide but has managed to achieve remarkable levels of tranquility. Paul Kagame has led Rwanda on a trajectory of economic recovery and at the same time striving for better conditions of existence for the citizens. Attempts towards reconciliation in Rwanda cannot be ignored. And as such, many have remarked that Rwanda is one of the “most promising nations” in the world, with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) developing closer ties with the East African country, as well as a plethora of international donors.

But Rwanda’s disposition is more than what meets the eye. Since taking over in the aftermath of the genocide that left nearly six million people dead and displaced 50% of the country, Kagame has embarked on pro-market reforms that betray a leader thoroughly ensconced in neoliberalism as the panacea to Rwanda’s problems. And to preserve this neoliberal drive, Kagame presides over a woeful human rights regime, with numerous reports about human rights violations that include the kidnappings and assassinations of those who hold dissenting views. This has largely negated perceptions about the “extraordinary progress” registered by Rwanda over the passage of time.

The World Bank and the IMF, being the embodiment of Western economic liberalism, have largely steered Rwanda towards unrelenting neoliberalism under the guise of promoting “good governance”. Rwanda had already been reeling under the adverse effects of the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) before the genocide. Kagame, under the pressure of achieving unfettered stability, continued with this path—developing an unquestionable loyalty to the World Bank and the IMF, the gatekeepers of foreign private capital who exude “anti-democratic and imperialist” tendencies.

From this context, it is clear that “countries which have emerged from protracted conflicts and go on to establish order, bureaucratic stability and spawn elites who kowtow to neoliberal policies, are touted as ‘success stories’.” The World Bank continually heaps praises on Paul Kagame’s economic policies while ignoring his autocratic tendencies.

It describes Rwanda as a country without economic blemishes, with one of its 2011 reports bleating: “Rwanda has made extraordinary progress in recent years. It is one of the few countries anywhere in the world that has managed a ‘triple crown’ of fast economic growth, robust reductions in poverty, and a narrowing of inequality… Rwanda is now ranked as the second easiest place to do business in all of Africa… [It] will continue on its path to put in place macroeconomic stabilization policies that are conducive for private sector development. This, together with a fiscal consolidation strategy aiming at expanding the domestic resource base while rationalizing spending, and increasing exports, is the only way to lessen aid dependence… Government will focus on private sector development, desisting from providing services that the private sector can deliver more efficiently and competitively.”

What this evidently shows beyond any reasonable doubt is that Rwanda is neoliberal in its ideological structure, powered unflinchingly by the World Bank. The mania with reduction in poverty rates and macroeconomic growth masks the material reality for most Rwandans—low wages, perennial poverty, and endemic corruption by the country’s elites. Even if Rwanda says poverty is reducing, birth rates are not declining and this means poverty for more people. The sacrosanct faith placed in the private sector is vainglorious—private capital is only concerned with getting maximum profits from minimal costs. Not economic growth.

Kagame, under the auspices of the World Bank and the IMF, is loyal to the interests of the market. He embraces the neoliberal agenda of competition and how the state must be “rolled back” in favour of private capital. This is averse to the interests of the working class and peasantry who languish in poverty while private capital (multinational firms and other big firms connected to the political elite) profit from the country’s resources. All this under the pretext of “good governance” and “order.”

Part of Rwanda’s Vision 2020 states, “Rwanda will continue on its path to put in place macroeconomic stabilization policies that are conducive for private sector development … Government will focus on private sector development, desisting from providing services that the private sector can deliver more efficiently and competitively.” If the state is rolled back, then what happens to the universal provision of essential, inalienable public services that include education, water, housing, public transport, land, healthcare, and power in a way that equally benefits everyone? Leaving these to the private sector is detrimental because private companies are only concerned with making profits and not ameliorating the welfare of the majority of people. It is an avowed fact that stands as the pinnacle of neoliberal thought—as pushed by the World Bank and IMF. These institutions have inculcated a dangerous idea in the Global South—that neoliberalism is “common sense” or “natural.” And this is wrong. All it does is increasing the fortunes of the elite, perpetuating inequalities.

Paul Kagame has always been amenable to the whims of private capital, believing in the false neoliberal assumption of the “trickle-down effect”—that if a foreign commercial giant operates in a certain country, then what follows is an automatic creation of jobs on a mass scale and the betterment of people’s lives. This is wrong. Foreign multinationals, and some local big companies, pay workers abysmal wages so that they maximize on profits. They take the profits out of Rwanda back to their headquarters in the Global North or in China. Almost “80% of the output of the largest 47 manufacturing and agribusiness groups in Rwanda are controlled by foreign and a few, large local firms who tow the RPF-party line.” This is in all honesty self-defeating.

Rwanda continues to receive foreign aid, much like every other “Third World” country. And because of this, it has to obey the conditions set by such donors. In a publicized IMF Letter of Intent (the document written by a country to the IMF stating planned reforms in order to receive IMF loans), Paul Kagame’s neoliberal ideology was laid bare. It talks of austerity (fiscal policy balance) and a vainglorious belief in macroeconomic growth. It shows how much Rwanda slavishly follows the dictates of international private capital.

It is clear that Paul Kagame deceives the world—projecting a seemingly prosperous Rwanda while the majority of its people are poor due to neocolonial domination by private capital. And in order to maintain this position (neoliberalism is inextricable from autocratic tendencies) he has to rely on state security in presiding over an atmosphere of fear. Fear of unknown consequences if one decides to oppose his neoliberal agenda.


Featured image: President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame. File photo.

(The African Exponent)

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Thu Sep 09, 2021 12:44 pm

US and UN Treachery in the African Great Lakes Region: Why Rwandan Refugees Don’t Want to Go Home
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 08 Sep 2021

US and UN Treachery in the African Great Lakes Region: Why Rwandan Refugees Don’t Want to Go Home

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Rwandan Hutu refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

The United States and the United Nations are responsible for the ongoing plight of Rwandan refugees.

The term “United Nations” in front of the UN’s various humanitarian agencies is deceptive. It implies that they’re funded by the UN’s general budget and therefore are politically neutral. In fact, however, the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and the UN High Commission for Human Rights (OHCHR) are all donor dependent, primarily on the EU and other European nations, who look out for their interests and those of the US.

Masako Yonekawa’s book “Post-Genocide Rwandan Refugees: Why They Refuse to Return ‘Home’: Myths and Realities ” addresses US responsibility for the Rwandan Genocide and ensuing Congo Wars, and the UNHCR’s brutal bias in favor of the US and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) during and after the 1990-1994 Rwandan Civil War.

Background

A Rwandan Tutsi monarchy and aristocratic class of cattle owners ruled over peasant Hutus for centuries in Rwanda before the Hutu population rose up in 1959, leading to Rwanda becoming a republic in 1961. During and after those years, the Tutsi aristocrats fled, mostly to Uganda. There they regrouped, raised an army, and then returned to reclaim what they considered their birthright, starting the 1990-1994 Rwandan Civil War. Since seizing power, President Paul Kagame and his government have pretended to lead a miraculous ethnic reconciliation, but Tutsi elites are in fact back in power, as evidenced by Wikileaks.

From October 1990 to July 1994, Kagame commanded the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), the military arm of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), until it seized power. Kagame claimed to have ended the final 100 days of massacres known as the Rwandan Genocide. This has been disproven, however, by many sources, including UN investigator Robert Gersony’s report and Judi Rever’s “In Praise of Blood, Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front.” The RPF’s crimes before, during, and after the genocide have been well documented but never prosecuted because the US is complicit, and Rwanda is a prized US client state.

Kagame was the power behind the presidency from 1994 to 2000, when he formally assumed the office. He secured his hold on power with a series of preposterous elections, then got Rwanda’s parliament to pass a constitutional amendment allowing him to circumvent term limits and remain in power until 2034. He has ruthlessly served US interests by invading and occupying the resource-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo and by dispatching Rwandan “peacekeepers” elsewhere on the African continent. Last February, against the will of the African Union, he called on the US to “intervene” in Ethiopia and offered to send Rwandan troops .

Rwandan refugees refuse to repatriate

Throughout that time, Yonekawa writes, “Rwandan refugees have refused to repatriate to Rwanda due to the fear of and trauma associated with the RPF as a result of its agenda in the Great Lakes region, partially or fully backed by the US Government.”

Most of these Rwandan refugees are from Rwanda’s majority Hutu population, who fled as Kagame’s Tutsi army advanced on Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. Two and a half million Rwandans fled in all directions in 1994, many into Tanzania, but by far the greatest number into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Hundreds of thousands of them were massacred by the invading Rwandan army, whom US troops and corporations assisted with training, logistics, and satellite intelligence. Three hundred thousand more struggled through the Congolese jungle seeking refuge, with the RPA in pursuit. Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga tells this tale with vivid detail in Dying to Live: A Rwandan Family's Five-Year Flight Across the Congo .

Needless to say, they didn’t want to go home, and many more Rwandans have struggled to secure refugee status and citizenship in host nations, from 1994 to now. They know that many Rwandan Hutus who returned or remained in Rwanda have been imprisoned, killed, or consigned to agricultural labor, in many cases on land they once owned. Word of the RPA’s massacre of eight thousand “Internally Displaced Persons” (IDPs) at Kibeho, Rwanda, in April 1995, terrified the refugees in neighboring countries.

Tanzania and other host countries sometimes took harsh action to be rid of Rwandan refugee burdens, but forcible repatriation also served Rwandan and US interests. Kagame’s Rwanda needed agricultural labor, and the reestablished Tutsi elite didn’t want educated and skilled Rwandans to gather outside its borders, where they could tarnish the country’s reconciliation facade or even organize to return, as they had. The US made sure that the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda put many of the latter behind bars and failed to prosecute a single Tutsi.

The US wanted whatever was good for Kagame and the Tutsi elite because it had chosen them to invade DRC, oust Mobutu, displace France as the dominant power in the region, and steal DRC’s abundant resources for various corporate interests. Polishing Kagame’s image, and that of Rwanda rising from the ashes, also provided cover for US involvement in the war that had led to such a staggering loss of life.

The invasion of DRC

In 1996, a new military force emerged in DRC calling itself the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFDL). It was made up mostly of invading Rwandans, but with a Congolese leader, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who gave the invaders a Congolese rebel facade. Ugandans and Burundians joined that invasion, but Rwanda was in the lead by far. Yonekawa writes:

“Washington’s support of the AFDL was made clearer by Kabila’s deals with US companies,” writes Yonekawa. “One was Bechtel, which provided satellite data by drawing up a master development plan and inventory of the country’s vast mineral resources for the DRC, and provided high-tech intelligence for the AFDL at no charge. Bechtel commissioned and paid for US National Aeronautics and Space Administration satellite studies of the DRC and for infrared maps of its mineral potential. Some of these satellite data gave Kabila useful military information before the fall of Mobutu. In exchange, Bechtel, which designed and built projects for mining companies, became first in line to win contracts.

“Another deal was with the American Mineral Fields (AMF) headquartered in Clinton’s home State of Arkansas. The AMF signed a US $1 billion contract with Kabila to explore cobalt and copper deposits in exchange for providing funds for the war.

“Moreover, military contractor Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, one of the world’s largest providers of products and services to the energy industry, reportedly constructed a military base on the Congolese/Rwandan border, where the RPA has trained. At the beginning of the war, the US embassy in Kigali was heavily involved in helping establish joint ventures to exploit coltan—a fact omitted from official reports.”


The Eurocentric United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)

At the beginning of her book, Yonekawa explains that the UNHCR has been Eurocentric and political since it was created in 1951:

“ . . . the 1951 Convention [Relation to the Status of Refugees] was Eurocentric, with chronological and geographical limitations in the aftermath of the Second World War. Western countries were not interested in non-European refugees, but ‘since they [Western countries] were using the United Nations as the means for dealing with their own problems, they were obliged to make at least some apparent concessions to universality’.

“The 1967 Protocol amended this Convention, expanding its scope as the problem of displacement spread around the world. This expansion was crucial because ‘the United States perceived refugee problems in developing countries as sources of instability which the Soviet Union could exploit for its own advantage in extending hegemony in the third world’. The presence of the UNHCR was intended to partially block Soviet power in Africa and Asia during the Cold War. As a consequence, Western governments regarded assistance to refugees ‘as a central part of their foreign policy towards newly independent states’.”


The UNHCR and Rwandan refugees

Fast forward to the UNHCR’s service to the US and Kagame’s Rwanda with regard to Rwandan refugees, who were, again, mostly Hutus who didn’t want to go home for obvious reasons.

Yonekawa herself worked with Rwandan refugees for UNHCR for 10 years during the 1990s and then again in 2007. “After my retirement from the UNHCR,” she writes, “I began working as a researcher, using my field experience to explore questions that had long troubled me.”

She recounts many stories of refugees’ desperate efforts not to go home, and some of the worst are those in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“ . . . from December 1996 to September 1997, under the guise of a ‘rescue operation’, the UNHCR attempted to repatriate refugees from north-western DRC to Rwanda. Reportedly, the AFDL set a deadline for the UNHCR to start on 1 May 1997 to search and repatriate refugees within 60 days.

“The UNHCR went to remote villages to look for refugees, even threatening them that it would send Kabila’s soldiers to repatriate them to Rwanda. Local villagers were informed not to help the refugees but to get them to leave the forest and come out onto the road to make their way to Rwanda.’

“Refugees were killed, however, once on the road; village chiefs were ordered to assist the military in “cleaning the road”, which was to remove bodies and bones as well as other indications of killings, such as clothes, cooking utensils, from the roadside. The UNHCR’s sole option was to ‘return to an uncertain and dangerous situation in Rwanda’ because ‘staying in DRC meant almost certain death’. Yet, the people who ordered the killings of refugees were in Rwanda.

“Finally, after having failed to locate the whereabouts of refugees who were in hiding, the UNHCR initiated a system of paid compensation of 10 US dollars per one refugee for any Congolese who brought them in. This became one of the most lucrative activities in the area, as hunters arrived with flyers from the UNHCR demanding that the local authorities help them in their work. When a villager refused to deliver the refugees he had hosted, hunters of refugees threatened that they would get Kabila’s soldiers to kill the villager and his family.”


There are many more harrowing accounts, including those of refugees who were told to gather for food distribution and then summarily massacred by Rwandan troops. Another is that of dissident journalist Charles Ingabire, who fled to Uganda and repeatedly asked the UNHCR to arrange asylum in a third country until Rwandan assassins shot him dead while he and a friend were having a drink in a bar in Kampala. After that the UNHCR finally arranged political asylum seeker status in Sweden for two more Rwandan journalists, Didas Gasana and Charles Kabonero, but that wasn’t the end of Kagame’s war on journalists , including a Rwandan Norwegian blogger who was deported to Rwanda with the blessing of Human Rights Watch. And not a word from the UNHCR.

US Responsibility in the Great Lakes regional power dynamics and Rwandan refugees

The last chapter of Yonekawa’s book, before her concluding remarks, is “US Responsibility in the Great Lakes Regional Power Dynamics and Rwandan Refugees.” For many this will no doubt be the most interesting, and I highly recommend getting the book even if you only have time to read this one chapter and skim the rest. It’s full of damning detail about US interests in DRC; French and US competition; US interference at the UN; US complicity in the forced repatriation and massacre of Rwandan refugees; and the US elites’ early steps, taken in the 1980s, that led to the ongoing catastrophe that DRC is today.

And it’s all painstakingly documented. At times Yonekawa has footnoted sources for every sentence in a paragraph. She substantiates a lot of US treachery that I’ve always suspected, but never precisely confirmed.

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RETURN TO THE SOURCE: The US Military Swarms Over Africa
Editors, The Black Agenda Review 08 Sep 2021

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RETURN TO THE SOURCE: The US Military Swarms Over Africa

Grim predictions about the U.S. military occupation of Africa are realized.

African Lion . Exercise Cutlass Express . Exercise Phoenix Express . Obangame Express . Justified Accord . Flintlock . These are the names of but a few of the military exercises carried out by the U.S. Africa Command forces (AFRICOM) on the African continent in recent years. The exercises have occurred across the expanse of the continent - east, west, north, and south - as well as on the surrounding seas and oceans. And the exercises have included participation from Europe, and from almost every African country. The ramping up of US militarism on the African continent - and the ensuing destabilization of communities and countries - should concern us all. Since AFRICOM’s formation in 2008, there have been a number of coups and coup attempts by U.S.-trained African military officers, the latest occurring this past week in Guinea .

What is at stake here? Almost a decade ago, the late Glen Ford wrote a short, incisive essay marking the beginning of what he described as the United States’ “wholesale military occupation of Africa.” Ford recognized that, while the US was using the excuses of internal conflict and Islamist expansion as a ruse, the real goal is control over African resources and its peoples. Disturbingly, the US military occupiers are now welcomed as “guests” by neocolonial African governments - willingly handing over the continent to fleecing and thievery. With the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan appearing as yet another sign of the US’s ineptitude and weakness, and with China’s inevitable consolidation as the globe’s economic superpower, Africa will be the theatre for US empire’s last stand. Ford saw it coming.

The US Military Swarms Over Africa

Glen Ford

2013 is the year the U.S. kicks off its wholesale military occupation of Africa. The escalation should come as no surprise, since the Army Times newspaper reported , back in June, that a U.S. brigade of at least 3,000 troops would become a permanent presence on the continent in the new year. On Christmas Eve, the Pentagon announced that 3,500 soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade, in Fort Riley, Kansas, will be sent to Africa, supposedly to confront a threat from al-Qaida in Mali, where Islamists have seized the northern part of the country. But the 2nd Brigade is scheduled to hold more than 100 military exercises in 35 countries , most of which have no al-Qaida presence. So, although there is no doubt that the U.S. will be deeply involved in the impending military operation in Mali, the 2nd Brigade’s deployment is a much larger assignment, aimed at making all of Africa a theater of U.S. military operations. The situation in Mali is simply a convenient, after-the-fact rationale for a long-planned expansion of the U.S. military footprint in Africa.

The Pentagon’s larger purpose in placing an army brigade on roving duty all across the continent is to acclimate African commanders to hosting a permanent, large scale U.S. presence. This is a very different kind of invasion – more like an infiltration-in-force. The Pentagon’s strategy is designed to reinforce relationships that the U.S. Africa Command has been cultivating with African militaries since the establishment of AFRICOM during George Bush’s last year in office. As an infiltrating force, AFRICOM has been a phenomenal success.

Militarily speaking, the African Union has become an annex of the Pentagon. The AU’s biggest operation, in Somalia, is armed, financed and directed by the U.S. military and CIA. The 17,000 African troops on so-called peace-keeping duty in Somalia are, for all practical purposes, mercenaries for the Americans – although poorly paid ones. Ethiopian and Kenyan forces act as extensions of U.S. power in East Africa. U.S. Special Forces roam the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic – ostensibly looking for the fugitive warlord Joseph Kony but, in reality, establishing a web of U.S. military infrastructures throughout the center of the continent. Uganda and Rwanda keep the eastern Congo’s mineral riches safe for U.S. and European corporations – at the cost of 6 million Congolese lives. Their militaries are on the Pentagon’s payroll.

In northwest Africa, the 16 nations of the region’s economic community await the intervention of the United Nations – which really means the United States and France – to expel the Islamist forces from Mali. Militarily, the West Africans are totally dependent. But, more importantly, they show no political will to escape this dependency – especially after the demise of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.

The creeping, continental U.S. expeditionary force, soon to be spearheaded by the 1st Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade, will bunk down in African military bases throughout the continent, not as invaders, but as guests. Guests who pay the bills and provide the weapons for African armies whose mission has nothing to do with national independence and self-determination. Three generations after the beginnings of decolonization, the African soldier is once again bowing to the foreign master.

Glen Ford, “ The US Military Swarms Over Africa,” Black Agenda Report (3 January, 2013).

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Tue Sep 14, 2021 1:19 pm

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US Destabilizes Eritrea and Ethiopia Using Syria-Style Propaganda
September 11, 2021
By Rainer Shea – Sep 8, 2021

As the Western media pivots towards Eritrea and Ethiopia amid the Afghanistan occupation’s failure, a familiar set of narratives is being propagated. These narratives are familiar for anyone who’s researched the encyclopedia of lies and hoaxes which have made up the West’s portrayals of the war in Syria, wherein Assad has been accused of numerous chemical attacks that have later been debunked. Or to anyone who’s researched the CIA’s atrocity propaganda against Serbia during the Balkan conflicts.

This is the type of deception that feeds off of a grain of truth, should that grain even exist. That takes real atrocities a given government might be committing (with Eritrea and Ethiopia’s neoliberal regimes indeed being guilty of many abuses over the decades), then exaggerates them in such a way that the genuine contradictions within these places can’t be properly addressed. All that prevails is imperialist destabilization and partition. When the CIA is running wild in a country with its psyops, fabricating stories that justify Washington’s proxy warmongering, the forces of class struggle are deprived of the opportunity to actually improve the conditions of the masses. This happened in Yugoslavia when the contradictions of the nation’s socialist state were exploited to carry out counterrevolution. This happened in Syria when the efforts of the country’s genuine reformers were ruined by Washington’s incitement of a jihadist civil war. And the same thing is happening in Eritrea and Ethiopia.

The CIA-tied Washington Post is telling us that the US sanctions against Eritrea are not just “overdue,” but “incomplete.” A moral judgment that’s reprehensible from an authentically humanitarian perspective; sanctions are designed to kill civilians, especially when directed against a country that’s undergoing an expanding hunger crisis.

Human Rights Watch, the known regime change propaganda outlet with ties to the U.S. government, has been charging the Ethiopian government with widespread abuses against Tigrayans. These accusations, which have been getting predictably hyperbolized by the imperialist media, leave out crucial context; as Ethiopia’s attorney general Gedion Timothewos has said in response to HRW’s report:

The TPLF has legitimately been designated as a terrorist organization by our parliament. Anyone who supports, provide material assistance or sponsors this kind of organization would have to be held accountable. The TPLF happens to be an organization organized along ethnic lines, so most of its supporters, most of its financiers happen to be, not all of them, but most of them, happen to be from one ethnic group. So sometimes, some outsiders might not understand this context… and the challenge. I understand where that is coming from but they have to understand the environment within which we are operating.

This fact doesn’t automatically disprove all the atrocity stories, but it shows the highly suspect way in which HRW and other imperialist NGOs are framing the conflict; namely, in a way which can protect the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front and uncritically promote its narratives. Again, we see how the grains of truth get exploited and weaponized, in this case for decidedly anti-humanitarian purposes.

The NGO industrial complex’ bias is made all the more suspicious by the Western media’s efforts to ignore or downplay the easily provable crimes of the primary entity these authorities are fighting. The TPLF, despite looting and hoarding food, being known to regularly commit war crimes across the Afar and Amhara regions, using the sabotage of essential services during a famine as part of its central insurgency strategy, and having started its campaign of violence during last year’s harvest season to deliberately exacerbate the humanitarian crisis, is having its atrocities be obfuscated by the imperialist media at every opportunity.

The US still doesn’t even classify the TPLF as a terrorist organization, despite USAID having recently found out about its efforts to deprive the masses of food. The hoarding scandal casts doubt upon the foremost among Washington’s accusations against both Eritrea and Ethiopia: that these countries have been trying to suffocate those within the rebel-controlled areas via food blockades. Not only has this charge been baseless and contradicted by history when it’s been directed towards Eritrea, but it’s now been shown to be misleading when applied to Ethiopia.

If USAID (the organization that’s been leveling the accusations) has been having its aid go to TPLF warlords who brazenly misuse these resources, in addition to the TPLF’s regular ambushing of aid trucks, the Ethiopian government is justified in applying tight checkpoints and other security measures. Washington has enabled a humanitarian crisis facilitated by proxies and sanctions, then made out the responses from Eritrea and Ethiopia to be the source of this crisis.

As columnist Bana Negusse wrote this year:

Large international media outlets, such as the AFP, continue to recycle baseless, specious allegations [against the Eritrean and Ethiopian governments] without minimal scrutiny, confirmation, or validation. Interestingly, after spurious allegations are raised, they are never subjected to follow-up or retraction, clarification, or correction, which in itself is newsworthy and merits serious investigation. Regrettably, it seems that statements and claims from some in the region, no matter their alignment with reality, are not merely assumed false but are totally dismissed, rejected, and ignored. By stark contrast, only the assertions from remnants of TPLF are to be considered as objective truth and disseminated uncritically.

Those of us who’ve studied the deceptions of the imperialists—especially when it comes to countries the imperialists aim to Balkanize, partition, and destabilize—have seen this all before. We’ve seen how disinformation gets propagated, ideally by “humanitarian” organizations like the White Helmets. How these organizations get used as fronts for assisting the atrocities of Washington’s proxy terrorists—whether these terrorists are the Syrian jihadists who’ve received direct help from White Helmets members, or the TPLF warlords who’ve starved the people with USAID’s complicity. How the media consistently twists the story to make the targeted governments look as bad as possible, while ignoring or even glorifying the crimes of the US proxies; throughout the Syria regime change war, Washington came to cheer for the jihadists.

As Eritrean American antiwar activist Elias Amare has assessed, the same coddling treatment is being applied to the TPLF, even as it’s now been undeniably revealed to be exacerbating the famine:

The TPLF are criminals who must be brought to justice. Many of their leaders have already been apprehended, but some remain in Tigray or on other battlefronts. The government forces withdrew from Tigray and declared a unilateral humanitarian ceasefire in June, but the TPLF continued to fight and encroached further beyond its home base into the Afar and Amhara Regions. They are continuing to commit atrocities against the civilian population. In the West, the crimes of the TPLF are hidden or glossed over, while the Ethiopian government and army are the targets of a massive media disinformation campaign. The Western corporate media is incredible, outright brazen in the way it continues to manufacture stories of massacres and rapes and what have you, the same way they did in Libya and in Syria, where they manufactured the White Helmets, chemical weapons attacks, and what have you. The pattern is the same and it continues.

Anti-imperialists must do the intellectual work of recognizing that Eritrea and Ethiopia can at the same time have serious contradictions which need to be addressed, and be targets of a CIA disinformation campaign. A campaign whose goal is to prevent the victory of the proletarian revolutionary movement within these countries, and to make their future consist only of starvation, perpetual war, and continued breakdowns of basic social services.

https://orinocotribune.com/us-destabili ... ropaganda/

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Sudan: A Revolution in the Making

Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on SEPTEMBER 10, 2021
Peoples Voice

Exclusive interview with the Sudanese Communist Party

Sudan drew global attention throughout 2019, as the people rose up against the corrupt and repressive regime of Omar al-Bashir. The uprising was celebrated for opening a transition to democracy and secularism, but that transition is far from complete. People’s Voice interviewed Elfadil Elhashmi, an activist in the Sudanese Communist Party, to discuss the ongoing struggle. The following is the first of that two-part interview.

People’s Voice: The Sudanese people won an important victory in April 2019, when they forced Omar al-Bashir from the presidency. Could you give us some background to that struggle?

Elfadil Elhashmi: The first phase of the Sudanese December 2018 Revolution lasted more than five months. Back in April 2019, I said what was going on in Sudan is a revolution in the making; I still argue that its heated tanks will keep boiling. It is an unfinished process in which the political ruling strata have been defeated but the old system, the deep security and militia State and economically deeply rooted system is still hanging on to its resources. The Old is half alive, and the New has yet to emerge from the womb of the Old.

The post-colonial national liberation project of equitable development and social justice never came to fruition following independence in 1956. The bloody military regime of political Islam, which was a dependent comprador in close alliance with regional and international imperialists, gave heavy blows to the grassroots forces of democratic transformation in Sudan. The regime adopted the prescriptions of the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) of privatization of successful public sector entities and austerity measures of cutting subsidies to real producers and basic commodities. Expenditures on health, education and basic infrastructure were also seriously cut, and there was privatization of the Gezira irrigation project and the transportation sector. Land-grabbing was widespread, resources were plundered, and the military generals have been involved in embezzling public funds and tax exemptions.

The absolute injustice necessitated an absolute ideology of “Islamization” or political Islam; hence the space of political and class struggle became brutally fascist. Class, race and religion have been overlapping and seem to explain identity and resources intersectionality that caused long civil wars in the South and currently in Darfur, Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile.

The contemporary paradoxical global sociopolitical mode of production is dominated by parasitic rentier finance capital. This globalization is approaching a new fascist phase in which it is constructing, reinventing and reproducing terrorism, Zionism, monarchies and dictatorships in the developing countries. It also fictitiously pretends to support the discourse of democracy, human rights, anti-terrorism and anti-fanaticism, while in the global South, absolute exploitation and injustice has no other way but to adopt absolute ideologies to continue stealing the resources.

The essence of popular revolutions in the developing countries since the eighteenth century has been anti-colonial and anti-feudal. It has raised popular slogans and demands of grassroots democracy and condemned parasitic capitalism.

When the streets in most big cities exploded in December 2018, a popular body emerged to lead and organize the movement under the slogan of Freedom, Peace and Justice. It was called the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC). It was formed mainly from political parties and professional organizations and trade unions (medical doctors, engineers, teachers, lawyers, judges, pharmacists, workers etc.) which formed their parallel bodies outside the pro-government legal framework. The December 2018 Revolution was completely a peaceful movement, so the West was shyly obliged to support it although they were a keen ally of the dictatorial political Islam regime.

Revolutions in the periphery have been calling politically for democracy but never lost sight of its class content as they demanded social justice and equitable development, and defined their enemies as parasitic merchant capitalists, rich generals and big landowners.

When the socio-political and economic crisis disabled the system and made it dysfunctional and it became impossible to survive, revolution came about with vanguards emerging from the oppressed, marginalized and disadvantaged sections against centuries’ long surplus extracted through violence (slavery, colonialism, neocolonialism and current global imperialism) and locally led by powerful and privileged strata of ruling classes.

PV: After April 2019, the FFC alliance entered negotiations with the military and negotiated a political agreement with the Transitional Military Council. The Sudanese Communist Party opposed these negotiations and withdrew from the coalition in November 2020. Can you give us more information about political agreement and why the SCP chose to withdraw?

EE: Some parties and professionals in the FFC happened to buy into the so-called “soft landing” introduced by the US through Ambassador Princeton Lyman, a special envoy for Sudan. Soft landing means a negotiated transfer to civilian-military partnership which keeps the existing economic system intact with no legal percussions to the military rulers accused of mass killings. This section of the FFC hijacked the negotiations and welcomed the Transitional Military Council (a de facto Bashir creation) into a power sharing model that has nothing to do with the revolution’s demands.

The Sudanese Communist Party almost single-handedly resisted this reactionary approach and exposed the fallacies of this model to the masses. Such a model has turned into a clear domination by the military council, which issues serious partial decrees and laws about peace and economic issues behind the passive and compliant civilian component of the government. The military component has become a class in itself, owning hundreds of companies that used to belong to the public sector which trade in basic commodities (animal stock, gum Arabic, oil seeds) and has mysterious links to militia smuggling activities, including gold and money laundering.

The SCP withdrew from the FFC coalition in early November 2020 and boycotted participation in the transitional executive government institutions. The main reasons for the Party’s withdrawal from supporting the transitional government can be summarized in the following points:

*The government’s consistent breach of the Constitutional Document signed by the FFC and the consequent fatal mistakes that contradict and reverse the demands of the Revolution.
*Purposefully adopting visions, strategies and tactics that oppose the Revolution demands of deconstructing the old economic and political system.
*Sluggish approach to legally bringing the old system criminals to justice and delaying or refusing to hand over Omar al-Bashir to the International Criminal Court.
*Too slow and malicious process of completing the investigations into the barbaric killings of the peaceful sit-in demonstrators in the Military Headquarters in June 2019.
*Executing the partial and irresponsible Juba Peace Agreement that was single-handedly led, designed and planned by the military generals instead of the Prime Minister.
*The appointment of ministers regardless of competencies and treatment of such privileged positions as war spoils.

Above all, the partnership model with the military, which is in fact handing over power to them, has added to the insult of succumbing to the dictates and prescriptions of the WB and the IMF. Such prescriptions include further privatization of public sector, further opening the economy to international companies, a free exchange rate of the Sudanese pound, and austerity measures which remove subsidies from production of gas, gasoline, medicine, electricity and water.

PV: In the current situation, what is the state of the people’s movement and what are the main sectors and organizations that are propelling that movement forward?

EE: As we speak, the economic situation is worse than before the December 2018 Revolution. The neoliberal strategies and policies implemented by the transitional government (military and civilian components), under pressure from the WB and IMF and despite the demands of the masses, have resulted in high inflationary prices of basic commodities and medicine and a devaluated currency. The standards of living are miserable, and more than 95 percent of the people are under the poverty line.

The SCP is in the heart of the forces resisting many policies and laws that are not in line with the signed Constitutional Document. The workers and trade unions are fighting to pass a new trade unions law that ensures they are independent and democratic. A new oppressive security law has been put forward by the transitional government, as well as a new privatization law which liquidates public sector entities under the disguise of a partnership between the private and public sector.

Given the actual several breach of the Constitutional Document, the SCP has recently announced a slogan for “toppling the current transitional government” and started to build up a front that will continue the momentum of the revolution. The political forces which agree to topple the transitional government and move forward to complete the demands of the Revolution include the Sudanese Communist Party and a few other parties, the forces of the Resistance Committees that are formed in all cities, one section of the Professionals’ Assembly (which split), the Martyrs Families groups and some mainly youth members of the two main traditional parties.

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Thu Sep 16, 2021 1:01 pm

What Lies Ahead for Guinea after Coup by US-Trained Military Unit?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on SEPTEMBER 15, 2021
Pavan Kulkarni\

Image
Guinea coupColonel Mamady Doumbouya (fourth right) and members of the special forces leave the Peoples Palace after the first session of talks with political leaders in Conakry. (Photo: John Wessels/AFP)

The coup leader, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, has claimed that he will put an end to the corruption and human rights abuses committed under the rule of ousted president Alpha Conde, whom he had served as a henchman. However, his close links to the US and France indicate other motives behind the coup


Over a week after the coup in Guinea was orchestrated by a US-trained military unit, the military junta that seized power initiated a four-day-long conference with political parties, business leaders and traditional leaders on Tuesday, September 14.

The stated reason for this conference is to reach an agreement on the duration and arrangements for the transitional period before civilian rule can be restored. It was clear from the outset that few of the main opposition parties sitting opposite the junta on the table were keen on pushing for a speedy transition to civilian rule. Smaller political parties reportedly did not get through the registration to attend the conference.

“It’s very difficult to want to impose on (coup leader) Colonel (Mamady) Doumbouya a civilian president – but it would be desirable that the prime minister was a civilian,” former prime minister Cellou Dalein Diallo of the Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UFDG), a leading opposition figure who lost three consecutive elections to deposed president Alpha Conde, told AFP a day before the meeting.

Describing the coup as a “welcome development,” he went on to urge the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) – which, along with the African Union (AU), suspended Guinea from the regional bloc after the coup – to not impose sanctions on the junta. Abdoulaye Oumou Sow, spokesman of National Front for the Defence of the Constitution (FNDC), an umbrella organization of opposition parties, joined Diallo in insisting that Conde should remain in the custody of the junta.

“We all know the friendship he has with some heads of state in the region. We know that he is rich and has all the means to want to return to power,” Sow said. These comments were an apparent response to the call by ECOWAS for Conde’s release.

A delegation of ECOWAS which met the junta in Guinea’s capital Conakry on September 10 reported that Conde was in good health and was insisting on his reinstatement to the presidency.

Following the visit, Fanta Cisse, Guinea’s stand-in foreign minister, said that it was not possible to immediately respond to the regional bloc’s request to free Conde, but “the principle is recognized.”

No progress was made in the meeting on Tuesday towards returning to civilian rule or securing Conde’s release. As the conference continues, the junta will reportedly hold talks with regional government representatives followed by the so-called “traditional leaders”, among whom Conde does not enjoy much popularity, especially in the south where he faces considerable opposition.

Mining interests

The talks with the representatives of the mining companies will be critical as they are likely to be treated by the junta as the most important stakeholders in the country. Guinea is the second largest producer of bauxite, used to make aluminum, amounting to a fifth of the global supply.

Aluminum prices, which were already on the rise, spiked to a 13-year-record high after the border closure following the coup due to concerns of disruption. However, the mining companies were amongst the first to get an assurance from the junta that their work will not be disrupted, and were urged to continue digging.

Mining companies have welcomed this assurance and reported that their activities have not suffered any disruption. This, at least for now, means that the record price rise has placed them in a very profitable position. It is unlikely that the representatives of these companies will insist on a speedy transition to civilian rule. However, it is important to note that mining interests are not homogeneous, and may have been an important influence behind the coup.

SMB-Winning – a consortium which includes Chinese aluminum producer Shandong Weiqiao, Singapore’s Winning Shipping and Guinean mining logistics firm United Mining Supply (UMS) – was awarded a $14 billion government tender in November 2019 to begin extraction from blocks 1 and 2 of the massive iron ore deposit in the Simandou hill range in the country’s southeast.

China also has major investments in Guinea under the Belt and Road Initiative, and has been crucial in advancing the railway line between Guinea and Mali – another West African country, which witnessed two of the four successful military coups in this region in the last year. Here too, the coup leader was trained by the US.

Russian company Rusal is also among the main bauxite explorers in Guinea. Before the coup, “Conde was interested in taking advantage of the partnership in the aluminum and bauxite business to increase economic cooperation and seek more Russian investments in Guinea,” wrote Lucas Leiroz, a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

“In June of this year, Conde sent a delegation of officials to Russia, during the 24th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, with the intention of starting a bilateral dialogue to attract more investment in Guinea, mainly in the infrastructure sector, which is a strategic point for the implementation of national development policies. In fact, Conde saw Russia as an opportunity for strategic international cooperation between two emerging nations, just as other African countries have seen in China, for example,” he said.

The US-AFRICOM’s role

Whether the junta will make attempts to renegotiate the Russian and Chinese projects in the interest of their western competitors will be crucial to watch. Keeping these two countries at bay on the continent has been the stated reason for the existence of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), which, despite its denial, has played a crucial role in the coup.

“The U.S. government and military are not involved in this apparent military seizure of power in any way,” AFRICOM said in a statement after a video showing Guinean soldiers escorting the American Green Berets back to the US embassy after the coup surfaced on social media.

The New York Times reported that a “team of about a dozen Green Berets had been in Guinea since mid-July to train about 100 soldiers in a special forces unit led by [coup leader] Colonel Doumbouya, who served for years in the French Foreign Legion, and took part in American military exercises..”

Critics find the newspaper’s claim that amidst the training, the students “peeled away for a mission not listed” and “mounted a coup” to be a laughable attempt at concealing AFRICOM’s obvious role. “If the Americans are involved in the putsch, it’s because of their mining interests,” a teacher in Conakry was quoted as saying.

In this situation, the ousted president seems to be unable to muster much support. None are reported to have taken to the streets to protest the coup, which appears to have received a popular welcome.

How Alpha Conde dug his own grave

Once a persecuted pro-democracy activist, Conde became the first democratically elected president of Guinea in 2010, following a massacre by the then ruling military junta in 2009 in which 157 protesters were killed and over 100 others were raped.

Conde’s promise to bring the guilty officers to justice was amongst the first he broke after coming to power, disappointing the victims and their families. In the decade that followed under his rule, the “U.S. authorized $4.8 million in weapons sales, provided $9.06 million in security assistance, and trained 1,326 soldiers in Guinea,” according to Cato Institute.

With such foreign backing for his security forces, Conde, who was once seen as the hope of democracy in Guinea, fell for the trappings of power and was unaccountable to the voters who elected him. Corruption remained widespread, while human rights abuses and violent crackdown on protesters and opponents continued unabated.

In 2018, Conde invited future coup leader Colonel Doumbouya, who was serving in the foreign legion of Guinea’s former colonizer France, to take charge of the Special Force Unit he had set up. This new unit was “a security instrument at his disposal for specific repressive missions,” Mamadou Aliou Barry, a Guinean political analyst, told Radio France International (RFI). Later in the year, Doumbouya was also trained by AFRICOM.

The proverbial ‘last straw’ came in 2020 when Conde held a referendum to change the constitution to allow him to contest for a third presidential term, which he won with the use of force against his opponents, killing dozens of protesters.

By holding on to power in this way, Conde lost much of the popular support and dashed the hopes for a meaningful democracy under his increasingly dictatorial and violently repressive rule. The ECOWAS and the AU, which are now condemning the coup, are being called out by many progressive voices on the continent for responding ‘too little, too late’, having failed to intervene in 2020 to prevent Conde from sowing the seeds for a return to military rule.

An increasingly desperate people, looking for relief from Conde’s rule, took to the streets in hundreds to celebrate the coup. Coming a full circle, Colonel Doumbouya, who is himself accused of having perpetrated many atrocities at Conde’s behest, has now promised that the purpose of seizing power is to put an end to corruption, mismanagement and human rights abuses – the very promises Conde had made and betrayed.

The real purpose of the coup by a colonel with a history of serving the former colonizer and training under the US will become clear in due course. The reorientation of the flow of Guinea’s mineral wealth and its geopolitical relations will be crucial indicators to watch for in the coming period.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/09/ ... tary-unit/

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Africa remittances to shrink by billions
By EDITH MUTETHYA in Nairobi, Kenya | China Daily | Updated: 2021-09-16 09:38


Remittances to African countries are expected to reduce significantly due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in partnership with the African Union Commission.

The report, titled "African regional review of implementation of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration", projects that remittances to African countries will drop by 5.4 percent, from $44 billion recorded last year to $41 billion by the end of this year.

Despite the expected drop, the report said remittances have demonstrated greater resilience and reliability as a source of capital in Africa than foreign direct investment flows.

It said remittances are the primary source of national income for 25 African countries, all of which have large diaspora populations.

In some of the receiving countries, remittance accounts for 65 percent of income while senders spend an estimated 15 percent of their income on remittances.

Most of the money sent home by migrants is used for household consumption, education, hospital bills, and investments like real estate.

However, the report said the costs of sending remittances to Africa are some of the highest globally. "Until recently, average transaction costs were equivalent to 8.9 percent of the amount being sent for a remittance payment of $200," the report said.

Support for migrants

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A customer conducts a mobile money transfer, known as M-Pesa, at a Safaricom agent stall in downtown Nairobi, Kenya Oct 16, 2018. [Photo/Agencies]

The report recommends that AU member states should support migrants and their families through the adoption of laws and regulations to facilitate the sending and receiving of remittances.

This can be achieved through fostering competition among banks and other remittance handling agencies with a view to establish low-cost transfer mechanisms.

The report also urged African countries to streamline the regulatory constraints associated with international money transfers, as well as engage destination countries to identify ways to enhance the provision of basic services to migrants in those countries.

It also calls on African countries to reduce the transfer costs associated with remittance payments among others, by making more extensive use of digital transfer solutions such as M-PESA.

M-PESA is a Kenyan mobile phone-based money transfer service, payments and micro-financing service.

Launched in 2007 by Vodafone Group and Safaricom, the largest mobile network operator in Kenya, the service has expanded to Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Egypt, Lesotho, South Africa, Ghana, Afghanistan and Ethiopia.

In the financial year ended March 2021, M-PESA cross-border transfers grew from $1.5 billion to $2.6 billion.

The report said the use of digital money transfer platforms reduces transfer fees in Africa by an average of 7 percent.

As the world enters an economic downturn, the report said remittance flows will be more important than ever for the poorest and most vulnerable people, especially those without access to economic and social safety nets.

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Fri Sep 17, 2021 1:15 pm

Racist Stereotypes About Africa in the US Media Have Long Driven the Rape and Plunder of the Continent
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on SEPTEMBER 16, 2021
Jeremy Kuzmarov

Image
Black Lives Matter should promote Pan-African solidarity and denounce U.S. imperialism in Africa

The Black Lives Matter movement has had a major impact in raising awareness about police brutality and the ongoing persecution of Black people in the United States but has been remarkably parochial in evading discussion of U.S. imperialism in Africa and around the world.

While protest signs commemorating George Floyd and calling for defunding of the police have been legion at many of its demonstrations, few if any signs have called for the abolition of AFRICOM or indictment of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for presiding over the overthrow and lynching of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi.


The latter omissions stem in large part from the ignorance of most of the U.S. population—whether Black or white—about Africa and the consequences of U.S. imperialism there.

The major fault for this ignorance lies with U.S. educational institutions and the mass media, which have for decades promoted stereotypes about the continent and its people, and evaded discussion of how it has been adversely impacted by Western colonialism.

Africans are still frequently characterized as “tribal people”—with all the attendant negative perceptions that spring from this word—whose poverty, conflict and disease-ridden countries can only be salvaged under foreign oversight.

Leaders who stand up to the Western powers like Qaddafi are demonized while those who acquiesce to their agenda are presented more favorably.

African voices are meanwhile marginalized—especially those that adopt a Pan-Africanist and anti-imperialist message—and many Blacks come to internalize the message that they are inferior.

Manufacturing Hate

Milton Allimadi, a professor of African history at John Jay College and founder of Black Star News, has just published the book, Manufacturing Hate: How Africa Was Demonized in Western Media (Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2021), which provides a history of racist stereotyping and media bias toward Africa that has helped skew American public opinion.

Allimadi starts his story with a discussion of European travelogues in the 18th and 19th centuries.

These presented Africans as being “trapped at a level of intellectual, socioeconomic and political development that Europeans had transcended centuries earlier” and helped justify the alleged obligation of Europeans to conquer and colonize Africa.

Sir Samuel Baker—Governor-General of the Equatorial Nile Basin (today South Sudan and Northern Uganda) between 1869 and 1873—set the standard in his 1866 book, The Albert N’Yanza Great Basin of the Nile, in which he wrote that “human nature viewed in its crude state as pictured among African savages is quite on a level with that of the brute, and not to be compared with the noble character of the dog.”

Joseph Conrad’s classic novel Heart of Darkness (1902) similarly depicted Africans as “primitive savages” and warned Europeans of Africa’s propensity to drive normal people insane.

The views cultivated by Conrad and other writers helped fuel support for colonization—which was considered a noble yet hazardous undertaking.

The New York Times’ Heritage of White Supremacy

The New York Times, in one of its earliest accounts of Africa published on July 1, 1877, claimed that Africans were “arrested at a position not so much between heaven and earth, as between earth and hell.” The article continued:

“The “poor dark savages” on the “dark continent” had “scarcely advanced beyond the element of art and science and even language” while, “from within, [they] devoured and destroyed one another, willingly offering their throats to the knives of sorcerers, or paving the deep grave of some bloody monarch with the living trembling bodies of his hundreds of young wives.”

These prejudicial comments ignore the flourishing of great African civilizations like ancient Carthage and the Songhai and Mali empires before the era of the slave trade and European colonization, which weakened and divided the continent.

The Times strongly endorsed British colonization over Germany’s and Russia’s, claiming that “the introduction of European civilization would be most justifiable, and might well repay the cost.”

The Times went on to depict the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War in South Africa as a “contest between a civilized nation with great military and naval power and inexhaustible resources and a primitive and barbaric tribe [the Zulu], however brave and unyielding … Sooner or later the powerful nation was destined to bring the savage tribe into abject submission or demolish it utterly.”

When Italy invaded Eritrea in the 1890s, the Times published a triumphalist account, claiming that the natives “welcomed the Italians as liberators.”

The Times adopted a more somber tone in reporting on Italy’s humiliating defeat at the Battle of Adwa in 1896—one of the greatest African victories against European imperialism—which the Times characterized as “terrible.”

In the 1930s, when Italy’s fascist leader Benito Mussolini reinvaded Ethiopia trying to reinvigorate the Roman Empire, the Times tried to diminish the significance of the Ethiopian victory at Adwa, while playing up the brutality of the “savage black warriors” who had “slaughtered nearly 40,000 Italians.”

Times reporter Herbert L. Matthews’s dispatch read like a press release from the Italian military command.

Known for his sympathetic reports of Fidel Castro’s rebel band in Cuba during the 1950s, Matthews had traveled in the same car as Italian military commander Marshal Pietro Badoglio as he entered Addis Ababa—and never bothered to interview any Ethiopians.

Support for Apartheid

The Times continued its pattern of white supremacy by supporting the odious apartheid system in South Africa from its beginning—and for many years thereafter.

In 1926, the “newspaper of record” published an article by Wyona Dashwood which supported the plan of South African Prime Minister James Barry Munnik Hertzog to segregate and disenfranchise Blacks in the Cape province as a way to deal with “the native factor.”

Dashwood claimed that the new system would help stop tribal fighting and give the “semi-civilized native”—whom she depicted as lazy and prone to theft—the chance to “develop along his own lines” and to begin to adapt some of the more “advanced economic, social and political systems of the white man’s civilization.”

Thirty years after Dashwood’s article, in May 1957, the Times ran a piece by Richard P. Hunt which reported on the perspective of apartheid leaders who had just passed a law empowering the new minister of native affairs, Hendrik Verwoerd, to ban Blacks from churches, clubs, hospitals, schools and other places if they would “cause a nuisance.”

An apartheid regime official was quoted as stating that the new powers were “needed to insure that the relations between black and white were to be those of guardian and ward,” which the article did not dispute.

When reporter Joseph Lelyveld began writing more critically about apartheid in the 1960s, his articles were toned down or distorted by editors, who made the system appear less brutal.

Lelyveld wrote to his editor in January 1983 that “virtually all the original reporting” he had conducted over a one-month period for a piece on the underfunding of Black schools had been omitted; the printed article, he said, was “like a salami sandwich without the salami, just slabs of stale bread.”

Always on the Wrong Side of History

Much like with its support for apartheid, The New York Times and other mainstream U.S. media outlets were on the wrong side of history when it came to African decolonization.

When Times reporter Leonard Ingalls wrote a letter demanding more sympathetic coverage, the foreign news editor, Emanuel Freedman, shot him down, preferring the traditional narrative in which Africans were depicted as “savages” and buffoons.

The Times’s coverage of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya adopted a “witch-craft versus civilization narrative.” The Mau Mau were presented as a “secret tribal society whose campaign of murder [has] forced the imposition of martial law.”

No indication was given that the Mau Mau emerged in response to colonial injustice. Nor that the violence of the Mau Mau rebels paled in comparison to that resulting from Great Britain’s scorched-earth military campaign which led to the deaths of thousands of Kenyans and the detention of thousands more in concentration camps.

Henry Wallace in Burnt Cork

The Times’s Kenya coverage fit with the pattern of demonization of radical anti-colonial movements, particularly when they were led by left-leaning Pan-Africanists like Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana—who was voted Africa’s Man of the Millennium at the dawn of the 21st century.

New York Times reporter Homer Bigart—a Pulitzer prize winning war correspondent who was expelled from South Vietnam for criticizing U.S. client Ngô Đình Diệm—wrote to Emmanuel Freedman in 1960 that “Dr. Nkrumah is Henry Wallace in burnt cork. I vastly prefer the primitive bush people. After all, cannibalism may be the logical antidote to this population explosion everyone talks about.”

Bigart’s negative association of Nkrumah with Henry Wallace was reflective of a prejudice not only toward Africans but also toward the left-wing and pacifist views which Wallace had embraced.

The comments about primitive bush people meanwhile reinforced deep-seated stereotypes about Africans. And the joke about cannibalism being an antidote to population explosion—a concern reflective of the Western elite’s view of Africans as a threat to be contained—was certainly in poor taste.

Congo

Like Nkrumah, Congolese Pan-African leader Patrice Lumumba was portrayed as a “wild eyed radical.”

Lumumba’s killer, Moïse Tshombe—who led a secessionist drive in the Katanga province backed by Belgian mining interests and white South African mercenaries—was praised in Time magazine by contrast as the “antithesis of the African savage.”

Most admirably, according to Time, Tshombe had “no complexes about being black” and recognized the “brutal side of the African personality, and the phony side of African socialism.”

Pro-Lumumbaist rebels who fought against Tshombe after Lumumba’s assassination were meanwhile depicted by Time as “a rabble of dazed, ignorant savages, used and abused by semi-sophisticated leaders.”

U.S. bombing operations—carried out by right-wing Cuban mercenaries—were hence justifiable, as was U.S. backing of the dictator Joseph Mobutu who was portrayed like Tshombe as a “responsible antidote” to Lumumba-style socialism.

Colonialism Dies Hard

At the end of the Cold War, numerous Western writers took stock of developments in Africa and concluded that the continent should be recolonized.

A characteristic piece from the era by Paul Johnson in The New York Times Magazine was titled “Colonialism’s Back and Not a Moment Too Soon.”

The article was about the U.S. intervention in Somalia, which Johnson considered “a model for action in other African countries facing similar political collapse.” He concluded in a refrain familiar to Rudyard Kipling that “the civilized world has a mission to go out to these desperate places and govern.”

An ever more apocalyptic and racist article was “The Coming Anarchy” by Robert Kaplan, whose Malthusian doomsday scenario read like a description of Africa from one of the 19th century explorers’ journals.

According to Kaplan, conditions in Africa were so dire, absent the white man’s rule, that Africans no longer resembled human beings.

Wherever Kaplan traveled in a taxi, young men with “restless scanning eyes” surrounded him. He described the men as being “like loose molecules in a very unstable social fluid that was clearly on the verge of igniting.”

Rwanda 1994

Historically, Western writers depicted Africans with alleged European features favorably, while demonizing those with so-called negroid features.

During the Rwanda conflict, Tutsis were adopted by some Western writers as honorary “Europeans” while Hutus were presented as the archetypical Africans.

The Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)—who happened to be staunch American allies—became the “good guys” by extension, and Rwanda’s national army, comprising mostly of Hutu allied with France, became the bad guys.

One of the earliest articles to use this racist characterization—which helped cultivate support for the RPF—was Alex Shoumatoff’s “Rwanda’s Aristocratic Guerrillas.” It appeared in The New York Times Magazine on December 13, 1992—two years after the RPF had illegally invaded Rwanda from Uganda and committed legions of atrocities against civilians.

A Marine intelligence veteran who lived for a period on a hippie commune in New Hampshire, Shoumatoff was at the time married to a Tutsi woman, who had been a Ugandan refugee and was the cousin of an RPF spokesman.[1]

His article informed readers that the Tutsis were “refined and had European features,” while the Hutus were “stocky and broad nosed.” He continued that, in the 19th century, “early ethnologists had been fascinated by these languidly haughty pastoral aristocrats [Tutsis] whose high foreheads, acquiline noses and thin lips seemed more Caucasian than Negroid, and they classed them as false negroes…. The Tutsis were thought to be highly civilized people, the race of fallen Europeans, whose existence in Central Africa had been rumored for centuries.”

After the RPF seized power, Shoumatoff wrote another piece for The New Yorker, sizing up the ethnic mix between Tutsis and Hutus in Burundi. Shoumatoff described the Tutsi as “tall, slender, with high foreheads, prominent cheekbones, and narrow features,” a different physical type from the Hutus, who were “short and stocky, with flat noses and thick lips.”

Such racist observations reinforced traditional stereotypes about Africans and painted a stark dichotomy that lent validation to the Tutsis genocidal campaign against the Hutu, which extended into the Congo.

Black Inferiority Complex

In a February 1965 speech in Detroit, Michigan, Malcolm X spoke about the damaging psychological impact of the demonization of Africa on Blacks. He said that

“the colonial powers of Europe, having complete control over Africa, they projected the image of Africa negatively. They projected Africa always in a negative light, savages, cannibals, nothing civilized. Why then naturally was it so negative it was negative to you and me, and you and I began to hate it. We didn’t want anybody to tell us anything about Africa, much less calling us ‘Africans.’ In hating Africa and hating the Africans, we ended up hating ourselves, without even realizing it. Because you can’t hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree. You can’t hate your origin and not end up hating yourself.”

Thirty years after Malcolm X spoke those words, The Washington Post published a reactionary article by an African-American reporter, Keith Richburg, “A Black Man in Africa.”

Richburg, who had covered the inter-ethnic massacres in Rwanda, described his revulsion at witnessing the “discolored, bloated bodies floating down a river in Rwanda towards Tanzania.”

Richburg wrote that, as he witnessed the bodies, he realized how fortunate he had been; that he too “might have been one of the victims of the Rwanda massacre or he might have met some similarly anonymous fate in any one of the countless ongoing civil wars or tribal clashes on this brutal continent. And so I thank God my ancestor made the voyage [on the slave ship].”

Richburg’s article formed the basis of his 1997 book, Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa, which Milton Allimadi calls “Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for the new century.”

According to Allimadi, Richburg offered a classic case of a Black man caught in the psychic pain of what Frantz Fanon called “internal inferiorization.” Under this condition, negative stereotyping results in self-hatred and a desire to be affiliated with the dominant race.

As a youth, Richburg had been taught to believe that he was superior to other Blacks who came from poorer neighborhoods, talked loudly, had darker skin and nappier hair. When he went to the movies with his brother, they would cheer on the British soldiers attacking “Zulu tribesmen” in film.

This exemplifies the disorder Fanon and Malcolm X described. Its impact ultimately has been to neuter and destroy Black radical movements and solidarity. The legacy can be seen today, among other ways, with Black Lives Matter’s silence about Africa—which should be corrected.

Notes:

An RPF fighter was the best man at his wedding. Previously Shoumatoff had written an article in Vanity Fair about the murder of Dr. Dian Fossey that helped shape the script for the hit movie Gorillas in the Mist. Shoumatoff had served in a U.S. Marine intelligence unit that trained him to be parachuted behind the Iron Curtain and had Russian language training. It is certainly possible he sustained his intelligence ties and that his writing on Rwanda was sanctioned by the CIA. ↑

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Mon Sep 27, 2021 2:17 pm

France Opens the Sahel-Saharan Front Against Wagner
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

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Putin..the new African champion

LONDON – France is doing everything it can to prevent Russia’s Wagner Group from gaining positions of influence in the Sahel-Saharan region.

While the new military council in Mali insists on signing an agreement with the group, Paris is pushing the leaders of the countries in the region to show their categorical rejection of the presence of the Wagner Group, which employs hundreds of mercenaries in its areas of concentration to achieve political, security and economic goals that benefit Russia.

Chad’s Foreign Minister Sherif Mohamed Zein warned Thursday that any “external interference, regardless of its source, represents a very serious problem for my country’s stability and security,” in response to a question about the Wagner Group, stressing that all measures will be taken to “ensure” Chad’s protection.

Observers believe that the Chadian minister’s statements come in the context of a French desire to fortify the Sahel and Sahara region against any external interference that contradicts the interests of Paris and its alliances in a region it considers a special playground in which no one is allowed to move without its permission.

Observers point out that the limited pressure that Paris can exert to prevent Wagner from entering Mali, and expanding in the Sahel and Sahara, prompt it to incite the regional leaders to announce their opposition to the existence of a group that competed with France’s interests in Central Africa.

It seems that the smell of oil and the news of the discovery of precious metals such as uranium and gold in Mali have prompted Wagner to make it a next target for its presence, after Libya, taking advantage of the difficulties that the new military council is having in obtaining regional and international recognition.

Although Wagner appears in the picture as a private security group like other well-known security groups, its dual nature, military and economic, will make it more loyal and committed towards Russia, and this is what France fears, that Moscow is covertly controlling the group’s movement since its interventions in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Central Africa and now in Mali.

The official Russian disavowal of the group allows Wagner’s leaders and soldiers to move freely in the absence of diplomatic pressure, as well as the absence of legal accountability for the charges brought against it from more than one side, including the Chadian Foreign Minister, who accused it of training opposition fighters who participated in the assassination of former Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno last April.

The group was known for its concentration in vital economic areas. In Libya, the group was stationed in the oil crescent, and it supported the commander of the National Army, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, because he had succeeded in bringing the various oil fields under his authority. In Central Africa, the group dominated the mineral-producing regions.

This was not the first time that France showed its concern about the role played by the Wagner Group, as it had previously expressed its disquiet about the role the group plays in countries such as Central Africa.

Last June, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian announced that Russia had embarked on a “seizure of power” in the Central African Republic through the mercenaries of the Wagner Group, while ruling out a similar threat in the African Sahel.

“In the Central African Republic, through Russian mercenaries, there is a kind of seizure of power, and military power in particular. This is what we are fighting against, and this is what prompted us to take measures to withdraw a number of our military personnel.”

France appreciates the danger of security companies and the ability of their members to carry out complex tasks, as they are the heirs of the mercenary formations that French intelligence has benefited from in Africa, which were used by Western powers such as the United States and Britain in tasks designed by its intelligence services.

The late French operative, Bob Dinar, was one of the arms of Western intelligence services in Africa and the Middle East, as he was able, with a small number of mercenary soldiers, to seize power in a number of African countries and hand it over to agencies prepared to serve their interests. Dinar actively participated in the war in Yemen in the 1960s on the side of the Saudi-backed Imami forces against the republican revolutionaries.

Wagner and its network of commercial and military relations recall one of the most famous military colonial projects, the East India Company, which ruled the Indian subcontinent for more than a century between the so-called company and its military forces, up to the so-called “Vice King” who became the Governor-General of India, over what is known today as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Paris is struggling to maintain its influence in Africa, which has historically represented a vital location for French interests, but in recent years it has faced many difficulties due to the multiplicity of its opponents, especially the jihadist groups in West Africa, which have gained combat experience and the ability to move and maneuver, forcing the French to involve government forces of Sahel countries, and is now looking for ways to withdraw its forces and support local forces in order to continue the complex war on terrorism.

Russia’s entry into Mali would add a strong competitor into the equation for France, which in recent years has engaged in open conflict with the United States over positions of influence in Africa, as well as confronting difficult security challenges with extremist organizations.

Many extremist organizations are active in the African Sahel region, including the branch of “Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb.” These organizations launch attacks from time to time targeting military barracks and foreigners in the Sahel countries, especially in Mali.

While the joint border area between Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso has turned into a new stronghold for extremist organizations, the French “Barkhane” operation, which included 5,100 soldiers, failed to clear the area of ​​militants, despite the presence of African Union forces and the arrival of military support from European countries.

France announced in early July 2021 that it would resume joint military operations in Mali after suspending them in early June, following a military coup in the country, the second in less than a year.

Al Arab

Translation by Internationalist 360°

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/09/ ... st-wagner/

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Biden Threatens Sweeping Sanctions on Ethiopia, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Responds
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 22 Sep 2021

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The U.S. is once again attempting to overthrow a legitimate head of state in Africa, this time in Ethiopia, where they want to put their old puppet, the TPLF, or a new one, in power.

President Joe Biden has issued an executive order threatening to impose new US sanctions on Ethiopia and Eritrea for their roles in humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Ethiopia’s northern regions.

Unilateral sanctions, meaning sanctions not approved by the UN Security Council, violate international law codified in the UN Charter. However, Biden wrote, “This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.”

In other words, the US writes its own laws, just as it imposes its own sanctions. Unilaterally.

In one bizarre paragraph, Biden describes Ethiopia’s conflict as a “national security threat”:

“I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, find that the situation in and in relation to northern Ethiopia, which has been marked by activities that threaten the peace, security, and stability of Ethiopia and the greater Horn of Africa region — in particular, widespread violence, atrocities, and serious human rights abuse, including those involving ethnic-based violence, rape and other forms of gender-based violence, and obstruction of humanitarian operations — constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.”

He’s wrong of course. Americans don’t wake up worrying about Ethiopian conflict. Many wake up wishing they didn’t have to go to that damn demeaning job another day, and/or wondering what pro sports they might enjoy afterwards. Many more wake up full of anxiety about medical debt, college debt, eviction, foreclosure, and poverty. Next to none will read Biden’s executive order and most couldn’t find Ethiopia on a map, thanks to the savage state of American education. Some, especially those who’ve been watching mass atrocity TV, might be persuaded by Biden’s invocation of “The White Man’s Burden ”:

Take up the White Man's burden--

The savage wars of peace--

Fill full the mouth of Famine

And bid the sickness cease;

And when your goal is nearest

The end for others sought,

Watch sloth and heathen Folly

Bring all your hopes to nought.

“Famine” is the Ethiopian emergency that US AID Chief Samantha Power has been shrieking about most for nearly a year. The Ethiopian government, she says, is blocking food aid into war-torn Tigray. Never mind that the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a US puppet for nearly 30 years, started the war that’s causing the suffering, as war always does. Or, that the Ethiopian government says that they wouldn’t starve their own people, that they are delivering more food to Tigray than any of the Western NGOs, but that they have set up checkpoints to make sure that aid convoys aren’t transporting arms to the TPLF. Power, like Blinken and Biden, don’t call the Ethiopian government’s account of facts on the ground a lie. They just ignore it, as do other Western officials and press.

Previous US and EU sanctions have targeted individual officials or military officers for their roles in the Ethiopian conflict, but in his most recent order, Biden threatens to sanction governments, political parties, or military or security forces that he deems to be prolonging the conflict or abusing human rights. The worst of such sanctions can block a nation’s access to medical supplies and food, as has been done to Iraq, Cuba, and Venezuela, or the freezing of a nation’s assets in foreign banks, as has been done to Libya, Venezuela, and now Afghanistan.

Time will tell whether the US and its allies will go to such extremes to control the Horn of Africa, but President Biden has heightened the threats. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed wrote an open letter in response, asking him to respect Ethiopia’s sovereignty, but Biden has not responded, and the letter has not been published by Western press.

Here is Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s open letter to Joe Biden, which he first published on his Twitter page .
https://twitter.com/PMEthiopia

https://www.blackagendareport.com/biden ... d-responds

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South African CP, Message to the COSATU Central Committee
9/21/21 4:32 PM
South Africa, South African Communist Party En Africa Communist and workers' parties
As delivered by the General Secretary, Dr Blade Nzimande

Tuesday, 21 September 2021

Dear comrades,

We bring revolutionary greetings from the Central Committee and the entire membership of the SACP, during this year, our 100 years since the SACP was founded. It is indeed a centenary we are proud of—a hundred years of unbroken struggle for national liberation, women’s emancipation, and socialism. We are also proud of the fact that it has been a 100 years of building the progressive trade union movement in South Africa, and no other political party can claim such in our country!

In our centenary we say, ‘Put People Before Profit’ as our theme and a call to action for our whole working-class. We say, ‘Socialism is the Future—Build is now’.

We also wish to take this opportunity to express our sincere condolences to the families of the public servants in the healthcare, safety, and security sectors, to workers in the agricultural, food retail and other essential goods and services sectors, to mention but a few sectors, who lost their lives because of COVID-19 while serving our people. We express our heartfelt condolences to all the unions that lost their members, leaders, and staff because of COVID-19.

Your Central Committee takes place during one of the most difficult situations facing the national democratic revolution since our April 1994 democratic breakthrough.

The jobs bloodbath and the need to drive mass empowerment

We are faced with the global COVID-19 pandemic and its economic and social impact and consequences. The pandemic has worsened pre-existing high levels of unemployment, poverty, and inequality in our country. Just in one quarter, from April to June 2020, over two million jobs were lost. Capitalist bosses mainly retrenched the affected workers. Their priority, as always, was on protecting profits. The jobs bloodbath however continued beyond the second quarter of 2020. In the face of the crisis, many workers were compelled to take wage cuts in lieu of retrenchments.

In the public sector, entities such as the SAA and the SABC retrenched workers. The SAA was first placed under business rescue. In fact, certain quarters wanted it to be liquidated altogether or wholly privatised. We had to confront that agenda, partly motivated by our centenary theme: Put People Before Profit: Socialism is the Future—Build it Now. But also, we defended the SAA and the SABC because we did not want them to become pilots for full or part privatisation. We also did this because as the SACP we strongly believe that workers’ struggles are indivisible, and that we cannot, for instance, elevate job security for workers in some sectors whilst abandoning workers in other sectors.

While we succeeded to save the SAA, so far, or for now, we lost a part of it to the so-called strategic equity partners. At SA Express, it seems a fait accompli, that those who wanted to finish off the entity through liquidation appear to have won. At Mango, workers have been battling with receiving their wage payments. We pledge our solidarity with all those workers as their interests and struggles are indivisible!

We need to continue and intensify the battle for public ownership not only in the aviation sector, but also in other key and strategic sectors of our economy. However, we need to draw lessons from our own struggles against privatisation and state capture. We went to the ANC Polokwane Conference in 2007 united on the need to fight privatisation and to keep our state-owned enterprises in the hands of the state. Yet we have subsequently discovered that some amongst us wanted those enterprises in the hands of the state so that they could facilitate their looting and not to drive a developmental agenda to advance the interest of the workers and the poor. We therefore need to clearly define the role and agenda to be pursued by SOEs!

We also need to advance more radical forms of ownership, including co-operatives and worker ownership. This must also include fighting for a truly broad-based BEE, rather than a BEE that concentrates on advancing the interests of the small elite. Frankly, these are tasks and struggles that must be led and advanced by a close working relationship between the SACP and COSATU, and broadly the Alliance, and other progressive forces.

We also need to work together with COSATU to confront and roll back the ideological agenda that argues the private sector is the saviour, and the public sector cannot advance the interests of society, especially the workers and poor. What the private capitalist agenda conveniently ignores is the important role played by thriving public entities in a number of countries worldwide. For example, the Forbes’s 2021 Global 2000 List has the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China at the top spot, number one. This state-owned bank alone employs 434,798 workers. Number four on the list is the China Construction Bank, a state-owned bank which alone employs 347,156, while number nine is the Agricultural Bank of China, in which the Chinese Ministry of Finance owns about 40 per cent and National Social Security Fund has a stake as well. The Agricultural Bank of China alone employs 459,000 workers.

While neoliberals and their hangers-on in South Africa both in and outside the state are opposed to our call for a developmental state bank and public banking sector, the state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has acquired a stake in the order of 20,1 per cent shareholding in Standard Bank South Africa. Given the abject failure of the big banks in our country to support co-operatives and small, micro, and medium-sized enterprises, for example, more than ever before we need a developmental state bank, public banking sector, and thriving co-operative banks. With the African Bank currently owned 50 per cent by the South African Reserve Bank and 25 per cent by the Public Investment Corporation, it is surely a ready-made candidate for not just effective public ownership, but for social ownership and a strategic public interest mandate.

The idea that public ownership is inherently destined to fail is nothing but an ideological drive to advance the monopoly of private ownership control and push privatisation, a policy instrument used in many cases to facilitate the capture of public assets by private interests. The industrial scale looting of our key state-owned enterprises has, unfortunately but predictably, now become an argument for further moves towards privatisation.

We should, in contradiction, for instance, welcome the proposal for Eskom to do a debt swap for green fund financing to deal both with its crippling R400-billion-debt but, of equal importance, to enable this critical public asset to become the strategic leader in our country as our region shifts towards renewable energy production. Without such a shift, Eskom will be left with stranded assets in the face of very rapid and necessary global moves to address the dangers of unsustainable global warming. Without a public sector lead in greening our economy there will be no just transition.

We should not forget that the crisis of Eskom and other state-owned enterprises is not a result only of looting, corruption, and associated governance decay. It is also a crisis of the neoliberal policy regime that was introduced in our democratic dispensation through the imposition of GEAR in 1996. It is for these reasons, at least, that the SACP has made it clear: Neither neoliberalism nor state capture is the solution to our economic challenges. Both are problematic and must be confronted.

By neoliberalism we include things such as the macroeconomic policy stances, fiscal as well as monetary, that deprived the publicly owned sector of adequate capitalisation and investment. We include the austerity that is suffocating our economy. It is the austere fiscal stance that underpinned problems such as the National Treasury-led refusal to honour Resolution 1 of 2018 in public service and administration bargaining. This undermined collective bargaining not only in the public sector—as capitalist bosses also saw this as an example for them to squeeze workers’ wages further and sought to weaken collective bargaining in industrial sectors.

For a long time now, we have defined the SACP and COSATU as the socialist axis in our movement, including the Alliance. We need to strengthen, rather than weaken, this perspective and approach as the basis upon which we should strive to ensure and guarantee the working-class as the leading motive force of our national democratic revolution. We call upon the Central Committee to resolve to practically strengthen this socialist axis, through a clear joint programme of economic and broader social transformation and development and building each other’s capacity.

Without closing ranks as the socialist axis, we will find it more difficult to overcome the now highest unemployment rates we face in many decades. We are faced with an unemployment rate of 34,4 per cent by the narrow definition, affecting, 7,8 million active work-seekers. Our total unemployment rate is 44,4 per cent, affecting close to 12 million active and discouraged workers, in a national population that is now approximately 60,143 million strong. Going hand in hand with unemployment is poverty, inequality, and the associated crisis of social reproduction, which is characterised by many households struggling to support life.

An even closer working relationship between the SACP and COSATU is of absolute necessity! Let us, amongst other things, resuscitate our joint political schools and joint programmes of action in defence and advancement of both the immediate and longer-term interests of the working-class!

An emergency response to the tsunami of unemployment, poverty, inequality, and the crisis of social reproduction

We need a rapid emergency response to the structural economic crisis we face. This must include more decisively driving the COVID-19 vaccination programme to achieve population immunity and ensure an economy-wide full capacity utilisation as soon as possible.

The SACP has called for a minimum income support structure, including grants for productive activities that people can engage in to make a living. In the same vein, to act against the crisis of social reproduction, we have joined the wide array of trade union and social movement forces in calling for the introduction of a universal basic income grant at a reasonable level. We do not need the false binary that has been drawn between a universal basic income grant and employment, between social security and economic growth.

A universal basic income grant can, and will, act as an economic stimulus not least for the millions of South Africans working in the informal and small, micro, and medium-sized enterprises sectors that have been most severely impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. The unemployed and under-employed poor, who will be the major beneficiaries of a universal basic income grant, are precisely those who live on basic food and other necessities. This is unlike the wealthy one-percenters whose savings go into off-shore speculation, and whose consumption patterns favour imports. All major international studies in basic income grants in other countries indicate important economic multiplier effects with such grants!

The current Special COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant can and should be used as the basis for expanding into a universal basic income grant. This must be phased in as rapidly as possible and form part of our wider effort to build a comprehensive social security system (towards which we committed ourselves as the ANC-led Alliance in our 2019 general election manifesto). The question is not ‘Can we afford it?’ The reality is that as a country we cannot afford the current crisis-high levels of unemployment and inequality. This is simply unsustainable and poses a threat to the National Democratic Revolution. We therefore welcome the indication given by President Cyril Maphosa, here yesterday, pointing to a consideration to extend the Special COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant beyond the current date that has been set to end it.

The second emergency response to the unemployment, poverty and social reproduction crises must be a significant and rapid expansion of a range of public employment programmes. The Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme, focused on community health care workers, and school assistants, underlined the possibility of rapidly scaling up on these kinds of programmes, in addition to the long-running Expanded Public Works Programme including Community Works Programmes. There are millions of South Africans who are desperately willing and able to work, and there is a wide range of work that needs to be done: maintenance of community resources and infrastructure, community safety and neighbourhood protection, environmental rehabilitation to build resilience, community food gardens, school sports coaching, early childhood care, and much more. All these require public employment intervention as the private sector is incapable of providing for these.

Another key challenge of our revolution is that of confronting and defeating the scourge of gender-based violence. But an integral platform for both men and women to fight this is to intensify the struggles for gender equality, whilst strengthening women organisation, especially working-class women. Organised workers in general, and COSATU in particular, have a duty to promote women organisation both inside their ranks as well as in many other sectors where working-class women are—stokvels, burial societies, the churches, school governing bodies and in many other such sites. The struggle for gender equality must be streamlined in every effort, not to mention the imperative to overcome the capitalist system crises of unemployment, poverty, inequality, and social reproduction, and the goal of the necessity to overcome the exploitative system itself.

Organisation of women and intensification of struggles for gender equality is also important because it is women who bear the brunt of the structural crisis in our economy. They are poorly paid and are often the first to be retrenched when capitalism hits moments of its crises. In line with the persisting legacy of colonialism of a special type, black/African women are the worst affected.

It is crucial to intensify our struggle to end racism and racial inequality in our society. The persisting legacy of colonial and apartheid capitalist inequality, including uneven development and under-development, remains articulated along racial lines. This is the context in which the crisis-high levels of unemployment, poverty, and inequality, as well as the crisis of social reproduction, continue to affect the black/African population the worst. Redressing the racial imbalances created under colonial and apartheid oppression and now reproduced daily by the capitalist market must find profound expression in our efforts to achieve structural transformation, towards completing the National Democratic Revolution and a socialist transition.

Structural transformation

The two urgent interventions—a universal basic income grant and public employment programmes—are, themselves, not silver bullets. They need to be part and parcel of a broader systemic and structural transformation of our economy. This means that our macro economic indicators must be premised on fighting unemployment, especially youth unemployment and privilege these considerations rather than narrowly focusing on inflation targeting.

The affordability of critically required interventions should not swing narrowly or entirely around taxation. Certainly, strategic taxation needs to be part of any public sector armoury, not least in the context of the huge windfall profits by mobile network and pharmaceutical companies in the midst of the pandemic.

However, there is a range of other interventions that need to be used to deal with our economic crises. The South African Reserve Bank should purchase primary state bonds rather than these being passed on to the private banking sector as a profit-making indulgence. Investment of these bonds should be ring-fenced and tightly monitored to ensure their productive use for key infrastructure build programmes, for instance.

Instead of the generalising idea that South Africa has good policies and what it needs is only to implement them, we need to join forces to achieve policy change in a number of areas where these are required. We urge COSATU and other worker formations to not go with that idea, which may at the end of the day prove to be useful for conserving the neoliberal substance we are yet to overcome in our policy terrain. We need to strengthen our unity of purpose as the socialist axis and strive for policy changes where they are required to achieve a breakthrough against the triple challenges.

That means other integral parts of a systemic economic response to our all-round crisis, needs to include a shift in macroeconomic, trade and industrial policy framework. This must prioritise the development of our national productive capacity, through adequate support for innovation, research, and skills development, geared to support industrialisation. We need a well-resourced, high employment creating impact trade and industrial policy to take the centre stage. This means we need to review the employment impact of all our sectoral master plans, and others, to strengthen them. This must include a major focus on skills development programmes, opening the workplace as a training space to massify workplace learning and training.

Critical co-ordination of the initiatives we need to advance, particularly through the District Development Model, should include a focus to systematically eliminate uneven development, with a strong focus on rural development as a key priority.

We have argued many times for the things just outlined. It is time now that we are just not satisfied with these as resolutions, but to come up with a concrete programme of action to campaign for the realisation of these, including intensive engagement in the battle of ideas. Again, this Central Committee is being called upon to come up with such concrete programmes and campaigns. No one will take up the fight for the working-class except the working-class itself!

Reconfiguration of the Alliance and building strong organisation

Above all, there can be no social revolution without revolutionary organisation. We need to strengthen our efforts to reconfigure the Alliance. As the COSATU Secretariat Report to this Central Committee states, Alliance relations at the national level have improved, but we still have a long way to go to achieve complete reconfiguration both at the national levels and equally importantly at sub-national levels. Our conception of Alliance reconfiguration is however not a narrow electoralist one, notwithstanding the importance of building a successful Alliance electoral campaign and platform. Neither is it a tactical manoeuvre. Alliance reconfiguration is a strategic organisational, political, and ideological imperative to rebuild and strengthen our movement to be capable of moving the National Democratic Revolution into a second radical phase of our transition.

When we discussed the important question of state power at our SACP 14th National Congress and the 4th Special National Congress, we agreed that engagements with worker formations, first and foremost with our ally, COSATU, were an apex priority. Why? Unlike other political organisations, the SACP is not a party merely for its members and leaders but a Marxist-Leninist, working-class party. Every step that the SACP takes as a Marxist-Leninist, working-class party must be with and for the workers and poor as a class.

Besides the questions of state power and Alliance reconfiguration, we resolved to build wider worker unity and a popular Left front. These are all interrelated strategic considerations. Those who compartmentalised the state power debate to mean that the SACP will be in competition with COSATU, and the ANC fail to understand the issue of state power correctly. We would like to suggest: Let our first few resuscitated joint political schools deal with this matter.

By the state and state power our understanding correctly includes the question of electoral strategy and tactics, but it goes far beyond that. It includes all the branches of the state and the entire forest of its organisation, establishments, institutions, agencies, and at all spheres, and the legal doctrine that guides them, to mention but a few elements. It is comprehensive on what the state is and where it derives its power. We include in this the many authorities, to name but a few, such as judicial officers, other office bearers in state authority, organs of state supporting our constitutional democracy, and other state officials, officers, the whole army of people who did not stand for elections but are entrusted with and exercise decisive state power.

We cannot overemphasise the importance of building our unity as the socialist axis within our movement and wider working-class unity to drive the National Democratic Revolution towards socialist transition. We need to pursue a strategic framework, not least in the policy space, that accords with our nature and character as the socialist axis. This is what must guide the minute details that we must push.

Among others, we need to bolster our efforts to strengthen our trade union movement in the industrial sectors. At the same time, we need to deepen the hegemony of our trade union movement in public service and administration and grow it further. As the SACP, we need a strong COSATU on all fronts.

But overall, both the SACP and COSATU have a duty to build and defend the unity of the ANC. This must be foremost in our minds as we campaign for an overwhelming ANC electoral victory on 1 November!

On the internationalist front, we call upon COSATU and all other progressive forces to unite to defend the Cuban revolution, which is facing one of its most challenging periods since the victory of that revolution in January 1959. We condemn the continuing criminal embargo by the United States and we call for its immediate lifting. We urge COSATU to join all other forces to provide emergency concrete support to Cuba at this point in time.

Amandla!

http://solidnet.org/article/South-Afric ... Committee/
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Wed Sep 29, 2021 1:28 pm

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Student protest over fee increases. Image credit: “South African student protests and re-emergence of people’s power,” Abahlali baseMjondolo, October 21, 2015.

We Carry a New World in Our Riots
Posted Sep 28, 2021 by Siddiq Khan

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

—D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover


July is mid–winter in the Southern Hemisphere, where Billie Holiday singing “like a summer with a thousand Julys” rings somewhat oddly. Just the same, there was plenty of fire to keep people warm this winter. For more than a week, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal—the two most populous provinces of South Africa that together account for more than half of the country’s GDP—were up in flames. In KwaZulu-Natal alone, more than 200 shopping centers and 100 malls were looted or burned, at least 1,400 ATMs damaged, 300 banks and post offices vandalized, and 11 warehouses, 8 factories, and 90 pharmacies destroyed “beyond revival.” The total tally for both provinces together is considerably higher, with more than 330 dead and upward of 40,000 businesses looted, burned, or vandalized. According to president Cyril Ramaphosa, “there is virtually no part of the economy that has not been affected by the violence.” With police outnumbered and overwhelmed, it took the deployment of 25,000 army troops with machine guns and tanks in the streets to crush the rebellion.

Death Be Not Loud

The particular death you die is not even a death (which is an inferior phenomenon at best) only an insanitary abstraction in the backyard…

– Flann O’Brian, The Third Policeman


Besides around a dozen people apparently trampled to death during the looting, it is almost certain that all those killed during these events were murdered by the state. The fact that hundreds of unarmed civilians were killed within the span of a few days, most likely almost all at the hands of heavily armed police and army units acting in defense of private property rather than human beings, is completely passed over in silence. Other than the above cases, no cause of death has ever been stated in media reports, which themselves merely reproduce police statements without comment. But one look inside reveals an exemplary instance of the reality masked by fraudulent statistics. A recent statement by the landless people’s association Abahlali baseMjondolo reports:

On Thursday last week (29 July), Zamekile Shangase, a 33-year-old woman from Asiyindawo in Lamontville, was shot and killed outside her home by the police. Zamekile was the mother of two children aged 6 and 11. She was elected to a position on the local Abahlali council in 2018 and served on the council for a year. Zamekile was shot while the police were raiding the settlement as part of Operation Show Your Receipt.

This is the second time that the police had come to raid the settlements in this area, and take peoples food. On Thursday they were going door to door, breaking locks, threatening and abusing people, and taking food from people. People got angry and started shouting. Some people started throwing stones at the police and banging on the police van. The police then got angry and started shooting.

A police officer was standing on the road and shooting up the hill into Asiyindawo at random. After Zamekile was shot the police carried on with their operation of seizing people’s food at gunpoint while her body was still lying on the ground.

We were very concerned to read an article in a major news publication in which it was reported that the police were fired on from all directions by criminals armed with bullets stolen in the riots, that they were forced to return fire and that “a 33-year-old woman was killed.” Another article by the same journalist reported that Zamekile was “caught in the crossfire.” This article saw no need to even mention Zamekile’s name.

The police lied to try and cover up the fact that they killed an unarmed person for no reason. There is no doubt that no one fired on the police. If the journalist had not just taken what the police said as the truth and had spoken to the residents of Asiyindawo, residents elsewhere in the nearby Sisonke settlement (formerly Madlala), and residents in the township (Lamontville) who live near Asiyindawo he would have found that they all agree that only the police were shooting.


The deaths are reported like natural disasters, as if the victims were killed in a flood or a hurricane, but anybody with any experience at the sharp end of police action will know without a shadow of a doubt that the police were the most likely involved in the deaths of the 330 unnamed people “killed in the riots.” Even the few who were trampled were likely indirect victims of the state, inasmuch as the stampeding in question was likely a result of violent police action. This is shaping up to be the year with the highest number of civilian fatalities by the state in the history of the country—more than any year during the rebellions of the 1970s and ’80s. Whereas “the official truth masks the truth about officials,” the violence of the neocolonial state is neither new nor exceptional. As I asked in “Another Man Done Gone,” on the death of yet another African migrant at the hands of the police:

More blacks are killed in police custody under democracy than were murdered in the prisons of the apartheid security forces during the States of Emergency of the 70s/80s. How many more never make it to the cells, murdered by the defenders of civilisation in the line of duty? How many do the forces of law and order murder with preventable disease and starvation? How many are forced to die hustling or driven to madness and suicide? How many victims of modern slavery are condemned to a living-death day after day, confined to an existence of planned misery in a coffin of dead-time grown to encompass each waking moment? In what way was Mido Macia’s death exceptional?

The Proletariat as Subject and Misrepresentation

Some women just wanted an end to it all. “It must all do away [sic], you see, Just like this!” Then you say, “but that is difficult. How can you do this?” This is what made women very angry. If you say there is something you cannot do you must say why.

—Gladys Manzi, quoted in Ian Sinclair’s Cato Manor, June 1959


A recent communique by Abahlali baseMjondolo on the riots is worth looking at. With all due respect to my comrades in Abahlali baseMjondolo, the attitude and language reflected in the statement seems to me a simplistic misrepresentation of what is going on. Many of those committed to change in this world often express similar understandings of the “negative” side of social movements, and it is in the interests of greater coherence that I offer my perspectives. In this spirit, some textual examples are in order.

Comparing looters to maggots (which also, not coincidentally, misrepresents the true causes of economic breakdown in Zimbabwe, just as simplistically, and in a similar tone, as those blaming incompetent and lawless “Blacks” invading white farms): “We fear that the economic situation will become like Zimbabwe, and that when the worms have finished eating the carcass they will eat each other.”
Denouncing rebels as short-sighted and self-sabotaging: “What will happen to people’s jobs now that factories and other places of work are being burnt? That is not a revolution. It is destruction that will leave the poor poorer.”
This is precisely the sort of rhetoric and perspective we have seen expressed time and time again by the ruling class and their representatives whenever the oppressed resort to tactics that do not agree with what they think is “productive” and “moral.” We have heard this applied to the landless who occupy land, “service delivery” protesters who blockade roads and attack state infrastructure, and students and workers who sabotage their schools and workplaces. It seems to me completely inconsistent, to put it mildly, for those who engage in, justify, and support such struggles to turn around and condemn participants in the present uprising.

Riots and looting on a comparable scale to what we have just witnessed in South Africa were always part and parcel of the revolutionary liberation movement. The level of social amnesia that has erased this aspect of the movement—which happened to involve some of the most egalitarian and unmediated forms of organization developed during the struggle—is a major obstacle to overcoming some of the limitations decried by this communique. Fragmentation and separation between people engaged in such direct action, those engaged in land occupations, workplace struggles, struggles of youth within and against schools, and rural resistance to imperialist resource extraction has to be superseded even more than it did during the 1980s if basic social change is to stand a chance—and those separations were not as entrenched as they are now. Of course, both the social amnesia and the separations are symptoms of major weakness in current working-class organization. Though voluntaristic exhortations for unity are not fit for the purpose, it does seem to be somewhat overstating the case to say, as Anton Pannekoek did, that “the working class is not weak because it is divided; it is divided because it is weak.” Certainly, a failure even to recognize the fundamental unity between various expressions of class struggle is a contributing factor toward keeping us weak.

Of course, when they say this is not (in itself) a revolution, when they regret the disorganization and limitations demonstrated by those who loot so inelegantly as to stampede one another to death a dozen times, I agree. Then again, even the total overthrow of personnel within a particular government does not in itself constitute a revolution, so long as the underlying social relations that such personnel work to serve and protect is not also overturned and fundamentally transformed.

It is also untrue that the present movement is an unmitigated expression of desperation, disorganization, and selfishness. One example, which I do not believe to be an isolated case, was related to me recently of a woman whose aunt runs a charity in KwaZulu-Natal for children who are abandoned or whose parents simply cannot afford to maintain them. The organization offers child care, education, food, and more. They were quite affected by the looting because they were in the middle of it all, but rebels left their property untouched. The aunt was told to stay indoors and was worried about food supplies for the children and staff. But, as it turned out, looters actually left them a large amount of food after everything calmed down.

My admiration and respect for the comrades in Abahlali baseMjondolo is such that I have no doubt that we share many of the same basic perspectives regarding the struggle for a better world, that their fight is my fight, and that the intentions behind their statements are good. This is why I think it so important for us all to remember that our own struggle was made possible only because our comrades from the past took bold and courageous steps in the fight against their own oppression, the consequences of which produced much immediate suffering, but, in the long term, were vindicated by history. Rather than thoughtless and selfish immediate gratification, their actions constituted a courageous and deliberate sacrifice for the sake of the future.

Following the Vaal Uprising of 1984, for example, when riots and looting during a rent strike left scarcely a single shop or government building standing in the townships of Sharpeville, Sebokeng, Evaton, Boipatong, and Bophelong, Johannes Rantete, a young resident who witnessed the events in his location firsthand, made the following observations in his “The Third Day of September”:

We then entered Zone 7. Here the atmosphere told us that the strikes had not been so serious. We walked for a long distance without seeing any damage. I was really worried by that. It seemed as if, while other zones were protesting, this one had been holding parties and other things. The people here seemed to be cowards. Only some children could be seen in the streets, while their mothers and fathers seemed to have locked themselves in their yards. It was only near the shopping centre that there was any sign of violence, but still at a low profile. The shops and other things had not been burnt as in other zones, but only the administration board office and a petrol station.

Does it mean that they wanted to secure their tomorrow’s needs by leaving out the shops? Were the rent hikes not a burden on their necks too? Are they laughing at the other zones who burnt everything? If they were vexed by the rent hikes they should have done the same as everyone else that Bloody Monday.

Brothers, if the time to fight has come, we ought to fight. There is no need to watch how the other partner is fighting. I don’t support the destruction of shops and offices, as they play a role in my daily existence, but if everything is to be destroyed, then let us destroy and not exempt even a single thing. Let us not lose God’s support by doing injustice; that is, doing harm to some and securing others, whereas they are all on the same elevation of guiltiness. Let us not be like King Saul, who infringed by securing King Hagat whereas ordained to exterminate everything by God.

We are Africans and brothers in love, and ought to share the pains of bitterness and the fruits of joy.


This is not to romanticize such actions. As he pointed out: “The following days were the days of hunger. People have nowhere to get food. They have to travel long distances to the outskirts to seek food and other commodities. Some people even cut pieces of meat from a living cow which escaped. It ran about without some parts.” But if it is true that people will be hungry after the riots, it is also true that they were already hungry before them. Suffering in itself cannot be avoided. What matters is the meaning of this suffering, the meaning we make out of the context in which it is endured. As our history shows us, when that context involves the long-term vision of a quest for a good life filled with love and justice, compassion and camaraderie, the direst of hardships may be stolidly endured.

It is worth noting that in the case of the Vaal rebellion, and during the liberation struggle in general, the burning and looting was a tactical direct action consciously connected to a coordinated movement—in other words, they took place within the context of a self-organized working class acting in defense of its own interests. I would suggest that what is truly regrettable about the present events is not the hardship and destruction they may involve, but precisely this lack of connection to any kind of conscious collective strategy.

All around the world and throughout history, the wretched of the earth have employed burning and looting as key tools in their struggle for liberation. As Vicky Osterweil pointed out in “In Defense of Looting” after the Ferguson uprising,

The civil rights movement was not purely non-violent. Some of its bravest, most inspiring activists worked within the framework of disciplined non-violence. Many of its bravest, most inspiring activists did not. It took months of largely non-violent campaigning in Birmingham, Alabama to force JFK to give his speech calling for a civil rights act. But in the month before he did so, the campaign in Birmingham had become decidedly not-non-violent…it is also the emergent threat of rioting that forced JFK’s hand.… Throughout the civil rights era, massive non-violent civil disobedience campaigns were matched with massive riots. The most famous of these was the Watts rebellion of 1965 but they occurred in dozens of cities across the country. To argue that the movement achieved what it did in spite of rather than as a result of the mixture of not-non-violent and non-violent action is spurious at best.

Calls for caution, denunciations of destruction, lectures in measured tones about the practical impossibility of immediately abolishing a world of slavery, the necessity for patience, discipline, and organization have long served to divide social movements into “responsible” and “irresponsible,” “self-controlled” and “uncontrollable,” “respectable” and “criminal” elements, when the reality has always betrayed an underlying unity.

Regarding the Watts Rebellion of 1965, to take one example, it is worth recalling the words of Guy Debord in “The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy,” who long ago pointed out the intimate relation between looting and the abolition of a world founded of poverty and racism:

The Los Angeles rebellion was a rebellion against the commodity, against the world of the commodity in which worker-consumers are hierarchically subordinated to commodity standards. Like the young delinquents of all the advanced countries, but more radically because they are part of a class without a future, a sector of the proletariat unable to believe in any significant chance of integration or promotion, the Los Angeles blacks take modern capitalist propaganda, its publicity of abundance, literally. They want to possess now all the objects shown and abstractly accessible, because they want to use them. In this way they are challenging their exchange-value, the commodity reality which molds them and marshals them to its own ends, and which has preselected everything. Through theft and gift they rediscover a use that immediately refutes the oppressive rationality of the commodity, revealing its relations and even its production to be arbitrary and unnecessary. The looting of the Watts district was the most direct realization of the distorted principle: “To each according to their false needs”—needs determined and produced by the economic system which the very act of looting rejects. But once the vaunted abundance is taken at face value and directly seized, instead of being eternally pursued in the rat-race of alienated labor and increasing unmet social needs, real desires begin to be expressed in festive celebration, in playful self-assertion, in the potlatch of destruction. People who destroy commodities show their human superiority over commodities. They stop submitting to the arbitrary forms that distortedly reflect their real needs. The flames of Watts consummated the system of consumption. The theft of large refrigerators by people with no electricity, or with their electricity cut off, is the best image of the lie of affluence transformed into a truth in play. Once it is no longer bought, the commodity lies open to criticism and alteration, whatever particular form it may take. Only when it is paid for with money is it respected as an admirable fetish, as a symbol of status within the world of survival.

Looting is a natural response to the unnatural and inhuman society of commodity abundance. It instantly undermines the commodity as such, and it also exposes what the commodity ultimately implies: the army, the police and the other specialized detachments of the state’s monopoly of armed violence. What is a policeman? He is the active servant of the commodity, the man in complete submission to the commodity, whose job is to ensure that a given product of human labor remains a commodity, with the magical property of having to be paid for, instead of becoming a mere refrigerator or rifle—a passive, inanimate object, subject to anyone who comes along to make use of it. In rejecting the humiliation of being subject to police, the blacks are at the same time rejecting the humiliation of being subject to commodities. The Watts youth, having no future in market terms, grasped another quality of the present, and that quality was so incontestable and irresistible that it drew in the whole population—women, children, and even sociologists who happened to be on the scene. Bobbi Hollon, a young black sociologist of the neighborhood, had this to say to the Herald Tribune in October: “Before, people were ashamed to say they came from Watts. They’d mumble it. Now they say it with pride. Boys who used to go around with their shirts open to the waist, and who’d have cut you to pieces in half a second, showed up here every morning at seven o’clock to organize the distribution of food. Of course, it’s no use pretending that food wasn’t looted.… All that Christian blah has been used too long against blacks. These people could loot for ten years and they wouldn’t get back half the money those stores have stolen from them over all these years.… Me, I’m only a little black girl.” Bobbi Hollon, who has sworn never to wash off the blood that splashed on her sandals during the rioting, adds: “Now the whole world is watching Watts.”


Just as the actions carried out by those who see no future for themselves in this world are not themselves deprived of forethought by definition—quite the contrary—so too the actions of those made desperate by the misery of their conditions are not themselves miserable by definition, again, quite the contrary. This was depicted graphically by Thomas Pynchon in a first-hand report on the subject, “A Journey into The Mind of Watts”: “Others remember it in terms of music; through much of the rioting seemed to run, they say, a remarkable empathy, or whatever it is that jazz musicians feel on certain nights; everybody knowing what to do and when to do it without needing a word or a signal: ‘You could go up to anybody, the cats could be in the middle of burning down a store or something, but they’d tell you, explain very calm, just what they were doing, what they were going to do next. And that’s what they’d do; man, nobody has to give orders.’” There is evidence to suggest that this element of creativity and play, always suppressed by the dominant representations of such events, was not absent in the recent riots, which were, according to an editorial in New Frame, “initially marked by a carnival atmosphere in some places.”

The Third Force or the Third Policeman?

He said it was again the beginning of the unfinished, the re-discovery of the familiar, the re-experience of the already suffered, the fresh-forgetting of the unremembered. Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular and by nature it is interminable, repetitive and very nearly unbearable.

—Flann O’Brian, The Third Policeman


As fair Aurora flares forth her heavenly countenance in the East, gladdening the eye with a thousand bejeweled sparklings upon the dew-dimpled bonnets of parked cars, delighting the ear with the mellifluous hubbub of garbage trucks making their morning rounds; as stalwart Gaia (she whose self-centered and revolutionary whirl about her own axis blesses us with the eternal dance of night and day) spins tirelessly in her ceaseless cosmic gyre; so too we mortals of the lower classes, whenever rising impudently above the station assigned to us, find ourselves involved in a perpetual cycle (of venerable antiquity, albeit of questionable repute) of condemnation and condescension. Time and time again—in saecula saeculorum—we are imputed to play the roles of mere mindless puppets manipulated by higher powers conspiring for their own sinister purposes.

Unsurprisingly, the dreaded third force that, according to the apartheid authorities, stood behind the revolutionary movement during the 1970s and ’80s, the criminal elements and outside agitators, who the African National Congress are constantly blaming for all forms of social contestation since 1994, has been trotted out again to explain the recent unrest. This time, there was a better excuse than ususal for raising the old bogeyman, as the first actions were indeed carried out in response to the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma. However, the intensity and extent of the rebellion belies so convenient a scapegoat. As anybody who has paid any attention to South African society could plainly see, and as Abahlali baseMjondolo state in their communique, “the riots that have been happening have nothing to do with Zuma. Poverty and hunger were a bomb and the break down in order caused by Zuma’s people lit the fuse. Everywhere people who started taking food from the shops said that they are starving and have nothing to do with Zuma and are not doing anything for him. Migrants were also taking food. Everyone who lives in South Africa was taking food because the issue was hunger and poverty.” Yet, it is not merely the willfully ignorant authorities and the comfortable classes who repeat such baneful accusations. Many well-meaning leftists, despite the salutary influence of Rosa Luxemburg and Mikhail Bakunin, have never been able to square the spontaneous self-activity of the working class—especially when it takes on a particularly exuberant and ferocious character—with their own notions of organization, counter-power, and class consciousness.

So it is that we find the likes of anarchist Shawn Hattingh, who argues that “the link between the spate of large scale looting that took place and two very obvious conflicting ruling class power bases that currently exist in the country is undeniable. To claim that there was an exercising of working class power is to fundamentally misunderstand the powers at play and where the locus of power at this point in history actually lies.” To claim that sabotage and expropriation are not exercises of working-class power is fundamentally to misunderstand the nature of power altogether, as well as the historical role that such tactics have played within countless contexts. Richard Pithouse, a longtime close associate of Abahlali, wrote in New Frame that “there is an ongoing, well-organised, widespread and strategically sophisticated attack on infrastructure. Cellphone towers, electricity substations, reservoirs, trucks, malls, warehouses, fuel storage facilities, factories and more have been and are being destroyed with impunity. These kinds of attacks are not at all typical of spontaneous riots. They are more typical of a well-organised coup attempt, or a civil war.” On the contrary, the history of South Africa is full of spontaneous uprisings that strategically targeted infrastructure. The Vaal Uprising, for one, systematically targeted post offices, petrol stations, malls, and government buildings of all kinds. During the riots of 1959 in Cato Manor, Durban, most municipal buildings were torched, as were all shops rented out to traders by the state, as well as welfare organizations (associated with “white officialdom”) and municipal vehicles. In a scene laden with poetic meaning, Gladys Manzi remembers:

This bus with a radio inside. I still remember the song from…the radio there. Ngagula, ngalala phansi, bajabula bonke sengilele phansi [I am sick, I am lying down; as I lay down dying they are all happy] and the bus was actually lying down on its side in flames.

Those who, like the women of Cato Manor and the people of Watts, acted to put an immediate end to it all have never received more than condescending and pious sermons as to why it cannot be done, because there is no explanation, other than the failure of most comrades to join them.

A Farewell to Harms

My mom worked in this building [Government of Tuzla Canton, abalaze]. There I learned to type on a machine during the war, it was in ’92. When the building was on fire I told her, “Mom, that is where you worked all these years!” She told me, “Oh, fuck this building, let it burn. Burn them all! Why have emotions for a building. These workers built it, they burnt it, they will build it again. The building is not important. What is important is that they have nothing to eat. They should have set it on fire 15 years ago, and with it all of them.”

—Participant in the Bosnia-Herzegovina rebellion, March 2014


The power of the dispossessed to destroy, of course, is only the shadow side of an even greater power to create: a power that is however hijacked, held hostage, imprisoned, enslaved, sabotaged, destroyed, suppressed by today’s dominant social relations. In order to liberate these creative powers, the barriers to their flourishing must be removed—a demolition job that inevitably results in heaps of messy ruins.

Since I have been living as an immigrant farmworker in Spain for the last several years, it might not be amiss to quote one of the most celebrated speeches by one of our most celebrated late comrades, who, in response to a journalist pointing out, during the Spanish Civil War, that even if he and his comrades win, they would still “be sitting on a pile of ruins,” replied:

We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a while. For, you must not forget, we also know how to build. It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities, here in Spain and in America, and everywhere.

We, the workers, can build others to take their place, and better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth, there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world, here, in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.


As the sentiments expressed by the impassioned Bosnian mother make plain, all around the world, ordinary people continue to carry that new world in our hearts, just as our predecessors did in theirs. If nowadays it can often seem difficult to discern any trace of it growing within the shadow of death cast so deeply by the old world as it rolls darkly toward its ruin, we might take heart by the knowledge that, for those who listen carefully, even ruins speak eloquently.

https://mronline.org/2021/09/28/we-carr ... our-riots/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Thu Sep 30, 2021 1:41 pm

20 Years After Durban: Africans and Afro-Descendants Colonized or Emancipated?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on SEPTEMBER 29, 2021
Mireille Fanon Mendes France

Image

The 20th anniversary of the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) is an opportunity to analyze the state of African descended people. Reparations for centuries of crimes against humanity must still be paid.

At the end of the Durban -2001- conference, the international community, many NGOs, social movements and members of what it is agreed, in the UN corridors, to call “civil society”, subscribed to the terms of the Durban Declaration and its Program of Action, even if some Western States had left the conference with a crash after having shamefully exploited the supposed anti-Semitism of all the participants. Anti-Semitism coming to deliver, at the right time, the colonial States which refused to discuss further the question of Reparations carried by a number of African States and which should have made it possible to close the sequence concerning the impunity enjoyed by all those who committed or allowed to be committed, in the name of Modernity and white supremacy, crimes against humanity and genocide.

The coloniality of power was then expressed in its most infamous aspects to muzzle a voice that had finally understood that after 3 decades against racism; it also had to perpetuate the invisibilization and to silence the victims of negrophobia and Islamophobia, or at least leave them a word circumscribed by the perimeter of human rights as thought by this coloniality of power which defines that of Beings. Not content with having more or less successful in their attempt, these same States, on the pretext Durban 2001, its Declaration and Program of action is a toxic process, as one State representative said during the open dialogue on the International Forum for Person of African descent, reiterate their opposition to the 20th anniversary of the Durban Conference which was celebrated at the United Nations General Assembly September, 22.

It is indeed a question of reparations linked to the transatlantic slave trade, to enslavement, colonization and colonialism which followed the human catastrophe both on the metaphysical and demographic level inaugurated by the Discoveries.

We are talking about an action that has moved, for more than 4 centuries, more than 12 million people and has been played on 4 continents. Colonial action which ensured the perpetuation of the euro-centered model which concluded in the supremacy of white bodies over Black and Arab bodies; who sold and enslaved the black bodies, considered as movables, because of the color of their skin and the natives bodies for their supposed lack of soul.

This process deeply structured the predatory capitalist system by allowing it to enrich itself on the unlimited exploitation of millions and millions of people deprived of their humanity and their dignity, but also on the theft of land and looting. of the natural resources of the Americas and the Caribbean which have allowed “the well-being and progress of Europe (…) built with the sweat and the corpses of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and Yellows. We decide not to forget it [1] “.

These crimes continue to be the hallmark of the majority of former colonizing and slave states; it doesn’t matter if some people say otherwise, apologize or affirm to be willing to return some stolen art. The way in which migrants are treated marks the permanence of the elements of the colonial power that governed the white power in its decision to prioritize humanity; the way in which migrants are treated marks the permanence of the elements of the colonial power that governed the white power in its decision to hierarchize humanity; migrants have become the new slaves whose lives are drowning in the Mediterranean under the fearless gaze of many European leaders.

Without a process of political and collective reparations, neither will the creative and dynamic energy of violated cultures that do not respond to the injunctions of the white world be restored nor will the sense of otherness and intersubjectivity, which humanity is sorely lacking, be reintroduced.

All these states and those who have helped them, from near or far, are responsible for racism in all its forms, and particularly for negrophobia built on the basis of the race policy put in place in 1492, with the aim of to prioritize humanity.

This is, in a way, what was affirmed in the Durban Declaration “if racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance are not fought by everyone, in particular the authorities. public and politicians at all levels, their perpetuation is encouraged[2] . How then to continue to pose as paragons of democracy and defenders of human rights without ever questioning the coloniality of power which maintains the “racialisés”, the precarious and especially the racialized in a zone of Non-Beings?

Since the Durban International Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance[3] , the situation of Africans and Afro-descendants around the world has not improved. Easy target of a system which does not hesitate to make enemies from within when it feels threatened, which finds nothing better than to criminalize vulnerable populations when it has to prove its investment in the fight against terrorism whose emergence it facilitated, Afro descendants and Africans are the first to pay the high price for the economic, social, security and migration policies of former colonizing and slave countries.

In Brazil or in the United States, every day a young black is killed; in Colombia, the forces of repression and the paramilitaries who assist them use excessive force (forced displacement, disappearance, harassment, torture, murder, etc.); these methods used during the civil war were used, even after the signing of the peace agreements, during the general strike of 2021 with Afro Colombians as main victims; and Europe is not to be outdone: the death of a young black or Arab is justified by self-defense.

In all of these countries, law enforcement forces enjoy impunity in the name of repressive and warlike rhetoric of law and order. All these dominating states exercise their coloniality of power without any state of mind and intend to pursue this path to ensure the power of white supremacy over the whole world, in the name of a carnivorous democracy of which they themselves have defined the contours.

Within the framework of the UN and its many agencies, states can impose their law and order on the pretext that they participate in its financing[4] . We are in a system where the between oneself is flourishing; functioning as a private enterprise, states act as a board of directors and UN staff become employees of this system which primarily defends the interests of imperialist and colonial states and not those of the People of Nations and even less those concerning the right of peoples to sovereignty and self-determination.

Without forgetting that within the United Nations itself, this institution is not left out when it comes to manifestations of structural racism that hit African and Afro-descendant officer; their progression, with the same diploma and qualification, is far from being the same. So much so that in 2020, the study carried out by the United Nations People of African Descent[5] revealed that 52% of the 2,857 people questioned admitted to having been targeted for racism in their working relationships.

The balance of power is the only rule and what is happening at the level of the Security Council is flagrant and shameful proof of this. It suffices to analyze the situation of Palestine, in terms of international law and international humanitarian law, to understand the structural impasse facing this country devastated by occupation and illegal Israeli colonization and abandoned by an international community cowardly, only concerned about its small interests and Mafia arrangements between friends.

In such a context, 20 years after Durban, what can Africans and Afro descendants expect? They were promised emancipation from the coloniality of their Being, they were promised the end of racism. 3 decades against racism later, where are we?

The UN, as usual, has masked its incompetence, muzzled by an international community that handles paradox as others handle lies, while lauding the many programs decided to fight against negrophobia. Between 2002 and 2021, there are no less than 8[6] . What to think of all these initiatives that have accelerated since the assassination of George Floyd? However positive they may be, their mandate, from one mechanism to another, is repeated more or less. In many of them and in the mandates of the different mechanisms, words such inclusion, living together, respect, equality, recognition, diversity, improvement, good practices … Is it enough to pronounce them, like mantras, to change the reality of victims of structural racism? For more than 20 years, these words have not changed or even helped to change the situation of people of African descent, yetthe international community is raving about it.

And Africans and People of African Descent continue to suffocate!

The UN, with the objective of satisfying its donors, achieves the feat of never questioning the fundamental reasons for this structural racism; they are either circumvented or at best approached lip service or quite simply ignored. It is well mentioned “to study the problems of racial discrimination encountered by the PADs[7] “, but the result of these studies is far from being taken into account because it effectively questions the responsibility “(of) the public authorities and politicians to all levels, which, by failing to meet their international obligations, encourage the perpetuation of racism[8] .

Listen to the victims of racism in general, yes, while energetically refusing to think about the nature of the deadly relationship that there is between “race, capital and class” and which not only questions the relationship to the world of an organism such as the UN but also the place of the Human in a world governed by the financialization of life and profit for the benefit of a few. The hold-up of humanity, inaugurated with the establishment of the race policy, has never ceased; it just put on new clothes drawn by human rights, democracy and many other terms that the liberal and imperial capitalist system praises to clear its conscience.

So, one of the terms that this system is throwing around is “recognition”. It carries with it as many paradoxes as both the UN and members of the international community carry when they affirm to be ready to end racism.

Antonio Guterres, during the International Day for People of African Descent, has he not once again referred to this by saying that “This is a long overdue recognition of the deep injustices and the systemic discrimination that people of African descent have endured for centuries and continue to face today[9] “.

But is it the State that will recognize the victims of structural racism while it is this same State that fabricates structural racism? What is the nature of this recognition which carries with its vulnerability, weakness, so that we can cease to be recognized?

Are we not once again facing a paradoxical injunction by addressing this institution in the hope that it will find a solution to what it has created itself? The dominant state, as an overarching institution, admits only asymmetry; therefore, recognition will only take place according to its terms and in particular from a posture of generosity which in return awaits the ‘recognized’ person deserving to leave the zone of Non-Being to which it is assigned.

Faced with racial violence, with institutional impunity, the black body, inhabited by the quest for his dignity, allows himself to come out of his assignment and to question the Unworthy; therefore Dignity speaks of the conditions in which the oppressed will engage, carried by the need to extract himself from the unworthy conditions imposed on him, he does not forget that the black body is part of a relationship to the world particular which cannot be obstructed as certain Human Rights defenders would like.

Structural racism also occupied a leading position by invading all areas of our societies. Black Lives Matter’s slogan “I can” breathe” becomes the cry of revolt of all those to whom the speech is stolen from the predatory, racist and domineering system.

Afro-descendants and Africans want their dignity to be expressed through justice that corrects historic crimes, through land reform recognizing both customary law and the right to land, as recognized in ILO Convention 169; what had been achieved by all those who, since Durban and even before, demand that a process of collective and political reparations be taken in charge by the former slave and colonizing states.

The heads of State gathered at the first Africa/Caribbean Forum[10] raised these concerns; they are aware, by experience, that the coloniality of white power uses oppression and submission so as not to lose hand on stolen lands and on natural resources and so that the euro-centric philosophy of human rights put in place by white thought is never challenged .

The fight against racializing racism does not depend on recognition or moral anti-racism, nor on representation in certain elective bodies or in certain positions, or in the media where many black bodies have appeared as a result of the death of George Floyd; it depends, on the one hand, on a commitment to political anti-racism in which the coloniality of power is denounced by all the victims of racial and colonial policies, and on the other hand, within the framework of the UN, on a geopolitical and geostrategic rebalancing of the forces present which will allow Africa, among other things, to emerge from the colonial “dark night[11] ” imposed by the former colonizing States, by the development banks and other international financial institutions, with the help of certain African presidents, fervent friends of Euro-centric Modernity.

This emancipation of Africa will pave the way for that of Afro-descendants and Africans in the diaspora, who must therefore work to put in perspective a balance of power in order to weigh on the former colonizing States for force them to reverse the nature of their coloniality of power in all international relations and with respect to all “racialisés[12] ” and racialized people.

The fight against structural racism calls for both demand and resistance both from Afro-descendants and Africans as well as from social and support movements to oppose the financialization of bodies and international relations and to stand up against the White supremacy.

20 years later, dignity is still to be won, but neither it is given nor it is decreed.

It has to be conquered as part of a decolonial political project drawn up by the first concerned with the support of their friends.

It remains the future of the African continent, of Africans and Afro-descendants of the diaspora, in South America, in the Caribbean who will have to lead the mobilization in order to force the dominant States to activate the international legal structures so that the crimes committed, between 1492 and the end of the Independence, are legitimately and collectively judged. The only possibility for all those who have been deprived of the fulfillment of their Being by their dignity to resume their place in a decolonial humanity no longer seeking “to contribute to the devaluation of human reality[13] “

Notes:

[1] Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the earth,1961; Editions Maspero

[2] First Chapter; Deeclaration; Page 4, https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UND ... penElement

[3] From august 31 to september 8/2001

[4] https://www.jeuneafrique.com/1106839/po ... d-malaise/

[5] https://unric.org/fr/de-hauts-fonctionn ... eneralise/

[6] • 2002: IGWG, Intergovernmental Working Group on the follow-up to the Durban Declaration; This Working Group, one of the 3 mechanisms ensuring the follow-up to the Declaration and Program of Action of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, was created in implementation of resolution 2002/68 of the Commission on Human Rights and approved by the Economic and Social Council in its decision 2002/270 of 25 July 2002. Its mandate aims, inter alia, to make recommendations for the effective implementation of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action; https://www.ohchr.org/FR/Issues/Racism/ ... Index.aspx

• 2002: Panel of Eminent Independent Experts on the Implementation of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Racism/ ... perts.aspx

• 2002: Expert Working Group on the Situation of People of African Descent, WGEPAD established by the Human Rights Council as a special procedure whose mandate is renewed every 3 years; https://www.ohchr.org/FR/Issues/Racism/ ... Index.aspx

• 2011: International Year of PADs; https://www.un.org/fr/observances/international-years

• 2015-2024: International Decade for People of African Descent -IDPAD-; 6 years later, few states have inaugurated it; many of them ignored it on the pretext that there is no racism; thus of France which refuses to recognize the colonial situation lived by the Afro-descendants in the colonies of its Republic; the program of activities is far from being followed since, more than halfway through the decade, only activities put in place by the organizations for the defense of PADs have been listed; some texts of a very general nature on the identity of the Recognition, Development, Justice decade. No reflection on structural racism and / or on the coloniality of power ensuring its sustainability. https://www.un.org/fr/observances/decad ... an-descent

• 2018, in December, the General Assembly decides to “create a permanent forum for people of African descent; it will not be implemented until 3 years later

• 2021, following the report of the High Commissioner on Racial Justice and Equality, it was decided to set up a mechanism to study systemic racism, police violence and violence against peaceful protests. We can see with this title the generalizing nature of the problem! Where has the question of structural racism gone?

• 2021 Establishment of the International Forum for PADs, part of the Decade Program of Activities

• 2021; September 1, launch of International PAD Day

[7] WGEPAD mandate

[8] See note 2

[9] https://news.un.org/fr/story/2021/08/1102812

[10] 7/09/2021; https://la1ere.francetvinfo.fr/martiniq ... 98535.html

[11] Expression borrowed from Achille Mbembe; Out of the dark night; Columbia University press, 2021

[12] In English does not seem to point out the difference between ‘racialisés’, a generic term for all forms of racism and racialized, a term specifying that it is, in this case, only race.

[13] Frantz Fanon, The colonized in question The North African syndrome, part 1; For the African revolution; Political writings; Maspero Editions

Mireille Fanon Mendes France is President of the Frantz Fanon Foundation

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/09/ ... ancipated/

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Where Flowers Find no Peace Enough to Grow
September 30, 2021
By Vijay Prashad – Sep 24, 2021

On 13 July 2021, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted a landmark resolution on the prevalence of racism and for the creation of an independent mechanism made up of three experts to investigate the root cause of deeply embedded racism and intolerance. The Group of African States pushed for this resolution, which had emerged out of global anger over the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police on 25 May 2020. The discussions in the UNHRC considered the problems of police brutality and went back to the formation of our modern system in the crucible of slavery and colonialism. A number of Western countries–such as the United States and the United Kingdom–hesitated over both the assessment of the past and the question of reparations; these governments were able to remove the requirement to investigate systematic racism in U.S. law enforcement.
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Cyprian Mpho Shilakoe (South Africa), Let’s Wait Until They Come, 1970.
Recognition of the enormity of the cost of enslavement and colonialism is a basic demand of the majority of the world’s population. Calculations of these costs range from $777 trillion for the trans-Atlantic slave trade to $45 trillion for British colonialism in India; these are partial, but still formidable, calculations. The total cost of the 191,900 tonnes of gold ever mined at the current cost of $46.5 million per ton is merely $9 trillion–far less than the total bill for enslavement and colonialism. No wonder that few governments are willing to entertain the question of reparations for the survivors of enslavement and colonialism. Yet, too often concealed from any meaningful discussion on reparations is the fact that colonial regimes were paid massive sums to compensate the loss of their source of income. The French owners of enslaved people in Haiti collected an estimated $28 billion from the revolutionary Haitian government, a sum that was not paid off till 1947, to compensate them for the property – namely human beings – that was reclaimed during the Revolution. Similarly, Britain paid off the English owners of human beings enormous sums of money following the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act; according to the Treasury, the completion of these payments by British taxpayers was made in 2015.

The denial of humanity to more than half the world’s population remains part of the broad framework of our world system. Even now, in 2021, the life of an Afghan civilian is made to be so much less than the life of a U.S. soldier. When 20,000 or more people died because a US-owned factory exploded in Bhopal (India) in 1984, H. Michael Utidjian, the medical director for American Cyanamid, expressed grief but asked that it be put into context. What is the context? ‘Indians’, he said, do not have the ‘North American philosophy of the importance of human life’. To Utidjian and so many others, their lives are disposable, as disposable as the lives of the 1.6 million Africans who die annually of preventable lower respiratory tract illnesses and diarrhoea.

Almost all of the deaths by diarrhoea are caused by poor hygiene and sanitation as well as unsafe water, problems that can be fixed by producing better infrastructure. Six populous countries–Congo, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Zambia–spend more to service their debt than on health and education combined. This is yet more hideous evidence of the disregard for people who fought to end colonialism but who remain seen by the powerful–despite their surface liberalism–as lesser and weaker.
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| The site where the Njwaxa Leatherwork Factory was once located in Njwaxa village near Middledrift in the Eastern Cape Steve Biko Foundation | MR Online
The site where the Njwaxa Leatherwork Factory was once located in Njwaxa village near Middledrift in the Eastern Cape (Steve Biko Foundation).
One of the reasons why the Johannesburg (South Africa) office of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research has spent considerable energy excavating the histories of struggle is to put on the record the Black-led struggle for freedom in southern Africa. They have gone back in time to the tell us about the history of the Industrial & Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) from 1919 to 1931, the ancestor of the modern trade union movement in South Africa (dossier no. 20, September 2019). They have told us about the development of contemporary South African politics (dossier no. 31, August 2020) and about the contemporary shack dwellers movement–Abahlali baseMjondolo–and its grip on the imagination of the country’s poor (dossier no. 11, December 2018). These have been accompanied by dossiers on the impact of powerful social theorists of African insurgencies and pedagogies of the poor offered through the work of Frantz Fanon (dossier no. 26, March 2020) and Paulo Freire (dossier no. 34, November 2020), whose centenary we celebrate this year. Each of these texts are working to build an archive of Black struggle against regimes of disparagement.

Dossier no. 44 (September 2021) is called Black Community Programmes: The Practical Manifestations of Black Consciousness Philosophy. These Black Community Programmes (BCP) ran from 1972 to 1977, each one founded and led by Black South Africans, each one developed to advance the cause of the Black community, and each one shut down by the apartheid regime. The BCP included projects of community welfare, Black art, Black theology, and decolonised education. A key area of the BCP was to develop the consciously neglected health of Black South Africans. Projects such as the Zanempilo Community Health Centre (Eastern Cape) and Solempilo (Durban, KZN) carried the objectives reflected in their names: zanempilo meaning ‘the one bringing health’ and solempilo meaning ‘eye of health’. Both were shut down by the apartheid regime when it banned all Black Consciousness groups in October 1977.
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Steve Biko (fourth from the right, wearing a cap) at the University of Natal Medical School Non-European Section in Durban, 5 April 1969 (Lindiwe Edith Gumede Baloyi).
The BCP emerged out of the context of intense popular resistance to the racist apartheid regime in South Africa, resistance that was not demoralised by the banning of the African National Congress and the Pan-Africanist Congress, but which thundered into the formation of the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO) in 1968. SASO was led by Steve Biko (1946-1977), who shaped the philosophy of Black Consciousness and who was murdered in the brutal cells of the racist government. Biko’s ideas of Black Consciousness were capacious. He had a deep sense that Black dignity had to be affirmed and that Black leadership had to be developed in order for a true future equality to be established. Black South Africans did not want freedom to be gifted to them; they had to seize it, nurture it, and build it further.

Biko defined Black Consciousness precisely as an ideology that:

seeks to give positivity in the outlook of the black people to their problems. It works on the knowledge that ‘white hatred’ is negative, though understandable, and leads to precipitate and shot-gun methods which may be disastrous for black and white [people] alike. It seeks to channel the pent-up forces of the angry black masses to meaningful and directional opposition basing its entire struggle on realities of the situation. It wants to ensure a singularity of purpose in the minds of the black people and to make possible total involvement of the masses in a struggle essentially theirs.
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Charlotte Maxeke Street (formerly Beatrice Street) in Durban, 2021 (Nomfundo Xolo).
This is neither Afro-pessimism nor futile despair for people of African descent, nor is it a declaration of Black separatism. Rather, this is the most profound synthesis of a politics of human dignity and a politics of socialism.

In 2006, journalist Niren Tolsi spoke to the poet Mafika Pascal Gwala (1946-2014) and asked him about the meaning of Black Consciousness in his life. ‘We didn’t take Black Consciousness as a kind of Bible’, Gwala said to Tolsi. ‘It was just a trend, which was a necessary one because it meant bringing in what the white opposition [to apartheid] couldn’t bring into the struggle. So much was brought into the struggle through Black Consciousness’. The Black Consciousness movement–alongside South African Communism (as documented in Tom Lodge’s monumental new book Red Road to Freedom, 2021) and the trade union movement that emerged from the Durban strikes in 1973–certainly brought the masses into the anti-apartheid struggle in a way that the white opposition could not; but it also brought in the sensibility of worth, of being worthy of human life, of making the struggle for freedom something precise and worthwhile for the dignity of existence rather than an abstraction.

That search for dignity defines the poetry of Gwala, whose Soweto poems sizzle with the desire for freedom:

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Our history will be written
at the factory gates
at the unemployment offices
in the scorched queues of
dying mouths

Our history shall be our joys
our sorrows
our anguish
scrawled in dirty Third Class toilets

Our history will be the distorted figures
and bitter slogans
decorating our ghetto walls
where flowers find no peace enough to grow.



Featured image: Milwa Mnyaluza ‘George’ Pemba (South Africa), New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, 1977.

(MRonline)

https://orinocotribune.com/where-flower ... h-to-grow/

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Ethiopian Mystery: The Case of the 428 Disappearing Food Aid Trucks
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 29 Sep 2021

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For nearly a year, warmonger and USAID administrator Samantha Power has been shrieking about famine in Ethiopia's Tigray, and demanding the humanitarian corridor that 428 massive food aid trucks have now mysteriously disappeared into.

Since July 12, the UN World Food Program (UNWFP) has sent 466 food aid trucks into Ethiopia’s war torn Tigray region, but only 38 have returned. That’s 428 missing or stranded trucks, and these aren’t pickups. They’re massive six-wheelers and more, usually pulling more massive cargo loads behind. They’re not cheap. Whether they’re owned by the UNWFP or private contractors, that’s a lot of pricey trucks.

The BBC reports, “We've asked the UN where the trucks are, but they haven't yet been able to provide clarification.”

Really? There’s no satellite intelligence that could spot more than 400 massive trucks on the ground even though it can spot every house on every block in the world these days? There are no truck drivers with satellite phones to stay in touch with the UNWFP, even if Tigray’s communications infrastructure is down? The UNWFP can afford to lose hundreds of these trucks, but can’t afford sat phones for the drivers?

Or are the trucks underground, and if so, why?

Are they perhaps full of Tigrayan Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF) troops and ammunition on their way to and from the war’s front lines? There’s no hard evidence of that, but it’s a theory as good as any the BBC is floating. And the BBC does, at least briefly, quote the Ethiopian government saying that fuel shortages are not the problem, and suggesting that the trucks may have been seized by the TPLF.

Of the 38 trucks that returned, all returned before September 16, meaning 279 trucks were missing at that time. Nevertheless, the UNWFP sent another 149 trucks last week, the third week of September. Why? Because the situation is so desperate that they disregarded hundreds of massive missing trucks? Unlikely. But none of the 149 have returned.

Does the UNWFP have so many massive trucks that they needn’t worry about hundreds getting lost? And so many truck drivers who don’t fear driving into a black hole?

Once again according to the BBC:

“Tigrayan forces fighting the Ethiopian government and its allies have laid the blame at the door of the Ethiopian government. ‘The truck drivers are provided with fuel that's only [enough] for a one-way trip to Tigray. They are not provided [with] reserve fuel [to return] that is customary on such trips,’ the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) said in a statement.”

If that were true, how could the UNWFP send 466 massive aid trucks into Tigray without knowing that all but 38 lacked the fuel to return? Why would they send another 149 trucks without a refueling plan if hundreds had indeed lacked the fuel to return?

And again, what about the truck drivers? Would all but 38 of 466 drive into Tigray knowing that they lacked the fuel to return? Never fear, the BBC has another possible answer:

“It [the TPLF] also says truck drivers—many of them ethnic Tigrayans—complain of violence and intimidation during inspections at checkpoints manned by the Ethiopian military and local security officials outside Tigray. It says they are not willing to go through these again to make the return journey.

“There are also restrictions on the amount of cash that can be carried, and with banking services suspended inside Tigray, there is no money available for them when they arrive.”


Well, again, if any of this were true, why did the UNWFP send another 149 trucks in during the third week of September? Why had they continued to send hundreds of trucks between July 12 and September 16 if only 38 had returned?

The BBC assigned “BBC Reality Check” staffers to investigate the case of the missing trucks, so why haven’t they asked these questions?

Why do the missing trucks matter?

For one, no individual or institution should ever give the donor-dependent UNWFP another dime if they’ve lost track of more than 400 massive aid trucks in Tigray or anywhere else, or if they were stupid or devious enough to keep sending hundreds of trucks when only 38 had returned. The US, UK, and Germany fund the majority of the UNWFP budget, with more contributions coming from individuals and corporations. Are any of them asking questions, and if not, why not?

For two, the near starvation of the Tigrayan people has been the rallying cry of USAID Chief Samantha Power, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and the rest of the humanitarian interventionist gang in the US and EU and their stenographic press. If they’re really so distraught, can’t they find a way to make sure these food aid trucks return for more? They have a lot of sway with the TPLF, their former puppets, who control the trucks’ destination, Tigray.

For three, can’t the UNWFP and/or donor nations make sure that the truck drivers have satellite phones so the UNWFP and the rest of us can at least know where they’ve gone and why they haven’t returned? Their safety would seem to be a concern for both the UNWFP and its donors.

For four, was the food distributed to its intended recipients in Tigray before 428 of 466 trucks disappeared? Or did it disappear with the trucks?

https://www.blackagendareport.com/ethio ... aid-trucks
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Mon Oct 04, 2021 1:37 pm

Ghana’s Socialist Movement: A Revolutionary Experiment in Communication
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on OCTOBER 1, 2021
Phillyp Mikell

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Congress of the Ghana Socialist Forum, which approved the transformation of the Forum into the Ghana Socialist Movement. Photo: Facebook of the SMG

The organization built an enormous apparatus for the dissemination of socialist thought for ideological dispute and found in mass communication the key to organizing the working class


Between July 31 and August 1, the Congress of the Socialist Forum of Ghana (SFG) took place in Ghana, a West African country on the Gulf of Guinea. At this Congress, the transformation of the SFG into the Socialist Movement of Ghana (SMG) was unanimously approved, and this change represents a milestone in the struggle and organization of Ghanaian workers.

The SFG was born in 1993, first as a Marxist study group, at the beginning this group was made up of four people, today there are more than three thousand members organized in 25 collectives throughout the country. For comrade Kwesi Pratt Jr., General Secretary of the SMG, the transition from Forum to Movement was important to advance the organization of the working class in a perspective of radical transformation of society:

“(…) It is important to recognize that in the beginning, with four members, our ambitions were very limited, now we have big ambitions, we see ourselves as a group to mobilize the working people to transform society, to smash the capitalist system and to build socialism.”

Participating in the Congress were the Communist Party of Cuba, the Party of Revolutionary Socialist Workers of South Africa, the Simon Bolivar Institute of Venezuela, the Palestine Liberation Organization, Pan African Today and the MST, among others.

For comrade Fábio Andrey, MST representative at the Congress, the transition from the Ghana Socialist Forum to the Movement represented a strategic advance in popular organization, since “the movement is an organization of greater autonomy, that people will be organized in this movement […]. There is a strategic definition that unifies all the militancy in the Movement and in this way it facilitates tactical actions to consolidate with a very well defined strategy […], The second thing is that it (the Movement) makes a clear option to be close to the bases, to the people of Ghana, and in this way it builds relationships in this exchange with the people who are in the periphery and who are disowned by the power of the state. So when they make the option to become a movement, they make a commitment to work close to the base.

Theory in motion: the centrality in the struggle of ideas

During the 29 years of its existence, the now SMG, has built a great reference in Africa with regard to political training through the study of Marxist theory, but also and above all in the ideological dispute of Ghanaian society as the centre of revolutionary strategy.

The understanding that the organization of the working class necessarily passes through the dispute of the hearts and minds of the working people is a maxim of global Marxist thought, but the practical implementation of this principle finds other dimensions on the African continent.

According to the Marxist intellectual Amílcar Cabral, the main leader of the struggle for the independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, one of the central tasks of the struggle against colonialism would be the “reconstruction of the historical personality” of the African peoples. For Amílcar:

“The ideological deficiency, not to say total lack of ideology, on the part of national liberation movements – which has its basic justification in ignorance of the historical reality that these movements aim to transform – constitute one of the greatest, if not the greatest weakness in our struggle against imperialism.”

In Ghana, the SMG has become entrenched in the struggle for mass communication and has built an enormous apparatus for the dissemination of socialist thought for ideological dispute. The Movement has a space dedicated to the promotion of culture and popular formation, the Freedom Centre. The space is the SMG’s headquarters in Accra, the country’s capital, where there is a library that makes available classics of Marxist and Pan-Africanist thought.

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SMG has built a great reference in Africa in the political formation and ideological dispute of Ghanaian society as the center of revolutionary strategy. Participants of the Ghana Socialist Forum Congress. Photo: Facebook of the SMG

The Movement also has Freedom Bookshop, through which it publishes classics of Pan-Africanist thought, as well as books and pamphlets authored by its militants. Currently, the printing of material also includes various progressive organizations in West Africa and other parts of the world, such as the partnership with the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research.

The Legacy Project is an effort by the Movement to print and distribute the entire work of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s principal Pan-Africanist and Marxist leader of independence. This project has reached out to public schools, universities, and various state institutions, such as the Armed Forces and the Judiciary.

Popular Education is also present in the Movement’s arsenal for grassroots training, the School, which not coincidentally is called Amílcar Cabral, focuses on “providing relevant tools for Marxist analysis of society, to spread the ideals of Pan-Africanism, and to facilitate meaningful interactions of progressive activists across Africa and beyond. The Amílcar Cabral school has trained more than 500 cadres from various parts of the world. (SMG, National Delegates Congress. Final Report)

The SMG also offers technical, editorial and managerial assistance to the printed newspaper The Insight and to Pan African Television. According to the comrade, Pratt Jr. all this effort of the SMG to build an enormous apparatus of communication and promotion of culture is fundamental to combat the hegemony of the bourgeois media:

“I mean media work is important for revolutionary work because we are in a world where revolutionary, leftist, pan-Africanist forces cannot be heard, you are drawn to the media of the imperialist, the colonialist. It is important to have access to a media platform whose article is the other side of things and this is absolutely important for us.”

Pan African Television: mass communication as a weapon of popular organization

Pan African Television (PATV) is an open broadcast platform on radio and TV in Ghana and also available on YouTube and Facebook. Based in Accra, PATV has a daily schedule of news, interviews, music and entertainment, according to Pratt Jr. “right now in Ghana it is the biggest television platform, but that is not enough for us and our competition (with the bourgeois media).


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Ghana’s Pan African News presenter and behind the scenes TV. Image: Pan African TV/Twitter and SMG Facebook

As a mass media, PATV is able to reach every house in every region of the country, which is extremely important, since the Movement has organized Collectives in several regions. PATV works as a direct communication channel with the SMG’s base, but it can also communicate its message to the entire Ghanaian population, in direct competition with the capitalist media platforms.

For Kwessi Pratt Jr, “people have to have hope that the new society is possible, people have to have confidence in themselves to decide. There are messages in the world today that can only be conveyed through mass media like newspaper platforms, like video platforms that are absolutely important.”

There is an effort by the SMG to make PATV the communication channel of the working class in Ghana, its programming offers the viewer a deeper narrative of the facts, politicizing the debate within society with a Marxist bias and disseminating the legacy of the popular struggle in the country, which finds its roots in the struggle against colonialism.

In general, the Socialist Movement of Ghana has found in the strategy of mass communication the key to the organization of the working class; its programming is a call to popular organization. A quick look at the workers who make PATV happen shows the profile of its militancy, mostly young and with a large participation of women.

The work in communication has guided much of the work and efforts made by the SMG, but all this work is not unrelated to the grassroots organization. The SMG has Collectives that are organized around four main areas: teachers, nurses, unemployed workers, and women.

According to Pratt Jr. “the collectives are basically study groups, studying to understand community problems, studying about institutions in West Africa, studying about institutions in the world, this also improves the understanding of local problems.”

For him there is a connection between the challenges of local communities and the processes of struggle and solidarity worldwide.

“The Collectives also connect, from national bodies, in solidarity activities in the rest of the world. Activities that involve solidarity with the Palestinian people fighting against the Israeli occupation, we are also very involved with Polisario (Western Sahara) fighting against the local colonial occupation […] We also support the solidarity movement to Cuba and Venezuela in the resistance to imperialism. So the collective game of all these rules is the local, the national and the international at the same time”, he concludes.

After the transition congress, visits were organized to all the Collectives in the country to align the issues of organicity of this new form of action. From these visits, the Collectives indicated people from their communities to participate in the grassroots political training at the Escola Amílcar Cabral.

The SMG continues to build popular power, advancing in the battle of ideas with coherence and rooted grassroots work. For West Africa, the work of the SMG represents a point of support and hope in the construction of a new world, direct heirs of the legacy of Nkrumah, the SMG remains firm in the defense of Pan-Africanist unity as a strategy in the struggle against imperialism.

To learn more about SMG’s work in communication visit:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/PanAfricanTelevision
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PANAFRICANTV
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/panafricantv/

Phillyp Mikell: Member of the Samora Machel Internationalist Brigade in Africa

Edited by Solange Engelmann

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/10/ ... unication/

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Protesters in Sudan Demand Exclusive Civilian Control of Transitional Government
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on OCTOBER 1, 2021
Peoples Dispatch

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(Photo: Sudanese Communist Party)

Following a failed coup attempt last week, political parties in Sudan have accused the military of trying to take full control of the transitional government formed in 2019. The transitional government is made up of both civilian and military members


Denouncing what they called a bid by the military to take over the country, thousands of Sudanese came on the streets of Khartoum on Thursday, September 30, to demand an exclusively civilian transitional government. The protesters were attacked by the security forces with tear gas, which led to scores being injured.

The protesters denounced last week’s coup attempt and raised slogans against General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the Sovereign Council, the main body in the transitional government. A large number of protesters came from remote areas of the country on trains. They also raised the issue of justice for protesters killed during the 2019 protests, as well as the complete purge of all remnants of the regime of ousted dictator Omar al-Bashir.

Separate calls for protests were made by various groups, including the the Sudanese Communist Party and the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) coalition, which includes most of Sudan’s political and professional groups, formed during the 2019 popular uprisings against Bashir’s long-term military rule.

In a statement released on its Facebook page, the Sudanese Communist Party, which has been critical of the transitional government, proclaimed that the objective of the protests was to “overthrow of the ruling coalition’s authority with its military and civilian brutality and the establishment of an authority that reflects the revolutionary demands aimed at overthrow, dismantling and filtering brutal dictatorial power.”

On Thursday, the Sudanese Professional Association (SPA) said that, “the objective of these marches is to protect Sudan’s democratic transition and there is no way to achieve that without ending any partnership with the military council,” Al-Jazeera reported.

Apprehensions of military takeover

The FFC and the SPA, which steered the months-long protests in 2019, have expressed apprehension of a military takeover of the transitional government, particularly after last week’s failed coup by a faction of the military.

The military has been sharing power with the civilian administration in the transitional government, which was set up after the revolution that ended Bashir’s rule in April 2019. The transitional government is to remain in power until 2023, as per the agreement signed between the Sudanese military and the FFC in August 2019.

General Burhan heads Sudan’s military. Following the coup attempt last week, he accused the civilian members of the transitional government of indulging in personal gains and failing to deliver what was promised post the revolution. He also rubbished the idea that the military is trying to take exclusive control, and argued that failures of the civilian administrators are the reason that coup attempts are being made.

Prime minister Abdalla Hamdok, who heads the civilian part of the administration, has refuted the allegations and called for restructuring the military and bringing it under civilian control.

Similar protests were organized in different parts of the country since the coup attempt last week. Residents of Sudan’s eastern parts blocked the production and shipment of oil from the region, along with all transportation, in protest against the coup attempt.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/10/ ... overnment/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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