Africa

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Mon May 01, 2023 3:02 pm

Resisting AFRICOM and Beyond
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on APRIL 28, 2023
T.A. Tran and Leanne Loo

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Mid-Atlantic members of the Black Alliance for Peace at a picket line action at Howard University, October 2022. (@Blacks4Peace)

Rose Brewer, PhD, is an activist-scholar specializing in political economy, social movements, and studies in Africa and the African diaspora. She is a professor of African-American and African Studies at the University of Minnesota, where she is the Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor and previous chairperson of the Department of African American and African Studies.

Professor Brewer was interviewed by Science for the People on October 20, 2022 for her work with the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), a revolutionary organization that seeks to recapture and redevelop the historic antiwar, anti-imperialist, and pro-peace positions of the radical Black movement.1 Through community organizing, movement support, and political education, BAP confronts and subverts US militarized repression at home and permanent war agenda abroad.

SftP: Can you tell us about the work you do around resistance against militarism and United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) through the Black Alliance for Peace?2

Brewer: Black Alliance for Peace is just a little bit over five years old, and the AFRICOM initiative is one of the most sturdy and significant pieces of work done by BAP. The idea of having military bases on the continent has really gathered steam since the Bush administration, and from the idea that was presented by the Defense Department in 2007.3 It didn’t really get catalyzed until 2008. There’s always been, or for quite a while, pushback against having those bases by the countries on the continent. More recently under the mantra of “fighting the war on poverty,” more and more of the African countries have allowed military bases to come in. Our work in BAP has really been a tremendous pushback against this for a number of reasons. BAP is an anti-imperialist, anti-colonial formation, concerned with the persistence of the neocolonial realities of not only Africa, but other parts of the world, and indeed on the tremendous negative impact by the US empire and its alliance with what we call “comprador class”—the governing structures of those societies. Basically that means the [African] elites who are in relationship with the Defense Department for those bases. Their public message is to provide “military training” to those various nations on the continent for protection to “secure democracy.” But of course none of that has really happened.

SftP: What are the roles of science and technology, including social science, in neocolonialism and militarism on the African continent?

Brewer: I really had to sit with that, because it’s very significant in a lot of ways. I want to generate a longer history, because this has been a very significant aspect of militarism in this country for quite a while. We have members who say from the very first time that Africans were stolen, militarism played a significant role. If we fast forward to the Imperialist World Wars and the post-World War II period, this really ratcheted up quite a bit in relation to the question that you’re asking. The RAND Corporation was put into effect in 1948 and they recruited both natural sciences and social sciences into their think tank. A lot of that conversation was around nuclear arms, and the conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States in that post–World War II period—the beginning of the Cold War. Another key arena was around 1956 when American University created something called the Special Operations Research Office, and they got money from the Defense Department. Here you really did see quite a number of political scientists, psychologists, and sociologists in relationship to military experts. Again, it’s the Cold War—the tension around communism and so-called democracy—and they brought the social scientists in to look at the nature of communism, political organizations, mobilizations, and the nature of social change.

However, it’s my understanding that the American War in Vietnam led to a level of critique against social scientists being involved in research funded by the Defense Department for military purposes. But it’s never gone away, and we can fast forward to the current period. A lot of the military funding that flows into the academy goes to political science. There’s always been a big coterie of engineers, physicists, and the natural sciences that have always gotten a lot of funding from the Defense Department, given the interest in weapons. But there’s also this social science aspect of it, which really looks at the human component of war and militarism. And international relations (IR) studies have also received quite a bit of funding from the Defense Department. We’re talking about millions of dollars and social scientists who get big grants of more than a million dollars to do research and writing. So there’s definitely an interplay and intermeshing between these scholarly entities. I call it the corporate university, to place more emphasis on the relationship between the security state and the university. They’re reading everything we’re reading, and more. That’s the logic, or illogic, of how they move.

We think of war through the technical aspect of it: the machinery, the bombs. But war is not simply this. There is a sociology: practitioners, generals, decision-making entities. Who are they? How do they move?

But there was pushback by the late 1960s, because everything was blowing up here from the Black Power movement to resistance on college campuses, and to the pushback against universities who capitalize on defense funding. As a matter of fact, down the road from me, there was an explosion that was at the University of Wisconsin–Madison regarding this very matter,4 as well as the pushback to eliminate the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). As a matter of fact, as I was getting into this whole issue of the corporate university, even more funding has been funneled into the sciences without a set of critical questions. What are we doing carrying out this research for the military? And of course there are people who push back. But the corporate university looks a lot like corporations in the twenty-first century with a top-down strategy where elites really push a particular agenda. The humanistic areas have really been given short shift, like ethnic studies. So the academy reflects a lot about what this society represents as it carries out the needs and interests of the war machine. And the budgets that could go to human needs are not going there.

SftP: What has been done with all of this war research produced from the academy? How has it been used?

Brewer: It’s published. It was produced as materials for those think tanks. We think of war, or how the media looks at it, [through] simply the technical aspect of it: the machinery, the bombs, the actual folks who are fighting. But war is not simply this. There is a psychology. There is a sociology that practitioners, generals, those decision-making entities are drawing upon to understand what is the nature of the sites. Who are the people? How do they move? So they’re using this material in a very harsh and nefarious way, but it isn’t as much hand-in-glove as the use of the military equipment. And it doesn’t get as much attention.

So that’s a social science question, but it’s being deployed as a security question and as a US-interest question, in terms of that interrelationship among the social psychology, the social science of it, and the hardware aspect.

SftP: Does AFRICOM play a role in this story, and specifically on how science and technology is leveraged for military purposes?

Brewer: We haven’t really explored that as much as we’ve looked at the number of coups that have happened on the continent—two in Burkina Faso in 2022 alone. These are often fighters who have been trained by AFRICOM. It also trains militaries in Africa, to the extent that the various nations don’t have their independent military anymore in most instances. So they’re selecting out potential military commanders, leaders, and using the tools of the US military to position them in relation to the interests of the United States. Mali, for example, has gold and other tremendous resources that are needed and utilized in other parts of the world, but especially in terms of the mining interest of the United States. The political economy of militarism on the African continent has everything to do with the resources that the multinational corporations depend on. A disproportionate number of them, of course, are seeded here in the United States. So it’s that convergence of politically understanding the economic terrain on which AFRICOM is seated and understanding the political dynamics in those places.

SftP: Would you say that the use of science and technology for neocolonialism and militarism is inevitable?

Brewer: Let me put that in a slightly different context. Inevitability, in the sense that time, place, and condition has situated the most capitalist society in the world (which is the United States) to articulate its own full-spectrum dominance—that is, it being the leading force in the world—while the majority of the world is pushing for multi-polarity. And when the Second World War (the Second Imperialist War) ended, the United States was the leading force. The complexity of where we are now means that in order for this empire to continue what we call its full-scale dominance, the status-quo of science and technology are necessary. [But] if we have a world that is catalyzed toward peace, that’s a different kind of question. So I’m making a distinction. If we are holding onto our position of dominance, then yes: science and militarism will be convergent. If we are fighting and resisting, and articulating a vision where the possibility of peace, the disarmament of nuclear arms, the possibility of the people and the planet living in good relationships, then no: they are not an inevitability, though it requires particular political demands.

SftP: Is there a relationship between how science and technology are used for domestic repression in the United States versus how they are used for warring abroad?

Brewer: BAP makes that connection between here and across the world. There’s the 1033 program where military hardware can be acquired by police departments and are used predominantly against communities of color.5 For example, here in Minneapolis, the city is debating a proposal by the police department to employ drones for policing.6 I live in the city where the George Floyd murder happened, and all that military hardware was out in full effect. The militaristic training of the police is comparable. As a matter of fact, you remember the warrior training that Derek Chauvin received, using the knee on the neck.

You can’t deal with domestic issues in isolation. They are inextricably linked to the global questions.

This is also not disconnected with what’s happening on the African continent. The defense budget in this country is tremendous, and the extent to which these resources are deployed is just beyond the pale, and that connection between police departments and the military has been solidified even more deeply. So, 1033 allowed that to happen.

SftP: What would a science that’s leveraged for anti-imperialist struggle look like?

Brewer: Science for the people! That’s what it would look like. The idea of science for the good of humanity, which does not deploy resources to exploit and expropriate. To build a just and fair world, and use information, knowledge, and expertise to that end.

We’re in a tremendous period of climate catastrophe. Hundreds of scientists signed a document just a few weeks ago saying that we cannot continue the way we are. The planet is on fire. Here, scientists can leverage their position for the social good, for peace. Like technology–what is it used for? Who controls it? In whose interests? Those are the questions that I think matter and move us toward the kind of science for the people that you all are lifting up.

SftP: Do you see ways in which communities living throughout Africa have done what you’re saying—reclaiming science for anti-imperialist struggle for antiwar struggle, or otherwise resisting its use for militarism?

Brewer: There’s a lot of resistance going on. I think one of the less well-known things is who are the allies and collaborators with BAP. Many of those collaborators are doing everything that you’re saying. We have a number of organizations that are not here, but are rooted on the continent that work with the Africa team, with the United States Out of Africa,7 engaging in political resistance and organizing the people with the kind of political education and knowledge that’s needed. For example, on October 1, 2022, we had a webinar composed entirely of activists from the continent who spoke to militarism, AFRICOM, and the comprador class on the continent. So, that kind of solidarity to dismantle it, to take it out of the continent, is a big piece of what organizations there are doing. And that continues to weigh in not only on the continent. You might have seen the media releases on Haiti and the pushback against sending US troops there.8 A lot of this is about self-determination. If you do have a civilian military, that’s one thing. If you have a military that’s trained by an empire, that’s a very different thing.

SftP: What are the demographics and geographies of these movements that have been popping up throughout Africa? How are women playing a role? How are young people playing a role? Are there particular types of resistance seen more in the rural areas versus the urban areas? Is it arising out of folks who have also been impacted by climate change and how it interacts with militarism?

Brewer: There are a lot of layers to what you just put on the table. As I mentioned before, the continent is very young, so a lot of the resistors are our young people. The people who have been most harmed by the neocolonial order are young people, women, and folk who have traditionally made a living by farming. This catalyzes folks to respond, to rise up.

If we look at South Africa, which I would say is most connected to the political economy of capitalism, where the economy has resided in the hands of the minority white population. Here even getting access to housing and potable water is contested. Much of the protests and resistance in South Africa is against land grabs.9 The people who are most harmed are those who have contributed least to climate change.

SftP: And what should liberation movements that we’re building here in the United States or anywhere else learn from the struggles of African peoples against AFRICOM, militarism, and imperialism?

Brewer: That brings us full circle back to the role of an organization like BAP. There’s such an insularity in this society about the depth and breadth about what this country does in the name of the people, all wrapped in security issues and terrorism issues, which are really façades to what’s beneath it. When you get into the left in this country, you can’t deal with domestic issues in isolation. They are inextricably linked to the global questions. You can’t resolve the issues of imperialism domestically, without knowing that this is an imperial nation with an empire that is all over the world, with eight hundred military bases all over the world. That’s what we’re dealing with: that’s how power is deployed. That’s how it’s maintained. That’s how it’s threatened.

Notes

1.“Mission,” Black Alliance for Peace, accessed November 11, 2022, https://blackallianceforpeace.com/backg ... nalization.
2.Through AFRICOM, the US Department of Defense engages in military operations and training with allied governments throughout Africa for the purpose of advancing US foreign policy interests in the region. Since AFRICOM was established, the number of drone strikes, military activities, incidents of deadly violence, and insurgent Islamist groups in Africa have skyrocketed. US-trained military officers have also been responsible for a number of coup attempts in countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, Mauritania, and Gambia in recent years. See “What We Do,” United States Africa Command, accessed November 14, 2022, https://www.africom.mil/what-we-do; Nick Turse, “Violence Has Spiked in Africa Since the Military Founded AFRICOM, Pentagon Study Finds,” The Intercept, July 29, 2019, https://theintercept.com/2019/07/29/pen ... -violence/.
3.U.S. Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, Africa Command: U.S. Strategic Interests and the Role of the U.S. Military in Africa, by Lauren Ploch, RL34003 (2011), 1.
4.Preston Schmitt and Doug Erickson, “The Blast that Changed Everything,” On Wisconsin (Summer 2020), https://onwisconsin.uwalumni.com/featur ... verything/.
5.Under the 1033 program, the Defense Department has transferred over seven billion dollars worth of surplus US military equipment to nearly ten thousand police jurisdictions, essentially free of charge. See also Charlotte Lawrence and Cyrus J. O’Brien, “Federal Militarization of Law Enforcement Must End,” American Civil Liberties Union, May 12, 2021, https://www.aclu.org/news/criminal-law- ... t-must-end.
6.Devlin Epding, “MPD to Begin Using Drones,” The Minnesota Daily, October 20, 2022, https://mndaily.com/274024/news/mpd-to- ... ng-drones/.
7.For more on BAP’s US Out of Africa campaign, see https://blackallianceforpeace.com/usoutofafrica.
8.In February 2021, Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse refused to step down when his term in office ended. While the Haitian people responded with mass protests, the United States had thrown its support behind Moïse. For more, see “Latest Statements and Press Releases on Haiti,” Black Alliance for Peace, accessed November 14, 2022, https://blackallianceforpeace.com/haiti.
9.See Nnimmo Bassey, To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa (Pambazuka Press: Cape Town, 2012), 159.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/04/ ... nd-beyond/

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Remembering Cabral
Originally published: ROAPE (Review of African Political Economy) on April 20, 2023 by Basil Davidson (more by ROAPE (Review of African Political Economy)) | (Posted Apr 29, 2023)

In the final essay to mark the fiftieth anniversary of national revolutionary leader AmílcarCabral’s murder in 1973, first published in the ROAPE journal thirty years ago, Basil Davidson provides a personal portrait. Davidson’s piece contains fascinating detail and insight on Cabral’s principles of organising, as well as how Cabral and his comrades started their successful anti-colonial struggle in the early 1950s, all of which retains its relevance in the context of ongoing struggle and revolt across the continent today.

It becomes tempting to wonder, in this period of moral reduction and political decline, just what it is which causes positive change to begin, and then enables this change to become a route of escape so manifestly valid and worthwhile that persons-ordinary persons, everyday persons, persons such as myself-will follow that route as though it might be as dear as life itself.

I was pondering this elusive question while present at Eritrea’s celebration on 24 May 1993 of the winning of its independence after 30 years of anti-colonial struggle. For the winning of this freedom, so vividly felt in Eritrea now, was the work of a remarkable self-mobilisation in sacrifice and effort for the common good. But how did this come about? Leave aside the instrumental explanations-the traditions of Eritrean social solidarity, the pressures of a malignant and ferocious enemy (as the Ethiopian dictatorship had long become), the brilliance of individual leaders, the courage of those countless volunteers who made the army of the EPLF, much else besides-and the elusive question still remains: just what it is that set this people on its route of escape?

The question is by no means new to readers of this journal, and various answers have come to hand. Addressing it on Eritrea’s smiling day of independence-formal independence, for the reality had been reached in 1990-President Issaias Afewerki told us that they had been able to win only by having evoked ‘a solidarity of effort’ across every rivalry (in Eritrea) of religion, ethnicity, or other claims on installed privilege. And the facts bear him out. The Eritreans have won against odds piled mountains high against them because they have been able to reach a nationwide unity of effort and objective. In their recent and internationally supervised referendum (see ROAPE 57), 98.52 per cent of registered voters used their vote, and of those who used their vote 99.805 per cent voted for independence. No one from any quarter of opinion has doubted the honesty of that vote.

How this unity was achieved through many years of difficult and often violent conflict-conflict also among Eritreans themselves-is part of a history that now awaits to be told. Excellent books could be written about that history, and we can hope that they will be. When they are they will have much to say about the means and methods of mass mobilisation: about just what it is that leads a people to become able to save itself from grim disaster. While thinking about this in Asmara, I was led again to thinking about another liberating figure whose name and achievement are known and respected by Eritreans, and not least because of his wisdom and leadership precisely in the means and methods of mass mobilisation.

It is just over twenty years since the death of Amílcar Cabral; and ROAPE’s initiative in celebrating this anniversary makes a fine occasion to celebrate Cabral’s achievements. And to note, moreover, that Cabral and what he achieved has not become lost in the turmoil of the passing years. I see, for example, that Edward Said gives due recognition to Cabral in his deeply impressive Culture and Imperialism (1993). Or else, for the English-reading academy worldwide, there is Horace Campbell’s still more recent memorial of Cabral in The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World(1993), where Cabral is defined as ‘the pre-eminent theorist and guerilla fighter in the period of the decolonisation of Africa’. Cabral’s achievement, writes Campbell, ‘sped the decolonisation of Africa in a very fundamental way’. Beyond that, ‘Cabral’s writings and speeches have provided the basis for a new direction in the study of Africa’.

These are sound judgements; and yet the question remains as to how it became possible for Cabral to be given the loyalty of a ravaged people, whose level of literacy stood at about one-half of one per cent, in a colony where the authority of power had long become synonymous with contempt or indifference, and where law had appeared and usually had been a force of blind oppression. Where any sense of patriotism was a bad joke, and social solidarity outside the family or clan an empty form of words.

Cabral and his handful of companions, four decades ago, had to find answers to despair. Where should they start, what should they do? Cabral started with five others in the Portuguese colony of Guine. That was in 1956, long before they had a party or a movement in anything but name, or any detailed programme, or any clear perspective. What they had, very consciously, was a burning sense of the justice of their anti-colonial cause, and a conviction that others would recognise this justice once the embers of revolt could be brought alight. What they also had, above all in Cabral’s unwavering clarity of mind, was the advantage-the very dangerous advantage-of an implacable enemy. Compromise with colonialism might be attempted; it would fail. Reconciliation might be wished for; the fascism of Portugal, whether at home or in the colonies, knew no such thing. So that there must arise for everyone-everyone regardless of preference or opinion-an unavoidable choice: are you for us or are you against us?

Any revolt would have to be the product of profound conviction. Any war of liberation, if it could come to that, would have to be a long one fought through ‘to the end’. It came to that in 1963, seven testing years since the six beginners had found each other, and had opted for a resistance that might have to become an armed resistance; and the core of their later success is to be found in those seven years. It turned, as would be seen later, upon a single principle of action and organisation: colloquially, in Guine Creole, que povo no mania nasi cribeca (meaning that people have to do it for themselves, you have to do it for yourself). Otherwise there is no self-development, there is only a calculation of personal gain, a squabbling bid to jump the queue.

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Statue of Amílcar Cabral at the Amílcar Cabral International Airport in Sal, Cape Verde (19 December 2015).

That may sound so very obvious, now in the aftermath. But in those years, it could and did sound revolutionary. Rebellious thought in those times-creative thought, contestatory thought-still carried old burdens: from one source, a severely condescending Eurocentrism that had shuffled down the decades from the slaving years, and then, from another source not much less unhelpful although more recent, an authoritarian Marxism-or ‘Marxism?’-according to which an effective blueprint for action must be handed down to actors as holy writ, without which those actors would be helpless. In their various ways these legacies would be tremendous handicaps to innovating thought and action, and Cabral had to measure himself against them: whether as a schoolboy in Cape Verde, where a primitive racism governed by way of pigmentational absurdities; or later as a university student in Portugal itself, where creative thinking had been crushed out of existence save for a clandestine communist party within which, however, the rigours of secrecy had duly opened the gate to the rigidities of a kind of Stalinism. Cabral and his handful of like-minded friends rejected both the racism and the Stalinism. Standing in a void, as it were, they looked for a posture of their own, and this they found in a deliberate process of re-Africanisation from the alienations of Portuguese colonial culture. Their Angolan comrade, Viriato da Cruz produced his masthead slogan, vamos descobrir Angola, and it became for all of them a whole programme of self-development. Let’s discover ourselves!

This was certainly the message that Cabral took back with him to Africa early in the 1960s, and what he afterwards taught, using whatever different ways and words, to all who would listen to him. Even in this tensely distraught territory of Portuguese Guine, lost somewhere between Senegal and Liberia and deprived in every conceivable dimension, the blacks could and would save themselves if only they themselves were led to take the saving work in hand. ‘Were led to take’, I think, was the kernel of Cabral’s ideas on political mobilisation. For this was the accent of his teachings in all the obscure and lonely years-the 1950s-when he was finding out ‘how to begin’ and with whom to begin. Later, when the beginning was well and truly made, he formalised these ideas and his teaching of them in his handbook for militants, the Palavras de Ordem Gerais composed in 1965, and then, orally and variously, in a series of forest seminars. These evolved as intimate ‘conversations’ when no limits were set to what could be raised and argued (partial texts of some of these seminars will be found in Cabral’s collected writings published as Unity and Struggle, London and New York, 1980, in an excellent translation by Michael Wolfers).

To the moral thrust of Cabral’s ideas on revolutionary change, in short, there was added this severely practical stress on the analysis of immediate reality and circumstance. It was to be one of his strengths that he knew his country and its peoples thoroughly, and usually better than anyone else: those early years which he had spent as a government agronomist, tramping from one region to another and living in their villages, at home within languages that others seldom spoke save in fragmentary phrases, became for him a living source of encouragement and inspiration. When he said que povona manda na si cabeca he was speaking, one can say, from inside the heads of the peasants from whom the slogan had initially come.

This was no doubt what gave his programme its simplicity of conviction. Facing a barbaric colonial oppression, always coercing or corrupting as it was, Cabral presented the ‘simplistic’ belief that humankind is good by nature, a view of things so outrageously stupid in the eyes of a distant Europe, as to set him beyond the boundaries of orthodox notice. Yet that is what he believed: so much so, I think myself, that he would never have been murdered if he had believed otherwise. For it stands sorely on the record that at least three among his murderers were men punished for one or other crime inside the fighting movement (PAIGC) but forgiven and released from prison by Cabral and kept close to his person, ‘so that they could make good their errors’. His chief bodyguard, whom I knew myself, was one of those three; afterwards, this man shot himself in horror at what he had helped to do.

The principles of Cabral’s organising action can be studied in the published writings (Wolfers, 1980). Their practicality had to depend on the sufficient recruitment of fighting personnel, and stiff training in the military disciplines of what had to be done. Here there was nothing new or original!—successful guerilla warfare having few and simple rules. The real-and enormous-difficulty came at the point where sufficient fighters had to be accumulated: precisely, that is, in the actual process of mobilisation. His practice in this respect, I think, can be boiled down to a broad conclusion: political mobilisation is always specific to time and circumstance. But it is a process; it has stages of development: essentially, two stages. One stage is to evoke sympathy with what you mean to do, overcoming (in this case) the deep ingrained scepticism of this rural audience-‘you want to throw out the Portuguese, but you can’t even make matches’-with its contempt for its own abilities: ‘Take up arms against the Portuguese? But what fool was ever going to do that?’

This was where the young ‘fighters of the first hour’ came into their own, attacking a police post, destroying a bridge: small actions, but successful ones. Sympathy with anti-colonial sentiments could then be got to take a step further: into feeding these young fighters-maybe a dozen in number, or fewer still-and then hiding them, bringing them useful information about the nearest garrison, or something of that kind. All this was possible and was done. But all of it would end in flight or extermination at the hands of the colonial state if this first stage were not followed by a second. Sympathy must be developed into participation. ‘People must do it for themselves’.

This second stage was entered at the end of 1963 and increasingly established in the year or so after that. In 1967, as we were coasting by night along the southern fringe of that country’s mangrove creeks, Cabral recalled for me the meaning of this crucial achievement:

First of all, as you know, we liberated the southern and a little part of the north-central regions of our country. Then, in 1964, we began to say to our guerilla fighters in the south that the time had come for them to go into the eastern region. Otherwise, we said, if the struggle remains only in the south and north, the Portuguese will be able to concentrate on those regions and eliminate us there. But we found that our guerillas were not at all of this opinion. We’ve liberated our own country, [they said to us], now let those others [in the east] liberate theirs. Why should the Balante go and help to liberate the Fula? Let the Fula do their own work…

We didn’t force the issue. We waited until the Portuguese did in fact begin to redouble their attacks in the south, just as we’d said they would, and then we argued our case all over again. This time it worked, and we could form a regular army that would move, and not stay, like guerillas, in their home zones. We said, free uniforms, better arms, good equipment and so on for everyone who joins; but everyone who joins will go where he’s sent. Two thousand young men volunteered. For a start, we chose 900 (Davidson, 1969).


Once sympathy had developed itself into participation-social and political as much as military participation-then it began to be seen, and Cabral made sure that it was seen, that the struggle against oppression had become a movement with its own inner dynamism.

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Party HQ of PAIGC, situated at the central Praça dos Herois Nacionais square in Bissau (3 November 2017).

Then it became a matter of persistent leadership in the sense of ensuring that the currents of self-development should stay unclogged (as little clogged as possible; Cabral was no Utopian) by collapsing into this or that personal vanity or distraction, while, at the same time keeping up the pressure for onward action. The general and in the end overwhelming success in these tasks was what the history of this liberation war would demonstrate, but it should go without saying that the success could never be invariable or complete. Here was a leadership-as I think must always happen in enterprises of this kind-that could never be free of personalist distraction and corruption, if only because these failings feed upon success. But the general success in this context of mobilisation was high, even as I think extraordinarily high. I used to walk about that country of forests and creeks and hillside pastures with a handful of fighters bent on this or that objective, or on simply looking after me; and the success was patent. Here you would find a peasant guarding or watching all canoe traffic on the waterways, quite by himself and usually keeping out of sight, unsupervised, unwatched, unguarded; but his work was to know about and report on everything that moved on the water, and this work he simply carried out. Here was a school in dense bush with two or three young teachers responsible literally ‘for everything’. Here was a makeshift ‘hospital’ for a clutch of wounded, with an itinerant surgeon who was virtually a saviour for these wounded but himself depended for food and safety on the nearest village activists. And so on up and down the line of useful action.

Once the movement could impose its own self-discipline-roughly, sometime after early disasters in 1963-there thus evolved a community across age, or across age-groups in these often age-defined societies, that was in evolution from colonially oppressed objects to socialised-self-regulating?-subjects: at various levels of consciousness, with various back-slidings into self-inflation, of course. But very much had been done to promote an essential unity of attitude and action by the time, late in 1973, that the Portuguese dictatorship was faltering to its fall. A fall, one can add, that was crucially accelerated by the achievements of Cabral and his movement, the PAIGC. It was certainly the case that the young Portuguese officers who would bring about that fall, in 1974, had learned their own lessons from those same achievements. “The colonised peoples and the people of Portugal are allies”, ran one of those young officers’ pronouncements of 1974. “The struggle for national liberation has contributed powerfully to the overthrow of fascism and, in large degree, has lain at the base of the armed forces movement” (which overthrew the dictatorship) (Davidson, 1981). The smooth men and women who would come to govern the Portugal of the 1980s would offer a very different view; the fact remains that overthrow of the colonial dictatorship in Africa was an essential preclude to overthrow of the dictatorship in Portugal itself.

Yet if much had been done to promote a post-colonial society in Guine, much else remained to be done; and there were those at the time (myself among them, if I may add) for whom the liberation war was at a level of virtual standstill (so far, that is, as major hostilities were concerned) but might have usefully continued for a few more years. As others have explained, what remained to be done, even to be launched, were transformations in the sphere of economic reorganisation. These could not be tackled while the Portuguese were still able to fight on offensive positions; but they might have been tackled after 1973 when the Portuguese were fighting in retreat. As it was, things fell out differently and by 1978, in peacetime, ‘doing things to people’ had taken the place of ‘people doing it for themselves’ (Dowbor, 1977).

In remembering Cabral, however, one thinks above all of the process of social change set in motion during the years of political innovation and expansion. One thinks, in Cabral’s own phrasing, of the armed liberation struggle not as a mere instrumentality, much less as an adventure, but as a ‘determinant of culture’, a penetratingly social determinant of cultural progress that ‘is without doubt, for the people, the prime recompense for their efforts and sacrifices.’ For

the leaders of the liberation movement, drawn from the ‘petty bourgeoisie’ (intellectuals, employees) or from the background of workers in the towns (labourers, drivers, salaried workers in general), having to live day by day with the various peasant strata among the rural populations, come to know the people better. They discover, at its source, the wealth of their cultural values (whether philosophical or political, artistic, social or moral). They acquire a clearer awareness of their country’s economic realities. They see the difficulties, sufferings and aspirations of the mass of the people… the leaders thus enrich their culture: they cultivate their minds and free themselves from inhibitions (imposed by colonial history). So they strengthen their ability to serve the movement in service of the people.

Meanwhile, the same cultural determinant had another field of action ‘out there in the bush’ about which the leaders who had mostly derived from the towns had known little or nothing, and had feared much:

On their side, the mass of labourers and, in particular, the peasants who are generally illiterate and have never moved beyond the confines of their village or region, come into contact with other categories; and in doing this they shed the inhibitions which had constrained them in their dealings with other ethnic or social groups. They understand their position as determining elements in the struggle. They break the fetters of the village universe. They gradually integrate with their country and with the world. They acquire an infinity of new knowledge useful to their immediate and future activities within the framework of the struggle. They strengthen their political awareness by absorbing the principles of national and social revolution postulated by the struggle.

Summarising, Cabral went on to say in one of his well-remembered phrases that ‘the armed struggle therefore implies a veritable forced march along the road to cultural progress’ because:

We should add these inherent features of an armed liberation struggle: the practice of democracy, of criticism and self-criticism; the growing responsibility of populations for the management of their own life; literacy teaching; the creation of schools and health care; the training of peasant and other cadres. And this is how we find that the armed liberation struggle is not only a product of culture, but also a determinant of culture (Endnote 1).

Looking back from these our 1990s [this article was written in 1993], when banditries and corruptions and vile external interventions have gone far to wreck or utterly destroy the harvests of progress that Cabral and his companions were able to promote and produce, I am sometimes met with reproaches by those, today, who tell me that Cabral and his companions failed. To those who tell me this from an honest standpoint, and not from any mealy-mouthed or merely calculating collapse into reaction, I can reply that the charge of failure is morally and historically baseless. I respect their prudent scepticism but ask them to think further. For the record shows that the principles upon which Cabral and his companions acted remain as valid today as they were valid thirty years ago and more. They are the same principles and ideas that may now be heard expounded, in a score or more African languages and as many different African situations, with the terminologies of democratic decentralisation, mass participation, cultural renewal, post-colonial restitution. New men and women will apply these principles and ideas, no doubt with the genius of creative innovation that history will unfold. But the same mandatory directive will apply. Que povo na manda na sicabeca.

Basil Davidson was a founding member of ROAPE, and a historian of Africa. He died in London in 2010 (read Lionel Cliffe’s obituary here). Mike Powell was the editor of the original special issue in 1993 which can accessed here.

Endnote:
These extracts are from one of Cabral’s principal political lectures, National Liberation and Culture, 1970, and available in the Unity and Struggle volume.
Bibliographic Note
Many and some of the most important of Cabral’s writings are in English in Unity and Struggle, translated by Michael Wolfers (Heineman, London, 1980/Monthly Review Press, New York, 1979); French readers have the advantage of being able to refer to a wider selection in two volumes of Maspero’s Cahiers libres, (Paris, 1975); Basil Davidson, The Liberation of Guine (Penguin, London, 1979:74), long out of print but since reprinted in an enlarged volume, No Fist is Big Enough to Hide the Sky (Zed Books, London, 1981:74,161); For a valuable retrospective of what happened after 1977, see Ladislau Dowbor, Guine Bissau: a busca da independencia economica, (Editora Basiliense, Sao Paulo, 1983) and specifically on Cape Verde, Basil Davidson, The Fortunate Isles(Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ and Hutchinson, London 1989); Edward W Said, Culture and Imperialism, (Chatto & Windus, London/Knopf, New York, 1993).

https://mronline.org/2023/04/29/remembering-cabral/
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Thu May 04, 2023 1:58 pm

At least 47,000 people have fled Sudan for Egypt

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According to UNHCR, Egypt is the nation that has welcomed the most Sudanese citizens since the fighting began in Sudan. | Photo: @UNHCREgypt
Posted May 4, 2023 (3 hours 36 minutes ago)

At least 100,000 Sudanese have crossed the country's borders, with Egypt and Chad being the nations that have received the most citizens.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (Acnur) indicated that at least 47,000 Sudanese have crossed the border with Egypt since the start of the fighting in Sudan on April 15.

According to the UNHCR spokesperson in Egypt, the northeast African country is the nation that has welcomed the most Sudanese citizens since the fighting began in Sudan.

"According to the figures that UNHCR has received from the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as of May 3, more than 50,000 people had crossed into Egypt, including 47,000 Sudanese and 3,500 third-country nationals," said agency spokeswoman Christine Beshay.


The official stated that several UN agencies are on the border between the two countries to help people fleeing the armed conflict between the Sudanese Army and the Rapid Support Forces (FAR) paramilitary group, which has already caused at least 550 dead, according to official figures.

Christine Beshay assured that the UN mission will support, under the coordination of UNHCR, all actions to respond to the needs of refugees and increase assistance to people through the Egyptian Red Crescent.

At least 100,000 Sudanese have crossed the country's borders, with Egypt and Chad being the nations that have received the most citizens, according to UN data.


The UN refugee agency estimates that around 800,000 people could flee the conflict in Sudan, which has caused a humanitarian catastrophe in the African country.

UN Secretary General António Guterres on Wednesday reiterated his call on the parties to the conflict to establish safe humanitarian access in Sudan.


Despite the fact that a seven-day truce began this Thursday, the warring parties have already violated this humanitarian pause, like the previous ones agreed.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/acnur-mi ... -0008.html

Google Translator

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Violent Clashes Erupt in Sudan Despite 7-Day Truce Extension

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Members of the Rapid Support Forces in Karthoum, Sudan, May 4, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @DworaczekBendom

"Our forces and residential neighborhoods came under indiscriminate artillery and aircraft bombardment in a flagrant violation of international norms," the RSF said.


On early Thursday, violent clashes erupted in the Sudanese capital Khartoum between the Sudanese Army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), despite a seven-day truce agreed by the two parties.

"Our forces clashed at dawn today with the rebels who tried to attack the command Bahri military area. Our forces destroyed eight combat vehicles of the enemy and seized 11 vehicles, a Katyusha launcher and communication devices," the Sudanese army said.

The RSF, for its part, accused the Sudanese army of violating the declared humanitarian truce and attacking their posts at dawn on Thursday.

"Our forces and residential neighborhoods came under indiscriminate artillery and aircraft bombardment in a flagrant violation of international norms as well as international and humanitarian law," the RSF said.

The clashes came a few hours after the two sides agreed to a seven-day truce extension proposed by the regional African bloc Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD). The clashes erupted mainly in Bahri town, Omdurman and central Khartoum.

Meanwhile, Sudan's Foreign Ministry condemned what it termed "the violations of the rebel Rapid Support Forces against embassies and diplomatic missions without the slightest regard to the declared truce or respect for international law."


"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemns the attacks by the rebel forces on the headquarters of the Indian Embassy," the ministry said, adding that it had also received complaints about attacks on the building of the Saudi cultural attache, residences of the Swiss diplomats and the consular section of the Turkish embassy.

Given that clashes have pushed the country to the edge of a humanitarian crisis, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths, who arrived in Sudan's eastern city of Port Sudan on Wednesday, urged the warring parties to make pledges to ensure the safe delivery of humanitarian aid to the needy.

To this end, the RSF Commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, pledged on Thursday to open and protect humanitarian corridors to facilitate the movement of citizens in areas controlled by his forces and ensure that aid reaches the needy.

Fighting between the Sudanese army and the RSF in Khartoum and other areas erupted on April 15, which has pushed the country to the edge of a humanitarian crisis. Thousands of Sudanese citizens have been displaced or forced to seek refuge in safe areas in Sudan and neighboring countries, including Egypt, Ethiopia and Chad.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Vio ... -0007.html

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May Day and Workers’ Rights in Eritrea
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 03 May 2023

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The Eritrean people struggle against sanctions and warfare instigated by the US. They recognize their efforts on International Workers Day, May Day.

May Day is a federal holiday in Eritrea, meaning that all workers have the day off and May Day celebrations and marches are held in the capital, Asmara, and in Masawa, Keren, Barentu, Mendefera, and Asseb.

The primary goal of the National Confederation of Eritrean Workers (NCEW) is industrial peace in accordance with the tripartite agreement between government, workers, and employers defined in the Labour Proclamation of Eritrea . I spoke to Abraham Bereket, International Relations Officer for the NCEW, via Zoom. He was in Turkey on a diplomatic mission and celebrating with the Turkish Public Workers Union in Ankara, but he had been involved in organizing the workers’ celebrations in Eritrea, which went on for several days.

ANN GARRISON: Greetings, Abraham. Can you tell us about International Workers’ Day in Eritrea?

ABRAHAM BEREKET: May Day celebrations went on for several days. There was a series of events we organized to make it a vibrant May Day.

One thing I organized, as part of a committee, was a series of seminars and panel discussions on the challenges and opportunities in the future of work.

I’m sure you know about the immense challenges of nation-building from the ashes of the thirty years war for independence, the recent economic destruction and social disruption caused by the border war with Ethiopia, and the pervasive poverty and economic underdevelopment. We face a huge challenge to lift the living and working conditions of Eritrean workers to acceptable, decent levels.

AG: What else took place, in addition to the marches and the panels to celebrate May Day?

AB: We also had events to encourage civic participation. We did three days of blood donations, and we did some tree planting. That’s part of a greening campaign that goes on throughout the year.

AG: Tell us about the National Confederation of Eritrean Workers (NCEW).

AB: It was created in 1979, during the independence struggle. At that time it was formed to recruit workers to serve in the independence struggle. Outside the armed forces it also served to support the struggle financially and logistically.

Now, of course, our aims are different. After independence we did our fourth congress, in 1994, where we shifted our key strategic priorities to securing the rights and well-being of workers.

Now we are spearheading the social dialogue and negotiation with the government and the National Employers' Federation of Eritrea to secure collective bargaining agreements and guarantee International Labour Organization standards. Working with the government and private employers we have established the Labour Relations Board to safeguard workers’ legal rights in disputes.

AG: Who belongs to the Confederation of Eritrean Workers?

AB: We have workers representing five federations constituted of 164 base unions operating in similar products or service areas. As of December 2019, NCEW had a total of 26,000 members, of which 10,702 (41.1%) were women and 15,298 (58.9 %) were men. The five Federations are:

Food, Beverage, Hotels, Tourism, Agriculture and Tobacco Workers Federation of Eritrea – 22%

Mining, Chemical, Construction and General Works Workers Federation of Eritrea – 39%

Service Industries Workers Federation of Eritrea – 10%

Transport and Communication Workers Federation of Eritrea – 15%

Textile, Leather and Allied Products Workers Federation of Eritrea – 14%

AG: And what is the Labor Proclamation of Eritrea?

AB: The labor movement in Eritrea generally is guided by the government’s Labour Proclamation of Eritrea No.118/2001 . It is a legal framework that guarantees workers’ rights, the basic rights within international labor organizations—the freedom of speech, freedom to unionize, and collective bargaining rights. This legal framework acts as a base when we try to organize within an enterprise. These are the rights that all workers have.

AG: And what about public workers?

AB: We don’t yet have a legal framework for organizing public workers in the Labour Proclamation, but it is written and waiting for ratification.

We are also working to ratify a legal frameworks for organizing cooperatives and workers in the informal economy.

AG: I know that the majority of Eritrean workers are in the informal economy, meaning they are largely self-employed, farming to feed their own families.

AB: Yes, that is true.

AG: When I was there, the Agriculture Minister showed me the Minimum Integrated Household Agricultural Package (MIHAP) developed to help farmers expand to where they could produce a surplus to sell at market, feed four more families, and thus free workers from farm labor to help build an industrial base.

AB: Yes, expanding the industrial work force is essential to the future of work in Eritrea.

AG: I have the pamphlet describing the MIHAP and how it is to increase production right here. It says the government will provide one dairy cow or six goats, 25 chicks, two bee hives, and 20 trees—10 fruit trees, five for supplementary forage, and five for firewood.

It’s an impressive development plan for moving beyond basic family farming.

AB: Yes, that’s right, and thank you.

AG: And what sort of work do you do in the informal economy?

AB: We do awareness raising about health and safety, and technical and vocational training—skills development.

AG: What is the rest of the informal economy and what is the challenge of organizing it?

AB: There are domestic workers, street vendors, and similar small- scale participants in the informal economy. What we need first is a legal framework for organizing and guaranteeing the rights of these workers. We’re working on that.

AG: Of course Western oligarchs and officials and their press hate Eritrea because they can’t stand its egalitarian example. They love to tell the story that Eritrean soldiers have been forced to work in the Bisha Gold Mine. What is your answer to that?

AB: As a trade union, we organized a symposium and conference in Asmara, and we invited delegates from labor organizations in Europe, Africa, and Asia. At the end we provided vehicles to travel to the Bisha Mine, and allowed them to engage with any workers they liked. When they returned, we asked them if they found any forced labor conditions, and they said no. We had proven to them that there were no soldiers forced to labor in the mine, and at that time those stories stopped.

AG: That story may have stopped but the Western Eritrea haters never stop. They can’t hate or sanction Eritrea enough.

AB: Yes, that’s true.

AG: I know that the history of the NCEW is intertwined with the history of the independence struggle. Could you tell us about that?

AB: The first Eritrean trade unions were factory-based during the colonial period. They emerged in 1948. On February 4, 1952, the factory-based unions coalesced to form the National Union of Eritrean Workers for Independence (NUEWI).

Then the erosion of Eritrea’s political independence by Ethiopia in the 1950s catapulted the union movement into the leading force of the Eritrean nationalist movement.

Ethiopia canceled our trade union rights in 1957. The NUEWI responded by organizing a strike and many members were jailed.

The dispute between the unions and the Ethiopian government came to the forefront in March 1958. Because of the increasing repression perpetrated by the Ethiopian regime, Eritrean workers had sought employment in Europe, North America and the Middle East and regrouped themselves alongside Eritrean students to participate in the Eritrean liberation movement.

AG: I know that the Eritrean independence movement captured the imagination of the world at that time.

AB: Yes, it did. The first meeting of the Eritrean workers in the diaspora was held in Germany in 1970. They named their organization “Eritreans for Liberation” and began to organize in different countries as the Eritrean Workers Union.

Eritrean workers from many parts of the world assembled in the liberated area of Eritrea in November 1979 and founded the National Union of Eritrean Workers (NUEW) in full allegiance to the principles of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF). The second congress of the NUEW was held in 1983 and the third Congress in 1988, all in the liberated areas.

AG: And what happened after the liberation in 1991?

AB: The NUEW leaders and members from the diaspora came to Eritrea after the liberation of the country in May 1991. NUEW coalesced with workers who came from the liberated areas and members of the trade unions previously existing under the Ethiopian military regime in the country.

In June 1992, the NUEW was reconstituted as a provisional organization of Eritrean workers until it was formally organized as the independent National Confederation of Eritrean Workers at the Congress held in September 1994.

In the process, membership was declared to be voluntary. Democratic elections were held at the base union level. The unions were organized into the five sector federations. Each of the sector federations held their congresses and democratically elected their respective leaderships.

A congress embodying representatives of the NUEW and the federations was convened in September 1994. The National Confederation of Eritrean Workers (NCEW) was established at this congress with new and independent statutes. A decision to limit the membership in the NCEW to workers residing within Eritrea was taken at the congress.

Each of the five Federations then developed its own constitution. They hold their respective congresses and elect their representatives, organize their administrative set-ups, and implement their respective programs.

Unlike its predecessor, NCEW membership is open only to workers residing in Eritrea.

AG: What special steps have you taken to ensure the rights of women?

AB: An established Committee on Women’s Affairs ensures that women workers’ issues are given attention. The NCEW has many women elected to positions at the highest leadership level, including membership in the Central Council and Executive Committees of the Confederation, as well as chairpersons and secretaries of federations.

AG: And have you affiliated with international labor organizations?

AB: The NCEW and the federations have become affiliates of regional and international trade union organizations, such as the International Trade Unions Confederation (ITUC), ITUC-Africa, the Global Union Federations (GUF), the Organization of African Trade Union Unity (OATUU), and the International Labour Organization (ILO).

AG: That’s a very impressive history.

AB: Thank you.

AG: Thank you for speaking to Black Agenda Report.

AB: You’re most welcome.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/may-d ... ts-eritrea

Africans in the US are a Colonized People: A Comment on the Indictment of the African People's Socialist Party
​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist 03 May 2023

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Paul Robeson subpoena to appear before HUAC

Red Scares, McCarthyism, COINTELPRO, "Black Identity Extremists" are all indicative of how the colonized are treated by the state.

“America is just as much a colonial power as England ever was…what do you call second-class citizenship? Why, that's colonization. Second-class citizenship is nothing but 20th (century) slavery. How you gonna to tell me you're a second-class citizen? They don't have second-class citizenship in any other government on this Earth. They just have slaves and people who are free! Well, this country is a hypocrite! They try and make you think they set you free by calling you a second-class citizen. No, you're nothing but a 20th century slave.”

-Malcolm X, The Ballot or the Bullet


In the colonial context, the colonized have no rights that the colonizer ever really needed to recognize. Therefore, any social space that Africans in the U.S. experienced were won through resistance. The historic fight for African self-determination and liberation from the anti-human colonial/capitalist system has been an uninterrupted feature of what we claim as the “Black Radical Tradition.”

An unapologetic opposition to the U.S. colonial/capitalist project and U.S. imperialism centers the Black radical tradition, along with internationalism and a commitment to socialist transformation. It is this tradition of principled, militant resistance that has been a constant source of concern and, consequently, systematic repression of Black/African radicalism by the U.S. colonial/imperialist state.

Fascism, in its historic form within the U.S. Southern apartheid system to its contemporary expressions, spearheaded by hegemonic neoliberal capital and operating through the Democratic Party and the state’s repressive apparatuses, continues to target the organized elements of the radical Black/African movement.

The “Red Scare,” where African Americans were physically attacked and murdered for just wearing their uniforms returning from World War I, the attack on the Garvey Movement, COINTELPRO, to “Black Identity Extremists,” – the state and its paramilitary associations have waged continuous war against African/Black people since the arrival of the first Africans in what became the United States in 1619.

Therefore, the indictments brought against the African People's Socialist Party (APSP) and its Uhuru Movement mass formation should be seen as consistent with colonial practice. The only difference with these indictments is that the target is not just Black radicals. The indictments represent not only a veritable declaration of war against African/Black radicals, but left opposition in general in the U.S. This is the lesson that is strangely being missed, judging by the relative silence from left forces.

We are told from the indictments that “Russia's foreign intelligence service allegedly weaponized our First Amendment rights — freedoms Russia denies to its own citizens — to divide Americans and interfere in elections in the United States,” according to Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen of the Justice Department's National Security Division.

And how was the APSP dividing “Americans?” They were sowing something referred to as “discord” by opposing the disastrous war in Ukraine initiated in 2014 when, after the U.S.- backed coup, the U.S. gave a green light to their newly installed puppet government to carry out attacks against its own citizens in Eastern Ukraine who were opposed to the coup.

With the indictments, the Biden’s administration’s message is clear. First amendment rights will only be respected as long as you are in agreement with the state. But if you are one of the still oppressed Black members of this white supremacist, settler-colonial state and you dissent from the prevailing views, not only will your first amendment rights not be recognized but you also might face criminal prosecution.

As dangerous as this is, there is also something deeply racist about the implications that oppressed Black people will only oppose U.S. foreign policies when instructed to by a foreign power. The apparent assumption this belief is based on is that Black people are only supposed to be concerned with abstract, domestic demands like demands for “racial justice” or so-called criminal reforms. International issues and specifically U.S. foreign policies are beyond the understanding of Black people and ought to be left for white folks. Of course, this racist construction contradicts the lived history of African/Black internationalism at the center of the Black radical tradition.

Yet, as absurd, and racist as this position is, it, nevertheless, represents the beliefs of members of the Justice Department, or at least is what they pretend to believe. With the indictment of members of the APSP the state claims to have uncovered a vast conspiracy between the Russians and the APSP to corrupt the ideas and perceptions of ordinary “Americans.” And what are those unassailable and unchallenged views and perceptions that ordinary “Americans” are supposed to have? Overwhelming and unanimous support for the Ukrainian war that could only be corrupted by a campaign of Russia inspired “disinformation and misinformation.”

According to the indictment, the task of the APSP was to make it appear that there was strong support in the U.S. for Russia's invasion of Ukraine and to build support for the 2015 United Nations petition that characterized U.S. treatment of African people in the U.S. as genocidal! The idea that the African People’s Socialist party or any Black radical organization needed encouragement from Russia or anywhere to take a position in opposition to U.S. imperialism and the genocidal policies of the settler-state against indigenous and Africans is racist nonsense.

The implications that opposition to the U.S. and NATO-manufactured conflict in Ukraine is ipso-facto evidence that the individual holding that view may be a Russian agent or unduly influenced by Russia propaganda is meant as intimidation. It remains to be seen if this move is an overreach on the part of the state.. However, for international audiences, the indictments is seen as the desperate move by a faltering hegemon that has lost global public opinion on the war and needs domestic ideological reinforcement.

The Fire this Time: McCarthyism Without Left Support

It is clear that the FBI, liberals’ new best friends, are still targeting Black Activists in the U.S. Why? Because for the state and for liberals, independent Black radicals are viewed as a potential if not actual internal enemies and a threat to national security.

The indictment of the APSP represents a tactical escalation that must be seen for what it is – a new declaration of war on Black radicals and by extension the uncompromised elements of the U.S. left.

The historical parallel is when the Truman administration indicted W.E.B. Dubois in 1951 as an agent of a foreign government. At that time he supposedly was an agent of the Soviet Union because as the Vice President of the Peace Information Center, he opposed war with the Soviet Union and advocated for peace and a peaceful relationship between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

In both cases, the targeting of Black radicals reaffirms that radical Black organizations continue to be seen as security threats to the U.S. national security state. The indictments of APSP also further exposes the superficiality of its commitment to liberal values of free speech and the right to association and the more blatant turn to authoritarianism.

The crisis of capital today has resulted in liberalism losing its ability to contain forces of opposition and legitimacy. Consequently, more repressive practices were required. However, the ideological terrain had to be prepared for that to take place. Russiagate played that role.

The result? Unlike during the first McCarthy era when there was some opposition, however tentative, to the heavy hand of government repression, today, with the exception of a few left organizations and commentators from libertarians and the alt-right, the targeting of the APSP has been met with silence.

Once again, Africans will be abandoned. And once again, we are reminded that, despite the ideological mystifications from Negro politicians and confused, class reductionist leftists, the exploited and colonized African/Blacks working class has only itself to rely on to defend our right to self-determination and collective self-defense in this settler-colonial hell-hole called the United States.

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Mon May 08, 2023 2:55 pm

US Troops in Somalia Rise to 900, House Votes Not to Withdraw
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 4, 2023
Ann Garrison and Jamal Abdulahi

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U.S. forces host a range day with the Danab Brigade in Somalia, April 5, 2021

The presence of US troops in Somalia helps the Islamist insurgency Al Shabaab recruit, exacerbating the very violence they claim to be fighting. But the House has voted down a resolution to withdraw.


On April 27, the House voted 101-321 against Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz’s resolution to remove all US troops from Somalia, even as all signs point to escalation in the fight with Al-Shabaab. AFRICOM, the US Africa Command, and Somalia’s president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, are both asking for more US presence, more funds, more weapons, more drones, and fewer restrictions on how they’re used.

The resolution did not call for an end to the drone bombing, only for the withdrawal of US troops.

Gaetz had no expectation that it would pass, but he forced all 435 members of the House to go on record for or against another costly US “forever war.” Conceivably they’ll have to answer for their votes in 2024, perhaps to the US’s tiny antiwar community, but more likely to the “America First” political movement that Gaetz shares with Donald Trump.

The vote ensures that the US will maintain a military presence in Somalia until at least after the next election cycle. At least 900 US troops have been stationed in Somalia, playing an advisory role while the national army they train takes heavy casualties on the battlefield against the Islamist al-Shabaab forces.

Located in the strategically significant Horn of Africa, Somalia not only has the longest coastline in Africa, but perhaps the world’s largest untapped coastal oil reserves. In 2021, the Somali government signed a $7 million oil exploration deal with the Houston, Texas-based company, Coastline.

Though congressional hawks justify the US military presence in Somalia in terms of “freedom” and counter-terrorism, the country’s geography and potentially massive oil wealth make it a key strategic prize for Washington.

Gaetz and the co-sponsors of the resolution to withdraw from Somalia were all Republicans. Fifty-two Republicans and 50 Democrats voted in favor of a pullout, while 165 Republicans and 156 Democrats voted no. (12 House members did not vote). The vote closely resembled the results on Gaetz’s failed resolution to withdraw from Syria, which brought together a left-right coalition in support while the bipartisan pro-war majority expressed vehement opposition.

In his press release, Gaetz wrote, “When the House debated my resolution to withdraw troops from Syria, both Republicans and Democrats argued the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against Afghanistan serves as a global permission slip for every neocon fantasy. They will argue the same for Somalia.” As they did, although some said it should be revisited and rewritten with a narrower scope.

JUST NOW: @RepMattGaetz Calls for Urgent Removal of U.S. Troops from #Somalia, Supports War Powers Resolution.

Gaetz, a member of House Armed Services Committee, argued that the presence of American troops in Somalia is not only ineffective in achieving its goals, but also… pic.twitter.com/cBG99xnXWT

— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) April 27, 2023


Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is all in

Most reports are likening Gaetz’s resolution to withdraw from Somalia to the effort he previously led to force a US military pullout from Syria. But there is a key distinction between the two situations.

In Syria, US troops are violating international law because they are not welcome by the government in Damascus. They are an occupying force violating Syrian sovereignty.

In Somalia, however, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is all in with US drones in the air and troops on the ground, tweeting his thanks to Joe Biden. His only complaint has been that he’s not getting enough air support.

Image

The US shoehorned Mohamud into power in May 2022 by using the IMF to batter Somalia into holding a corrupt, clan-based election. They now have a willing collaborator whom many Somalis consider to be their puppet.

Moreover, anti-American sentiment is widespread, and the US presence serves as a recruiting tool for Al-Shabaab. On the same day the House voted not to withdraw troops, Brown University’s Costs of War Project reported, “The United States says its goals in Somalia are to eliminate Al-Shabaab and promote peace. The paper documents how U.S. counterterrorism policies are having the opposite effect and ensuring that the conflict continues in perpetuity.” It concluded that Al-Shabaab is still on the rise 16 years after its emergence, and noted, “The U.S. spends more on counterterrorism in Somalia each year than the Federal Somali Government earns in tax revenue.”

Al-Shabaab arose in response to the US-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, when Ethiopia was led by a longtime US client, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The TPLF overthrew Somalia’s Islamic Courts Union and occupied the country from 2006 to 2009, while Al-Shabaab flourished in an atmosphere of national resistance. Thus, as TJ Coles documented for The Grayzone, the US is now fighting the very ‘terrorists’ it created.

Al-Shabaab took an oath of allegiance to Al Qaeda, but its connection is more ideological than operational.

Mission creep

President Donald Trump increased drone bombing but withdrew nearly all 700 US Special Forces in Somalia at the end of his term, in December 2020.

On May 16, 2022, the day after President Hassan Sheikh Mohammed was re-elected, President Joe Biden signed off on a Pentagon proposal to reintroduce troops and establish a “small persistent presence.” “We’re working now to evaluate local conditions, including those following the Somali presidential election yesterday,” said Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby in a Defense Department press release. “And we’re engaging partners in the region, including the Somali government, to determine the best way forward.”

On the same day, the New York Times reported that the decision would “revive an open-ended American counterterrorism operation that has amounted to a slow-burn war through three administrations.” The Times also reported that “people familiar with the matter” said the number of troops would be capped at 450.

Now, roughly a year later, during the April 27 debate about the resolution to withdraw troops from Somalia, Gaetz and Congressman Ryan Zinke, R-Montana, each stated that there are about 900 US troops in Somalia. Gaetz serves on the House Armed Services Committee, Zinke on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies, an Appropriations Subcommittee, so they would be perfectly positioned to know.

Zinke, a former Navy Seal, argued for further escalation by invoking the Hollywood action blockbuster, Black Hawk Down, which dramatized the botched and bloody US military-humanitarian intervention in Mogadishu in 1993.

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition. But I agree with my distinguished colleagues from Florida that Congress has an obligation to review it. Congress should not abrogate our responsibility. We should ask the tough questions. And ultimately, we should provide the funding necessary and the resources to win. That’s our job.

“And I agree with you 100%. But as a commander, they are doing more than just guarding an embassy. A force structure of 900 may seem like a large footprint. But those of us who remember Black Hawk Down would suggest otherwise. A force requires medi-vac. Those medi-vac require people that service those aircraft.

“In case we get in trouble, we need a quick reaction force, a force large enough to defend our troops. Because I, unlike my colleagues, know that if you were to put any American servicemen in harm’s way, we want to ensure we have the adequate force to make sure they’re recovered safely.

“They also have to be fed. Communications. In order to have an effective force, you need a footprint that can do its mission. . . . “


When service members with the skill sets that Zinke listed are added to the 900 US Special Forces figure, the total number of troops could be in the thousands.

The Special Forces are already supported by a fleet of US Navy ships off Somalia’s coast, in the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean, and additional troops at the US military base in neighboring Djibouti.

Support for Somaliland secessionists

The Biden administration has been tacitly supporting the secessionist movement in Somalia’s northern Somaliland State, seemingly in exchange for a military base site in the coastal city of Berbera. The plan to work directly with Somaliland—bypassing the Somali government—to establish the base in Berbera is outlined in the 2023 National Defense Appropriation Act (NDAA).

The plan, however, suffered a major setback when a brutal war broke out between Somaliland secessionists and unionists in the city of Las Anod and the surrounding region of Sool, Sanaag, and Cayn (SSC). Many died, many more were injured, and more than 200,000 may be displaced in the ongoing conflict.

The secessionist militias are on the outskirts of Las Anod, periodically shelling the city with artillery, and residents anticipate more violence after a Ramadan lull.

US and EU officials asked Somaliland officials to withdraw from the SSC Region, but merely expressed “disappointment” when they did not.

US props up unpopular president

As the US promotes the division of Somalia, it is propping up the corrupt and nominally functioning national government of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, which has no popular support inside or outside the capital of Mogadishu. US Brigadier General Peter Bailey issued a revealing set of comments to NBC, stating that Somalis “need democratic reform to make sure the government is recognized as being legitimate.”

Shortly after returning to power, Mohamud “declared total war” on Al-Shabaab, bidding for a new influx of support from the US and promising a quick victory.

However, nearly a year later, Al-Shabaab still controls large swathes of land, mostly in central and southern Somalia, through a combination of brute force, racketeering, and sheer terror. Control of contested areas seesaws with dizzying frequency.

One of Mohamud’s key strategies proved to be a spectacular failure. He armed clan militias in central Somalia, claiming to empower local resistance. Some then set up roadblocks to collect illegal taxes in Middle Shabelle, while others converged on Mogadishu to challenge his own authority. He responded, comically, that he would ban machine guns mounted on vehicles and rocket propelled grenades—weapons that he had distributed—in the streets of Mogadishu.

The strategy of infusing clan politics into the Somali National Army (SNA) led to high casualties and low morale. Many were killed after being lured into remote towns and running out of ammunition.

Among the high-profile casualties was the commander of Danab, meaning “Lightning,” an elite, US-trained commando brigade. The US has spent 80 million dollars to train, equip, feed and pay salaries for Danab. Bancroft Global, a private contractor for the State Department, vets and recruits its members.

The casualty rate is much higher in other branches of the SNA. Many deserted at a faster rate than they can be replaced.

Casualties and desertion have made the SNA a largely spent force.

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The Danab, an elite Somali commando brigade in the war against Al-Shabaab. They are recruited and vetted by private military contractor Bancroft Global and trained by US troops at Baledogle Airfield.

US takes direct control of Somalia’s operations

Washington insists that Somalia is leading the war against Al-Shabaab, while the US is simply training and assisting its armed forces. However, a series of recent events demonstrate that the US is fully in charge of operations.

Ambassador Larry André, a foreign service veteran, orchestrates from within Mogadishu’s Halane, a sprawling and heavily fortified compound like the Green Zone in Iraq. In February, André arranged public relations offensives by embedding New York Times and NBC reporters with US Special Forces to produce pieces about the conflict.

The New York Times confirmed that Somali forces have been taking heavy casualties in recent months. Times correspondent Eric Schmitt described a graduation ceremony for new recruits of Danab, which was shrouded in sadness because the brigade had sustained heavy losses. “Many of the recruits will be rushed to the frontlines to backfill two Danab battalions decimated by an Al-Shabaab attack last month that left more than 100 soldiers dead or injured.”

While public relations led by the US Embassy in Mogadishu was kicking into high gear, the State Department convened a meeting in Washington, DC that included the UK, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Turkey. The meeting took place on February 28, 2023. Among the agenda items was America’s request that its partners shoulder some of the financial burden of the prolonged war.

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US troops monitor field operations and implement drone strikes in Somalia, as reported by NBC Nightly News, February 2023
Also, on February 28, 2023, the US Embassy announced that it was sending 60 tons of new weapons and ammunition to Baledogle—in a pair of C-17 Globemaster cargo planes—to be used against Al-Shabaab.

On March 1, 2023, President Mohamud’s National Security Advisor, Hussein Sheikh-Ali, announced that Ethiopia and Kenya would be sending 30,000 more troops to help Somalia fight Al-Shabaab.

On March 29, 2023, President Joe Biden nominated Richard H. Riley to replace Larry André. Riley has served in significant positions in Pakistan, Norway, Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt, and Iraq.

All these recent developments promise escalation and the likelihood of more US boots on Somali soil.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/05/ ... -withdraw/.

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Will the Death of Yet Another Opponent of Rwandan Strongman Paul Kagame Prompt a Suspension of U.S. Foreign Aid to Rwanda?
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - May 4, 2023 0

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John Williams Ntwali [Source: ipi.media]

The man Bill Clinton called “one of the greatest leaders of our time” has admitted that many of his opponents “tend to die.”
In the early morning hours of January 18, Rwandan journalist John Williams Ntwali died in a road accident. According to the senior police superintendent in Kigali, Ntwali was the passenger on a motorcycle that was struck by a speeding car whose driver was then arrested.

Suspicion was aroused, however, when the Rwandan authorities failed to provide a police report, the exact location of the alleged accident, any photo or video evidence, or detailed information on the others involved in the accident.

Ntwali was an investigative journalist who played a leading role in covering and bringing attention to the plight of residents who are in a dispute with authorities over land evictions. Ntwali was also one of only a few journalists in Rwanda independently covering high profile politicized trials of journalists, commentators and opposition members, and posting videos about their condition in prison.

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John Williams Ntwali [Source: interview.cd]

In June 2022, he told Human Rights Watch about the torture wounds he had seen on inmates—numbers of whom were arrested for “genocide denial”; meaning they questioned the official narrative of events in April 1994.

Prior to his death, Ntwali had published videos on his YouTube channel about people who had suspiciously “disappeared.” His last video, posted on January 17, was about the reported disappearance of a genocide survivor who had spoken out about being beaten by police officers in 2018.

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Rwandan supporters of then-imprisoned opposition leader Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, one of many political prisoners in the country. [Source: beforeitsnews.com]

In June 2022, Mtwali told Human Rights Watch:

“I’m told that after the Commonwealth heads of Government Meeting [CHOGM], they won’t play around with us anymore. I’ve been told five or six times, I receive phone calls from private numbers. Some [intelligence] people have come to my house twice to tell me. NISS [National Intelligence and Security Services] has told me: ‘If you don’t change your tone, after CHOGM, you’ll see what happens to you.’”

A journalist who saw Ntwali a day before his death told Voice of America: “He looked cautious and switched off his phone before we started talking…He said phones could not be trusted. He told me that all the doors on which he knocked were closed but he was determined to face life. His death was so sudden.”

A group of 90 human rights organizations, many Africa-based, are demanding an independent inquiry into Ntwali’s death.

The International Press Institute noted that Rwandan authorities have consistently failed to ensure credible investigations into and accountability for suspicious deaths of political opponents or high-profile critics, such as Kizito Mihigo, a popular gospel singer who died in police custody in February 2020.

Therefore, regional and international experts—such as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions—should be involved in the investigation.

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Kizito Mihigo [Source: afropop.org]

Legitimizing a Strongman
Time magazine called the Biden administration to task in December for giving a platform to Rwandan President Paul Kagame at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit which, it said, “legitimizes strongmen like [him].”

President of Rwanda Paul Kagame delivers remarks during the Space Forum at the U.S. - Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C., on December 13, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch—Getty Images)
Rwandan President Paul Kagame delivers remarks during the Space Forum at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C., on December 13, 2022. [Source: time.com]
Jeffrey Smith wrote in the Time piece that Kagame had once said of his political opponents, “many of them tend to die.”

So, too, Smith wrote, “has any façade of democracy in Rwanda. Since winning the country’s first direct presidential elections in 2003—with more than 95% of the vote, a winning percentage that has grown to 99% in recent years—Kagame has systematically installed the structures of a totalitarian state in which literally any measure can, and will, be taken by state authorities to silence the calls for inclusivity and democratic reform—from intimidation to collective punishment and from kidnappings to ‘disappearances.’ Even state-sanctioned murder has become routine.”

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Patrick Karegeya [Source: wikipedia.org]

One citizen quoted in Smith’s piece told Human Rights Watch: “Here, the problem is talking the truth. If you do, they go after you.”

After opposition figure Patrick Karegeya was killed in a South African hotel room in 2014, Kagame’s Minister of Defense was quoted as saying, “When you choose to be a dog, you die like a dog, and the cleaners will wipe away the trash so that it does not stink for them.”

World media took notice in 2020 when Paul Rusesabagina, a U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree whose actions in the 1994 genocide inspired the film Hotel Rwanda, was kidnapped and held in captivity for more than two years after being duped into traveling from his home in the U.S. overseas by Rwandan authorities.

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Paul Rusesabagina leaving a court hearing in Kigali, Rwanda, in 2020. He was held captive for more than two years. [Source: nytimes.com]

Based on the publicity surrounding this case, Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, requested in July a comprehensive review of U.S. policy toward Rwanda and urged that the U.S. place on hold all assistance over concerns about human rights and Rwanda’s apparent role in the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in neighboring Congo.

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Robert Menendez [Source: dailycaller.com]

As of this writing, the requested hold has not been placed and Rwanda is scheduled to receive $176.56 million in U.S. foreign aid in 2023.

According to Time, since 2003 total U.S. aid and development assistance to Kagame has increased by 400%—despite the massive documented human rights abuses of his regime.

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William J. Perry, the U.S. Defense Secretary from 1994 to 1997, speaks with Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame. Perry helped secure the delivery of weapons to Kagame that were used to attack Congo and exterminate Hutu refugees in eastern Congo. [Source: therwandan.com]

Kagame has been called an “African Hitler” because a) his forces established open air crematoria for more efficiently disposing of the bodies of the massive numbers of Hutu that they killed during Rwanda’s civil war (1991-1993) and thereafter; b) he triggered the Rwandan conflict and genocide beginning in 1990 when forces under his command illegally invaded Rwanda from Uganda and then in 1994 appears to have ordered the shooting down of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana’s airplane so he could take power for himself; and c) he invaded Congo twice, sponsored proxy militias that killed and raped tens of thousands of people in Eastern Congo while plundering the area’s resources.[1]

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Paul Kagame (featured on right) leads RPF troops after carrying out an illegal invasion of Rwanda from Uganda. [Source: listverse.wpengine.netdna]

A clue as to why the U.S. has stuck by Kagame for so many years appears in an October 2022 State Department fact sheet, which gushed that “in November 2019, an American Chamber of Commerce was formed in Rwanda and has now grown to over 70 members. U.S. business interests in Rwanda are expanding, with private U.S. investment in tea, coffee, energy, mining, water treatment, banking, franchising, services, hospitality, tech, communications equipment, and manufacturing.”[2]

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Juvenal Habyarimana [Source: musabyimana.net]

Meaning that Kagame has kept Rwanda open for U.S. business when his predecessor, Juvenal Habyarimana (1973-1994) had been criticized by the State Department for heading a government with “elephantine bureaucratic procedure” and a “go-slow bureaucratic mentality” that hindered private enterprise.[3]

Kagame performed a particularly valuable service for U.S. business interests in his invasion of Congo, which helped to install a pro-Western government that provided lucrative mining concessions for U.S. and Western based multinational corporations.

Among the companies that benefitted was American Mineral Fields (AMF), which happened to have been headquartered in Hope, Arkansas, Bill Clinton’s hometown.[4]

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Rwandan-backed occupiers sent by Kagame in Eastern Congo. [Source: aljazeera.com]

Clinton was a major booster of Kagame from the beginning of his reign, referring to him as “one of the greatest leaders of our time.”

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[Source: Inyenyerinews.org]

One wonders if Clinton still feels that way today—amidst a massive amount of evidence that the opposite holds true, and that Kagame is a serial killer.


As chief of intelligence under Yoweri Museveni in the 1980s, Kagame, nicknamed “Pilate” after Pontius Pilate, tortured and killed many regime opponents. To become head of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), Kagame is rumored to have killed his rival, Fred Rwigyema, who was widely respected and may have averted the conflict that led to the Rwandan genocide. ↑

The State Department fact sheet further noted that “U.S. exports to Rwanda include aircraft, pharmaceutical and scientific products, machinery, optical and medical instruments, construction equipment, and agricultural products. U.S. imports from Rwanda include coffee and other agricultural products, tantalum and tungsten ores, and basketwork. Rwanda is currently eligible for limited preferential trade benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). The United States and Rwanda have a trade and investment framework agreement (entered into force in 2006) and a bilateral investment treaty (entered into force in 2012). The United States has also signed trade and investment framework agreements with the East African Community (EAC) and with the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). Rwanda is a member of both regional organizations.” ↑

Ambassador Herman Cohen for National Security Council, “How Habyarimana Runs Rwanda;” American ambassador (Herman Cohen) to Secretary of State, “Rwanda’s Private Sector: Battling the Bureaucrats,” April 1988; “Rwanda: Even a Worse Future Ahead,” December 11, 1987, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley California, African Affairs, Box 1, Folder Rwanda. ↑

Dena Montague, Frieda Berrigan “The Business of War in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Who benefits?” Dollars and Sense, July/August 2001, http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stor ... the-congo/.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/0 ... to-rwanda/

**********

South African court rules in favor of NUMSA and others in load shedding case, asks state to ensure power supply to critical facilities

The Court has granted urgent relief sought by NUMSA and 18 other applicants to exempt public hospitals, schools, and police stations from rotational power cuts, recognizing that load shedding infringed upon constitutional rights. A decision on Part B of the application seeking final relief is awaited.

May 06, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

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Photo: IndustriALL
In a crucial ruling on May 5, the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria decided in favor of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and 18 other applicants seeking relief from severe power outages that have affected much of the country. It ordered the Minister of Public Enterprises to take “all reasonable steps” within 60 days to ensure that there is sufficient supply or generation of electricity to prevent any interruption due to load shedding to all public health establishments, all public schools, and the South African Police Service and police stations.

In March, the United Democratic Movement (UDM) and NUMSA joined political parties, trade unions, and civil society groups (UDM and Others) in calling upon the court to declare load shedding (or rotational power cuts) as unconstitutional, citing the infringement of certain rights, including those enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

As such, the application not only named the state-owned energy utility company Eskom, but also President Cyril Ramaphosa, the Ministers of Mineral Resources and Energy and Public Enterprises, and the South African government as a whole.

South Africa has been in the throes of a worsening electricity crisis as Eskom has struggled to meet the country’s energy demands for over 15 years, resorting to load shedding in the process.

Record power outages over the past year have inflicted major economic losses and disrupted access to crucial public services including hospitals. Conditions are set to worsen as electricity demands increase during the winter, with Eskom preparing protocols for Stage 9 load shedding, which could see outages lasting for over 14 hours a day.

The application submitted by UDM and Others is divided into two parts: Part A, which sought urgent relief and which was granted on Friday, called upon the Court to exempt the country’s critical sectors, including health care, from load shedding.

In the submission to the Court, the applicants “put forward extensive evidence of egregious breaches to the rights to life and access to health caused by load shedding,” with Dr. Lufuno Rudo Mathivha from the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital stating in her affidavit that “there have been several instances where patients succumb and the cause of death is described in many different ways in circumstances where the cause of death may actually have been due to load shedding.”

Similarly, the applicants outlined the impact of load shedding on the right to education, which are “particularly keenly felt in rural and township schools,” as noted in the judgment: “Iniquities created by our country’s past injustices are, by the simple act of load shedding, being perpetuated against a vulnerable segment of society”

In his affidavit to the Court, President Cyril Ramaphosa had stated that “none of the government respondents have a Constitutional responsibility to supply electricity to the people of the Republic.”

However, the applicants argued that it was because of the President’s obligation to respect and promote the Bill of Rights that he must respond to the “humanitarian crisis” of load shedding, emphasizing that “the fundamental rights entrenched in the Bill of Rights…cannot be given effect to without electricity.”

In its ruling, the Court declared “It is clear that, whatever the President and his cabinet Ministers averred, the consequences of policy decisions resulted in the current need by Eskom to continue to implement various levels of load shedding.”

The ruling added, “We find that there have been repeated breaches by the State of its Constitutional and statutory duties and that these breaches are continuing to infringe on citizens’ rights to healthcare, security, and education.”

“Even if the relief sought were to be considered as only amounting to an interim interdict, we find that a prima facie right has been established and that the interferences also create apprehensions of irreparable harm in the form of prejudice to the right to life…as well as other Constitutional rights…”

In a statement welcoming the judgment, NUMSA said, “This is a victory for the entire country, not just for NUMSA alone, but also for the entire working class.”

The applicants are now gearing up for the Court’s verdict on Part B of the application, which will be for final relief, seeking a comprehensive review of the actions of the government, the President, ministers, and Eskom as they relate to their failure to uphold their constitutional and statutory obligations to ensure a reliable supply of electricity.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/05/06/ ... acilities/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Sat May 13, 2023 1:25 pm

UN: + 18,000 People Enter Ethiopia From Sudan

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People arriving from Sudan to Ethiopia. May. 11, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@craigling10

Published 12 May 2023

"...more than 440 individuals have crossed the Kurmuk border crossing point..."


The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) has reported that the quantity of individuals seeking refuge in Ethiopia as a consequence of the persisting crisis in Sudan has exceeded 18,000.

"People arriving from Sudan to Ethiopia via the Metema border town have now reached more than 18,000," the UNOCHA stated in its most recent situation update published on Thursday, adding that more than 440 individuals have crossed the Kurmuk border crossing point into Ethiopia's Benishangul Gumuz Region.

According to the agency, recently instances of newcomers at the Pagak/Bubieyr border crossing point in the Gambella region of Ethiopia have surfaced, marking the first of such occurrence since the onset of the conflict in Sudan.

The UNOCHA has reported that the number of arrivals to the region comprises individuals from 60 distinct nationalities, with a notable prevalence of individuals hailing from Ethiopia, Sudan, and Turkey.


The UNOCHA has proclaimed that preparations are underway for the construction of housing and reception facilities for individuals requiring relocation, along with the provision of additional medical support.

The Sudanese capital of Khartoum and other regions have experienced armed confrontations between the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group, since April 15.

Both factions have levied accusations of starting hostilities against each other.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/UN- ... -0001.html

Sudan Warring Parties Sign Agreement To Avoid Harm To Civilians

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The deadly clashes have left at least 550 dead and 4 926 wounded. May. 11, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@XHNews

Published 11 May 2023

Deadly armed clashes between the Sudanese army and the RSF have been raging in Sudan since April 15.

Al Arabiya news channel reported Thursday that the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) signed a declaration in the Saudi port city of Jeddah pledging to protect civilians in Sudan.

The warring parties stressed that the interests of the Sudanese people are a priority and agreed to allow all civilians to leave besieged areas, the report said.

The agreement affirmed Sudan's sovereignty and unity and welcomed mediation efforts by other countries. It also called for a halt to all attacks that could harm civilians, the report said.

The two sides began talks on Saturday in Jeddah to reach a ceasefire to facilitate emergency humanitarian aid to the conflict-torn country.


On Thursday, Saudi Arabia sent its fourth aid plane to Port Sudan, loaded with more than 10 tons of food and medical supplies, among other relief items, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

Deadly armed clashes between the Sudanese army and the RSF have been raging in Sudan since April 15 in the capital Khartoum and other areas.

The deadly clashes have left at least 550 dead and 4 926 wounded, according to figures released by the Sudanese Ministry of Health in early May.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Sud ... -0021.html

Zimbabwe Lifts Restrictions on Basic Goods Imports

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Minister of Finance and Economic Development Mthuli Ncube. May. 12, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@KingsolomonZW

Published 12 May 2023

"...Ncube affirmed the government's commitment to preserve macroeconomic balance..."


On Thursday, Zimbabwe implemented the complete elimination of restrictions on the importation of essential goods in an effort to mitigate the escalating prices.

"In order to enhance the supply of basic goods to the public, all basic goods will no longer be subject to import licenses and will also come into the country free of import duties and taxes," Minister of Finance and Economic Development Mthuli Ncube said.

The authorities have recently declared an extensive array of measures aimed at stabilizing the exchange rate and macroeconomic environment due to the price hikes and exchange rate instability in the recent weeks.

Ncube affirmed the government's commitment to preserve macroeconomic balance and eliminate exploitative arbitrage circumstances in the economy.


According to Ncube, the government intends to encourage the usage of the Zimbabwean dollar in domestic transactions.

Ncub has stated that such goals will be achievedthrough the enforcement of mandatory payment of government agency and service provider fees and levies in the local currency.

The measures involve the refinement of the foreign exchange auction system, the relocation of all external loans, and a pledge to consistently evaluatethe domestic interest rate with the objective of promoting domestic savings.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Zim ... -0009.html

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Who Is Fighting Whom in Sudan?
MAY 8, 2023

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Khartoum’s Africa road tunnel, 2020. Mohammed Abdelmoneim Hashim Mohammed, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

By As’ad AbuKhalil – May 2, 2023

There are various ways in which we can examine the Sudanese conflict and its underlying causes. We can treat it as a purely domestic conflict between two warring factions and leaders who are vying for absolute political power. Or we can view it as a proxy war in which outside powers — regional and international — are fighting for the imposition of their own agendas on Sudan.

We can also borrow from the racist Orientalist tropes and assert, yet again, that the people of Africa and the Middle East have always been at war and that the West just wants to establish peace on earth.

In reality, the conflict in Sudan is not isolated from the US agenda in the whole of Africa. We can’t, as we look around various conflicts in Africa, forget that the U.S. founded the Africa Command in 2007. Regional commands that the US establish are intended purely to govern and manage wars in the region of that command.

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U.S. AFRICOM area labelled in yellow. (DoD Updater Private, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Central Command focuses on wars in the Middle East, while the Africa Command focuses on wars in Africa. Of course, the U.S. would not admit that. The Africa Command chief modestly declared recently that the U.S. aim is merely to help Africans find “African solutions,” presumably because Africans can’t find solutions without help from the White Man.

Africa Command embodies a declaration that the US has completed its inheritance of the former colonies of European powers. US interests in Sudan have been increasing over time especially as US media express alarm at alleged, expanding Russian diplomatic and military roles on the continent. But Sudan has been at the forefront of U.S. regional conspiracies for decades.

A Former Dynamo

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Some of the leaders at the Arab League 1967 summit in Khartoum, from left: Saudi King Faisal, Egypt’s Gamal Nasser, Yemen’s Abdullah Sallal, Kuwait’s Sheikh Al-Sabah of Kuwait and Iraq’s Abd al-Rahman Arif. (Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons)

Sudan was once one of the most advanced political systems in the Arab world. When much of the Middle East was ruled by despots, Sudan enjoyed periods in the 1960s of political liberalism, a thriving press, and dynamic political parties. Its leaders often mediated between feuding Arab leaders, and the capital, Khartoum, hosted the famous 1967 Arab Summit in which all Arab countries agreed on the “3 Nos of Khartoum” (No to peace with Israel, No to recognition of Israel, and No negotiation with Israel).

The Sudanese Communist Party was once the largest political party in the entire Arab world. But that put the spotlight on Sudan: how could the US tolerate a democracy in which Arabs express their political aspirations freely? Despotic rule has always been the favorite form of government for the US and NATO countries.

The unpredictability that democracy brings causes alarm in Washington, D.C. Furthermore, the U.S. government, through its Middle East section, knew that Arab public opinion clashed with the U.S. and Israeli agendas.

The Arabs overwhelmingly, for example, oppose normalization with Israel, while the U.S. considers normalization at the top of its agenda. Only despots can impose normalization on their people. For that, Egypt’s Anwar Sadat was regarded, and still is regarded, as the model Arab ruler, despite his cruel repression and corruption.

A Sudanese colonel by the name of Jaafar Nimeiry seized power in Khartoum in 1969 in a military coup d’etat. Previous to taking power, he tried to sabotage the democratic process but failed. He fashioned himself after the Egyptian charismatic leader, Gamal Abdul-Nasser, although he had none of the Nasser’s charisma or brilliance.

At first, Nimeiry ruled as a socialist Arab nationalist but that changed after 1971 when he faced what he said was a communist plot to unseat him. He then launched an anti-communist campaign against one of the most influential political parties in the country. His relationship with the US started after the coup and he began to veer away from the USSR.

Natural US Ally

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Sudan’s Prime Minister Gaafar Mohammad Nimeiry, right, arriving in U.S. for a state visit, 1983. (US Dod, Michael Tyler, Wikimedia Commons)

His savage punishment of communists and of communist sympathizers, rendered him a natural ally of the US and the West. It is not far-fetched to think that the US aided his anti-communist purges, as it had done in several Arab and non-Arab countries.

At first, Nimeiry established relations with China, but later received US backing. He was quickly transformed from a (brief) revolutionary mimic of Nasser into a linchpin of US plots in North Africa. This coincided with his discovery of religion and the propagation of a conservative Islamist message. His Islamism, naturally, did not rankle Washington as long as he was an obedient client and as long as he deviated from staunch support for Palestinian struggle. Islamism was a close ally of Western plots against the left during the Cold War.

Nimeiry was paid handsomely by the U.S. to facilitate the smuggling of Ethiopian Jews into Sudan (dubbed Operation Moses by Israel). The Sudanese despot did not object to Mossad operations in his country as long as the US continued to support him against his opponents, and as long as his internal repression was blessed by Western countries.

But Nimeiri was overthrown in 1985. However, after a brief civilian period, he was succeeded by another military despot, Omar Al-Bashir. Al-Bashir cultivated the Islamists in Sudan and claimed at first to support Palestinian struggle and later joined the Iran axis in the region.

But he had a secret deal (for a fee, undoubtedly) to surrender Carlos the Jackal to France, after allowing him to reside in Sudan. He later betrayed the Palestinians and switched sides to join the Saudi-UAE axis. Al-Bashir was overthrown in 2019.

Hopes for a New Era

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A civil demonstration against the October 2021 coup in Sudan. (Osama Eid, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

The people of Sudan aspired for a peaceful democratic transition to a new political era. But top military leaders would not surrender power and reneged on promises they had made to civic groups leading to the uprising against the dictatorship.

The two generals (Abdel Fattah Burhan who leads the Sudanese Army and Hamidti who leads the Rapid Support Forces, RSF) followed in the footsteps of other Arab despots who knew that the way to the US Congress’s heart passes through Tel Aviv. Against the wishes of the Sudanese population, both generals established open relations with the Mossad.

And while they did not allow Hamdouk, a US-picked technocrat to exercise power as a prime minister, they ousted the civilian component from the government to rule without a civilian façade. The coup of 2021 (by the two generals with Mossad support) didn’t trigger sanctions in Washington, and the Biden administration continued to have excellent relations with both generals. Both generals resorted to force as their militaries shot and killed protesters to secure the new coup.

The US did not mind the use of force. It has other considerations, such as its ever-expansive interventions in Africa, always in the name of fighting terrorism, which never seems to end or even diminish.

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Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, aka Hemedti, in 2022. (Government.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Saudi Arabia & UAE Picked Sides
Both Saudi Arabia and UAE served as sponsors of the two generals, but each picked a side. The UAE favored the RSF while the Saudi government favored the army commander, General Burhan.

The previous ruler, Omar Al-Bashir, had formed an Islamist political base. His arrest did not eradicate its influence from the country, although it was banned from political activity by the new rulers.

Hamidti of the RSF then accused Burhan of cultivating relations with the Islamists in order to establish a popular base of support (there is merit to the accusation especially after Burhan released some of the key Islamists during the recent fighting).

The UAE to expressed its preference: Hamditi was its man. the UAE combats all traces of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the region and the world.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, has been embroiled in an announced bitter feud with the UAE, in Yemen, Libya and Sudan. Each side serves as a regional patron to a different group. But the UAE’s close relations with Israel underlines the Mossad patronage of Hamidti. Burhan, on the other hand, is sponsored by the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Egypt.

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Sudan’s Abdel Fattah Burhan in 2019. (Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

The conflict in Sudan is a domestic, regional and international conflict. The US and its media, wary of a Russian role in Africa, have exaggerated the part played by the Wagner group and all but omits the influential roles of US allies in the region.

The RSF is more than a force. It is an actual army which only lacks an air force and is bigger than the regular army. Meanwhile, somebody has been equipping the warring factions with advanced weapons.

The US removed Sudan from the terrorist list, allowing the military junta to augment its arsenal. The deal which resulted in the normalization with Israel required the US to help the ruling junta to break out of the long isolation imposed on Sudan by the US and Israel.

There is no end in sight in Sudan. Forces from outside the country are fueling the conflict. In the Middle East, we often used to say, when the US evacuates its personnel, it is usually a sign of a sinister plot by Washington against that country. The US has just evacuated its personnel.

This does not bode well for the future of Sudan. In 1976, after the US evacuated its personnel from Beirut, the civil war intensified of a civil and did not end until 1990.

https://orinocotribune.com/who-is-fight ... -in-sudan/

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Sudan: The Mamushkas’ War
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 11, 2023
Guadi Calvo

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Refugees from Sudan’s civil war

Three weeks after the beginning of the conflict, after the cease-fires agreed upon by the parties have failed one after the other, and without any international or regional force having been able to push forward a proposal to at least stop the death, the Sudanese continue to kill each other with fervor in the different active combat pockets throughout the country.

Two ambitious generals, the general and head of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the self-styled General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known by the diminutive name of Hemetti, patron of the paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Force (RSF). Both chiefs have been putative sons of former dictator Omar al-Bashir, whom they helped overthrow in 2019.

With the prodigal and infinite funds they have been able to accumulate in several decades of plundering natural resources, particularly gold and oil, and state corruption, without giving a damn about the 47 million Sudanese who only have the option of fleeing to some place where the projectiles of the rival sides do not reach or choose a side, before the side chooses them, they continue killing and increasing the crisis that escalates day after day without yet reaching its zenith.

Since last April 15, the day of the beginning of what can now be defined as a civil war, have begun to emerge -like the game of Russian dolls- a war that contains another and another and so on repeatedly not only within the country, but also of foreign interest.

The most evident is the war that the army continues to wage in Darfur where once again, as Hemetti has been doing since the beginning of this century with the consent of al-Bashir, it massacred close to half a million Darfuris in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups, settled in the region since the beginning of time, in a struggle against the Rizeigat, a tribe of Arab origin that arrived in the region from the beginning of time, a tribe of Arab origin that arrived centuries later and to which Hemetti and his janjaweed (armed horsemen) belong, which after the “success” in the war of extermination that lasted from 2002 to 2012, al-Bashir would elevate to the status of paramilitary force, reconverting into the FAR, which reactivated a few months ago and after the outbreak of the 15th have reached dreadful levels with fighting in the capital of West Darfur, el-Geneina and other nearby cities such as Nylan, capital of East Darfur, as well as in el-Obeid, el-Fasher and others in the same areas.

In Nylan, which was practically divided in two, the fighting intensified last Saturday 6th with the use of heavy weapons after the attempt of FAR commandos to infiltrate army warehouses in the neighborhood of al-Nahda, so that the second most populated city of Sudan – with about 600,000 inhabitants – after the Khartoum-Omdurman axis, which exceeds five million, the army controls the western side, where the government buildings and the army command are located, while in the east the FAR forces have the army command. 000 inhabitants – after the Khartoum-Omdurman axis which exceeds five million – the army controls the western side, where the government buildings and the army command are located, while in the east the FAR forces have the airport, the offices of the intelligence services and the central police headquarters, the seizure of which meant heavy fighting with an unknown number of casualties.

Both groups are struggling to cover the largest amount of territory not only in Darfur, but in the whole country where important battles are being fought, in view of the fact that last Saturday the groups of negotiators arrived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, who hurried to clarify that they were not there to discuss any cease-fire agreement, but to establish humanitarian crossings through which both civilians and supplies of medicines and provisions in general could circulate without risk.

Behind this meeting is not only Riyadh, one of the main parties interested in resolving the crisis given its proximity to Sudan through the Red Sea – with an average width of 280 kilometers – but also the United States, which, in view of the strong presence of both China and Russia in the region, does not want to give these two powers any possibility of interfering in the conflict.

While the fighting in Darfur intensifies, the United Nations reported that in the south of that region more than one million polio vaccines for the vaccination campaigns planned after the outbreak at the end of last year, were destroyed after multiple looting, which caused damage to health facilities, thus breaking the cold chain.

On the other hand, the World Health Organization reports that it has recorded some thirty attacks on health care facilities since the beginning of the conflict in which large quantities of medicines have been lost. In addition, some $14 million worth of supplies have gone missing, according to the World Food Program. Due to the attacks focused on hospitals, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported that it has halted its work in West Darfur.

The Aba Dhar camp for displaced people, as well as 20 other refugee centers, had been attacked earlier this month, so that thousands of civilians have had to flee to Chad, adding to the more than 20,000 who arrived in the first days of fighting.

Many of them had first been located south of the Chadian city of Adre, but once they had outgrown the facilities, camps have been opened near the villages of Taktakli, Darta, Gidenta and Denta, where humanitarian conditions are extremely precarious, considering that Chad is one of the poorest nations in the world.

The desolation of Khartoum

The fighting has not stopped in the capital of the country in spite of the cease-fire, where different international organizations mention that the number of dead is between 500 and 600, while the number of wounded is around 5,000 in the whole country. Some local entities, such as the always politically active since 2019 Doctors Union, reject these figures and denounce that the real numbers are much higher. They report that bodies are piling up in morgues and many more are rotting in the streets without anyone being able to lift them, let alone count them, because of the large space in which they are scattered, not counting those who have been left under the rubble after the bombings. This theory is not at all far-fetched if one considers the harshness of the clashes, the prolonged nature of the fighting and the areas in which it takes place, mainly urban. Most of the hospitals of the capital and many supply centers for the basic needs of the population have been destroyed, to which must be added that also, after the release of thousands of criminals from prisons in the first days of the conflict, gangs composed of these elements have begun to attack the population, having established themselves as an authority in some neighborhoods of Khartoum.

Among the many hardships being endured by the civilian population, we must also add the collapse of the electricity network, which has left important sectors without this service, to which must be added the shortage of drinking water, which has caused the price of drinking water cans to quadruple, while other Khartoumis have had to resort to the White Nile, which runs along the eastern shore of the city, to get their supplies.

Some tons of the little humanitarian aid that has arrived are entering the country through Port Sudan, on the Red Sea, some 800 kilometers by road from the country’s capital and 1,600 from Darfur. In spite of the UN’s demands regarding security for the transport of the aid, on May 3, six trucks on their way to Darfur were ransacked.

It is now estimated that more than 300,000 people have been displaced by the fighting, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which estimates that this figure could triple in the near future. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that 115,000 people have already taken refuge in neighboring countries. Meanwhile, more regional armed militias have been joining the two major factions over the course of the past few weeks.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/05/ ... shkas-war/

Liberia and the Challenges of US Imperialism
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 11, 2023
Djibo Sobukwe

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For those who are concerned about the US interference and its debilitating colonial and neocolonial impact on Africa, the study of Liberia is instructive. As professor Niels Hahn argues in his book, Two Centuries of US Military Operations in Liberia, Challenges of Resistance and Compliance:

“Liberia is the country in Africa where the United States has the most extended history of military engagement, and each intervention is layered on the experience of previous interventions. Over the years, the interventions have become more comprehensive and sophisticated, and Liberia can be considered an essential case for the general study of US military interventions in Africa.”

(Hahn 2019, vi)

Historical Background

Contrary to popular belief, Liberia was the USA’s first overseas colony by way of war conquest. Many people and some authors like Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book, The Grand Chessboard, say that the Spanish-American War of 1898 was America’s first overseas war of conquest. As we may know that the Spanish American war led to several overseas conquests like the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Cuba etc. However as it turns out this is proven false. Research shows that the colonization of Liberia preceded the US colonization of Hawaii and even the Mexican-American War which resulted in the annexation of California.

In 1816, the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America, commonly known as the American Colonization Society (ACS) was established to deal with the problems of slavery. Its objective was to execute a plan to repatriate free people of color (which included formerly enslaved Africans and the mixed race offspring of slave masters) with their ‘consent’ back to Africa or another place thought most expedient by Congress (like Haiti or Mexico where slavery had been abolished). This choice was not always an easy one for some freed African-Americans, since it could mean leaving some family members behind who were still enslaved. In some cases they were emancipated only if they agreed to emigrate.

Although the ACS was presented as a philanthropic humanitarian freedom project for formerly enslaved Africans, reports from leading members of the ACS show that the real motivations were based on concern for the security of their own slave plantations. Most of the members of the ACS were white plantation owners in the South and they were increasingly aware of the Haitian Revolution which started in 1791 (to 1803) and the Gabriel Conspiracy in Virginia which was discovered in 1800. The British banned the slave trade not slavery in 1807 and the Americans followed suit in 1808. So one may not easily imagine that there was a connection between the Haitian Revolution, the Gabriel Conspiracy and the colonization of Liberia but research shows otherwise. Slave owners understood that if the number and proportion of slaves to whites and free Africans was not balanced there was a chance of a big rebellion. So the best way to secure their property was to encourage freed Africans to emigrate for fear that they would encourage a rebellion. The fact that the Maryland legislators passed laws to financially assist colonists in expeditiously removing Black people after the Nat Turner rebellion in 1831 is further a demonstration that their motive was not philanthropy but fear of Black rebellion (Hahn 2019,16). We also have to keep in mind that Britain had colonized Sierra Leone a few years earlier, likely for similar reasons.

The ASC sent its first ship to Sierra Leone, from there they went to a neighboring island called Sherbo Island in February 1820 with 88 formerly enslaved African Americans and three white members of ACS. The ship was escorted by a US navy ship. They arrived at Sherbo island they tried to negotiate and unsuccessfully tried to buy some land but they were not welcomed by the indigenous Africans, and 22 formerly enslaved African Americans and all three whites died of malaria and the remaining 66 sought refuge in Sierra Leone.

The ASC sent a second ship the following year, and this time, the US government assisted the ACS with more military power. Again they tried to negotiate land purchase with the local chief Zolu Duma aka King Peter. When the chief refused to negotiate on sale of the land, ACS members threatened to kill him with their superior weaponry, thereby forcing him to sign a document stating that he had sold the land for some shoes, tobacco, beads, and cooking pots, which they reportedly never received.

The formal possession of Cape Mesurado happened in May 1822. ACS colonial agent, Dr. Eli Ayers, was appointed the first US government agent. He employed formerly enslaved African-Americans as laborers and as soldiers to protect the colony and they formed a militia.[1] Six months later several indigenous African ethnic groups united and launched several armed attacks trying to expel the colonists. This anti-colonial war was unsuccessful only due to the superior weaponry of the US colonists.

So we are clear: this was a war of colonial land dispossession and conquest! And not as some try to portray it that indigenous Liberians just agreed to welcome the white colonizers with their African-American employees to share the land. Or that Liberia was an African country never colonized. After that the ACS continued to send ship loads of ‘settlers’ to Liberia, some included Africans intercepted from other illegally trafficked enslaved Africans from other parts of the African coast line. These Africans were called “Congos.”

The colony expanded under the pretext of suppressing the slave trade and at the same time justified the expansion of the US military on the West African coast. In July 1847, Liberia was declared “independent” and thus evolved from the first US colony (outside continental US) to the first neo-colony. Emigration back to Africa via the ACS was encouraged by some early African nationalists like Edward Wilmot Blyden. Although Blyden challenged the political rule of the Black and mulatto settlers, he was unable to make any changes in the exploitative relationship. The small ruling elite known as Americo-Liberians discriminated against the indigenous Africans (who were not considered citizens until 1904 when the constitution was changed.) The Americo-Liberians for the most part served as neo-colonial agents of US imperialism.

The Anti-Colonial Period

Liberia has had twenty five presidents including the current one. All with the exception of president William R. Tolbert Jr., Liberia’s 22nd president, have been staunch US neocolonialists. If these compradors even thought of going into a different political direction they were quickly defeated by the hidden hand of US imperialism to which he also finally fell victim. Ironically, Tolbert was overthrown and replaced by Samuel Doe, the first indigenous African leader turned president in the service of US imperialism. The lesson here being: it is ideology and principles that are most important, not ethnicity, gender or place of origin. US Imperialism doesn’t hesitate to co-opt and exploit any contradiction in its favor.

It was during the reign of Tolbert’s predecessor, President Tubman, that “Liberia became a frontline country for the USG in the fight against socialism in Africa” and reportedly the CIA had its largest African base in Liberia at the time.[2] Pan Africanists are familiar with the history of the conservative Monrovia group established in 1961 as a neocolonial response to the Casablanca group which advocated immediate independence, socialism, unity, support for liberation movements, and anti-zionism. As obedient compradors do, Tubman denounced the Casablanca group and warned that no one should join them. Tolberts’ presidency, however, shows the influence of socialist Pan-Africanism.

William R. Tolbert Jr. was president from June 1972 until he was murdered in a bloody coup in April 1980. He was influenced by the socialist Pan-African trend of Nkrumah, Touré, and Cabral. Months before he was elected president, Tolbert was one of the pallbearers of Nkrumah’s coffin at his funeral in Guinea.[3] In a speech he gave in Guinea he said Nkrumah was the most renowned politician of Africa. He also participated in the Silver Jubilee of the Democratic Party of Guinea, where he praised president Sékou Touré for rejecting the French commonwealth.[4] A review of his foreign policy positions clearly demonstrates a radical shift towards socialist internationalism; from establishing friendly diplomatic relations with the USSR, Cuba, and calling for increased support for the freedom fighters in Mozambique, Namibia, Angola and Guinea Bissau. He said Liberia would be willing to send troops to Southern Africa if requested by the OAU.[5] He established the Liberia fund for the Liberation of Southern Africa in February 1977 and handed over a check for $600,000 to the OAU chair for said purpose.[6] Tolbert also broke diplomatic relations with Israel in 1973 and made a statement in solidarity with the Palestinian People at the UN General Assembly where he stated:

“We must equally insist on full recognition and respect for the national rights of the Palestinian people by the state of Israel, especially their right to self-determination and a state of their own. Israel must withdraw from all occupied Arab territories.”[7]

If that didn’t upset the US colonial masters enough, Tolbert had one more policy shift that must have been unsettling to them. He had inherited a policy from Tubman’s government that recognized the Republic of China in Taiwan as the government of China and had sent students to Taiwan for training in the sugar industry.[8] Consistent with president Tolberts’ alliances with socialist countries, he began to reach out to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and when Chairman Mao Zedong passed in 1976, he sent a message of condolences and described Mao as “one of the greatest statesmen of the contemporary world.” Not long after he received the first PRC delegation and a historic relationship of bilateral relations and economic cooperation began in 1977.[9] Despite some interruptions after Tolbert’s administration, this relationship resumed in 2003, and has become a major development partner with a big impact on national development to date.

Tolberts’ demonstrated affinity for socialist Pan-Africanists created a climate that was favorable for the birth of the Movement for Justice in Africa (MOJA) just short of two years after his election in 1971. MOJA, founded at the University of Liberia, was inspired by Nkrumah’s ideas and supported liberation movements in all of Africa. Although not one of the founders, Tolbert was supportive of MOJA. Within a few years MOJA grew and became a Pan-African movement with branches in Ghana, Nigeria, Mauritius and representatives in east, central and southern Africa.[10]

Although one could say that Tolbert made a 180 degree turn in his foreign policy from his predecessor, his domestic policies can be described as center-left. At a national conference on development objectives and strategy in 1973 it was suggested that the economic “open door “policy should be redefined and this became a policy known as “Humanistic Capitalism”.[11] Although Tolbert linked it to African Socialism and a “Christian ethic”, in an interview with German TV, he explained that the objective of humanistic capitalism was that “the profit generated from the exploitation of natural resources by industrialized countries” should be “equitably shared with the country of origin of those resources.”[12]

Tolbert promoted what he called the policy of “Liberianization”, which did not mean nationalization of any enterprise or industry, but a more significant participation and distribution going to Liberians.[13] All foreign concession agreements were renegotiated to increase taxes from foreign investors. The negotiation with Firestone was the biggest accomplishment because Firestone lost its “special tax privileges.” The progressive tax system resulted in funds to finance social services, education and health care. Primary and secondary education were free and university fees were reduced by 50%. One of the main objectives of the Tolbert government was the plan to become self-sufficient in rice production by 1980.[14] It was in the course of this effort that the government likely committed his biggest error when in an effort to stimulate local rice farmers he announced an increase in the price of imported rice. Some argued that this would selfishly benefit Tolbert himself since he owned a number of private rice farms.[15] This was unpopular since most people still depended on imported rice. The result was in the infamous demonstration known as the rice riot of April 14, 1979 in which 41 demonstrators were killed and many were injured. Although the government ultimately did not raise the price of rice, the damage had been done.

Generally speaking it is the US governments’ objective is to keep countries dependent on financial aid and US military ‘protection’ and Liberia is no exception to that. Therefore Tolbert’s positions that sought to make Liberia less economically dependent on foreign corporations and encourage industrialization were enough to upset Firestone and the US government such that they conspired to have him removed. Considering the errors made and contradictions of his domestic rice policy, this facilitated a climate of instability and one which the US government never hesitates to manipulate. To insure his governments’ security Tolbert had his most trusted supporters in key government positions. However, he did not trust the military since the US government had substantial influence on the Liberian military regarding loan agreements. He therefore sought and signed a mutual defense pact with Guinea where Liberia would have access to Guinean troops if necessary.[16] The 1979 rice riot prompted Guinea, based on the mutual defense pact, to send troops to its neighbor. Although this military intervention was unpopular among Liberians it was suspected that the leader of the protest, Gabriel Baccus Matthews, also the leader of a pseudo Marxist organization called Progressive Alliance of Liberia, was linked to the CIA.[17]

The US strategy to completely dominate and control Liberia politically, economically and militarily is of interest because the US empire has used many if not all of the same strategy and tactics in other countries not only in Africa but the entire global south.

The US Weapons of Hybrid War in Liberia

As Steve Biko taught us, “The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” In other words, imperialism relies on controlling the battle of ideas.

Regarding Liberia:

Dr. Togba Na Tipoteh, co- founder of MOJA, in an interview last year (2022) speaking about flag day and the government of Liberia stated :

“Unfortunately we have a flag that looks like the flag of USA but with one star. It’s unfortunate primarily because this country continues to be moved by persons who are into the Americanization of Liberia. … it has to do with the American mentality, the support for the slave master, because you wait for the command of the slave master, the command from the former colonial power before you act.”

US imperialism always combines its ideological/cultural power (AKA “soft power”) closely backed with its vast economic power, which translates into economic colonialism. This is aided by tools like the World Bank/IMF known to increase poverty and hardship, resulting in low quality of life and dependency wherever they go. It also selectively uses economic coercive measures also known as sanctions for governments that resist cooperating with its hegemonic policies. Lastly, its immense military power is on a mission to dominate the world and at the same time ensure massive profits for the ‘defense’ contractors.

Even the historical distortion of the colonization of Liberia is an example of the ideological power of imperialism. The ideological propaganda went from the philanthropic notion of the ACS “white man’s burden” to philanthropic colonialism to “humanitarian imperialism.” The result is that some people erroneously believe that Liberia was never colonized.

It is remarkable that Marcus Garvey’s UNIA had established a cooperative relationship for several years with the Liberian government. However, when Firestone arrived in 1924, with the support of WEB Du Bois who had been a special representative of US president Calvin Coolidge, the UNIA was suddenly expelled. The government of Liberia made an agreement with Firestone that gave the company the rights to exploit the Mount Barclay plantation for 99 years at a rent of $1 per acre the first year and after that at a fixed rate of $6000 per year.[18]

This was clearly a one sided ‘deal’ but George Padmore (1972, 45) argued that the government of Liberia did not have much choice because since the Berlin conference of 1884 – 1885, there was hardly any land in Africa that had not been colonized and Britain and France both had already annexed parts of Liberia to Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast respectively.

In the early years of the 20th century, France invaded Liberia and the government of Liberia appealed to the US government for protection. The US government guaranteed protection on condition that the Liberian government agree to grant a rubber concession to Firestone.[19] Some Liberians felt that the Firestone deal would ensure US protection into the future since they would not want their investment to be taken over by other colonizers.

Firestone was trying to dominate the world rubber market and they realized that they would need a huge indigenous labor supply. In Liberia, Firestone developed a system of forced labor akin to slavery. Firestone used the local chiefs to supply the forced labor because they profited as well.[20] Firestone’s sinister behavior also extended into Liberia’s food security. As we know, rice is a traditional part of the Liberian diet and they have a long history of cultivating rice. Firestone told the government that the Liberian rice farmers should come to work for Firestone to harvest rubber and that Firestone would import cheaper subsidized rice under the U.S Agency for International Development (USAID). This is how Firestone also made Liberia dependent on imported rice thereby destroying its own rice economy and self-sufficiency and food security in the country.[21]

Liberia has had two civil wars, and since its founding, there has been no war in Liberia where the US government was not indirectly involved.

Further examples of US ideological power are demonstrated when leadership, like former president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, published an article in 2007 titled “AFRICOM can help governments willing to help themselves.” Here she says that AFRICOM can develop a stable environment in which civil society can flourish and the quality of life for Africans can be improved.”[22]

We have to wonder, after what NATO/AFRICOM did to Libya in 2011, how many Liberians really believe the former president Sirleafs’ statements about AFRICOM? With recent reports of the presence of Al Qaeda and Hezbolah in their country, will Liberians feel like they are forced to seek protection from the (former) colonizer just as they did in the early twentieth century? Or will they follow the path of Mali and Burkina Faso who ended up expelling their former colonizer?

In 2008, a year after the founding of AFRICOM, the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African affairs, Theresa Whelan, referenced Liberia as a model stating that it “represents an African country where AFRICOM provides the ‘foundation’ on which the three pillars of economy, governance & rule of law, and social development are based.” The US inter-agencies are responsible for the implementation of these pillars, while African nation states, regional organizations, and the AU are responsible for the stability, symbolized as the roof.”[23] Some of these organizations include UN integrated mission in Liberia (UNMIL), ECOWAS, and numerous NGO’s. Hahn points out that the UNMIL was one of the first to implement the concept of a UN integrated mission in 2003 which involves a multidimensional operation involving political, military, civilian police, criminal justice, civil affairs, human rights, gender – child protection, disarmament demobilization, public information and support components. Further examples of the ideological soft power is the theoretical basis of the UNMIL, which advocates the notion of “liberal peace”, promoting the lie that liberal capitalist democracy is actually peaceful (like the US and EU countries). Even their term ‘good governance’ is a term that describes a government friendly to neo-liberalism and an environment attractive to private sector investment.[24]

As stated by The Black Alliance for Peace in its 2022 press release on AFRICOM:

“Despite its rhetoric, the purpose of AFRICOM is to use U.S. military power to impose U.S. control on African land, resources and labor to service the needs of U.S. multinational corporations and the wealthy in the United States. It also serves as a major boon to ‘defense’ contractors.”

Liberia, like many African countries, suffers from devastating poverty as a result of a history of colonialism and neocolonialism. According to UN development reports, Liberia ranks in the bottom half of the low category of the Human Development Classification. Additionally, its debt to GDP is 57.08 % in 2023. This means that the government spends that percentage of its GDP on debt servicing, forcing it to reduce public spending on health and education and other public needs due to austerity measures. An Oxfam report showed that Liberia is among other west African countries that spend more on debt servicing than a whole year spent on education.

Part of resisting neocolonialism means developing what Thomas Sankara called an “Addis Ababa United Front against debt.” In his Speech on Foreign Debt At The OAU, July 1987. He stated:

“Debt cannot be repaid, first because if we don’t repay, lenders will not die. That is for sure. But if we repay, we are going to die. That is also for sure. Those who led us to indebtedness gambled as if in a casino. As long as they had gains, there was no debate. But now that they suffer losses, they demand repayment. And we talk about crisis. No, Mr. President, they played, they lost. That’s the rule of the game, and life goes on. We cannot repay because we don’t have any means to do so. We cannot pay because we are not responsible for this debt…

It is our duty to create an Addis Ababa unified front against debt. That is the only way to assert that refusing to repay is not an aggressive move on our part, but a fraternal move to speak the truth.”


In October this year Liberia is scheduled to have elections, it is our hope that they will be free and fair and that the people draw on some of the lessons of their own heroic anti-imperialist Pan-African history for future direction.

References:

Hahn, Niels. Two Centuries Of US Military Operations in Liberia. Challenges of Resistance and Compliance. Alabama: Air University Press, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama 2019
Padmore, George. Pan -Africanism or Communism. New York 1972 Anchor Books
[1]Hahn 2019, 14

[2]Hahn 2019, 56

[3] W.Tolbert 1972 as cited in Hahn 2019, 79

[4] W.Tolbert 1972 as cited in Hahn 2019, 79

[5] W.Tolbert 1976 as cited in Hahn 2019, 86

[6] W.Tolbert 1977 as cited in Hahn 2019, 87

[7] Bright 2002 as cited in Hahn 2019,84

[8] W. Tolbert 1971,1975, as cited in Hahn 2019,88

[9] W. Tolbert 1978 ,as cited in Hahn 2019,89

[10] Kpei 1979 as cited in Hahn 2019,94

[11] Sankawulo 1977,as cited in Hahn 2019,82

[12] Executive mansion 1978 as cited in Hahn 2091,82

[13] W. Tolbert 1972 ,as cited in Hahn 2019,82

[14] W. Tolbert 1978 as cited in Hahn 2019,89

[15] Dahn 2009 and Tipoteh 2009 as cited in Hahn 2019,97,98

[16]Karpeh 2009; Wallace 2009 as cited in Hahn 2019, 93

[17]Bowier 2009; Fahnbulleh 2009; Guannu 2008; Tar 2009; Tokpa 2010 in Hahn 2019, 96

[18]Brown 1941 as cited in Hahn 2019, 38

[19]Buell 1947 as cited in Hahn 2019, 39

[20]Buell1928; Sundiata 1974 as cited in Hahn 2019, 40

[21]USAID 2004, Logan 2009 in Hahn 2019, 52

[22]Hahn 2019, 212

[23] Hahn 2019, Appendix A

[24]Hahn 2019, 224

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Tue May 16, 2023 1:53 pm

Sudan Announces to Extend Airspace Closure

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People fleeing violence in Sudan, May, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @CDNewsDispatch

Published 14 May 2023

Airports in Port Sudan, Wadi Seidna, and Khartoum, however, will serve as entry points for humanitarian aid.

On Saturday, Sudan's Civil Aviation Authority extended the closure of airspace until May 23 amid continued armed conflict between the Sudanese Army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Humanitarian aid and foreign evacuation operations are excluded from this closure.

Since the outbreak of the clashes on April 15, the country's airspace has been closed as air navigation systems at Khartoum International Airport have been affected by the clashes between the two warring sides in the vicinity of the airport.

Video clips on social media showed the damage to the Khartoum International Airport due to the fighting between the warring sides. Rubble scattered throughout the airport, where the destruction included parts of the airport corridors, halls, devices and equipment.

As Khartoum airport has been out of service since the first day of armed clashes, evacuation planes of diplomats and foreign nationals used Wadi Seidna airbase in Omdurman city, north of the capital Khartoum. Some other countries used Port Sudan Airport in Sudan's Red Sea State, some 870 km east of Khartoum.


On Friday, the Sudanese Council of Ministers announced that airports in Port Sudan, Wadi Seidna, and Khartoum will serve as entry points for humanitarian aid after maintenance.

The council said the decision to allocate airports was part of efforts to implement the Declaration of Commitment to Protect the Civilians of Sudan, which was signed by the Sudanese Army and the RSF in the Saudi port city of Jeddah on Thursday.

When the clashes broke out, both sides rushed to seize control of the country's three main airports, namely Khartoum Airport in the capital, Merowe Airport in northern Sudan, and El Obeid Airport in North Kordofan State in western Sudan.

Khartoum International Airport locates in the heart of the Sudanese capital, adjacent to the General Command building of the Sudanese Army. It is the main airport of the country, through which an estimated 95 percent of foreign air traffic passes.

Sudan has been witnessing deadly armed clashes between the Sudanese Army and the RSF in Khartoum and other areas since April 15, leaving over 550 people dead.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Sud ... -0014.html

Sudanese Continue to Clash in Khartoum City

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Smoke columns generated by the shelling in Khartoum, Sudan, May 15, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @RFI

Published 16 May 2023

Human rights defenders urged the conflicting parties not to deal with health facilities for military purposes or as military targets.


On Monday, clashes continued between the Sudanese Army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), with eastern parts of the capital Khartoum witnessing intense bombardment.

"A large logistical supply of weapons, ammunition and fuel belonging to the rebel militia has been dealt with in a qualitative operation that targeted some areas in Sharq Al-Neel locality and bases around the East Nile Hospital," the Army said.

There were no civilian casualties during the operation, but the RSF said the bombardment resulted in the "death and injury of dozens of innocent citizens and the destruction of a large part of the hospital."

The RSF attacked the embassies of Jordan, South Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, the Sudanese Foreign Ministry said, adding that the RSF damaged documents and furniture, and stole valuables, including computers and diplomatic vehicles.


Meanwhile, the National Human Rights Commission in Sudan condemned the use of air force and heavy weapons in the vicinity of residences, which resulted in civilian casualties.

It demanded the evacuation of all health and civilian facilities, urging the conflicting parties not to deal with these facilities for military purposes or as military targets.

Since April 15, the conflict between the Sudanese army and the rebels has left at least 676 dead and over 936,000 people displaced. It is estimated that about 15.8 million Sudanese, or about one-third of Sudan's population, will need humanitarian aid in 2023.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Sud ... -0009.html

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Why the US is Arming Morocco and Working to Combat Russian Influence in Algeria
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 15, 2023
Robert Inlakesh

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The United States government is deeply entrenched in fuelling an arms race between Morocco and Algeria, as the “New Cold War” opens another front in Northern Africa, the feud threatens a devastating conflict. The war in Ukraine has only exacerbated the crisis.

Algeria has announced that its ties with Morocco have reached “the point of no return”, as their rival neighbor sets up a half billion dollar deal for American artillery missile systems. Pitted in the middle of a US-China race to secure control over key trade routes in Northern Africa, with Washington also working to combat Moscow’s influence in the Sahel and repel Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, the neighborly feud could pose a major threat to regional stability.

Back in August 2021, Algeria officially severed diplomatic relations with the Kingdom of Morocco, citing a large number of concerns it had with its North African neighbor. This included accusations of meddling in Algerian affairs, helping to plot terrorist attacks and disrespecting unilateral agreements, in addition to concerns over Morocco’s ties with Israel.

That November, tensions again escalated as three Algerians were killed in alleged drone strikes against clearly marked trucks along Mauritania’s border with the disputed Western Sahara region. The attack was described as “barbaric” by Algerian State-media and came only one day after Algeria’s President, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, ended his nation’s gas supply contract with Rabat.

Tensions between Morocco and Algeria date back as far as 1963, to the brief conflict known as the Sand War; a battle that erupted over the Algerian Tindouf and Béchar provinces, which the Moroccan monarchy viewed as rightfully its own. The land border between both sides has also been closed since 1994. The ideological rivalry between the two States is also deep-seated, as Morocco sided with the West during the Cold War, while Algeria backed Global South liberation struggles and sided with the non-aligned movement.

Although the two North African nations are pitted against each other due to a number of domestic, ideological and regional disputes, the influence of foreign powers and their geo-strategic agendas are now bringing tensions towards paroxysm. As trade routes, natural resources and the so-called East-West struggle for regional dominance are all on the table, Washington’s policy decisions are at the root of the renewed tensions between Algiers and Rabat.

Speaking to MintPress, Zine Labidine Ghebouli, an analyst and researcher who specializes in the political and security dynamics of Algeria, stated that “there will be some provocations throughout this year.” He shared that the tensions could be both diplomatic and military in nature, while asserting that the situation hasn’t yet tipped over to the point of fully blown war erupting. Instead, Ghebouli believes that armed confrontations will likely take place in the Western Sahara:

The concern is increasing rapidly, especially with the developments in Western Sahara, with the diplomatic tensions and the lack of any envisageable solution for this conflict, I think it is becoming increasingly likely that we will see some show of force.”

DID ISRAEL REVIVE THE MOROCCO-ALGERIA FEUD?

The Morocco-Israel normalization deal, inked in 2020, was a turning point for Morocco-Algeria relations. Algeria cited the hosting of Israel’s Yair Lapid, in addition to referencing “massive and systematic acts of espionage”, as chiefly encouraging the decision to break off diplomatic ties with Morocco. Accusations of spying have been denied profusely by officials in Rabat and Tel Aviv.

Although Rabat never signed an official normalization deal with Israel until 2020, friendly gestures were historically made by Morocco towards the Israelis, such as inviting Israel’s former President Shimon Peres to the country in 1986. Moves like these may have drawn the ire of Algiers, which has remained a staunch supporter of the Palestinians, yet did not carry the same baggage as the Israel-Morocco relations of today.

In order for Morocco to buy into normalization with Israel in 2020, this required some convincing, such as the US Trump administration’s pledge to break from the consensus of the international community on the issue of the disputed Western Sahara region, by recognising it as part of Morocco. Incidentally, on November 14 the Polisario Front – which represents the indigenous people of the Western Sahara, the Sahrawi people – declared that the 29-year ceasefire between it and the Moroccan army had officially ended. On December 10, the US government released a declaration of Morocco-Israel rapprochement, which entered into force 12 days later.

Israel signed a memorandum on military cooperation with Morocco last year, feeding into Algerian fears of a Zionist presence on their border. In addition to this, the Moroccan secret services were revealed to have used Israeli-developed Pegasus spyware to target Algerian numbers; in what an analysis from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab concluded was weaponized to advance Morocco’s geostrategic interests.

On October 13, 2021, Algeria’s national broadcaster, Ennahar, reported that the General Directorate of National Security (GDNS) had thwarted a Zionist conspiracy to use separatist groups in order to carry out terrorist attacks throughout the country. A number of testimonies were collected from the alleged suspects that were arrested, with Algerian State-media claiming that the plot was “hatched by the Zionist entity [Israel] and a country in North Africa”. The reference to a North African country was broadly interpreted to have meant Morocco. On the Western Sahara dispute, Tel Aviv was reported to have lobbied the US to recognise Morocco’s sovereignty over the area, which fits in line with a history of Israel having sent advisors to help fight the Polisario Front.

Israel has also voiced its concerns about Algerian efforts to revive its global diplomatic presence. In July 2021, a Moroccan Hercules cargo aircraft with special forces commandos landed at Israel’s Hazor Air Force Base as part of a US-led exercise on “fighting terror”. In addition to this, Morocco’s armed forces have acquired Harop suicide-drones and Heron UAV’s from Israel Aerospace Industries. The relations between both sides continue to develop in the military sphere.

THE US TAKES OVER IN MOROCCO

In November 2022, the US took over from France as the largest foreign investor in Morocco. Recently, back in April, the State Department also approved a potential $524.2 million sale of HIMAR artillery rocket systems to Rabat.

Furthermore, a worrying order was given by US President Joe Biden, late last year, for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to prepare an emergency plan for the establishment of an American military industrial base in Morocco. The instruction was allegedly given after the American President received a report from CIA director Bill Burns, which focused on Moscow’s expansionist endeavors in the region. The report said that Russia is in discussions for the establishment of a logistical base inside Algeria, which could “threaten the interests of Washington and its allies there.”

Stephan Blank, a senior fellow at the US-based think tank, the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), has argued that Algeria “should be held accountable for its policies by both Europe and the U.S.” for siding with Russia against the West. It is not just a talking point at American think tanks that Algiers be punished for its refusal to fall in line with Western interests, US policy makers have also followed through, proposing sanctions on Algeria. In the US Senate, Marco Rubio has called for sanctions over a 2021 arms deal between Russia and Algeria, while in the House, Rep. Linda McClain led several of her colleagues in a push for the Biden administration to impose sanctions for the same reason.

Algeria serves as Russia’s third largest arms importer, yet has for some time been able to remain neutral between NATO and Russia when it comes to Ukraine, abstaining from a UN vote last year to condemn Moscow’s invasion. According to Zine Labidine Ghebouli “it has been quite obvious that Algeria has maintained a certain kind of neutrality, or at least a non-alignment strategy when it comes to the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia,” mentioning that “the Algerian embassy was recently re-opened in Kyiv as a sign that they don’t really want to take sides”. “At the same time I think it is becoming increasingly challenging for Algeria to retain that posture, especially with the Western pressures, especially with the legal developments regarding the International Criminal Courts arrest warrant for Putin,” he continued.

Noticeably, in a move which received some attention in Washington, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune opted out of attending the annual US-Africa Leaders Summit last year. At this current time, Algiers and Washington remain on good footing, yet it has become clear that Algeria will not behave as its puppet.

Although neutrality may be a challenge, Algiers has been one of the States to have actually benefited financially from the Ukraine conflict, or rather because of Western sanctions on Russian oil and gas. Algeria has become Italy’s biggest gas supplier and ended up generating over 50 billion dollars in oil and gas revenues in 2022. Commenting on this, Ghebouli says that “this war has given Algiers a bit of time to rebalance its economy, to prepare itself, and to attempt to revive its outdated oil and gas sector and other sectors,” agreeing that the circumstances surrounding the Ukraine war has given it a definite boost.

Another important element that fuels US interests in Algeria and Morocco, is Chinese investment and the fact that Algiers is playing a role in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). While the US is the largest foreign investor in Morocco, Beijing has not put all of its eggs in one basket and is investing in projects like the Tangier Tech City, giving it a foothold there. On the other hand, China is set to invest at least 3.3 billion dollars in the construction of El-Hamdania deep water port in Algeria, a project which will aid in strengthening the Italian trade route through Algeria and into the Sahel region.

The United States is not taking China-Algeria cooperation lightly, as it is itself attempting to ensure that the Europe-to-Africa trade route from Spain, through Morocco, is under Western control. The Biden administration’s Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) that was set forth by the White House last June, is designed to help the US combat China’s BRI, using a strategy opted for through the World Economy Forum (WEF), namely relying on non-government investments to help. In this competition for control over vital trade routes and infrastructure, no decisive winner has been declared yet and the power balance could significantly change in the future.

WESTERN SAHARA AND ALGERIAN SEPARATISTS

Although warfare between Morocco and Algeria would be a lose-lose for both sides, the likelihood of armed confrontation is now causing worry for both Algerians and Moroccans. The ongoing arms race should therefore be a cause for concern for investors like the United States, as the top priority for any investment market is stability and security. However, the recent large-scale deal for the potential sale of offensive artillery systems gives the opposite impression.

A security source, based in Morocco, who chose to remain anonymous, said that “the winner in any future conflict will likely be whoever is on the defense, the terrain favors the defender and not the attacker, especially in the Western Sahara area where conflict is the most likely to break out first”.

The Western Sahara could become a battle ground at any moment, as the Algerian backed Polisario Front is officially at a state of war with Morocco over the disputed territory. The United States government takes the position that the land is Moroccan, so will likely support measures taken by Rabat to combat the Polisario Front. US based think tank, ‘The Washington Institute for Near East Policy’ claims that “there is evidence that Iran is both arming and training the Polisario Front in Algeria in an attempt to destabilize Morocco”, providing a convenient argument that could help conjure up a convincing pro-Western narrative in the event that conflict erupts.

The claim that there is evidence of an Iran-Polisario alliance is misleading at best, with the allegations all leading back to Israeli media outlets and a former Israeli public official. One example of the alleged evidence for such a connection is an i24News probe, which had claimed to have heard conversations between an individual affiliated with the Polisario Front and an alleged Hezbollah-linked figure from Lebanon. The Israeli media outlet claimed that they had listened to conversations between the Hezbollah and Polisario affiliated individuals in Spain. The evidence cited by a number of Washington based think tanks, are statements made by former Israeli diplomat Dore Gold, who said that “I am told by reliable sources that the IRGC has now spread its tentacles in the Western Sahara”. Despite such allegations, not a single shred of evidence has been produced to support this conclusion.

Last year I spoke to Dr Sidi Omar, the representative of the Polisario Front for the United Nations, who told me the following in response to a question about Moroccan provocations:

Since its violation of the 1991 ceasefire on 13 November 2020, which has led to the resumption of war in Western Sahara, the occupying state of Morocco has been engaged in a parallel, retaliatory war against Sahrawi civilians in the Sahrawi Occupied Territories. Human rights activists in particular are daily subjected to all sorts of violence and unspeakable atrocities without the world knowing about their plight. This is because of the media blackout imposed on Occupied Western Sahara that remains encircled by the 2700 km long Moroccan wall of shame, which is the second longest wall and the greatest military barrier in the world.”

The Moroccan occupying authorities have also been engaged in a large-scale scorched policy in Occupied Western Sahara. The policy, which is organized and implemented by the occupying security forces, includes destruction of houses and livelihoods, vandalism of properties, and the killing of livestock with the declared objective of uprooting Sahrawis from their homes and lands, which are given to Moroccan settlers.”


Interestingly, Dr Omar also made the claim that “Israeli-made unmanned aerial vehicles have been frequently used by Moroccan forces to kill not only Sahrawi civilians but also civilians and nationals of neighboring countries.”

On the other hand, Morocco has been vocal over the past year about the rights of Kabylie separatists to break away from Algeria and form their own independent state, provoking outrage in Algiers. There have been allegations from Algiers about Rabat backing groups there, even claiming in 2021 that separatist groups linked to Morocco and Israel had set deadly wildfires.

Zine Labidine Ghebouli, says that the claims about the threats of separatists in the areas are likely overblown, sharing that “during my last visit there wasn’t much of a presence of the pro-separatist sentiment in the way it is often described”. He added that “even if Morocco wanted to weaponize this sentiment, they wouldn’t be able to, this is because the Algerian people are very nationalistic and if they see that Rabat is weaponizing some groups in northern Algeria, regardless of the legitimate demands that the groups could have on some level, the Algerian public will mobilize to protect against this.”

Conflict in Northern Africa, between a Western armed Morocco and Russian-Chinese armed Algeria, is most likely to break out in the Western Sahara, which may start with exchanges between the Polisario Front and the Moroccan armed forces, but could quickly drag Algeria into the exchange. This is why threats of US sanctions, the construction of a military industrial base to combat Russia and the biased approach to the issue of Western Sahara, all encourage conflict, something that could actually jeopardize their investments in the region.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/05/ ... n-algeria/

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US hybrid war against PMC Wagner in Africa
May 15, 11:10 am

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US hybrid war against PMC Wagner in Africa

Politico published a detailed article on how the West should confront Russia in Africa.

Judging by the tone of the article and the opinion of American sources from the power structures, the West intends to turn Africa into the main battlefield, reports Automaticearth.

Information will be purposefully spread among African officials that cooperation with PMC Wagner will bring chaos in the long run, despite Russian promises to bring peace and security to the continent. This direction of pressure on Africans is due to the fact that Wagner and the Kremlin pose a long-term threat to US interests in Africa.

France is also already trying to use this fear-mongering tactic, which, however, has not yet shown its effectiveness.

Now the West is promoting the idea that Wagner is breeding more terrorists in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali than it is destroying them. This statement is, of course, not true.

The real terrorists in Africa are spawned by America and France, who secretly arm them and, as has long been customary, present them as "freedom fighters."

There are also reports that Wagner's actions are hindering trade and investment, which is aimed at driving a wedge between Beijing, a longtime investor in Africa, and Moscow.

The strengthening Russian-Chinese alliance worries the United States very much. Washington is doing everything to break it.

For example, at the end of March, the West claimed that Wagner allegedly killed Chinese miners in a car.

The essence of Russian-Chinese cooperation in Africa partly boils down to the fact that China invests in the Belt and Road Initiative, and Russia, represented by Wagner PMC, ensures their security.

Countries such as Burkina Faso, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda have already suffered from this propaganda campaign. They are unlikely to take the Western bait.

The leader of Burkina Faso said last week that his country is in a "strategic alliance" with Russia. At the same time, Chad expelled the German ambassador from the country for interfering in internal affairs. At the same time, the Western media unleashed a hype that Wagner planned to carry out a coup d'état there.

As for the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, the two countries are currently waging their own hybrid war against each other over the resource-rich eastern region of the Congo.

France is trying to use their conflict on the principle of "divide and rule." However, despite French efforts, Russian-Congolese ties are only getting stronger.

In addition, US disinformation directed against Wagner did not prevent Russia and Rwanda from jointly defending the CAR capital at the end of 2020.

Washington is trying to counteract the growing popularity of Wagner throughout Africa as much as possible. However, he lacks the credibility to push Wagner out of Africa with information warfare alone.

That is why the West will increasingly use armed terrorist groups, using them to attack, especially against Chad, under a "false flag".

Chad is a top US target as Washington urgently needs a proxy client on the continent to advance its interests.

Comment: that is, like Poland and Ukraine in Europe

However, Chad's expulsion of the German ambassador instead of the Russian ambassador, as the US wanted, shows that the country's leadership does not believe a single American word about Russia.

However, now the country is divided. Part of the territory is controlled by official authorities supported by Russia. Another part of Chad is controlled by US-French terrorists who masquerade as "rebels".

Since the public already "expects" a coup in Chad from the positions of the Central African Republic, allegedly organized by "Wagner", such an attack may well be inspired by the West.

The US seeks to manipulate this regional military power to its advantage in its hybrid war against Wagner in Africa.

This could take the form of Chad's intervention in the CAR and/or against the "Rapid Reaction Force" allegedly linked to Wagner.

In addition, the West can use Sudan for these purposes.

If America's provocation succeeds, it could plunge part of Africa into a protracted conflict that risks reversing the multipolar progress that began last year.

https://secretra.

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Fri May 19, 2023 2:21 pm

Libyan parliament suspends Fathi Bashagha as prime minister of Sirte-based government

The failure of the two rival administrations in Libya to agree on a new electoral law is delaying the national elections and endangering the fragile ceasefire achieved through UN mediation in November 2020

May 17, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

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Fathi Bashagha. (Photo: Middle East Online)

Fathi Bashagha, the prime minister of the Libyan parliament-backed Government of National Stability in Sirte, was suspended from his post on Tuesday, May 16. The decision was announced after a meeting of the parliament in Benghazi by its spokesperson Abdullah Belhaiq.

Belhaiq stated that the parliament has handed over Bashagha’s duties to Finance Minister Osama Hammad. According to reports, an inquiry has been constituted against Bashagha on allegations of corruption. His failure to enter the capital Tripoli was also considered as one of the reasons for his suspension.

Bashagha was appointed as prime minister by the Libyan parliament based in the eastern part of the country in February last year after it “dismissed” the interim government led by Abdul Hamid Dbeibah for his failure to hold national elections and for allegedly using his post to promote his candidacy as president. Dbeibah, however, refused to step down and continues to enjoy the support of factions in and around Tripoli.

Upon his appointment as prime minister, Bashagha tried to enter Tripoli on a couple of occasions last year, leading to violent clashes between his forces and those loyal to Dbeibah, and the killing of scores of civilians. After his attempts failed, Bashagha announced that his government would operate from the central Libyan city of Sirte.

Dbeibah had been appointed as the interim prime minister in the Government of National Accord formed in February 2021 after a long mediation by the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) between the warring factions in Libya. The UNSMIL-led Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF) had been able to negotiate a ceasefire deal among several fighting factions in the country in November 2020. Though the ceasefire still holds, there has been a stalemate in the political process as the interim government under Dbeibah failed to build a consensus around the national elections, which were scheduled to be held in December 2021.

UNSMIL’s new leadership, under Abdoulaye Bathily, has tried to bring the rival administrations to agree on early national elections and to end the political uncertainty in the country and over a decade of war.

Libya, once a prosperous and stable country in Africa, plunged into war and chaos following the NATO-led invasion in 2011 and the killing of long-term ruler Muammar Gaddafi.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/05/17/ ... overnment/

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Escaping Debt Slavery: Ethiopia, Africa, and the IMF
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 17 May 2023

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In 1987, at the Organization for African Unity, Thomas Sankara said, "Debt is a cleverly managed reconquest of Africa." Ethiopia might actually be better off if the US keeps the IMF from signing off on its latest loan request.

The US is holding up Ethiopia's request for a $2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for postwar reconstruction and development. I spoke to Robert J. Prince, Retired Senior Lecturer at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies , about Ethiopia, Africa, and the IMF.

ANN GARRISON: A source who preferred to remain anonymous told me that the US is holding Ethiopia’s loan up, demanding accountability for wartime atrocities, but that their real goal is to force Ethiopia to distance itself from Russia and China, but most of all from Eritrea. That sounds plausible, but what do you think?

ROBERT J. PRINCE: I'm not at all surprised that the loan request is in limbo, as Washington has been putting all kinds of pressure on Ethiopia for some time. And this is just another form of pressure. Indeed, putting all the pieces together, Washington has been engaged in nothing short of hybrid warfare against Ethiopia ever since Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018. The games being played with the IMF loan are simply one element of that.

Concerning Washington's claims of Ethiopian government atrocities, Washington is well aware that the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) tried to regain power militarily and failed. The TPLF has essentially been Washington's proxy in the region.

This was a two-year war, and in war, unfortunately, atrocities are committed, but most of the documentation that I have seen places the atrocities on the TPLF side of the fence, and they have been, quite frankly, horrific.

Having failed to overthrow the Abiy government and bring the TPLF to power, the United States tried to control the outcome diplomatically, through the Pretoria peace agreement, which Washington orchestrated from the sidelines to save the TPLF from complete defeat. The pressure that is being put on them through this IMF agreement is an example of that.

Let's just look for a moment at the comment about Eritrea. In my mind, there's no doubt that one of the main targets of Washington in the Horn of Africa is the Eritrean government. We need to keep a couple of things in mind, given the wall of bad press that Eritrea gets in this country. One is that Eritrea is the only country in Africa that has refused to collaborate with AFRICOM, the US Africa Command.

And the other thing, less known and less appreciated, is that Eritrea also refuses to accept IMF and World Bank loans with their structural adjustment aspects. I don't think there's any other country in Africa that has done that either. So these are really the main reasons for Washington’s hostility towards Eritrea.

But you have to add something else. To back up a little bit, I was recently reading a book about Ethiopia called The Lion of Judah in the New World . The author is Theodore Vestal, an Oklahoma State University professor. And in that book, he makes a comment about Henry Kissinger's policy towards the Horn of Africa. We're talking 1972-1973, but it really sets the stage very nicely. And what Vestal notes is that in some National Security Council secret document, Kissinger said that the best thing for Washington's policy in the Horn of Africa was to keep the region divided and pit one side against another.

Think about what's happening now, the carving up of Sudan over 10 years ago, the splitting up of Somalia that you're reporting on these days, and then the ethnic conflicts that continue to hurt Ethiopia. That is classic Kissinger divide-and-rule kind of stuff.

And the opposite of that is Ethiopia, trying to make regional alliances, both for economic and political reasons. And from what I can tell, the strength, the real key to economic and social dynamism and development in the Horn of Africa is the Eritrean-Ethiopian connection. So of course that's something that Washington wants to break up. It’s another reason Eritrea gets all the bad press it gets.

It's very difficult for me to analyze what's fact and what's fiction in US reporting on Eritrea. I don't follow much of it because I feel it's so one-sided.

AG: Okay, the same source, who prefers to remain anonymous, said that China is Ethiopia's largest bilateral creditor. So therefore, the US thinks that China should take on more responsibility in terms of the bailout package. However, the Chinese want the IMF to foot the bill. Could you interpret?

RJP: We need to remember certain things about the IMF and the World Bank. While they claim to be international organizations, and of course to a certain extent they are, they are US run and dominated. And since the late 1970s, early 1980s, the IMF has attached conditions to its loans. And those conditions are known as structural adjustment, which has been discredited by academics all over the world for the past 35 or 40 years. It doesn't lead to development, but it does lead to greater debt.

So how would this particular proposal be any different from other IMF proposals? I don't know.

But in terms of the broader geopolitical question, let's just be frank about what's happening in the Horn of Africa. And here I would like to take a specific example that relates to foreign aid and major funding. And that has been the West’s attitude towards the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which has the potential of really creating a kind of economic dynamism in the Horn of Africa which hasn't existed until now.

Ethiopia went on several occasions to the IMF and the World Bank asking for financial aid to help build the dam, but they didn't get it. And, in fact, most of the funding for that dam has come from the Ethiopian people themselves, which is quite moving. So this is their dam. And this is their dam, whether they’re Amhara, Oromo, Tigrayan, Somali, or any other Ethiopian ethnicity. It doesn't matter. It’s their dam.

The creation of this dam is one of the few counterbalancing forces that I see to all this ethnic tension and dissent. Everyone has a place in that dam. And not just Ethiopia, because this dam, when completed, and it's near completion, is going to provide electricity for the entire region. And without electricity, development is difficult, difficult to impossible.

Now, where do the Chinese fit into this? The Chinese are the only major foreign country to my knowledge that have played any role in funding this dam.

AG: I believe they invested in the electricity delivery infrastructure.

RJP: That may be. I haven't seen the statistics for a couple of years, but as I remember, Ethiopians had invested about $6 billion and the Chinese had invested about $1 billion.

So you've got that big project. And in the midst of all this ethnic tension that we're seeing, the dam brings Ethiopians together and brings the Horn together, but what has the US and the World Bank position been on the dam? They've opposed it, they've opposed it down the line. They've thrown monkey wrenches into it. This is the kind of project that the IMF and the United States refuse to fund. But this is the kind of project that the Chinese in particular welcome and help. So there's that part of it.

When I look at this Chinese, Russian, and American competition for Ethiopia, and for Africa in general, what we're really seeing is the reemergence of the politics and division of the Non-Aligned Movement of the 1950s. If you really get down to it, very few countries want to take sides in this New Cold War.

They want to be able to deal with both China and the United States, but this is unacceptable to the US. This whole thing is being played out worldwide. It's being played out in Africa, and the people of Africa are making it really clear that they don’t want to take sides, and that both sides have a possibility to engage in their development.

How could US policy towards Ethiopia change to make it more constructive? I don't see that happening, by the way, but if it did, they would invest in infrastructure. All this US/AFRICOM military buildup that we're seeing in the region is only causing more conflict.

If the US wants to compete with the Chinese in developing Africa, that can be done. The United States still has tremendous resources and has the ability to do it. Then ask the Ethiopians what kind of aid and investment they want. Ask Africans. That kind of competition would be a win-win situation for everyone. There's no need for it to be anything else, but I don't see our government moving in that direction at all.

AG: No, they don't fund development. They fund aid, which creates dependency.

RPJ: Yes.

AG: For those not so familiar with the IMF, could you explain what structural adjustment means, what the IMF demands in exchange for these loans and bailouts?

RJP: Good question. Structural adjustment means laying down conditions that countries must accept in order to get the money that they need, often that they're starving for. That means that they’re forced to open up their economies to foreign intervention, whether it's investment or markets. And for a country that's trying to develop economically—it really doesn't matter whether it's on a capitalist or socialist model—some kind of protectionism is almost required in the initial stages of development, for a certain amount of time.

Structural adjustment eliminates the possibility of a young, emerging economy developing to the point where it can compete globally. One part of it is allowing goods to be imported into the country at prices that local manufacturers can’t compete with.

Economies still recovering from colonialism are weak. So they need some form of protectionism. and some form of government support for their economic development.

Structural adjustment severely limits the role of a government in helping a country stand up. That's really the heart of the matter.

Conditions include cutting government support for education, health care, transportation and other forms of infrastructural development. Then these areas are taken over by foreign players. As that happens, it's inevitable that these countries can't compete, their debt grows larger and larger, and therefore they have to come back to the IMF or the World Bank for further aid. And they get caught in a debt cycle. So this is the problem of structural adjustment.

AG: Don't they typically wind up using the money they borrowed to pay interest on the debt, giving it right back to the people who loaned it to them?

RJP: Yes they do! Addis is applying for an IMF loan for debt relief, to service its increasingly heavy interest payments. Ethiopia’s debt distress level is rated as high and that’s probably one of the key factors behind this loan application. Between 1970 and 2006, Ethiopia’s debt levels were somewhere between $1 and 10 billion. Since 2006 those debt levels have risen precipitately. Just since 2020, when the TPLF’s failed attempt at a military coup began, Ethiopia’s debt ballooned from $34 to 60.1 billion, a near doubling over three years. This is an increasingly unmanageable burden for Ethiopia to bear, cutting into development possibilities not just for Ethiopia but for the entire Horn of Africa.

Virtually all Horn of Africa countries are near “debt distress.” Sudan and Somalia are already in debt distress, meaning they cannot in any way pay off the loans they have acquired from multinational entities like the IMF and World Bank, or from private sources. Twenty-two African countries are now either bankrupt or at high risk of debt distress.

African debt remains at its highest level in over a decade. Debt servicing sucks up increasingly large proportions of budgets and revenues. As a result, a wave of defaults in the world’s most vulnerable countries is likely to occur and faster than expected.

The other thing that happens is there's so much corruption that gets involved, given all the African despots we support, that a lot of this money just disappears.

So they've set up a system that's very hard to get out of. It’s an endless cycle of growing poverty and social problems and greater economic interference from larger countries, but particularly from Washington and the Europeans.

I first looked at this policy 30-plus years ago, after serving in the Peace Corps. And then I couldn't believe it could last this long because it's so punitive. But now it's finally coming apart. We're seeing countries that don't want to be dominated by the dollar anymore and will trade with China in yen. These are attempts to get off of exactly these kinds of policies.

And who is looking at IMF policies and saying we've had it? Well, virtually the entire Global South.

One last point on these policies. It's much easier to impose them on poor countries. When the United States or the World Bank or IMF tried to do that with China and Russia, and even Iran, as they did, they did not succeed. So it's been middle and larger economies that have danced with the IMF for a certain amount of time, until they realized this is not in their interest and pulled back.

AG: It sounds like it could be better if they don’t get this $2 billion loan in the long run.

What do you think might be the consequence if they don’t? Calling it a bailout makes it seem dire.

RJP: Whether Ethiopia gets the loan or doesn’t there will be pressure either way. One of those “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situations for sure.

If they don’t get the loan – given the level of domestic turmoil the country is experiencing - their financial situation will be that much more difficult, forcing them to look for other creditors.

But it is not at all clear – given that the conditions the IMF is asking are not public – that even getting the loan could be problematic. For example,

One of the conditions for the loan to be processed is that Ethiopia give the IMF creditors and development partners guarantees for the $2 billion, which will be difficult for Ethiopia to come up with and add considerable pressure on Ethiopian finances should they be unable to pay on time. Nor is there any assurance that even if such conditions were met, that the loan would be granted.

So pressure both ways: if they get it, depending on the conditions, and if they don’t get it, given the financial problems. All this needs to be placed in the broader context of Washington’s hybrid warfare against the Abiy government.

If you just look at the Tigray War, and now all these terrible massacres taking place in the Oromia Region and elsewhere, it seems like the country's falling apart. But when you look at the economic indicators, you see that it's not in spite of all of this. The Ethiopian economy is growing, and regional integration is taking place. This region is tired of war, of factionalism, of the kind of sectarian policies that have dragged it down for so long.

All these countries want to find common ground. And so is that approach going to win out? I believe that it will in the end, but not without a lot of pain and struggle in the years ahead.

AG: Okay, thank you, Rob Prince for speaking to Black Agenda Report.

RJP: My pleasure.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/escap ... ca-and-imf

********

Supporters of the Sudanese Army demand the withdrawal of the UN

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In the course of the last few months, demonstrations by people affiliated with the Army have increased. | Photo: VON
Posted 19 May 2023

At the protests they carried banners, waved Sudanese flags and chanted slogans such as “one army, one nation”.

Supporters of the Sudanese Army demonstrated this Thursday in front of the hotel where the United Nations representative in the country, Volker Perthes, is staying, to demand his immediate departure from the territory in the midst of the internal conflict.

The political secretary of the Beja Optics Council, Syed Ali Abu Amneh, affirmed that the protesters in Port Sudan, where Perthes moved after the evacuation in Khartoum, have demanded the immediate dismissal of the official.

“This man is the main person responsible for the war in Sudan. Because of what he has done and his contribution to the division and separation between the peoples of this very country,” Abu Amneh noted.


According to local media, the protests carried banners, waved Sudanese flags and chanted slogans such as "one army, one nation" or "out with Volker."

In recent months, protests by people affiliated with the Sudanese army and Islamist groups have increased against the UN special envoy, who, according to international media, has even received death threats.

In this sense, the United Nations expressed its concern in this regard after the publication on the networks of a video in which a man demands an Islamic edict to assassinate Perthes.

On April 15, clashes broke out between the Army and the Rapid Support Forces, which have left around a thousand dead and more than a million displaced.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/protesta ... -0011.html

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Sat May 27, 2023 2:09 pm

Imperialism and the Crisis of Governance in Sudan and Libya
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 25, 2023
Abayomi Azikiwe

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After 60 years, the African Union, the successor to the Organization of African Unity, faces monumental challenges in the contemporary period

Note: These remarks were prepared for and delivered in part at a webinar in honor of the 60th anniversary of the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor to the African Union (AU) formed in 2002. This virtual event was sponsored and organized by the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) on Thursday May 25, 2023. Other panelists were Dr. Abdiwahab Sheikh Abdisamad, a Somali Kenyan and Kenyan citizen. He is the Executive Director of the Institute for Horn of Africa Studies and a specialist in political science, conflict resolution, and rural development; Essam Elkorghli, an education specialist who has studied the impact of the United States and NATO destruction of Libya; and the moderator, Yolian Ogbu, a first-generation Eritrean American studying political science and communications. She has served as the youngest Student Government Association (SGA) president in the University of North Texas history on the first all-women of color ticket no less. An organizer at heart, Yolian was also on the National Women’s March 2019 Youth Empower Committee and works within her cohort to increase the wave of civic engagement in young women across the country. The live stream of the webinar can be viewed on Facebook at the following link:


May 25 represents the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) created by 33 independent states in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1963. Nearly four decades later in 2002, the African Union (AU) came into existence with a renewed commitment to greater unity and coordinated development.

The events in Ethiopia during May 1963 represented a watershed in the struggle for national liberation and Pan-Africanism which can be traced back centuries to the heroic resistance against enslavement and colonization. A series of Pan-African Conferences and Congresses took place between 1893 and 1945 which brought together Africans from various geopolitical regions of the globe to discuss their common interests aimed at charting a methodology to win freedom and social justice.

Since 1963, many more colonies have gained their independence while the economic and military liberation of the continent remains elusive. Today, the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) along with French and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops are operating in numerous states throughout the region.

As a direct result of this renewed militarization of the continent by the imperialist centers of global power, there has been deepening levels of instability and displacement. Africans are being human trafficked across North Africa and the Mediterranean in a manner reminiscent of the Atlantic Slave Trade between the 15th and 19th centuries.

The increasing presence of peoples of African descent in the nations of Europe and in North America has provided an ideological rationale for the emergence of neo-fascist organizations and political officials. On the southern border of the U.S., 1,500 troops along with thousands of law-enforcement personnel and vigilantes are patrolling to keep people of color out of the country.

Despite these harsh realities, there have been awakenings throughout the world in which Africa is very much involved. Although there is the reemergence of military coups in several West African states, the mass sentiment from the workers, farmers and youth is decisively anti-imperialist. This rising consciousness is reflected in many of the foreign policy positions articulated by African heads-of-state and envoys in their speeches annually before the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

This same outlook permeated the anti-imperialist governments in existence at the time of the founding of the OAU. Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the then President of the First Republic of Ghana exemplified the concept of “positive action” which was employed in the independence struggle which he led in the British colonial Gold Coast from 1947-1957.

Nkrumah’s pioneering work entitled “Africa Must Unite” was released to coincide with the inaugural summit of the OAU. The book covers all aspects of the struggle for national liberation and the dangers of disunity and the continuing threat of imperialist domination.

In the introduction to Africa Must Unite Nkrumah says:

[i[“For freedom is not a commodity which is ‘given’ to the enslaved upon demand. It is a precious reward, the shining trophy of struggle and sacrifice. Nor do the struggle and sacrifice cease with the attainment of freedom. The period of servitude leaves behind tolls beyond what it has already taken. These are the cost of filling in the emptiness that colonialism has left; the struggle and the toil to build the foundation, and then the superstructure, of an economy that will raise up the social levels of our people, that will provide them with a full and satisfying life, from which want and stagnation will have been banished. We have to guard closely our hard-won freedom and keep it safe from the predatory designs of those who wish to reimpose their will upon us.” (p. Introduction xvi)[/i]

These words written in 1963 are quite prophetic. The struggle against neo-colonialism–which Nkrumah called the last stage of imperialism, the title of a study he published in book form two years after the first OAU gathering–continues after the acquisition of national independence with the purported “departure” of the colonial powers. It was these same colonial powers in the former Belgian Congo who were instrumental in thwarting the efforts of the first democratically elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba during 1960 and early 1961.

The collective imperialism led by Washington and Wall Street were identified by Nkrumah in 1965 as the principal enemies of the African Revolution. Despite the U.S. attempts to distance itself historically from the rise of colonialism in Africa, their ruling interests were also present at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 where the continent was carved up among the leading imperialist centers. Even prior to the establishment of independence for the 13 British colonies in what later became the U.S., Native removal and African enslavement were thoroughly entrenched into the political economy.

Successive administrations in Washington have viewed the movement towards genuine independence in Africa as a threat to U.S. interests. This is why Lumumba, Nkrumah, and many others were targeted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the State Department.

In Africa Must Unite Nkrumah goes on to emphasize:

“New nations like ours are confronted with tasks and problems that would certainly tax the experience and ingenuity of much older states. They would be difficult enough if we existed in a peaceful world, free of contending powers and interested countries eager to dabble in our internal affairs and manipulate our domestic and external relations in order to divide us nationally and internationally. As it is, our problems are made more vexed by the devices of neo-colonialists. And when we attempt to deal with them in ways which, having regard to all the facts that are known to us, seem most appropriate in the endeavor to maintain the internal unity upon which our viability and progress depend, we are misrepresented to the outside world to the point of distortion.” (Introduction, xvi)

In the contemporary African context, the states of Sudan and Libya provide a clear illustration of the contradictions which have arisen since the dawn of national independence and the later founding of the OAU. Each nation-state embodies tremendous potential for the economic emancipation, sovereignty and unification of Africa. Nevertheless, the legacy of European colonialism and modern-day neo-colonialism has hampered the capacity of Sudan and Libya to claim their rightful places as leaders in the sustainable development of the AU member-states.

The Crisis of Governance in the Republic of Sudan and the Role of Imperialism

Sudan has been in the international media since the eruption of clashes between the two military structures in charge of the administration of the transitional state on April 15. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have long held a position of authority within various governments since independence from British imperialism in 1956. There have been extended periods in the post-colonial political history of Sudan where the military seized control of the government while ruling in the interests of imperialist states and their allies.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) grew out of the military campaign to end the insurgency in the western Darfur region in the first decade of the 21st century. Both institutions, the SAF and RSF, apparently had no intentions of relinquishing political power to the civilian population which had been organized through the Sudanese Professional Association (SPA), the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) and the Resistance Committees which have been essential to the mobilization of mass demonstrations and strikes since emergence of the democratic movement in 2018-19.

Peace negotiations have taken place between the armed opposition groupings in Darfur and the border areas in the Abyei, Blue Nile and South Kordofan regions of the country with the Transitional Military Council (TMC) which was headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and General Mohamed Hamden Dagalo (Hemitti). The character of these discussions over the last four years has resulted in a reconfiguration of alliances in Sudan. After the October 2021 coup carried out by the TMC against the Transitional Sovereign Council (TSC) represented by the then interim Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, several of the armed opposition groupings within the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) supported the SAF/RSF coup.

The popular resistance committees along with the other mass and professional organizations, opposition groupings, including the Communist Party, have been deliberately sidelined by the imperialist states along with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and the United Nations in their extensive deliberations on a transitional framework towards a democratic dispensation. A systematic policy of empowering the military apparatus of the Sudanese state has resulted in the current crisis.

Reports indicate that between 700 and 1,000 people have been killed in the fighting since April 15, with an additional 5,000 or more injured. In addition, over 1 million have been displaced with hundreds of thousands being forced across the borders into neighboring states. Hospitals, residential neighborhoods, educational facilities have been paralyzed by the clashes taking place in the Khartoum-Omdurman twin cities. There have been fierce clashes over the control of the airport, military bases and the defense ministry in and around the capital.

The recent eruptions have reignited the fighting in Darfur. Port Sudan on the Red Sea has been the focus of evacuations by foreign states as well as a further militarization by the Pentagon.

It is to be noted that efforts by the Republic of South Sudan to hold talks aimed at achieving a negotiated settlement in the first few days of the war were rejected by the SAF and RSF. Saudi Arabia and the U.S. were the only two states which were able to bring representatives of the two belligerents together in Jeddah where agreements were signed ostensibly to guarantee safe passage for convoys distributing humanitarian aid and for those wishing to evacuate.

However, heavy fighting continues while a lasting ceasefire and sustainable peace agreement has not been realized. The domination of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in the internal affairs of Sudan has complicated the transition to a democratic political system.

Since the early phase of the independent African states in the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. intelligence apparatus has often preferred the rule of post-colonial military structures. Ruth First, the South African journalist and social scientist, published a groundbreaking study in 1970 on the role of the armed forces in various states. Her book entitled “Power in Africa”, later renamed, “The Barrel of a Gun”, analyzed the role of the CIA and Pentagon in the destabilization of African states. Even after the eruption of a civil war, U.S. corporations guided by intelligence provided by their operatives set out to control the process of “national reconstruction.”

When the initial Transitional Sovereign Council in 2019-2020 was set up, numerous conditions were laid down by the former U.S. administration of President Donald Trump along with his successor, President Joe Biden, for the “reentry” of Khartoum back into the “international community.” These conditions included, and were not limited to, the repayment of restitution to the survivors of those killed in attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and the bombing of the USS Cole in the Gulf of Aden in 2000. Sudan was also required to “normalize” relations with the State of Israel as part of the Abraham Accord initiatives aimed at undermining solidarity with the Palestinian national struggle. The commitment to officially recognize Tel Aviv goes against the Sudanese Israel Boycott Act passed by their parliament in 1958.

The absence of any type of representative government in the Republic of Sudan has opened the floodgates for foreign military and intelligence manipulation and subversion. As Ruth First wrote in Power in Africa as it relates to the role of imperialism in the former Belgian Congo:

“It was as a result of United States preoccupation with the Congo that we have the single major instance of a coup d’etat—two, in fact, in the same country, at an interval of five years—engineered by external forces. Lumumba’s offense was to have asked the Soviet Union, once the West had refused, for transport for his troops to defeat the Katanga secession. The issue was not whether the Congo should have a government headed by Lumumba, Kasavubu, Mobutu or Tshombe; but whether an African state should seek an option other than dependence on the West.” (Armies in Stalemate, p. 420)

The role of the resistance committees has been admirable as reported by some news agencies. They have sought to assist the people in their needs for medical care, food and refuge from the clashes.

An independent Sudanese news agency reported:

“The resistance committees active in the neighborhoods of eastern Khartoum said in a press statement on Tuesday (May 2) that the usual ‘binary position (with/against the army/ militia), does not concern us as civilians in anyway’. According to the resistance committees, ‘the two positions express a direct interest for each of the parties to the conflict in power,’ while ‘our position necessarily favors the only one affected by this war, the Sudanese people – whom the conflicting parties are attempting to get on their side and their allies, in order to gain popular and political support. ‘The most important position now is the preservation of people’s lives and their livelihood, peace and security, and access to basic services’.” (https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-new ... eace-talks)

In reality, the people of Sudan will be the entity which determines the future of the country. The military and its supporters have been thoroughly exposed for their failure to place the interests of the people above their quest to maintain political and economic power in Sudan. Moreover, the imperialist powers and their allies led by Washington have forfeited the right to have any say related to the stability and development of Sudan.

Libya: A Case Study in Modern Neo-Colonial Destabilization

Twelve years ago in 2011, AFRICOM under the administration of President Barack Obama spearheaded and carried out the destruction of the North African state of Libya, the most prosperous and stable country on the continent. The overthrow of the Jamahiriya government led by Col. Muammar Gaddafi represented the first full scale operation of AFRICOM.

The destruction of Libya was given legal cover by two resolutions, 1970 and 1973, passed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). These measures provided a false narrative for the intervention by the imperialist countries prompting a migration trail which has impacted tens of millions in Africa and other geopolitical regions.

In recent years, Libya has been de facto partitioned by two political groupings in the east and west of the country, neither of which represents the national and class interests of the masses. The developments in this oil-rich North African state represents a stark lesson to the rest of the continent that imperialism and its collaborators must be defeated in order to fulfill the Pan-African project enunciated by the founding documents of the OAU and the AU.

Since 2011, the instability and displacement engineered by the CIA and the State Department has impacted the entire regions of North and West Africa. This mass migration has fueled the human trafficking industry while placing pressure on the military and security structures of the nations of Southern, Central and Western Europe. The phenomenon of conservative and neoliberal administrations is undoubtedly a by-product of the displacement caused by the interventions of the NATO countries and their allies. The campaign of former President Donald Trump in 2016, played up the fears of whites in the U.S. of being overwhelmed demographically by migrants from Mexico and Latin America as a whole.

Imperialism and the Shifting Character of World Politics

However, these regime changes and direct occupations have not brought any relief–let alone prosperity–to the working classes of Western Europe, the United Kingdom and the U.S. since the economic conditions have worsened due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the supply chain shortages in industry and commerce along with an inflationary spiral which has skyrocketed since the early months of 2020. Consequently, the central banks of the capitalist states have raised interest rates, tightened credit availability, prompting layoffs in the high-tech, real estate and service industries. The Biden administration has not come to grips with the drastic changes within the labor market since 2020. Rather than impose price controls on the capitalist corporations, Biden has concentrated on the war in Ukraine which has drained the national treasury of at least $115 billion.

The advent of industrial actions in France and the UK in the early months of 2023 portends much for the current volatility of the world capitalist system. In the U.S., a new leadership in the United Auto Workers (UAW) has withheld—at least for now—an endorsement of Biden in the 2024 presidential race. A key player in the delivery sector, United Parcel Services (UPS), is being threatened with a nationwide strike by workers represented by the Teamsters Union.

At some point it is inevitable that the proletariat in the U.S. will exercise its labor power against the corporate interests. African Americans and Latin Americans, who are mainstays of the Democratic Party electorate, are not content with the institutional and policy neglect of their constituencies by the Biden administration.

The peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean are the natural class allies of the working class and oppressed in the imperialist states. Propagandists for capitalism and imperialism have no solid arguments which support their positions related to the expansion of U.S. and NATO influence throughout the world.

Sudan and Libya are continuing to reveal the negative impact of neo-colonialism in the 21st century. As Nkrumah pointed out in his book “Class Struggle in Africa” published in 1970:

“The African Revolution, while still concentrating its main effort on the destruction of imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism, is aiming at the same time to bring about a radical transformation of society. It is no longer a question of whether African Independent States should pursue a capitalist or non-capitalist path of development. The choice has already been made by the workers and peasants of Africa. They have chosen liberation and unification; and this can only be achieved through armed struggle under socialist direction. For the political unification of Africa and socialism are synonymous. One cannot be achieved without the other.” (p. 84)

These same axioms enunciated in 1970 holds true for the African Diaspora as well. In the U.S. and Western Europe, the intensification of racist repression and super-exploitation serves to further institutionalize the national oppression of peoples of color. Mass demonstrations and urban rebellions which resurfaced in the aftermath of the police execution of George Floyd, three years ago on Africa Liberation Day 2020, illustrates the potential for revolutionary change in the citadel of world imperialism.

However, it will take the mass mobilization and organization of the most oppressed elements within capitalist society to reach the desired abolition of exploitation and oppression. Undoubtedly, based upon the history of African peoples over the previous six decades, they will play a pivotal role in the elimination of imperialism in the modern world.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/05/ ... and-libya/

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Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki in China
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 24 May 2023

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Eritrea can chart an exciting new development path through mutually respectful collaboration with China.

Any doubt that a new multipolar world has emerged in the Horn of Africa should have dissipated last week with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki’s trip to China. President Xi Jinping rolled out the red carpet for Afwerki and his delegation and celebrated the growing collaboration between the two countries. Both presidents spoke of the relationship that began in 1967, when the young Afwerki traveled to China to train to fight in the 30-year guerrilla war for Eritrea’s independence from Ethiopia.

Xi said that the two countries will mark the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations on May 24, Eritrean Independence Day, and that China views and develops bilateral relations with Eritrea from a strategic and long-term perspective.

According to Xinhua , he also said,

“In face of the current international situation, which is full of instability and uncertainty, a sound “China-Eritrea relationship not only serves the common and long-term interests of the two countries, but is also of great significance to regional peace and international fairness and justice.

“China appreciates Eritrea's long-standing adherence to an independent foreign policy, firmly supports Eritrea in exploring a development path suited to its national conditions, firmly supports Eritrea in safeguarding its sovereignty, security and development interests, and opposes external interference in Eritrea's internal affairs and the imposition of unilateral sanctions.

“China is ready to share experience with Eritrea on national governance, jointly oppose unilateralism and bullying, and safeguard the common interests of the two countries and other developing countries.

“China is ready to work with Eritrea to advance mutually beneficial cooperation and achieve common development through various frameworks and platforms, such as the Belt and Road Initiative, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and the Outlook on Peace and Development in the Horn of Africa.

“China supports Chinese enterprises to invest and do business in Eritrea, and stands ready to strengthen cooperation on infrastructure construction, telecommunications, agriculture, mining and fisheries, and will continue to send medical teams and senior agricultural experts to Eritrea.”


Eritrea is resource rich

Eritrea is resource rich and has enormous, barely tapped potential. Its Red Sea Coast alone is a strategic prize no doubt envied by all the world. According to the US Naval Institute, twelve percent of world trade passes by its Red Sea ports, Masawa and Assab, between the Suez Canal on the Mediterranean and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait leading into the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. According to the International Energy Agency, that includes 10 percent of the oil products and 8 percent of the liquified natural gas (LNG) on the move every day.

This is the trade route that most immediately connects Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. The fish in its coastal waters are a vast resource as well.

Eritrea, like Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, sits on the Arabian Nubian Shield , a mineral rich formation thought to be one of the next frontiers for mineral development. Mineral mapping indicates that it contains copper, tin, zinc, nickel, iron, sulfur, platinum, manganese, uranium, tantalum, niobium, phosphates, cobalt, and chromite.

No one should think that China and private Chinese corporations will not be looking to get the best deals they can, but Eritrea has stood proud throughout its independence struggle and since, resisting the neocolonial Western aggression and exploitation that has plagued most of Africa. It can be expected to insist on win-win agreements to tap its resources.

As a peaceful country that is nevertheless isolated, excoriated, and brutally sanctioned by the West, it offers China a chance to demonstrate to Africa and the world that it can be a positive force for development and cooperation across the African continent.

It is one of two African nations—the other being Zimbabwe—that has refused to collaborate with AFRICOM, the US Africa Command, and its freedom from the shackles of IMF and World Bank debt makes it uniquely ready to collaborate with both China and Russia.

Its stability is singular compared to all of its larger neighbors, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia. The only similarly stable nation in the region is its tiny neighbor, Djibouti, which exists primarily by renting military bases to all the great powers that feel compelled to have a military presence in the Horn of Africa’s hugely strategic waterways.

China and Eritrea have said that their collaboration will include “security,” which will no doubt include Chinese military use of Eritrea’s ports. Eritrea has already agreed to collaborate with Russia on security as well.

The militarization of the region is unfortunate but inevitable, given the New Cold War and the enormous geostrategic resources at stake. Russian and Chinese presence in Eritrea will provide a counter hegemonic balance to escalating US military presence in Somalia , which includes the plan to build a US base in Somalia’s Berbera Port. Hopefully, all the military forces flexing their muscles in the region will preclude another devastating attack like that on Libya.

Western press acknowledged President Isaias’s historic trip

The Western press, like Western officialdom, never mention Eritrea except to hate it for its independence, but major Western news outlets nevertheless felt compelled to acknowledge the historic significance of President Afwerki’s trip to China.

Yahoo Finance republished the South China Post, which wrote:

“Chinese President Xi Jinping rolled out the red carpet in Beijing on Monday for his Eritrean counterpart Isaias Afewerki, saying that China opposed sanctions imposed on the Horn of Africa nation.

“Eritrea is heavily sanctioned by Western nations for alleged human rights abuses, but in a meeting with President Isaias, Xi said that China opposed external interference in Eritrea's internal affairs.

“He added that Beijing would firmly support Eritrea to safeguard its own sovereignty, security and development interests.”


Reuters wrote:

“Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Monday strong China-Eritrea relations were key to bolstering peace in the Horn of Africa region and pursuing mutually beneficial development, speaking at a meeting in Beijing with his Eritrean counterpart.

“Eritrea has strategic importance for China given its location on the Red Sea, one of the world's key shipping corridors with access to both the Suez Canal and Europe to the north and the Indian Ocean to the southeast.”


Voice of America wrote:

“China's Premier Li Qiang told visiting Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki on Monday their countries should ‘deepen mutually beneficial win-win cooperation and continuously enrich their strategic partnership’ at a meeting in Beijing.

“On the Red Sea, Eritrea could be geopolitically important for China, with its access to the Suez Canal and Europe to the north and the Arabian Gulf and Indian Ocean to the southeast, as China seeks to bolster its presence in the Horn of Africa.”


Eri-TV traveled with President Afwerki and his delegation and a documentary and further news will be coming soon.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/eritr ... erki-china

*****

Libya hosts more than 700,000 migrants and refugees

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The figure of 706,062 migrants reflects an increase compared to the previous identification of November and December 2022. | Photo: www.nationalgeographic
Published 27 May 2023

Much of the migrant and refugee population in Libya uses the Central Mediterranean route to reach Europe.

The International Organization for Migration noted that Libya hosts more than 700,000 migrants and refugees of around 44 different nationalities.

According to the immigration agency, the figure of 706,062 migrants reflects an increase compared to the previous identification of November and December 2022, when 694,398 migrants were counted.

Most of the migrants in Libya come from Niger (24 percent) followed by Egypt (23 percent), Sudan (19), Chad (12) and Nigeria (4), with 53 percent of the total located in the west. from the North African country.



Libya shares more than 4,300 kilometers of land borders with six countries, where the IOM identifies the main routes used by migrants and refugees to reach the North African country.

Much of the migrant population uses the Central Mediterranean route to reach Europe; a total of 14,948 reached Italian coasts during the months in which the IOM made its last report.

Libya is considered by NGOs as an "unsafe country" for migrants and refugees, which is why they call not to return those who are intercepted at sea, such as the at least 24,000 people returned against their will in 2022 and more than 5,000 this year, according to data from the organizations.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/libia-su ... -0008.html

Google translator

*****

It’s the Time of Nkrumah!
MAY 26, 2023

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Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. Photo: United World.

By Adnan Akfirat – May 23, 2023

Oh people, oh humanity, hear and know: Africa is being liberated!

We know that imperialism has darkened the fortunes of the land of the black skinned. Our pearl-toothed brothers and sisters are determined to overthrow the hegemony of US imperialism. European imperialism, on the other hand, is watching its feet in Africa in order to avoid the great defeat of the USA. Developing countries, especially the People’s Republic of China, are shouldering and strengthening Africa’s struggle for independence.

In the last five hundred years of imperialism, Africans have suffered the most and still suffer the most. There have been and are struggles that are an example for humanity. On the 51st anniversary of his death, we bring to your attention the struggle of the great revolutionary Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the torchbearer of Africa’s struggle for liberation, the legendary leader of Ghana, the first independent state of the continent.

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, popularly known as “Osagyefo” (the warrior leader who defeated the enemy and saved the nation), was born on September 21, 1909 in the small town of Nkroful in the Western region of Ghana. He died on April 27, 1972 in Bucharest, where he was being treated for cancer.

Let us get to know Dr. Nkrumah, one of the most distinguished politicians of the nation of Ghana and of Africa, one of the founders of the “Non-Aligned Movement”, a close friend of Mao Zedong, Nehru, Tito, Ho Chi Minh, Sukarno and Nasser.

Became a scientific socialist in the U.S.
After a successful primary school education, Nkrumah studied in the U.S. and the UK and earned a PhD in economics, preferring the struggle for African independence to a life of brilliant academics.

While in the U.S., Nkrumah earned a master’s degree in education from the University of Pennsylvania in 1942 and a master’s degree in philosophy from the same school the following year. While teaching political science at Lincoln University, America’s first university to offer education to blacks, he was elected president of the African Student Organization of America and Canada. During this period, he embraced Scientific Socialism.

In 1945, Nkrumah left the United States for England to study law and complete his doctoral dissertation in philosophy, enrolling at the London School of Economics. In Britain, he met senior Pan African leader George Padmore and helped organize the Fifth Pan African Congress.

After 10 years in the US and two and a half years in the UK, Nkrumah returned home to become secretary-general at the invitation of Ghana’s first political party, the United Gold Coast Congress Party (UGCC). The colonialists then were calling Ghana the “Gold Coast”. In 1949, Nkrumah left the UGCC to form the Congress People’s Party (CPP). From then on, Nkrumah thought of nothing else but freeing the Gold Coast from the shackles of colonialism. He became the chief architect and artisan of Ghana’s independence and the founding father of the Republic of Ghana. (1)

Not the Gold Coast – Ghana!
Nkrumah’s party won 71 out of 104 seats in the 1956 general elections, giving it an absolute majority. Britain’s Colonial Governor invited Nkrumah, then in detention, to join the government. Nkrumah, in turn, demanded an end to colonial rule. At the end of mass demonstrations, Britain backed down and on March 6, 1957, the country of the “Gold Coast” declared its independence. After independence, Nkrumah changed the colonial name of the “Gold Coast” to Ghana, inspired by the ancient Ghana Empire that lasted from the fourth to the thirteenth century.

Nkrumah’s political goal was to re-liberate the entire African continent and unite it under the name of the United States of Africa. Indeed, he founded the Organization of African Unity in 1963.

Ghana’s independence in 1957 was the African continent’s smoothest and first experience of an independent state. It was entirely a reflection of Kwame Nkrumah’s brilliant mind and reassuring personality. It brought pride and self-respect not only to Ghana, but to the whole of Africa and to all black people around the world. Thirty-six countries in Africa gained independence in the decade after 1957. Nkrumah gave strength not only to Africans and blacks in the USA and Europe, but also to the struggle of all oppressed countries through the “Non-Aligned Movement”, of which he was one of the founders, and became the darling of the peoples.

Nkrumah saw the power of Western industrialized countries and their multinational corporations as the main threat to the economic well being of Third World countries moving towards independence. He therefore announced a program in which the government would nationalize the means of production and distribution and use the resources for industrialization and social development. (2)

From the moment Nkrumah took office as Ghana’s first president, he proclaimed to the world his program of non-alignment, positive socialism and the unswerving struggle for African unification. A closer look reveals that this program is similar to Atatürk’s “6 Arrows” program.

Overthrown by the CIA in a military coup
US imperialism was alarmed by Ghana’s liberation from the shackles of colonialism, its strong economic progress and its role model for Africa and all the oppressed nations of the world. The CIA made six assassination attempts. Nkrumah was overthrown by a military coup on February 24, 1966, in his ninth year in power. The coup was carried out by senior officers of the Ghanaian Army under the guidance of the US intelligence agency, the CIA.

Dr. Nkrumah was out of the country at the time of the coup. He had traveled to Hanoi (now Ho Chi Minh City), the capital of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, via the People’s Republic of China at the invitation of President Ho Chi Minh, having received a promise from the US administration not to bomb in order to establish peace in Vietnam. Dr. Nkrumah learned about the coup from the leader of the People’s Republic of China, Prime Minister Zhou En-lai, in Beijing, where he had arrived to return home.

Nkrumah declared that the coup was orchestrated by the United States and its intelligence agency, the CIA, but the United States denied this. Official US documents declassified in 1999 proved that the coup was a US plot.

John Stockwell, who worked for the CIA in Africa for many years, published a definitive account of the CIA’s role in Nkrumah’s overthrow in his 1978 book “In Search of Enemies.” (3)

On May 9, 1978, Seymour Hersh, a renowned American journalist, published in the New York Times the role of the CIA in Nkrumah’s overthrow. (4)

Dr. Nkrumah could not return to his country and sought refuge with his close ally, President Ahmet Sekou Toure of Guinea. Ahmet Toure made him an honorary co-president of Guinea.

Dr. Nkrumah died on April 27, 1972 in Bucharest, Romania, where he had gone for cancer treatment.

Guinean President Ahmed Sekou Toure gave him a grand funeral and said: “Kwame Nkrumah was one of the men who determined the destiny of mankind in the struggle for freedom and dignity. Kwame Nkrumah is alive and will live forever, because Africa, grateful to him, will live forever.” (5)

Nkrumah explains
Nkrumah continued his struggle from Guinea while in exile. He led the activities of the Congress People’s Party against severe repression. Every week on Radio Guinea he broadcast the program “Voice of the Revolution” and addressed the people with very effective speeches.

In one of his speeches he said:

“Ghana has always been a country feared and hated by the imperialists and neocolonialists. Immediately after independence, I declared that Ghana’s independence was meaningless unless it was linked to the total liberation of Africa. Today at least 36 African countries have achieved political independence. I also stated that political independence couldn’t be sustained without economic freedom and independence. The imperialists, colonialists and neo-colonialists, racists and settler regimes in Africa know this. That is why they relentlessly seek to maintain their exploitative control over the economy and natural resources of the -emerging‖ African states.

“In Ghana, our many state-owned factories and industries, state and cooperative farms and enterprises, and the huge Volta River Complex have put us in a position to revolutionize our industrialization and agriculture. This was the sure way to achieve our economic independence. For the imperialists and neocolonialists, Ghana had therefore become too dangerous an example for the rest of Africa to be allowed to continue under socialist leadership.” (6)

Nkrumah lives on and fights
The well-known proverb of the Turkish nation is “Fear does not change your destiny!” tells us that necessity will change desires. The US overthrew Nkrumah, but his independence, mixed economic model and development program are today leading Africa from success to success. The black continent is putting its weight behind the future of humanity. In the coming years, all plans that do not take Africa into account will come to naught!

And a few words for Turkey: With almost half of its population Muslim, Africa deserves closer attention from Turkey. To understand Africa, we need to know and learn from the heroes of the continent of the black skinned people, one of the most important valleys of the great humanity.

We remember the great revolutionary Nkrumah with respect and gratitude, who is Great Ataturk’s spiritual comrade-in-arms!

Footnotes:
1. Eric Kaku Quaidoo’s master’s thesis from the University of Ghana provides extensive information about Nkrumah. https://scholars.fhsu.edu/cgi/viewconte ... ext=theses

2. ibid.

3. https://www.theghanareport.com/today-in ... w-nkrumah/

4. https://www.nytimes.com/1978/05/09/arch ... ghana.html

5. https://www.theghanareport.com/today-in ... w-nkrumah/

6. The tape transcripts of Kwame Nkrumah’s addresses to the people of Ghana in Conakry between March and December 1966 on Radio Guinea’s “Voice of the Revolution” program were collected and published as a book by Panaf Publications in London. Transcribed by Eric Kaku Quaidoo.

https://orinocotribune.com/its-the-time-of-nkrumah/
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 01, 2023 1:43 pm

TRANSCRIPT: The Roots and Consequences of African Underdevelopment, Walter Rodney, 1979
Editors, The Black Agenda Review 31 May 2023

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In May 1979, the Center for Afro-American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles hosted a symposium titled The Political Economy of the Black World. We are publishing, for the first time, Walter Rodney’s thoughtful presentation at this symposium.

From May 10 to 12, 1979, the Center for Afro-American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (CAAS) hosted a symposium titled The Political Economy of the Black World. The symposium was organized by CAAS director and linguistic anthropologist Claudia Mitchell-Kernan with political scientist and CAAS associate faculty member Pierre-Michel Fontaine. It was an important if somehow forgotten intervention into the still-developing discipline of Black Studies, demonstrating the politically urgent energies and theoretically rigorous approaches of the nascent discipline, while showcasing the vibrancy of CAAS under Mitchell-Kernan’s direction.

Over two long days audience members heard from a quite remarkable congregation of historians, anthropologists, political scientists, and economists, their presentations roaming across the United States, Jamaica, Cuba, Brazil, Haiti, Central America, and southern Africa. In addition to Mitchell-Kernan and Fountaine, presenters included Robert S. Browne, founder of the Black Economic Research Center and the Review of Black Political Economy, Brazilian activist and scholar Lélia Gonzalez, Cuban critic Lourdes Casal, plantation theorist George Beckford, Panamanian sociologist Roy Simon Bryce-Laporte, and African American political scientists Linda Faye Williams and Marguerite Ross Barnett. St. Clair Drake gave a stunning closing address that took in five hundred years of Black history.

Walter Rodney was one of the presenters at the symposium. He gave a short, thoughtful talk on the Roots and Consequences of African Underdevelopment. Rodney’s talk built on his classic study How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, musing on how theories of underdevelopment had developed, as it were, over the recent past, especially when it came to understanding the core-periphery metaphor and the nature of classes in Africa.

It was Rodney’s second visit to Los Angeles and to UCLA. It would also be his last. After returning to Guyana that summer, he was charged with arson and arrested by the Forbes Burnham government. A year later, on 13 June 1980, Rodney was assassinated in Georgetown.

Memorial services for Rodney were held in Los Angeles and a symposium in his honor was hosted at UCLA in January, 1981. The proceedings from the symposium by CAAS as Walter Rodney: Revolutionary and Scholar a Tribute, edited by Pierre-Michel Fontaine and historian Edward “Ned” Alpers. In honor of Walter Rodney, and to mark the great work of CAAS and its director Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, we reproduce the transcript of Rodney’s 1979 talk at UCLA below.



The Roots and Consequences of African Underdevelopment

Dr. Walter Rodney

I would like to orient my remarks in a way that encompasses [the previous papers], but unfortunately the date is so different, and perhaps the frames of references we have to use are so different, that I must simply see mine as a third and different component looking at the African world, looking at the African environment itself, and concentrate in the time at our disposal on a resume of where we stand in terms of the literature, the analysis, and the efforts which have been made around the aspects of development that record here the roots and consequences of African economic development.

To begin with, a very brief account of the state of the literature. I would suggest that there were two principal phases. The first, in which the parameters of the discussion of African underdevelopment held to the theories which are well-known relating to the development of Africa, the proposition that colonialism had to some measure developed Africa and that Africa so long as it remained within the framework of international capital had a potential for development and/or modernization as it was called. I don’t feel that there is any need to elaborate on that early phase, because it has passed from the scene quite rapidly. It has been exposed as ahistorical, as mechanical and static. One of the ways is measuring and confirming how rapidly this position has passed is to notice that many scholars who at one time had one foot– or perhaps both feet–firmly planted in the camp of modernization have themselves made the transition towards the new parameters of underdevelopment and dependency. I am unaware of any scholars who have taken the backward leap from looking at dependency and underdevelopment, imagining somehow that there is a development potential within the international capitalist system as far as Africa is concerned.

So while it may be true that there are still exemplars of the old order, and while undoubtedly the institutions in this country and elsewhere may be unduly heavily represented by the exemplars of the old order, I think that it is still reasonable to say that at this stage it is really not worth the effort to make the basic argument to suggest that Africa was being underdeveloped, that what we find in Africa is underdevelopment rather than development. I fear that if there are those amongst us who like to hear that argument we will have to find another context. I myself have forgotten how to make that argument, it seems a while since I have had to deal with that.

Instead, we may look at the second phase, which is the phase in which persons of varying ideological persuasions, although Marxists are in the majority, or sometimes those who are called New Marxists, persons of varying ideological persuasions, have said by and large we accept that Africa and a number of other so-called Third World countries were locked within the international capitalist system in such a way that what was created was a continual process of domination, dependency, and growing inequality, each one reinforcing the other. That would be generally accepted by a large number of scholars and then they would proceed to engage in a series of debates within this camp, sometimes quite violent debates, which might suggest that they are fundamentally opposing positions.

Essentially, the new arguments have a great deal to do with the way in which dependency should be precisely defined, admitting at the very beginning the use of the term was and probably still is fairly loose, and there is no real agreement on making it precise. And more than that, the precision may vary from continent to continent, from example to example, as we begin to enrich our understanding of the various empirical situations.

Beyond the definition of problems a number of scholars in Latin America, as well as in Africa, have been concerned with the extent to which this dependency paradigm is first of all historical, but secondly of value for predictive purposes or for further analytical purposes in resolving the actual problem of contemporary underdeveloped states, because there is to some extent a weakness built into the scholarship in which even though many of us have sought to transcend the original descriptive elements of underdevelopment, it probably still remains true that some of the descriptions that remains implicit in the very terminology which is employed, a term such as underdevelopment, for example, is probably best substituted by dependent development, so that one understands that it does encompass a certain movement, that it is part of the development of capitalism on a world scale, although the development has very specific characteristics within which we can locate what has previously and what is still called underdevelopment.

More important, and more contemporary, are the disagreements that have to do with trying to determine whether within underdevelopment we should place the emphasis on functions related to trade, or functions related to production. A great deal of the debate about unequal trade, unequal exchange, for instance, is placed within this framework. And to go further, particularly in certain circles, where left-wing scholars sit to discuss and to critique the works of others who have tried to put forward some general formulations, it is queried whether it is even useful to maintain the now-commonplace distinction between the periphery and the core, the metropole and the colonial or neo-colonial peripheral zone.

A further area of continuing discussion is the significance to be attached to the emergence of class forces on the African continent, to what extent do these class forces and their emergence make a difference to understanding not merely of the state of underdevelopment, but more important the direction of change on the African continent. I would like to concentrate attention on really only two of these questions, though I believe that they are interrelated, questions concerning whether or not it is still valid and useful to maintain the distinction between periphery and core, and secondly what evaluation should be placed on the emergence of class forces in Africa today.

In the first instance, the critique of what I may loosely call the theory of the center-periphery, or core-periphery, seems to me to be ill-directed. Undoubtedly there are weaknesses in establishing a very static framework between center and periphery, but I doubt whether any of the main contributors to the understanding of modern underdevelopment have really ever said that there is a single core and a single periphery. I believe that there has always been a sense in which persons had to conceptualize, and have had to move to a greater degree of abstraction than is the reality. The reality being that there are peripheries and peripheries, there is a hierarchy within the periphery, if you like, and there are changes within the core countries. This has, I believe, been accepted by most theoreticians on the subject, and indeed it is only by accepting that possibility of hierarchization and change within the peripheral countries themselves that we can see historically the possibility of a peripheral country becoming a poor country, a very rare possibility, which has only been realized in the case of the United States itself under very special historical circumstances. But nevertheless, it is a historical precedent which forces a number of scholars to look more carefully at what would be called the intermediate states on a world scale. Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Iran, India, and possibly African countries such as the UAR, Nigeria, Libya, Algeria, may begin at a certain stage to qualify for intermediate status.

One of the reasons why for my own part I would want to reaffirm that the center-core formulation still remains vital to an understanding of the roots and consequences of African development is that there has been no change in the decision-making centers of the international system. Whatever other shifts and nuances may have come into being, it remains true that the decision-making centers are still the same, and that when one correlates this not only with the economic benefits derived from those centers, but with a series of other non-tangibles – and the non-tangibles were referred to at the very beginning of the conference by the chairman who introduced the first speaker [economist Robert S. Browne ] – when we look at a certain number of intangibles over and above the material benefits derived by the center, it seems to me that we will find another confirmation that the center- or core-periphery hypothesis is still a viable and meaningful one. To illustrate, Europe, and ultimately North America, bore a relationship to Africa through which the social relations of capitalism as they were developing in Europe and North America were aiming to reproduce themselves the better within Europe and North America. This is one of the contentions that I would like to throw out for your consideration. In other words, let us ignore for a moment the transfer of profits in a sort of quantitative sense from Africa to Europe, or from the Caribbean to Europe, from the Caribbean to North America, and let us concentrate on what seems to me to be an observed historical fact, that the social classes dominant in Europe and North America used their external pressure to consolidate their own social dominance within their own society. I will give three instances of this, one of which involves both Africa and the Caribbean in the period when the plantation system was being founded.

Reflecting upon the emergence of the plantation system and its significance in the seventeenth century, I believe that there is far more to it than the mere so-called primitive accumulation of capital. It was part of a process through which emergent capitalist forces in Europe imposed their domination over competing classes, the main competing class being the feudal land-owning class. It was part of a process by which the towns imposed a domination on the countryside within Europe, imposing that domination by virtue of the fact that they called in the New World to redress the balance in the Old. Whatever had been the difficulties of their class struggle in Western Europe at the time, whatever may have been the constraints which would have held back the development of capitalist forces in Western Europe, when they turned to the New World they were not simply getting capital, nor simply getting a material advantage, but that material advantage translated into social terms, the establishment of the domination of capitalist social relations in Western Europe itself.

To make a quick leap historically, two centuries thereafter, at the end of the nineteenth century, modern imperialist capital began its sweep. Monopoly capital exercised a domination over what was previously considered entrepreneurial, competitive capital. At that particular point in time, again our analysis, and I think that this is being self-critical, has tended in the past perhaps to concentrate on the ways in which imperialism gained specific advantages within this process of underdeveloping Africa. They gained surplus, they gained new markets, they gained new raw material, etc., This has been well-documented, and this has been taken almost for granted within the analysis. I would say more than that. It seems to me that what they were also doing was insuring that in the sharpening contradiction between capital and labor in the metropoles, the nature of class struggle in Europe and the domination of capital over labor would be reinforced again by drawing upon the rest of the world from which Europe expected surplus to be generated by African labor operating inside the African continent itself.

Many years ago I came across a quotation from Cecil Rhodes. It is often quoted, in fact it was quoted by Lenin, and it's quoted by a number of persons, but, for my own part, I do not believe I saw the significance of the quotation in the early years. It is one in which Rhodes says he is going to the East End of London, and he sees poverty. And more than poverty, he sees the anger of the English working class. He sees the desperation of the English working class, and he says, “If we do not engage in colonial and imperial ventures, the English working class are going to deal very seriously with us here in England.” It was a class question that the nature of the contradiction has sharpened within the protracted crisis of capitalism, which is now well-documented as taking place over the last three decades of the nineteenth century, in which the periods of slump clearly overwhelm the small peaks of boom in the economy. There was a protracted crisis in agriculture and industry, and the way out of that, a way that preserved the hegemony of the capitalist class, was the extension of capitalist relations to the rest of the world.

Now of course it was not purely voluntaristic. There is a dialectical process, a technological process, which made this possible. It is not merely that the capitalist classes wished, and the wish became a reality. They had a technological capacity at that time to extend their control. But the search for extension of control, the process upon the developing Africa, involved the recreation, if you like, the stabilization, of capitalist relations inside of Europe.

I say that, and you may think that this is merely the past, but I believe we are living in precisely the same epoch today. It is always easier to see it in historical perspective with hindsight, but it is often so difficult to look around when one is involved and immersed in the same process. But I believe that today we are once more looking at an intensive phase in which your American capital is seeking to reinforce and to stabilize its hegemony in class terms inside of America, inside of Europe, by bringing into being a further intensification of exploitation and domination over the so-called Third World. It is time to look at the way in which this so-called crisis, the recession, and more so the inflation and stagnation, the currency crisis, have been effectively exported to the Third World, so that whatever may be the degree of crisis in a country such as Britain–and there was and still is a real crisis–whatever the blows that the capitalist class has to bring to bear against the British and American working class, it can in part maintain that process of reconstituting labor in some form or fashion within the state and within the overall political economy because it has an out. The out is in fact the Third World . Increasingly, Africa is playing a role in this regard.

To my mind therefore it would be a serious error of judgment to imagine that the international capitalist system functions in a way in which it is not necessary to make the distinction between center and periphery, because that distinction to my mind seems vital to an understanding of the way in which the system operates. There is definitely that continuation of the power of decision making in the center, a power which is used in a class-conscious sense, particularly as capitalism and those who run the system acquire a greater consciousness of their own objectives. This is not a theory of conspiracy in history, it is an admission or a recognition that social classes gain a greater consciousness of the meaning of their own activity the longer that a system functions. Capitalism has been around long enough for us not to be so naive as to imagine that they are not clear in the pursuit of their own class interests, and they are doing so at the global level.

Something like the multi-national corporations, which again have been cited in so much of the literature quite correctly as the dominant form of exploitation, seems nevertheless in some ways to be misapprehended. Because to me the real threat from a Third World perspective, the deeper meaning of the multinational corporation, is not merely that it transfers values from the Third World to the center, not merely as an exploitative mechanism, but the way in which it continually reinforces a certain integration, a certain international integration, with the center located of course in the metropolitan world. Because what is a multi-national? Essentially by integrating resources from a whole variety of territories, Third World as well as metropolitan, it has a capacity to control the destiny, not merely the economic destiny, but the well-being in the broadest sense of the word of so many of the peoples of Africa and the world at large. And I think that it may be well to focus on this aspect much more than we have done in the past.

Besides, there are areas in which , apart from the economic base, one may see the operation of what we may call laws or tendencies, certainly the right of institutions which are quantitatively different in the metropole as compared with the periphery, that is to say, the countries of Africa. One notes for instance the presence of the state and operation of the state starting in the colonial period. “The colonial state came as close as possible to pure violence,” says one of Fanon’s most perceptive contributions. The colonial state really comprised the police barracks. We don’t have to get a very sophisticated theory of the state, including… functionalism and … functions and so on to explain the colonial state. We just have to look for the police stations and military barracks. It was a very crude form of state, where [the] rich intervened very directly in economic process. Very directly coercion was extended so that very many of the relations of production were not “economic” or market-determined. They had the immediate power of the coercive apparatus brought to bear. That is, of course, not only true of Africa, it is true of indentured labor in the Caribbean, but it was certainly true of Africa throughout the colonial period. Bearing this in mind, then, I am saying, in spite of the constraints of having to move very quickly, for those who are familiar with the way in which the debate is going I believe that to a large extent that seeks to deny the reality of the center-periphery formulation is rather ill-directed.

And now the second of the major issues under discussion, the question of class forces. Again, sometimes, the question is posed to my mind too simplistically to advance our understanding of the reality. You get, for instance, people saying, is the issue really that of internal class conflict, or is it that of the contradiction between the emerging African nation-states and international capital? I think that is a false dichotomy. I don’t think that we really want to see either/or–it is either that it is internal to Africa, and that is determined; or it is a question of contradiction between Africa and Europe. To my mind from the very beginning there were two levels of the problem, and that at the beginning perhaps when Europe imposed itself the external contradiction was clearly very dominant. However, as the system evolved, it also developed a capacity to localize itself, to reproduce itself within the environment of Africa, which meant, willy-nilly, that capitalism produced classes and strata of a particular configuration necessary for the reproduction of capital and the export of surplus. And what we have to do it seems to me is to look at the peculiar characteristics of the social forces which today as a consequence of underdevelopment guarantee the reproduction of capital in Africa, and ultimately the reproduction of capital on a world scale. I stress the peculiar characteristic not because one is imbued in any sense with looking for the unique in Africa, but because undoubtedly some of the discussion has been stymied by the a priori assumptions that once we are using the language of class which came from another context, it would automatically be relevant in Africa, or to the African continent. And then of course those who would not like to see the parameters of class used at all, will then react to that and say we told you in the first place that we should never be talking about class, that’s a European thing, we don’t have any of that in Africa, we are all brothers, and I own 15,000 acres and you don’t own any, but we still belong to the same family. It can’t end up without other kinds of mystification. I am saying that we can search for specificity in regard to class development and a number of studies are doing precisely that.

As to my own contribution in this particular context I would like briefly to point [to] some aspects of class development which appear to me important not just because one wants to analyze them academically, but because I feel that they are politically important, and that the dimension that we cannot afford to ignore political implications, because otherwise we may end up by trying to achieve formulations to break underdevelopment, and then we ask ourselves how do these relate in practice, how do we translate this on the ground, and we find ourselves totally bemused, frustrated, because it is impossible to produce no matter how beautiful and advanced the development plan if you produce it and offer to certain African states, given their [...] class structure, they cannot and will not utilize these plans. So I want to speak very briefly in the last minutes about the political dimensions involved with respect to both the middle strata, as they are sometimes called emergent petit bourgeoisie, and the working classes.

It seems to me that what is sometimes called the national bourgeoisie – I think incorrectly, more often the national petit bourgeoisie in Africa – is itself a pretty weak class. They grow up as weak intermediaries. They are often self-employed. They are certainly lacking in any tremendous social power. Capital in Africa, as far as it is in the hands of Africans, does not really wield a tremendous amount of social power. And I feel that lack of that social power which in Europe would guarantee “the normal functioning of capital” – because you have to go to the workplace and offer your labor for sale – in Africa you do not have to go and work necessarily for the national petit bourgeoisie, so they must find a number of other mechanism for extracting surplus from the mass of the population. And since they have inherited the colonial state, this pure police state, they use precisely that apparatus as the principal mechanism for capital accumulation both on their own behalf and of course for export. I again must be forced to leave this as a very broad statement rather than one which is properly argued, but I think that if we see the lack of a social power base, because capital has not within Africa or must Third World countries reached that state where the relations, which after all are very important, between the owners of capital and the seller of labor are such that the owner of capital can command the seller of labor by virtue of the fact that he is an employer. This is hardly the case in Africa. What is left then is for this class to search for alternatives. The alternative most readily at hand is the mechanism of the state as state in its many facets, to be used as a means of accumulation against the very rampant authoritarianism from one end of the continent to another.

As for the working classes and their particular position, with hindsight at any rate look at the processes of the underdevelopment of Africa, and look particularly at its consequences, we may well determine that the most important aspect of underdevelopment was the underdevelopment of the working class. The underdevelopment of the productive forces in general, and the working class is a salient [element] within these productive forces. One looks from one end of the continent to another, recognizes the incomplete crystallization of a working class, recognizing the transitory nature, the migratory nature, of the working class, sees the way in which there is a continual shift between the working class and the rural subsistence activities, see what proves to be politically crucial, the weakness in the organization of the working class, including even the trade unions, which are by and large controlled by the petit bourgeoisie in Africa. What I would say is that if we are going to try to deal not just with the roots and consequences of underdevelopment, but obviously if we are orienting ourselves towards forms of solution, we have to consider at what point can there be an incisive break with the old pattern, where do we intervene in this whole seemingly unbreakable pattern of underdevelopment. And I would suggest that the point of intervention is not economic or psychological or cultural, it is social in the sense of looking for those social forces whose material interests coincide with the kinds of development plans which one is proposing, and indeed it involves bringing the said social forces into the making of the said development plan.

But before running ahead to that phase which would seem to be the future, it is still sufficient at this juncture to emphasize that the development possibilities must place politics first, as it were. We may perhaps have been caught in an incorrect attitude when we think that other things have come first. Politics must come first because unless one can identify within the African continent–particularly north of the zone that is right in combat in the south of South Africa– if we are going to think of the ways in which the actual mechanism for transformation in Africa, it can only be done by people. It can only be done by social forces, and too much of this discussion has been abstract. It has not sought to relate and to locate these co-called solutions within some particular social classes to see whether the possibilities of organization of these social classes, and to derive the development thrust from the organization of the serf classes whose interest coincide with the liberation of Africa. That perhaps is trying to say a great deal, just as my brother [Leslie Manigat recounted] so many years of Haitian history in X number of minutes. But it seems to me that we are caught within this trap in which there is still the illusion both on the left and on the right. ON the right there is the illusion that Africa is developing, and those who know the reality know that this is proved to be false. And on the left, perhaps we, if we want to be self-critical, there is a tendency to fall back into what ultimately becomes a curious kind of intellectualizing which seems to imagine that that is what comes first, that that will resolve problems, and that we ourselves have failed to link with an actuality, and to recognize that the next development in development theory is not going to come because somebody sits in some particular place and suddenly shouts Eureka! because it has come into his or her head. It will come because the people of Africa have opened up new possibilities for development. And those of us who monitor the situation, whether it be in southern Africa or elsewhere, are quite convinced about the capacity of the African people to open up these possibilities.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/trans ... odney-1979

Putin, South Africa, and the International Criminal Court
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 31 May 2023

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The West has deployed the International Criminal Court in the US/NATO proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.

On March 17, the International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted and issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova. They are the first and only white people to be indicted by the court. All 44 of those previously indicted have been Africans.

Neither Russia, China, nor the US have accepted the court’s jurisdiction. The US Congress even passed what’s colloquially known as the Hague Invasion Act , which makes it lawful—not internationally, but lawful according to US statute—for the US to invade the Netherlands to save any US official, service member, or citizen, or those of any of its allies, should they ever be brought before the International Criminal Court in The Hague, no matter how heinous or well-documented the crime.

The indictments of Putin and Lvova-Belova allege that they were responsible for the abduction and “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children to Russia. Defenders of Putin and Lvova-Belova say that the children were just temporarily removed from a war zone where they might have been in danger.

Putin is scheduled to represent Russia at a conference of the BRICS nations—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—in South Africa in August. However, the plan has become controversial there because South Africa is a states party to the ICC and might therefore be expected to arrest Putin. Thirty-three African nations are states parties to the court and thereby accept its jurisdiction.

I spoke to David Paul Jacobs, a Canadian attorney who has practiced in international law about the indictment.

ANN GARRISON: David, I think the ICC would be a laughingstock for its racist hypocrisy if there weren’t so many lives lost in the crimes that it considers and fails to consider, but this indictment has the world’s attention and it’s awkward for South Africa. Can you explain South Africa’s legal position as a states party that still accepts the jurisdiction of the court? What does the Rome Statute or any related documents say?

DAVID PAUL JACOBS: The Rome Statute gives the ICC the “authority to make requests to States Parties for cooperation.” South Africa is a state party to the Rome Statute, although in 2016, South Africa indicated its intention to withdraw from the Statute, and later reversed itself.

The obligation to cooperate with the ICC is tempered by Article 98 of the statute which provides that:

1. The Court may not proceed with a request for surrender or assistance which would require the requested State to act inconsistently with its obligations under international law with respect to the State or diplomatic immunity of a person or property of a third State, unless the Court can first obtain the cooperation of that third State for the waiver of the immunity.

2. The Court may not proceed with a request for surrender which would require the requested State to act inconsistently with its obligations under international agreements pursuant to which the consent of a sending State is required to surrender a person of that State to the Court, unless the Court can first obtain the cooperation of the sending State for the giving of consent for the surrender.”

In this case the “requested State” is South Africa and the “third State” would be Russia.

South Africa’s obligations include the requirements of the African Union’s 2015 resolution granting heads of state immunity from ICC prosecution and the provisions of its domestic law: the Diplomatic Immunities and Privileges Act, 2001. Many countries have similar enactments to protect their heads of state and diplomatic personnel and reciprocally protect such persons from other states, for obvious and historic reasons. International law recognizes the jurisdictional immunity of a head of state.

The South African government has now granted immunities and privileges under the Diplomatic Immunities and Privileges Act, 2001 for the BRICS meetings to be held in Cape Town in June and August, 2023.

AG: If South Africa were to arrest Putin, Russia would feel obliged to invade South Africa, wouldn’t it?

DPJ: Given the decision of the South African government to apply immunity to the BRICS meetings, the question, thankfully, does not arise.

It is worth noting that the USA, which is not a state party to the Rome Statute, has enacted the American Service-Members' Protection Act, aka the Hague Invasion Act, prohibiting US cooperation with the Court, and permitting the President to authorize military force to free any US military personnel held by the court.

AG: Thirty-three African nations, including South Africa, are states parties to the court. Given that the Court has indicted 44 Africans and no one from another continent, do you think they should all withdraw from the court?

DPJ: The African Union has instructed member countries not to cooperate with the ICC.

AG: Regarding the indictment of Putin and Lvova-Belova itself, I know that Ukraine’s bombing of its own Russian-speaking population, its disregard for the Minsk Accords, and perhaps even its desire to join NATO make a moral case for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but it’s still a crime of aggression, a violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty, isn’t it?

DPJ: Article 51 of the U.N. Charter provides in part that:

“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

It has been argued that the right of self-defense includes a right of anticipatory self-defense necessary in the face of overwhelming threats. The decisions of Crimea, the Donbas, etc., to join Russia, and the armed attacks on their territories, ramping up in January 2022, in part provide the bases for such arguments on the part of Russia. Recall, however, that the NATO attack on Yugoslavia was deemed illegal by the late Antonio Cassese who was a President of the ICC.

The US claimed that its wars on Iraq and Afghanistan were all justified as aid in “self-defence” even though NATO countries were not attacked or threatened prior to the attacks.

AG: Why do you think the court indicted Putin for abducting children but not for invading Ukraine, which would seem to be its primary violation of international law?

DPJ: That’s not clear. I do not believe that the indictment is yet released, so we do not know the allegations in full. The ICC has complex provisions regarding the crime of aggression, only recently added to its jurisdiction. Regarding the charge, the Russians claim that children without parental or other support, orphans and such, were moved to safety but many have been returned.

AG: David Jacobs, thank you for speaking to Black Agenda Report.

DPJ: Thank you.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/putin ... inal-court

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Imperialist Hegemony and the Class Struggle in Africa and the Diaspora
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 30, 2023
Abayomi Azikiwe

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Kwame Nkrumah And Haile Selassie

Note: The following solidarity statement was prepared and delivered in part to the African Liberation Day program organized by the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, (A-APRP-GC) under the theme “Pan-Africanism: Waging Class Struggle in Africa and the Diaspora, Fighting for the One United Socialist Africa!” on Sat. May 27, 2023. The event was broadcast over the “Africans on the Move” internet radio program hosted by Lee Robinson of the African Awareness Association based in Richmond, Virginia. Speakers from various organizations made presentations including the Million Women March, the Committee to Free Jamil al-Amin, the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Movement, among many others. You can listen to the podcast of the event at the following link: (https://www.blogtalkradio.com/africa-on ... ay-27-2023)

Africa Liberation Day comes amid an escalating campaign by the West and their allies to stifle sovereignty and sustainable development.


May 25, 2023 represents the 60th anniversary since the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the forerunner of today’s African Union (AU).

During 1963, over 30 independent African states held a summit meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where they agreed to put aside differences in order to initiate a continental organization.

Since the early 1960s, two distinct blocs had come into existence in the post-colonial period of historical development. The Casablanca Group, which included states such as Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Egypt, Algeria, among others maintained an anti-imperialist posture in regard to their foreign policy imperatives.

Contrastingly, the Monrovia Group, which constituted the majority of states on the continent at the time, took a far more moderate position in relations to national development and international relations. Developments during the early 1960s witnessed the escalation of the armed struggles for national independence in Algeria along with other European colonies and settler states such as Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, South Africa, Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe), Southwest Africa (later Namibia), etc.

The overthrow and assassination of the first democratically elected prime minister of the former Belgian Congo, Patrice Lumumba, during 1960-1961, served to heighten anti-imperialist sentiments among progressive and socialist oriented states as well as among the masses of workers, youth and farmers on the continent. Therefore, from the onset, the OAU represented a compromise between the moderate and anti-imperialist states.

There were both positive and negative aspects of the OAU policy in its formative years. An OAU Liberation Committee was established to provide material and political aid to those liberation movements and political parties still fighting for national independence.

However, the OAU position of non-interference in the internal affairs of member-states allowed for the destabilization and overthrow of governments by imperialist forces which backed counter-revolutionary elements within African societies. Within less than three years, the revolutionary Pan-Africanist government of the Republic of Ghana headed by President Kwame Nkrumah was forcefully and undemocratically removed in a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) instigated coup by lower-ranking military officers and the police.

Nkrumah was a leading co-founder of the OAU, which in actuality stemmed from the ideological views expressed by the Convention People’s Party (CPP) government in Accra. Even prior to taking power as Leader of Government Business in 1951, Prime Minister in 1954 and as an independent head-of-state beginning on March 6, 1957, Nkrumah was a strong advocate of African unity.

As early as 1947 in his first book entitled, “Toward Colonial Freedom: Africa and the Struggle Against World Imperialism”, which was reprinted in 1962 when he was President of the First Republic of Ghana, Nkrumah identifies the economic machinations of European domination as the basis of African oppression and exploitation. In later years, Nkrumah would publish “Africa Must Unite”, which was released at the founding summit of the OAU in May 1963, “Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization” released in 1964 and “Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism”, issued in 1965, which proved too powerful for the United States since it pointed to the central role of Washington and Wall Street in the continuing underdevelopment of Africa and many other geopolitical regions of the world.

Contained in these texts are severe indictments of imperialism and the imperatives of African unification under socialism. Although these books were published six decades ago, their perceptions of the African situation remain relevant.

Today, across the continent, efforts by imperialism to stifle African development and unification abound. In West Africa we have experienced the recrudescence of military coups carried out by military elements with close ties to the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM).

In the Republic of Sudan, a major center of destabilization, the imperialists and their cohorts have armed and politically empowered military structures which have left millions traumatized and displaced. Hundreds of officially documented deaths have occurred in Sudan, an oil-rich and geostrategic state which could play a monumental role in the struggle for anti-imperialism and African unity.

As was illustrated in neighboring Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, there must be African solutions to African problems. At the initiative of the AU, a series of negotiations were held in South Africa and Kenya which resulted in the existing peace accord between the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

Yet in the Republic of Sudan, the leadership of the Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) refused to meet in neighboring Republic of South Sudan for peace talks. Instead, it would take the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the U.S. to convene the talks. Nonetheless, the peace has still not been won.

The role of military interests in African politics was explained by Nkrumah in his seminal work entitled “Class Struggle in Africa”, published while he served as Co-President of the People’s Revolutionary Republic of Guinea in 1970. Most of the armed forces and police structures in independent states were inherited from the colonial era. Their political orientation is often dominated by capitalism and neo-colonialism. This set of social circumstances require a revolution from below which establishes the rule of the majority class interests of the workers and farmers of Africa.

Socialist Revolution in Africa and the Diaspora is the Ultimate Solution

In the chapter entitled “Socialist Revolution” in the book “Class Struggle in Africa” openly proclaims that the transformation of society from capitalist to socialist relations of production provides the only solution to the continental crisis. However, imperialism and their surrogates will not relinquish power without a struggle to overcome their control of the oppressive capitalist and colonial states.

Nkrumah says in this regard that:

“The highest point of political action, when a revolution attains its excellence, is when the proletariat—compromising workers and peasants—under the leadership of a vanguard party the principles and motivations of which are based on scientific socialism, succeeds in overthrowing all other classes. The basis of a revolution is created when the organic structures and conditions within a given society have aroused mass consent and mass desire for positive action to change or transform that society. While there is no hard and fast dogma for socialist revolution, because no two sets of historical conditions and circumstances are exactly alike, experience has shown that under conditions of class struggle, socialist revolution is impossible without the use of force. Revolutionary violence is a fundamental law in revolutionary struggles. The privileged will not, unless compelled, surrender power. They may grant reforms but will not yield an inch when basic pillars of their entrenched positions are threatened. They can only be overthrown by violent revolutionary action.” (p. 80)

In this same book, Nkrumah views the African Revolution as part and parcel of the world socialist movement against capitalism and imperialism. He views the African revolutionary struggle as being worldwide encompassing the people of African descent in the Diaspora of the Western Hemisphere.

According to Nkrumah:

“The African revolutionary struggle is not an isolated one. It not only forms part of the world socialist revolution but must be seen in the context of the Black Revolution as a whole. In the U.S.A., the Caribbean and wherever Africans are oppressed, liberation struggles are being fought. In these areas, the Black man is in a condition of domestic colonialism and suffers both on the grounds of class and of color. The core of the Black Revolution is in Africa, and until Africa is united under a socialist government, the Black man throughout the world lacks a national home. It is around the African peoples’ struggles for liberation and unification that African or Black culture will take shape and substance. Africa is one continent, one people, and one nation…. The total liberation and the unification of Africa under an All-African socialist government must be the primary objective of all Black revolutionaries throughout the world.” (pp. 87-88)

These observations and conclusions remain elusive but compelling in the third decade of the 21st century. Nonetheless, the existing crises of capitalism and imperialism provide openings for Africans and other oppressed and exploited peoples to wage a protracted struggle for genuine liberation and socialism.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/05/ ... -diaspora/

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Paramilitaries accuse the Army of killing 18 civilians in Sudan

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On April 15, fighting broke out between the parties to the internal conflict that left at least 850 dead. | Photo: EFE
Posted June 1, 2023

According to the FAR, the bombardments against the areas of Mayo, Andalus and Al Azhari in Khartoum left more than 106 injured.

The paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (FAR) accused the Sudanese Army on Thursday of causing the death of 18 people as a result of the bombardments carried out by the armed forces against the south of Khartoum.

The insurgent entity condemned through a statement "the brutal crime committed by the coup forces against innocent civilians in the areas of Mayo, Andalus and Al Azhari in Khartoum, who were subjected to indiscriminate artillery bombardment and an air strike that left 18 dead and more than 106 injured.

Similarly, the FAR denounced the destruction of a considerable number of homes by artillery shelling in the Al Mudaraat al Shagara region, in northeastern Sudan, forcing its inhabitants to move.


For its part, the Sudanese Doctors Union reported 17 deaths and the same number of injuries as a result of the attacks by the Army, which have intensified after their representatives withdrew from the negotiating table.

Instead, the Army spokesman, Colonel Nabil Abdala, reported that the armed forces “undertake, according to the constitution and as a national duty, to end the rebellion. This is what will happen in the next few days.”

In turn, the military spokesman blamed the FAR for obstructing humanitarian corridors, occupying hospitals and civilian homes, and making the restoration of basic services more complex.

Similarly, the government announced the decision to extend the closure of its airspace until June 15 due to the continuation of the confrontations. However, humanitarian aid and evacuation flights will be exceptions, as long as they have prior authorization.

On April 15, fighting broke out between the parties to the internal conflict, leaving at least 850 dead and more than 5,500 injured while more than 1.3 million displaced people are reported.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/paramili ... -0010.html

Google Translator

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South Sudan Regrets UNSC Extension of Arms Embargo

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Child soldiers in South Sudan. | Photo: Twitter/ @hallaboutafrica

Published 1 June 2023 (1 hours 51 minutes ago)

The United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution to renew arms embargo measures, targeted sanctions of the travel ban and asset freeze against individuals and entities.

On Wednesday, South Sudan regretted the renewal of the arms embargo and sanctions by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

"We have regretted and objected to any renewal of the sanction because this is unjustified; this was done in bad faith and ill intention under the spotlight of being a state with a lot of abuses," said Deng Dau Deng, South Sudan's acting minister of foreign affairs.

On Tuesday, the UNSC adopted a resolution to renew for a year, till May 31, 2024, arms embargo measures against South Sudan as well as targeted sanctions of the travel ban and asset freeze against individuals and entities.

Resolution 2683, which was adopted with ten votes in favor and five abstentions, also decides to extend the mandate of the Panel of Experts, which assists the work of the South Sudan Sanctions Committee, until July 1, 2024.


Dau said South Sudan has been working tremendously in implementing the provisions of the agreement and have gone far to implement the provisions of the benchmark that was earmarked for the removal of these sanctions.

He stressed that the renewal of the arms embargo will affect the implementation of the peace agreement both in the security transition as they want to graduate and arm the unified forces in the cantonment site and deploy them to take up their duties in providing security.

Dau said the arms embargo will also affect the economy of the country as prices will increase and investors will shun the country.

"Arms embargo is a factor that affects the economy, the trade, the commerce, and the security of the country. Prices will now shoot up because we are a landlocked country and South Sudan relies heavily on things that are imported from the neighboring countries, therefore, the prices will increase, and the investors will not have interest in coming to South Sudan because it is a country under sanction," Dau said.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Sou ... -0006.html

Senegal: Opposition Leader Sonko Sentenced to 2 Years in Prison

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Senegalese politician Ousmane Sonko. | Photo: Twitter/ @CheickIbtidiani

Published 1 June 2023

Once convicted of "corruption of minors," Ousmane Sonko will not be able to participate in the 2024 presidential elections.


On Thursday, Ousmane Sonko, the leader of the Senegalese opposition, was convicted of corruption of minors after being tried on May 23 for allegedly raping a young masseuse. This verdict would disqualify him as a candidate in the upcoming elections.

The Prosecutor's Office had requested a ten-year prison sentence for rape against Sonko, or five years for corruption of minors, and an additional year for acts of threats and death.

The court's verdict also sentenced the owner of the beauty salon where the alleged rape occurred, Ndèye Khady Ndiaye, to two years in prison. She was charged with incitement to debauchery, dissemination of immoral images, and complicity in rape.

Sonko was acquitted of the charges of rape and death threats that he had been accused of, and Ndiaye was acquitted of complicity in rape.

This trial against the opposition leader took place after a young masseuse named Adji Sarr accused him in early 2021 of "repeated rape" and "death threats."


The tweet reads, "Senegal: Tension mounts as Ousmane Sonko's caravan advances towards the capital. The oppposition politician vowed to reach Dakar leading a people's convoy. The Government promised firmness in case of breach of public order."

Since then, the case has been generating controversy and tensions in the country, with Sonko's supporters believing that the judicial process aims to disqualify him as a candidate for the presidential elections in February 2024.

The verdict was announced amidst protests by his supporters, while Sonko has been under house arrest since Sunday, surrounded by law enforcement forces.

This prosecution came after the opposition leader was sentenced on May 8 to a six-month suspended prison term for defamation and public insults against a Senegalese minister, accusing him of corruption.

Sonko's arrest in March 2021, when he was on his way to appear in court for the masseuse case, surrounded by a crowd of supporters, led to violent protests that resulted in at least fourteen deaths, twelve of them from gunfire.

Known for his anti-system rhetoric, the opposition leader criticizes misgovernance, corruption, and French neocolonialism, and he has many followers among the Senegalese youth.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Sen ... -0007.html

Ghana Committed to Boost Sustainable Ocean Economy

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President of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo at the National Blue Economy Summit. Jun. 1, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@asaaseradio995

Published 1 June 2023 (6 hours 37 minutes ago)

"As part of the process, we have initiated the national integrated maritime strategy...";/b]


On Wednesday, during a two-day National Blue Economy Summit, the President of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, expressed his country’s commitment to fostering a sustainable blue economy that would advance the wellbeing of all Ghanaian citizens.

Akufo-Addo emphasized the significance of the ocean as a potential catalyst for facilitating the development of West African countries and enhancing the well-being of its people.

According to Akufo-Addo, in order to ensure the sustainability of the ocean economy, the government has instituted measures such as policy formulation and program development.

"As part of the process, we have initiated the national integrated maritime strategy to allow us to chart viable courses to address maritime threats, conservation and management of marine resources to generate substantial national income and ultimately improve the living standards of our people," Akufo-Addo said.


The president also highlighted that despite a surge in private investment during the previous decade, too little capital is destined towards the blue economy; and emphasized the imperative need of ensuring a higher influx of investments into this emerging sector.

Akufo-Addo referred that the maritime industry and projects with marine-based projects can strongly benefit from the implementation of public-private partnerships, which can attract significant amounts of private investment.

The summit, which focused on the theme of "our ocean's health, our prosperity, our planet's security", was organized through a joint collaboration between the Ghanaian government's sustainable development goals advisory unit and the United Nations Development Program; both local and international stakeholders participated in the event.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Gha ... -0003.html
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 07, 2023 2:34 pm

Marginal Benefits & the Functionalism of Conflict in Africa: Case Studies of State Responses to Pan-African Political Leaders
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JUNE 2, 2023
DaQuan Lawrence

Image
Deposed Congo Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, hands manacled, sits in the bed of an army truck under guard of Congolese soldiers after his arrival at Leopoldville (Kinshasa) airport, Dec. 2, 1960, one day after his arrest by troops loyal to Col. Joseph Mobutu. Lumumba was executed the following month. This is believed to be one of the last photos of Lumumba alive. (AP Photo/Horst Faas)

“Historical evidence reveals that Africa had its renaissance centuries, if not millenniums, before Europe. Some of Africa’s past civilizations were in the Nile, Zimbabwe, Congo and Ghana. It was the trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonialism which destroyed Africa and underdeveloped it. Slavery and colonialism were made possible by the so-called European Renaissance. Today these forces have their Pan-Europeanism through their European Union, making them a powerful economic bloc. They are integrating socially and politically and working for a borderless Europe. On the other hand, Africa is wallowing in the quagmire of underdevelopment, poverty, endless border wars, economic domination and the dictatorship of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This is because African leaders are dragging their feet on the implementation of Pan-Africanism and have made Africa a perpetual beggar of foreign ‘aid’. Some of these leaders have become agents of neo-liberalism and neo-colonialism, whose instrument is ‘globalization’. Globalization is just a new form of recolonizing the African continent.

Pan-Africanism was developed by outstanding African scholars, political scientists, historians and philosophers living in Africa and the diaspora. It was conceived in the womb of Africa. It is a product made in Africa by Africans. Pan-Africanism is the oldest vision in Africa. Pan-Africanism includes the intellectual, political and economic cooperation that should lead to the political unity of Africa. The Pan-African alternative provides a framework for African unity. It also fosters radical change in the colonial structures of the economy, and the implementation of an inward-looking strategy of production and development. It calls for the unification of financial markets, economic integration, a new strategy for initial capital accumulation and the design of a new political map for Africa. Pan-Africanism demands that the riches of Africa be used for the benefit, upliftment, development and enjoyment of the African people. Pan-Africanism is a system of equitably sharing food, clothing, homes, education, healthcare, wealth, land, work, security of life and happiness. Pan-Africanism is the privilege of the African people to love themselves and to give themselves and their way of life respect and preference.

Dr. Motsoko Pheko, Former member of the South African Parliament1, Pan Africanist Congress of Azania


Introduction: Pro- and Pan-African Class Analysis of Conflict in Africa

Often, the narrative of African states on the path to capitalist economic development is told from a perspective of Western dominance where incentives African states could receive are overemphasized. However, capitalist development in Africa has led to conditions of economic deterioration.2 Instead of considering the impetus of capitalist development and pro-West political and economic activities in Africa as the “consumerism development” that African leaders learned from Western nations, this article presumes that foreign influences are just as present as they were during previous centuries. It is widespread knowledge that any economic or political reforms to international economic systems enhanced the control of said system by Western powers.3 The aforementioned fact, combined with the facts that historically society has been stratified based on a social hierarchy of racialism – which was instituted by false-narratives and pseudoscience, and both were dominant factors in the decisions European leaders (first monarchs and clergy-members, and eventually politicians and businessmen and women) made regarding the economic exploitation of African states – should not be underemphasized.4 In White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of U.S International Relations, author Robert Vitalis outlines how the underpinned racial subjugation operates as the driving force of the global political economy and in the field of international relations, making pro African assessments of post-World War I intra- and inter- state conflicts necessary:

“In the first decades of the twentieth century in the United States, international relations meant race relations…The problem of empire or imperialism, sometimes referred to as ‘race subjugation,’ was what preoccupied the first self-identified professors of international relations. They wrestled with the prospect that a race war might lead to the end of the world hegemony of whites, a future that appeared to many to be in the offing.”5

This paper analyzes inter- and intra-state conflicts in Africa utilizing state responses to Pan African political leadership from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – Patrice Lumumba; the Republic of Ghana – Kwame Nkrumah; the State of Libya – Muammar Gaddafi; and South Africa – Robert Sobukwe and Jafta Masemola, as case studies. The work considers conflicts throughout Africa as functional components to the international economic order and manufactured phenomena that produce marginal benefits to developed nations and elite classes of underdeveloped nations due the structure of the global political economy. Although the DRC, Ghana, Libya, and South Africa are the focus of this study, the Republic of Guinea (Diallo Telli); the Republic of Guinea-Bissua (Amilcar Cabral); Burkina Faso (Thomas Sankara); the Republic of Mozambique (Samora Machel); the United Republic of Tanzania (Mwalimu Julius Nyerere); and the Republic of Angola (Dr. Antonio Agostinho Neto) are further examples of Pan African political leaders that experienced conflict with African states and foreign states alike and deserve to be investigated as well.

The central premise and hypothesis of this paper is that intra- and inter-state conflicts within Africa are structured into the global political economy and can be considered functional characteristics due to colonial remnants and paternal policies which prevent African political leaders from advancing African nations beyond the imposed, foreign “progression” they currently experience. The article posits that institutions, businesses, state governments, and elite or middle-class members of developed and under-developed nations may be negatively or positively impacted by conflicts in African states, whereas local Africans and their respective state economies are typically negatively affected. This research topic was selected because historically the varying international (external) and national/domestic (internal) state responses to Pan African political leaders have disproportionately been condemnation. As a result, this study seeks to identify whether both contemporary African and non-African (foreign) states can respect the sovereignty of African nations, coexist, or cooperate with African leaders who do not want to be economically and politically dependent on Western institutions in the current international political economy.

The primary research questions addressed include a) identifying whether conflict in Africa is a function of the global political economy?; b) investigating the similarities and distinctions of state responses to Pan African political leaders; c) considering the number of proxy-wars in African states, what is the role of non-African states in conflicts throughout Africa?; and, d) how do the remnants of colonial systems such state formation, constitutions, laws, public policies, and governmental administration impact conflict in Africa?

The following work considers qualitative data sources of political and economic development in African states amid the post-independence era, as well as quantitative data regarding international development standards, economic policy metrics and global indicators for developed and underdeveloped nations.

The literature reviewed in the article includes: “As Qaddafi Died, So Did His Craziest Dream and Mistake: Pan-Africanism,” “Contemporary Conflict Resolution,” “Conflict Trends in Africa, 1946-2004. A Macro-Comparative Perspective,” “Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook,” “Did Masemola Spend 26 or 28 years on Robben Island?” “How to Write About Africa,” “Jafta Masemola’s Master Key: Experimental Notes on Azanian Aesthetic Theory,” “Lumumba Speaks: The Speeches and Writings of Patrice Lumumba, 1958-1961,” “Robert Sobukwe: How Can Man Die Better?” “The Assassination of Lumumba,” “The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History,” “Transitional Justice and DDR: The Case of South Africa,” and “White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of U.S International Relations.”

We first consider class analysis of conflict in Africa through a pro- and Pan-African perspective. The paper includes sections on global imperialism, colonialism and globalization, how the global economic and political apparatus (international state governments, multinational organizations and non-state actors) benefit from conflict in Africa, and state responses to Pan African political leaders. The article concludes with the author attempting to persuade the reader into a pro- and Pan-African perspective of the global political economy.

Global Political Semantics: Imperialism, Colonialism and Globalization

In the last century many African states have experienced political decolonization and witnessed the spread of democracy.6 Considering the global political economy, African states fall within the purview of the Washington Consensus and Bretton Woods institutions, and abide by international laws and regulations regarding economic development. African states are heavily influenced by foreign institutions and nations, and even relegated to secondary status under the current international system.7 As a result, since World War II many African states have either pursued a pro-capitalist path towards economic development, or in a few instances, a non-capitalist or socialist path towards economic development. Despite either path toward development, African states (their respective governments, economies, and citizens) exist in a state of perpetual underdevelopment (poverty), especially in relation to developed nations.8 Furthermore, internationally members of the African diaspora suffer gross violations of human rights daily due to the remnants of the colonial era, slavery, and racialism.9 Despite attempts by international organizations to ameliorate the issues created by the exploitation of Africans, said subjugation is widespread and not limited to the continent, as diaspora Africans experience discrimination in developed nations such as the United States, Britain, France, and many others.

The conditions that led to the perception of Africans as derogatory are present in modern capitalist countries, and indicative of the monolithic misperception of all Africans as impoverished savages.10 Therefore, examinations of African state reactions to the global political economy and newly instituted economic order created in the post-1948 (WWII) society are critical. With the conclusion of the Second Great War and the development of nations such as Germany, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and others, and the United States’ increasing role as a global superpower, African states became the focus of an “extraction based” global economy based on commerce, that sought to convert Africa’s many resources into financial capital that would in turn be used to develop the “developed” nations.11 As a result, many African leaders found themselves in compromising positions where they had to participate in the global system of capitalism and accept foreign oversight or administration of economic and political affairs. Furthermore, the economic systems that were instituted by the colonial nations were maintained under the new global economic order, albeit under a different structure.12 In other words, Africa was nominally “liberated” under the guise of political freedom as African leaders showcased their power and privilege internally among Africans, but were exploited, subjugated, and manipulated economically and socially by foreign powers and overseers of the global political economy.13

State Behavior and the Functionalism of Conflict in Africa

In order to identify whether conflict in Africa is a function of the global political economy, this article examines state behavior and responses to Pan African political leaders, who each wanted to economically and/or politically change the fundamental relationship between African nations and Western nations. This proposed change in and of itself is a principal conflict within Africa, or among the continent of Africa and the global political economy. An economy that relies in Africa for exports, minerals, resources, human capital, labor, etc., while simultaneously reproducing new social mechanisms to convince the inhabitants of the underdeveloped (third-world) nations that they are inferior to the inhabitants of the developed (first-world) nations that are superior.

How do the remnants of colonial systems such state formation, constitutions, laws, public policies, and governmental administration impact conflict in Africa? Considering the international military industrial complex, which profits off of wars around the world via the sale of weapons, military technology, fighter jets, ships, etc. and the fact that despite the independence era, many African states continue to abide by state policies, structures, governance mechanisms and state formation frameworks that were developed, instituted and implemented by former colonial states, African nations engaged in conflict can be viewed as a natural characteristic or regular phenomenon.14 Whereas the modern state system in Sub-Saharan Africa is relatively new, most states gained their independence after 1960.15 Only Ethiopia, Liberia, and South Africa were recognized as independent states prior to 1950.16 After four or more decades of independent public policy, the industrial and service sectors of most African countries remain severely underdeveloped.17

The conclusion of the Cold War period caused changes in the predominant forms of governance in Africa. The number of autocracies in Africa fell declined through the 1990s, reaching five in 2000.18 The number of democratic regimes increased from three to eleven between 1989-1994; and in 2004 there were thirteen democracies in Africa.19 Many African countries have experienced improvement in the qualities of governance since 1990. Yet, many of the new democratic regimes have weakened and some, such as Congo (Brazzaville), Guinea-Bissau, and Ivory Coast, have failed or were caused to fail depending on one’s perspective.20 In the 1990s, two countries increased autocracy: The Gambia and Zimbabwe.21

Since 1946, African states that made significant moves toward democracy typically experienced an absence of, minor or localized, armed conflict.22 Benin, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, and Senegal each established democratic regimes in relatively peaceful societies.23 Decisions to install democracy occasionally ignited armed conflicts within peaceful societies. Sponsored regime transitions in Central African Republic, Comoros, Congo (Brazzaville), Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Lesotho, Niger, and Sierra Leone have been featured serious armed violence, even though goods from these states remained on the world market.24 Burkina Faso, Djibouti, and Tanzania have begun to liberalize their regimes at a more measured pace; others, such as Cameroon, Gabon, and Guinea have only modestly eased restrictions on political activity.25 Nigeria and Mozambique were the only African states that instituted major democratic changes following protracted experiences with civil or communal warfare. Generally, states that have past, recent, or ongoing experiences with social wars have remained autocratic, are struggling to design or establish a power-sharing government to end civil wars and reduce fragmentation (political) factionalism, or in some cases, have collapsed.26

State Responses to Pan-African Political Leaders

The Democratic Republic of Congo

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is the first case in our study of state responses to Pan African political leadership and an extremely worthy test case considering its historical ramifications. The conflicting nature of the global political economy is revealed by the United Nations’ “intervention” in the Katanga Crisis and the assassination of the DRC’s first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, which is internationally known as the first “peace keeping” mission.27 The overthrow of the Congo’s first government, the removal of Lumumba, the deadly repression of the popular resistance to the neo-colonial governments of Joseph Kasa Vubu, Joseph-Desire Mobutu and Moise Tshombe, and the creation of the Second Republic in this massive strategic country, all had repercussions which led to catastrophic consequences throughout Africa.28

Congolese independence was principally an expression of the anti-colonial revolution and agency of the oppressed which pitted the colonialist global North against the colonized global South.29 Since WWII, millions of people had removed colonial regimes via strikes, civil disobedience movements, and wars including: India (1947), China (1949), Vietnam (1954), Algeria (1954-62), Indochina (1957), and Cuba (1959).30 Whereas the United Nations declared 1960 the “Year of Africa”, and about 16 states on the Black continent gained their independence, the largest and potentially richest newly independent state was the Congo.31 To counter the obstacle that (African) independence created, the West sought to change its policy of explicit control for one of secondary and indirect control, and new national leaders had to learn to respect the neo-colonial order.32

Lumumba was ‘problematic’ to the West, because he advocated for a complete decolonization that would benefit the Congolese, and subsequently entire African, population.33 Lumumba, therefore, had to be stopped. Lumumba was not a communist, but a nationalist, and prepared to accept help from any state provided that it was unconditional help which did not compromise Congolese sovereignty.34

In order to sway public opinion in their favor, Western strategists utilized political subterfuge and propaganda.35 Similar to the way Belgian monarch Leopold II rationalized and legitimized the imperial conquest of the Congo by presenting it as a civilizing initiative that liberated Africans from the Arab slave trade, in 1960 the West promoted that nationalists were destroyed in the name of protecting Africa from Soviet imperialism.36 Western nations used code phrases via dog whistle politics such as “saving Africa from the Cold War,” or “containing Soviet influence in the process of decolonization”.37

Ludo De Witte, Belgian author of “Crisis in Kongo” (Crisis in the Congo) and “The Assassination of Lumumba” mentioned the following about the state and international response to Lumumba:

“If Africa was the revolver and the Congo its trigger, in the words of Fanon, the assassination of Lumumba and tens of thousands of other Congolese nationalists, from 1960-65, was the West’s ultimate attempt to destroy the continent’s authentic independent development…

…the violation of the Congolese democracy is expressed in Lumumba’s imprisonment; UN complicity is demonstrated by the help given to Mobutu’s soldiers in capturing Lumumba; the Belgian attack on Congolese sovereignty is proved by the Barracuda plot and the actions of white officers in Katanga…The imminence of this process of radicalization explained why the Congolese leader was seen as a mortal enemy of the Belgian establishment, Wall Street and the City of London.”38


De Witte details how key international players engineered intervention in the Congo from the onset including: the Eyskens government, U.S. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, and senior UN officials, led by Dag Hammarskjold.39 Based on the author’s accounts of Belgian Foreign Ministry archives and “Enquete sur la mort de Patrice Lumumba” (Inquiry into the Death of Patrice Lumumba), an unpublished doctoral dissertation that Jacques Brassinne defended at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in 1991, the Pan African nature of Lumumba’s political and economic policies threatened major developed nations including Belgium, the United States, Britain, and France.40 De Witte notes that Brassinne’s work was compromised due to his unobjective position and support of Belgian activity, and his own collaboration with the Katanga regime, which he knows is responsible for Lumumba’s assassination.41 De Witte ultimately declares that UN leaders supported the war the Western powers were pursuing against Lumumba’s government, and at certain times, the UN was the willing tool of Western interference42.

In the decades since Lumumba’s assassination, the DRC has maintained its role as an international, underemphasized yet integral key state within the global political economy that directly or indirectly contributes to foreign GDP and surplus via precious minerals, resources, and human labor. Unfortunately, unlike Lumumba’s brief tenure as a state leader, the DRC’s political leaders have not upheld any Pan African imperatives or policies, and Congolese citizens continue to experience economic, social, and political exploitation as national and international leaders uphold the political and economic status quo policies of the global political economy.

The Republic of Ghana

The Republic of Ghana is the second case in our study of a state responses to Pan African political leaders. Ghana’s first Prime Minister, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, is internationally revered as a leader and pioneer within the pan African movement, however his tenure as state leader in Ghana unfortunately ended in a coup d’état in 1966.43 Among the greatest political figures of the 20th century, champion of world peace, and spokesman of the Non-Aligned Movement, it is ironic and an indication of the component based functioning of conflict in Africa that Nkrumah’s government was overthrown in a violent CIA-masterminded coup while he was on his way to Hanoi to negotiate a peaceful settlement to the U.S. war in Vietnam.44

The state response was carried out jointly on February 24, 1966 by the Ghana Police Service and Ghana Armed Forces, as Colonel E.K. Kotoka, Major A. A. Afrifa, Lieutenant General J. A. Ankrah, and Police Inspector General J.W.K. Harlley “led” the coup, however the British (PM Harold Wilson) and U.S. (Lyndon B. Johnson) governments are believed to have approved the coup because of Nkrumah’s “pro-communist” foreign policy.45 Dr. Charles Quist-Adade mentioned that “the fate of Africa was irrevocably altered when the CIA sponsored a coup d’état against Nkrumah, a Pan-Africanist visionary who was voted as ‘Africa’s Man of the Millennium’” in an article published by Covert Action Magazine in 2021.46 Ironically, Nkrumah stated this himself in 1968 in Dark Days in Ghana writing:

“It has been one of the tasks of the CIA and other similar organizations to discover…potential quislings and traitors in our midst, and to encourage them, by bribery and the promise of political power, to destroy the constitutional government of their countries”47

Nkrumah’s critics, opponents, and detractors espoused that he was trying to excuse his dictatorship and mismanagement of the administration. However, Quist-Adade notes that “the U.S. embassy had long played up Nkrumah’s alleged economic mismanagement and poor human rights record, although it tolerated a higher number of political prisoners among the military junta which succeeded him and worse economic outcomes”.48

In either case, upwards of 1,600 Ghanaian citizens died in the coup and many more sustained injuries.49 After the coup investors flocked into the country, including William H. Beatty, Vice President of Chase Manhattan Bank, who spoke of new favorable investment conditions as a result of the remarkable strides made since the coup.50 Post-Nkrumah’s removal, the National Liberation Council (NLC) led the Ghanaian government from February 1966 until October 1969, and ultimately implemented structural adjustment policies that were recommended by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which Nkrumah opposed as signs of neocolonialism.51 The NLC was advised by Harvard economist Gustav Papanek, who just prior served time in Indonesia, and recommended the privatization of state-owned businesses and reorientation toward the West, which enabled the reestablishment of foreign governance over Ghana’s economy.52

Prior to the coup, Nkrumah deliberately made Ghana the center of the African revolution and Ghana’s independence catalyzed continental rebellion against European imperialism. Within a decade after Ghana’s independence in 1957, more than 90 percent of African states had achieved independence.53 Nkrumah’s independence-day pronouncement that the independence of Ghana was useless without with the complete liberation of the entire African continent, led to Ghana training African liberation fighters, financing their movements, and encouraging them to remove colonial rule from their states.54 Nkrumah argued that only a federal state of Africa with a common market and currency, united army (an African High Command), and a common foreign policy could provide the foundation for immense reconstruction, modernization of the continent, and optimize Africa’s efforts to effectively quell internal conflicts, diminish foreign interference, and limit predatory and imperialistic wars.55

The State of Libya

The third case in our study of state responses to Pan African political leaders is the State of Libya, which experienced the assassination of Muammar Muhammad Gaddafi on October 20, 2011. As the 11th year commemoration of Gaddafi’s legacy approaches, he is widely recognized in Africa and around the world as a forgone Pan African who wanted to economically and politically liberate African nations from paternalistic relationships with Western states.56 Like Nkrumah, Gaddafi also envisioned a united African continent, and many scholars, observers and members of the international community now accept what was once claimed as conspiracy: Gaddafi was assassinated by Western (U.S. and NATO) forces because his Pan African state aspirations would ultimately diminish African dependency on the international Western economic and political apparatus.57

During his lifetime the Libyan leader often outlined his plan to create a united Africa with its own currency, military forces to defend the continent, and an African passport.58 Whereas 2021 marked the first year of the African Union’s African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) after its enactment in 201859 – which took place seven years after his murder – Gaddafi had long “conceived and financed a plan to unite the sovereign States of Africa (United States of Africa), and in 2004, a pan-African Parliament of 53 AU nations arranged plans for the African Economic Community, which would utilize a single gold currency by 2023.60

Although it was revealed that Hillary Clinton would infamously claim that:

“According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues:

A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,
Increase French influence in North Africa,
Improve his internal political situation in France,
Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,
Address the concern of his advisors over Gaddafi’s long-term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa.”61


Gaddafi had African support and opposition, was viewed as a threat to other African regimes, and the AU infamously did not assist the Libyan leader when Western forces attacked him in Sirte, Libya.62 Members of the international community, including Iqbal Jassat, an executive member of the Johannesburg-based think tank Media Review Networks, uphold that “some African countries are responsible, and let down Libya by voting with the UN Security Council in their resolution to bomb the State of Libya.”63

Author, attorney, public banking reform advocate, and founder of the Public Banking Institute, Ellen Brown writes:

“It was thanks to the 2016 publication of Hillary Clinton’s emails that the reason behind NATO’s entry into Libya was revealed. It was to prevent the creation of an independent hard currency in Africa that would free the continent from its economic bondage under the dollar, the IMF and the French African franc. That hard currency would have allowed Africa to shake off the last heavy chains of colonial exploitation.”64

Prior to 2011, Libya had achieved economic independence, managed its own water, food, oil, money, and its own state-owned bank65. Under Gaddafi, Libya had arisen from one of the poorest to the richest countries in Africa. And despite the significant issues in Libya prior to the coup, international lawyer Francis Boyle, maintains that “Libyans had an incredibly high standard of living, the highest in Africa,”66. Boyle declared: “when I first went to Libya in 1986, I was amazed by the empowerment of women. What I saw in Libya was that women could do anything they wanted to do.”67 Furthermore, the State of Libya’s education and medical treatment were free; housing was considered a human right; and Libyans participated in a system of local democracy.68 The country also had the world’s largest irrigation system, the Great Man-made River project, which brought water from the desert to the cities and coastal areas; and Gaddafi was embarking on a program to spread this model throughout Africa.69

The state response to Gaddafi’s geo-political, and overtly Pan African international aspirations resulted in conflict in Africa that was caused by non-African states but endorsed or enabled by other African states, which reveals a complex and nuanced perspective of conflict in Africa. Nevertheless, the functionalism revealed in the relationship between the global political economy and conflict in African states remains apparent.

The Republic of South Africa

The final case of state responses to Pan African political leaders is the Republic of South Africa (RSA), which has a deep history of social and political movements and a long list of freedom fighters who died for African liberation and their cultural, political, or social rights.70 Whereas many instances of political repression to Pan African activity have taken place in the RSA and many women, children, and men could be mentioned, a few prominent cases including the torture of Steve Biko, et al., hanging of Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu, et al., and the assassination of Chris Hani et al. bear notable mentioning. This study will focus on the founding leadership of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), which was founded in 1959 by Robert Sobukwe, Jafta Masemola, et al., and the state response to their political activity which included attempts to improve social, economic, and political conditions for marginalized Black South Africans.

This case is distinct from the previous three because the examples of Pan African leadership are not heads-of-state or members of government, but citizens who organized and led political movements or parties that did not lead the RSA. Due to its complex history, the RSA’s last five presidents were Black Africans (Cyril Ramaphosa, Jacob Zuma, Kgalema Motlanthe, Thabo Mbeki, and Nelson Mandela) who were members of the African National Congress (ANC), a party that was historically progressive but less radical or focused on the (pan) Africanist political perspective as opposed to a multiracial perspective of South Africa.71 Azanian scholar, activist, and analyst Liepollo Lebohang Pheko, writes:

“Sobukwe, Anton Lembede and AP Mda were among the leading lights who galvanised the Defiance Campaign and strongly opposed the policy of multiracialism, which they deemed to be a dangerous mechanism to privilege minority rights. Sobukwe was dissatisfied with the growing influence of the white-led Communist Party of South Africa and, by 1956, became part of the Africanist group.

He diagnosed the colonial question by saying: ‘The Europeans are a foreign group which has exclusive control of political, economic, social and military power. It is the dominant group. It is the exploiting group, responsible for the pernicious doctrine of white supremacy, which has resulted in the political humiliation and degradation of the indigenous African people.’

In 1959, the Africanists, led by Sobukwe and including the likes of Mda and AB Ngcobo, left to form the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania. Mandela, Walter Sisulu and other leading youth league members remained in what Sobukwe considered to be a captured ANC.”72


In December 1959, a week after the ANC announced its anti-pass campaign, the PAC also announced that it was planning to initiate a campaign against the pass laws with the aim to free South Africa by 1963.73 On March 16, 1960, Sobukwe wrote to the Commissioner of Police, Major General Rademeyer, informing him that starting March 21, the PAC would hold a five-day, non-violent, disciplined, and sustained protest campaign against pass laws.74 On March 21, 1960, at the launch of the PAC’s anti-pass campaign, Sobukwe resigned as lecturer at the University of Witwatersrand, with the intentions of turning himself in for arrest at the Orlando Police Station.75 Sobukwe hoped his actions would inspire other Black South Africans. During the eight kilometer walk to the police station, small groups of men joined him from neighboring areas like Phefeni, Dube and Orlando West.76 When the crowd approached the station, most of the marchers, including Sobukwe, were arrested and charged with sedition.77 After an estimated 5000 marchers reached the Sharpeville police station, the police opened fire and killed 69 people and injured 180 others in what is now known as the Sharpeville Massacre.78

Sobukwe was issued a banishment order on March 25, 1960 to the Driefontein Native Trust Farm, Vryburg District, which is now North West Province.79 The documentation stated that Sobukwe had been both arrested and was awaiting trial“ but it [was] necessary to have a banishment order in hand just in case he was released.”80 On May 4, 1960, Sobukwe was sentenced to three years imprisonment for inciting Africans to demand the repeal of the pass laws.81 At the end of his three-year prison term on May 3, 1963, the South African Parliament enacted the General Law Amendment Act, dubbed the ‘Sobukwe Clause’, which empowered the Minister of Justice to extend the detention of any political prisoner indefinitely.82 Sobukwe was then moved to Robben Island for a six-year sentence.83 The Clause was not used to detain anyone else and the Apartheid government renewed it annually when it was due to expire on June 30, 1965.84

While on Robben Island, Sobukwe was kept in solitary confinement and his quarters was separate from the main prison.85 In May 1969, Sobukwe was transported from Robben Island because the government did not want his death there to propel him to prominence and martyrdom, and was again banished, this time to Galeshewe in Kimberley. Although his family joined him, he remained under twelve-hour house arrest, his correspondence and communication continued to be monitored, and his banning order prohibited him from participating in any political activity.86

Known as the Tiger of Azania, Jafta “Jeff” Kgalabi Masemola was Robben Island’s longest or second longest serving prisoner who was detained for 26 or 28 years after he was abducted leading the armed wing of the PAC.87 When the PAC was banned in 1960, Masemola and others were sent to Lesotho to coordinate the PAC’s underground guerrilla unit, Poqo, the predecessor of the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA).88 Masemola was seized in Lesotho by apartheid forces and sentenced to life on Robben Island along with most of the members of his unit.89 Masemola was in solitary confinement for much of his time on Robben Island, and valiantly rejected President PW Botha’s offer of release on condition that he abandon the armed struggle.90 Masemola refused to negotiate unless it led to the return of land to dispossessed Africans and the establishment of a free and just society in RSA.91

Masemola was released in October 1989 to a homecoming reception filled to capacity in Atteridgeville’s Super Stadium.92 The police intervened and ordered the people to disperse before the celebration ended.93 Following his release, Masemola joined politics, using a church where he lived to address masses of people who came to his evening meetings.94 The church belonged to Rev. Brander, father of Simon Brander who died on Robben Island convicted as a PAC-Poqo activist. Masemola travelled the country reviving PAC structures and intervened in conflicts between members of the PAC and the United Democratic Front (UDF). 95

Unfortunately, on April 17, 1990, Masemola was killed in a car crash in what the PAC considers suspicious circumstances.96 The truck that was involved in the crash with Masemola’s car fled the scene and was never found, and to date no investigation has been launched.97

Conclusion: Can Pan-African Political Leaders Coexist with the State?

After considering the instances of state responses to Pan African political leadership in the states of DRC, Ghana, Libya, and South Africa mentioned above, a few similarities and distinctions emerge. While each political leader(s) had varying methods and ideals they aspired to manifest in order to revitalize economic development and maintain political control of their respective state, the responses to such desires were coup d’état, torture, imprisonment, assassination, and exile. Considering the domestic and foreign state responses to Pan African political leaders, one must logically consider if the modern global political economy can or will allow such leaders to coexist. Can international states work with African leaders who want to prioritize African political sovereignty and economic independence, and change the nature of their relationship with Western superpowers? The existence of the Global South and former Non-Alignment movement members proves that alternative international paradigms, or theories of state engagement can be instituted.

Lumumba was a Pan African nationalist who sought to have Congolese and African sovereignty respected; Nkrumah was also a Pan African nationalist, and sought to modernize of the continent, diminish foreign interference, and to have a united States of Africa; Gaddafi, another Pan African nationalist, sought to implement an Africa-based currency, military, and united governance structure; and Sobukwe, Masemola et al. were Africanists who sought to have Black African political perspectives prioritized as opposed to a multiracial African perspective that marginalized the rights and existence of the former.

In each instance above, some form of external or foreign interference took place and the coups or internal African actors were usually backed by global superpowers. In the DRC it was Belgium, the U.S., UK, UN, and France to some extent; in Ghana it was the U.S. and UK; in Libya it was the U.S. and NATO; and in South Africa the apartheid government had multiple supporters such as the U.S. UK, and the Netherlands. Each instance also included some form of propaganda campaigns or miseducation campaign to discredit African political leaders. This ultimately resulted in massive miseducation in order to maintain the international economic order and prevent social upheaval about the indiscriminate (or possibly) racist and classist nature of the global economy that considers humanity of Western states but not African states.

The fact that the international community is usually persuaded to be convinced that African leaders are attempting political wrongdoing by seeking to be less dependent on Western economic and political international infrastructure is alarming. Whereas foreign states have the ability to utilize African states for proxy-wars, African states being prevented or discouraged from seeking to develop political and economic structures that are self-sufficient and sustainable is deplorable. Unless the nature of conflict in Africa serves a function to the global economy, and the dual reality of developed nations, businesses, governments and affluent citizens benefiting from conflict in Africa, and Africans suffering the negative consequences is intentionally structural and functional. Does the global economy and international community receive any marginal benefits from the conflicts that occur in the global South, particularly in Africa? Can African states and the international political landscape accept more pro and Pan African governance and leaders? More inquiry is surely needed from all perspectives interested in the topic.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/06/ ... l-leaders/

Bibliography and End Notes at link.

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Is the UAE in Control in Somalia?
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 07 Jun 2023

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Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Many Somalis think that the United Arab Emirates is now as much or more in charge in Somalia than the Somali government.

I spoke to Dr. Abdiwahab Sheikh Abdisamad, Chairman of the Institute for Horn of Africa Strategic Studies, about the United Arab Emirates’ extensive influence in Somalia.

ANN GARRISON: Dr. Abdisamad, to make this intelligible to American readers, I think we probably have to start with a summary description of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Most readers will know it as a tiny country ruled by a sheik with a lot of oil. To elaborate on that, it seems to be a confederation of vastly oil-wealthy sheikhdoms where the hereditary ruler of Abu Dhabi is president and the hereditary ruler of Dubai is vice president and prime minister.

There are roughly a million Emirati citizens and a guest worker population of between 7 and 8 million, largely from India and other parts of South Asia, but also from Somalia and other nations in the Horn. I believe the million or so citizens all get oil royalty checks and are therefore quite comfortable, but the 7 or 8 million guest workers have no rights and are treated miserably.

Dissenters are routinely thrown in prison or disappeared, and there are no freedoms of assembly, association, press, speech, or religion, but the country is stable because all the Emirati citizens get oil royalty checks.

With such a small native population, it has few ground forces, but it has used its vast oil wealth to build a state-of-the-art air force, largely by buying F-16s, drones, and the like from the United States, and it’s considered a “middle power.” It recently expanded its navy and joined a joint naval force with Iran, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, India and Pakistan to patrol the Gulf region.

Is there anything you’d disagree with in that summary, or anything you’d like to add?

DR. ABDIWAHAB SHEIKH ABDISAMAD: No, that is a good description.

AG: Now can you characterize Somalia by contrast?

ASA: Somalia has a population of 17 million people, most of whom are very poor. More than 80% are ethnic Somalis, with some minorities concentrated in its southern states. Most are traditionally pastoralists who live by tending livestock, with minority populations of farmers and fisherfolk, but now roughly eight million live in urban areas.

The country is divided into six federal states with a national government in Mogadishu, which is very weak. Nevertheless, many Somalis are struggling to be a nation despite pressures from outside, including that of the US , that encourage its fragmentation.

The country is oil rich, but most of its oil remains untapped. Various powers and corporations have been hovering around its oil resources, looking for future profits, most of which will not benefit the Somali people unless it has a stronger national government.

Its coastline is the longest in Africa, sitting on the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean, at the interface of Europe, Africa, and Asia, and its ports are hugely valuable resources that are also coveted by various foreign powers, including the US and the UAE.

Having a very weak state, it also has a very weak military, with many outside forces, most of all the US, present in the country to, they say, fight the terrorist group Al Shabaab.

AG: Somali and Arabic are the two languages of Somalia. Could you tell us a few things about the history of Somalia and the Arab world it faces just across the Gulf of Aden?

ASA: Somalia has a long history of cultural, religious, and trade ties with the Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula. Although Somalis ethnically are not Arabs, they identify more with Arabs, including those on the African continent, than with their fellow Sub-Saharan Africans. Thus it was not surprising when Somalia joined the League of Arab States (Arab League) in 1974, becoming the first non-Arab member of that organization. Initially, Somalia tended to support those Arab countries such as Algeria, Iraq, and Libya that supported Palestine and opposed United States policies in the Middle East.

After its defeat in the 1977-78 Ogaden War with Ethiopia , President Siad Barre’s regime aligned its policies more closely with those of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Subsequently, both of these countries began to provide military aid to Somalia. Tensions between Ethiopia and Somalia continued, and other Arab states, in particular Libya, angered Siad Barre by supporting Ethiopia. In 1981 Somalia broke diplomatic relations with Libya, claiming that Libyan leader Muammar al Qadhafi was supporting the rebel Somali Salvation Democratic Front and the nascent Somali National Movement . Relations with Libya were not restored until 1985.

AG: And what about Somalia’s particular history with the UAE?

ASA: Throughout the 1980s, Somalia became increasingly dependent upon economic aid from the conservative, wealthy, oil-exporting sheikhdoms of Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. This dependence was a crucial factor in the Siad Barre regime's decision to side with the United States-led coalition of Arab states that opposed Iraq following that country's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Support for the coalition brought economic dividends. Qatar canceled further repayment of all principal and interest on outstanding loans, and Saudi Arabia offered Somalia a $70 million grant and promised to sell it oil at below prevailing international market prices.

AG: Now can you explain the UAE’s involvement in Somalia now, and why you consider it a threat to Somali sovereignty.

ASA: A recent agreement inked in Abu Dhabi by both countries' defense ministers purportedly intends to enhance security forces and preserve shared interests. The UAE has agreed to train 10,000 Somali forces to address Somalia's security demands.

However, in November 2022, the UAE secretly recruited and funded the training of 3,000 young Somali men in Egypt with the support of the Egyptian government. This secret operation irritated Somalia’s neighbor Ethiopia because of Ethiopia and Egypt’s dispute over Nile River waters and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

The Somali people and some government officials are concerned that the Arab nation's recruiting and training of these Somali forces will be used to destabilize the government and further divide the country's frail security sector, as it has in Libya, Sudan, and Yemen, where the UAE trained some of the most prominent rebel groups.

According to some accounts, the UAE intelligence agencies oversee Somali security problems rather than the foreign affairs ministry, which is in charge of foreign relations.

AG: So, basically, some Somalis believe that the UAE is as much or more in charge in Somalia than the Somali government. Is that right?

ASA: Yes.

AG: What role does the UAE play in Somalia's efforts to establish a stable government?

ASA: The UAE stands out as one of the foremost partners to Somalia, whose financial resources and expertise in sea and air transportation and logistics could be put to use to influence Somalia either negatively and positively.

In fact, the UAE deploys its resources--financial, economic, and diplomatic--to achieve its own geopolitical goals, particularly to boost its efforts to diversify its local economy beyond the oil sector, but this does not typically encourage stability, sovereignty, or prosperity in Somalia.

AG: What is the UAE trying to achieve in Somali waters?

ASA: Their biggest geopolitical goal is to protect the Red Sea and Indian Ocean waterways. The Gulf of Aden region remains a strategic resource for controlling military and commercial shipping, since a third of the world’s shipping lines use it as a transit point.

For some years, Somalia’s coastline gained notoriety for piracy, weapons smuggling and illicit trade, and migration. The efforts of some 34 countries, which sent a naval force there to curb piracy at sea, has resulted in fewer incidents since 2018.

Somalia became less stable and sovereign while the Gulf States, most of all the UAE, ramped up their investments in Somali ports, manufacturing, tourism and infrastructure development and eyed Somalia as a big market for goods and services.

AG: What kinds of investments is the UAE making in Somalia, and how have they challenged Somali sovereignty?

ASA: Emirati investments in Somalia have complicated nation building efforts and, to a large extent, accelerated the regional vs. federal tensions that already existed.

Emiratis have made a $442 million capital investment towards the upgrade of the port facilities in Berbera, Somaliland. This investment created deep division between the Somali federal government and Somaliland, a secessionist state which none of the UN’s 193 member states recognize. Much political bickering between the federal and state administrations followed this UAE investment because the UAE negotiated it directly with Somaliland, bypassing the federal government.

The UAE further injected new capital into the port of Bosaso in Puntland, another regional state in northern Somalia. This investment further deepened tensions between the national government and its states because the UAE again negotiated directly with the state government, not with the national government, as it did in Somaliland.

In December 2022, Puntland state entered an agreement with UAE's multinational logistics company Dubai Port World (DP World) to expand Bosaso port.

At various points in time and to varying degrees, the UAE has played a significant role in providing security assistance in Somalia, particularly to the Puntland Maritime Police Forces. This assistance, however, has frequently strained relations between the Puntland administration and the central government in Mogadishu.

AG: How do the UAE's investments contribute to political tension and division?

ASA: The UAE's investments in Somalia, carried out without the involvement of Somali stakeholders or the central government, impede port operations and reduce Somali ports' competitiveness in a region that is continuously looking for ports to access new markets for economic growth.

The UAE has strategically constructed a network of commercial ports spanning both sides of the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. These ports serve as critical hubs for trade and facilitate the movement of goods across the region for the Arab nation, but their Somali ports don’t benefit Somalia.

AG: How has the UAE's situation changed since President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's election victory?

ASA: President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's return to power in May 2022 reenergized the Emiratis’ political and diplomatic influence, which the previous president, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo, had challenged.

Somalia and the UAE signed the aforementioned military and security agreement to mend the strained relations.

AG: Why is the Horn of Africa region strategically important?

ASA: The Horn of Africa has emerged as a highly contested geopolitical battleground in recent years due to its strategic location along vital maritime trade routes.

It is adjacent to the Red Sea shipping route, and the region witnesses the passage of a significant share of global trade, including more than 6 million barrels of oil per day, nearly 40 percent of the world’s oil.

AG: And how is this geostrategic significance affecting Somalia?

ASA: The countries of the Horn, including Somalia, are seeing increased rivalry among regional powers, including China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States, playing out along their coast and land. Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia are experiencing far-reaching changes in their external economic and security relations as a result.

The historical connection between the Gulf and the Horn of Africa has been characterized by extensive economic and political interactions over centuries. While there was a period of disengagement, the Gulf states reemerged in recent years as significant players in the Horn, exerting economic and political influence.

The Emirates continue to bolster their diplomatic, economic, and political presence in Somalia and the larger East Africa region by forming alliances in order to preserve their power bases in Africa and within the Gulf region.

The rivalry among states in the region should be an opportunity for Somalia to attract foreign capital to improve its domestic economy and modernize infrastructure, but to realize this potential Somalia needs to be a stronger, more stable and sovereign nation.

The rival nations’ militarization of infrastructure projects also poses threats to stability in Somalia.

AG: Dr. Abdisamad, thank you for speaking to Black Agenda Report.

ASA: You’re very welcome.

Dr. Abdiwahab Sheikh Abdisamad is a researcher, Pan-Africanist, and Chairman of the Institute for Horn of Africa Strategic Studies.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/uae-control-somalia
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Fri Jun 09, 2023 1:49 pm

COMMENT: Story-telling in an African Village, Ama Ata Aidoo, 1966
Editors, The Black Agenda Review 07 Jun 2023

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Remembering the anti-imperialist and Pan-Africanist politics of the late Ghanaian writer, Ama Ata Aidoo.

We are losing our elders much too quickly. The indomitable Ama Ata Aidoo, Ghanaian feminist, writer, poet, playwright, critic, and academic joined the ancestors last week, on May 31, 2023. Born in 1942 in the town of Abeadzi Kyiakor, located in Saltpond in the Central Region of Ghana (then known by the colonial name, “Gold Coast”), Aidoo began writing at the age of 15, winning a newspaper short story competition in the process. She would go on to receive a Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Ghana, Legon. She then served as professor at the University of Cape Coast (Ghana) for many years, and later served as minister of education for the Ghanaian government in the early 1980s. One of the most recognized African women writers of her generation, Aidoo was one of the last of the post-independence cohort of women and men of letters.

Aidoo has received a resounding send off by the media throughout Africa and in the west. Tributes rightly celebrate not only Aidoo’s numerous works, but her feminist orientation in the commitment to elucidating the social and political condition of African women. However, western white feminists, especially, were keen on focusing on Aidoo’s feminism to the exclusion of almost everything else.

Less discussed was Aidoo’s staunch nationalism and Pan-Africanism - and her critiques of European use and abuse of Africans. In an interview published in a 1990 edited volume on African women writers, Aidoo responded to a question about whether she saw herself both as a writer, a woman, and someone from the Third World, with: “I…find my commitment as an African, the need for me to be an African nationalist, to be a little more pressing. It seems that there are things relating to our world, as African people, which are of a more throbbing nature in an immediate.” And in a video described as her “explosive interview on imperialism that went viral,” Ama exasperatedly explains to the white interviewer the extractive and genocidal role of Europeans in Africa:

Since we met you people 500 years ago, look at us. We’ve given everything. You are still taking…It’s true. I mean where will the whole Western world be without Africa? Our cocoa, our timber, our gold, our diamonds, our platinum, etc.. Everything you have is us….It’s a fact. And in return for all this, what have we got? Nothing. Anti-personal indoctrination against ourselves. If you go and cook your horrible diseases like AIDS, you say it is us. You brought us tuberculosis….In exchange for Africa giving Europe - the western world - 500 solid years of our people, our human beings, to work your cane [field], to dig your gold…in exchange for that we get nothing. Nothing. And the white folk look upon us like monkeys…

We celebrate the life of Ama Ata Aidoo by recalling her staunch advocacy of African/Black peoples and her poignant critiques of European white supremacy, by reprinting a short and little known commentary on the dubious representation of African oral literature by a Euro-American anthropologist. Not only does Aidoo challenge the discipline of anthropology for its scholarship on Africans, but she also questions the notion that African art and oral history are not “art” because they are seen by Europeans as only “functional.” Aidoo ends by rebuking the anthropologist, telling him to “find out from Africa…what actually operates in the process of the creation or transmission of oral literature.”

Story-telling in an African village

Ama Ata Aidoo

It would not be an exaggeration to say that nearly all the collectors who have reduced African oral literature to written material were Euro-American anthropologists. And this does not imply a censure. Indeed as a white missionary friend would put it, “If they had not done it, who would?”

However one wonders when the traditional literature of this continent would be considered as literature rather than supplementary anthropological data? I want to have an answer to my question because I consider rather strange the following comment from Dr Lienhardt [Peter Lienhardt, British social anthropologist], in the discussion on the African oral tradition in the July issue [of New African]:

There is not one good and convincing account from my reading, of adults sitting together in an African village, telling one another stories for entertainment. Not one! And if one were found, it would be most valuable to have. This material simply has not been collected, I imagine, but on the whole people have copied earlier ideas that the English and the Irish had about their own folklore and referred it, to some extent, to Africa, and I have never seen a group of adult villagers solemnly sitting down to amuse one another with folk tales. They may have done so of course, fifty years ago.

What is he implying? What does he want to be told? At any rate, I have a feeling that one would have to know what the discussion was about in order to understand the points he tried to make.

For instance, what meanings does he want to give to the word "professional" in the context of oral literature. What category of a professional entertainer does Dr Lienhardt know in Nigeria? What others has he come across both in his field work and in his reading? Does the use of this word in the discussion have anything to do with functional and non-functional art? In which case I was right to detect an implication in his remarks that the African folk tale may be inferior to the Celtic-Anglo-Saxon tradition because the former is functional and the latter was not? Assuming this premise is correct, may I ask Dr Lienhardt if for art to be good it should of a necessity be non-functional? Or does "professional" here mean one who is able to tell or sell a story on demand? If it is, then Dr Lienhardt is talking of the informant. Or, does" a professional" refer to one who has a more retentive memory and greater gifts for narration and therefore is more acclaimed as a story-teller? I know one such.

There is a village called Kyiakor near Saltpond in the Central Region of Ghana where I grew up. There, if you entered any compound between eight and twelve o'clock in the evening you might or might not come upon a group of women and children gathered either by a fire or just anywhere telling each other stories. Sometimes if you were lucky, you would not have to enter a house. On the market-place where they sold kerosene, oranges, and biscuits, men of all age groups told stories to each other. Anyone could tell a story because in these groups everyone performed the dual role of narrator-audience. As long as a man managed to come in first with his “you are lying", addressed to a narrator, he was able to take his turn at telling a tale. And the tension which nearly always built up towards the end of a story because of people's eagerness to speak contributed towards the fun. However I remember Papa Amoanyi best because he seemed then to know more stories than anyone else, and his stories seemed always to be the most involved and the most interesting. I also remember that he was the leader of a group and sometimes when there was a wake-keeping in town, the funeral-owners would go to him with a bottle of Akpeteshie (local gin) and ask him to bring his men. They would tell stories all night, and as the night wore on, the funeral owners would supply Papa Amoanyi and his group with more gin and cola nuts. These helped to keep them awake. To the best of my knowledge they were never paid. What is more, the group only about started the evening and what normally happened was that other people joined them not only to listen but to take up their turns at telling stories.

I know of other circumstances in which people solemnly told stories to amuse one another. For example there were cases of men who for periods in the year would leave the village with some members of their families and retire to homesteads in the woods to hunt either the grasscutter from their corn farms or the monkeys from the cocoa plantations. And more often than not these people would, in the evening, gather by their fires to tell stories. I participated in such gatherings when I was a child.

Now I would like to know from Dr Lienhardt what ideas about African oral literature have been confused with those the English and Irish had about their folklore. I should have thought that it would be easier in a period like this to find out from Africa (since she offers the opportunity to interested parties) what actually operates in the process of the creation or transmission of oral literature.

Ama Ata Aidoo, “Story-telling in an African Village ,” New African, October, 1966.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/comme ... aidoo-1966

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Armed Attacks on Nigerian Villages, 30 Killed

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Armed men in Sokoto. Jun. 5, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@AmiirAbbas3

Published 5 June 2023

"...the vigilante group visited the Azam village to caution the residents..."


The Nigerian police have reported that an incident occurred on Saturday wherein numerous villages in the Sokoto region of the northwestern part of the country came under attack by armed assailants, resulting in the deaths of no less than thirty individuals.

Authorities in Sokoto have reported that the individuals who were targeted were affiliated with a community policing organization based in the Tangaza region within the local government area. Before the attacks, some members of the vigilante group visited the Azam village to caution the residents about potential violent outbreaks.

"However, the vigilante members overreacted and ended up beating some villagers," said a statement released by the authorities. After that, the villagers “called for assistance”, it came “from armed men suspected to be bandits” on board 20 motorcycles.

"On getting the information that assistance was coming, the vigilantes withdrew to their various villages," the statement said.


According to the statement, the assailants “targeted” the vigilante group and claimed the lives of 8 individuals in Raka, 7 in Bilingawa, 6 in Jaba, 4 in Dabagi, 3 in Raka Dutse, and 2 in Tsalewa villages.

The proliferation of armed attacks has emerged as a security concern in specific regions of Nigeria, resulting in fatalities and abductions in the recent months.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Arm ... -0001.html

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Nigeria’s new President Bola Tinubu begins his term with fuel subsidies controversy

Nigerian journalist Chido Onumah analyzes the first days of the country’s new President Bola Tinubu, his announcement on ending subsidies, and the political climate in the country after the controversial elections

June 06, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch



Prominent Nigerian journalist Chido Onumah talks about the country’s new President Bola Tinubu. He explains the controversy Tinubu caused by announcing an end to fuel subsidies and the impact it had. Chido also explains the agenda or lack of it of the new President and the political climate in the country following the controversial election.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/06/06/ ... ntroversy/

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Rival groups in Libya finalize draft electoral law raising prospects of national elections

The disagreement over the electoral law was one of the main issues which led to the postponement of national elections scheduled in December 2021 under the UN-mediated peace agreement

June 08, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

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(Photo: Moroccan Diplomacy/Twitter)

Rival groups in Libya came to an agreement on the draft of a new electoral law at a meeting in Morocco, various sources reported on Wednesday, June 7. However, the formal ceremony to sign the agreement was postponed at the last moment without explanation amid reports of some issues not being resolved.

Augila Saleh, speaker of the Libyan parliament or House of Representatives (HoR) which backs one of the rival governments, and Khaled al-Mishri, leader of the High State Council (HCS) which backs the interim government based in Tripoli led by Abdul Hamied Dbeibah, traveled to Morocco to sign the draft of the electoral law finalized by the 6+6 meeting.

The 6+6 Joint Committee, made up of representatives from the two rival governments, had been meeting in Bouznika, Morocco, since May 22. The meeting concluded on Tuesday after the finalization of the draft.

The text of the new law has been finalized and “all that is left is for the parliament to ratify,” Omar Boulifa, a representative for the HCS who participated in the 6+6 meeting was quoted as saying by The New Arab.

The draft law addresses issues related to the role of the president and the parliament, and eligibility of candidates, Al-Wasat reported. These were among the reasons cited for the postponement of the December 2021 national elections that had been scheduled as a part of the UN led peace process. The elections were postponed due to disagreements over the electoral law passed by the Libyan parliament based in Tobruk.

According to the Al-Wasat report, finalization of the draft law was announced despite disagreements, not specified, expressed by at least 61 members of the Libyan parliament who signed a joint letter on Saturday criticizing the committee for “overstepping” its mandate.

Reacting to the objections, Khaled al-Mishri said on Wednesday that attempts will be made to address the outstanding issues in the coming days even though the 6+6 committee’s work is final and binding.

The UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) issued a statement on Wednesday on the outcome of the meeting in Morocco saying that all outstanding issues related to the electoral law should be resolved soon in consultation with all stakeholders in Libya with the objective of holding the national elections in 2023. It also warned against the actors adopting “delay tactics aimed at prolonging the stalemate, which has caused so much suffering for the people in Libya.”

Libyans have been suffering from over a decade of conflict triggered by the NATO-led intervention in 2011 which displaced Muammar Gaddafi. Various war lords, backed by different regional and global powers with an objective to control the country’s oil and other natural resources, have been fighting against each other since then and have divided the country into their own zones of influence.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/06/08/ ... elections/

South Africa’s social movements lead resistance to organized xenophobia and state inaction

Since 2021, a ‘vigilante’ group called Operation Dudula has carried out actions targeting people perceived to be foreign nationals. A group of social movements, including the militant shack dwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM), have gone to court against Operation Dudula and the alleged complicity of the South African state

June 07, 2023 by Tanupriya Singh

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(Photo: Abahlali baseMjondolo)

Over the past two decades, South Africa has witnessed bouts of severe xenophobic violence which has disproportionately targeted poor Black migrants from other African countries.

The roots of this violence, as the government stated in its 2019 National Plan to Combat Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, are in the “many years of a racist and isolationist policy of apartheid,” recognizing African people as the “worst victims of xenophobia in contemporary South Africa.”

“Xenophobia is not only about the hatred of people from another country. It is also anti-Black, it is racist,” emphasizes Nomzamo Zondo, the executive director of the Social Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI).

Between 2008 and 2021, at least 612 people were killed and over 122,000 were displaced due to acts of such violence, according to a report published by Xenowatch. While xenophobia is not novel to South Africa, its various iterations in recent years have increasingly come to be associated with a vigilante group called Operation Dudula.

With a name that translates to “force out” in isiZulu, Operation Dudula first made an appearance on the 45th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising in 2021, when a group of protestors armed with weapons marched through Soweto on a “clean-up mission” targeting businesses owned by foreign nationals.

Since then, the group’s members have regularly incited or been directly involved in acts of hate speech, intimidation, and violence against people they perceive to be immigrants, including through forced evictions, “shut down” notices delivered to businesses and stores, physical attacks, and obstruction of access to public services.

A group of social movements and civil society organizations in the country have now come together to seek court action against Operation Dudula, and importantly, the failure of the South African state and police to discharge their duties to intervene and prevent the group’s criminal activities.

The petition has been filed by SERI on behalf of Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia (KAAX), the South African Informal Traders Forum (SAITF), the Inner City Federation (ICF)—a self-organized group of low-income residents living in Johannesburg’s inner city, and the socialist militant shack dwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM).

State-backed ‘vigilantism’
One of the key incidents of violence highlighted in the affidavit submitted by SERI took place on April 6, 2022, when residents of Diepsloot, an informal settlement located north of Johannesburg, carried out a march against instances of murder, high crime rates, and ineffective policing in the area.

Also in attendance was Operation Dudula’s leader at the time, Ntlantla Paballo Mohlauli (known as Nhlanhla Lux), who addressed the crowd, blaming the high crime rates on the presence of foreign nationals, going further to say, “we will wait for the police to leave and then disperse to the streets and our approach will depend on the people we are fighting, if those people have guns and weapons we also have guns and weapons.”

Later that day, a mob went door to door asking people they suspected of being foreign nationals to produce their passports or money. The mob beat, stoned, and then burned to death a 43-year old Zimbabwean man, Elvis Nyathi.

Two days later, the South African Police Service (SAPS) conducted warrantless raids in Diepsloot, asking people to provide identity documents.

Speaking to Peoples Dispatch, Nomzamo Zondo said, “Operation Dudula has actually said that they are not a vigilante group because they have the support of the government, that the government has joint operations with them and therefore, they cannot be acting outside of the law.”

“You have instances of Operation Dudula going into a community, there is a mob assaulting informal traders, closing down shops they perceive to be owned by foreign nationals…and then immediately behind them, the police would follow and carry out raids.”

This proximity to state power is also reinforced by the fact that Operation Dudula members often wear military-style clothes that resemble the uniform of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF).

The affidavit provides a detailed account of the failure of the SAPS to investigate Operation Dudula’s activities, intervene to stop its violent actions despite being present at the scene, or arrest the group’s members responsible for unlawful conduct. In some instances, “the SAPS has enabled and supported Operation Dudula’s criminal conduct,” the affidavit notes.

On June 13, 2022, Operation Dudula members went to the Yeoville Market in Johannesburg and ordered all traders to leave. Despite being present at the site, the SAPS did not intervene. On June 21, a third of the market burned down in an arson attack.

Moreover, the warrantless raids of people’s homes by the SAPS are themselves a violation of a judgment issued by South Africa’s Constitutional Court in 2021, which held that such raids constituted a violation of the rights to dignity and privacy.

In this context, the affidavit calls upon the court to declare the SAPS in breach of its constitutional duties and to interdict its “supporting or colluding with Operation Dudula.”

It seeks a similar interdict on the actions of the Minister and the Department of Home Affairs, by virtue of participation of its officials in “joint operations with the SAPS” as acknowledged by the MHA in a letter to SERI, on communities targeted by Operation Dudula.

Anti-poor xenophobia under capitalism
Operation Dudula often invokes reactionary anti-migrant rhetoric, publicly singling out entire nationalities as criminals, “illegal border jumpers,” and “cheap laborers.”

This is accompanied by repeated false statements saying that South Africa has over 15 million foreign nationals, when in reality, the figure stands at about 3.9 million according to Statistics South Africa. This figure is then used to construct narratives of foreign nationals as “leeches of the South African constitution” that are taking away housing and jobs from South African nationals.

Such a narrative takes root in a context of soaring unemployment and poverty in a country deemed the most unequal in the world. In circumstances where access to healthcare and education remains a struggle, Operation Dudula has threatened and targeted people trying to access public health facilities.

In Jeppe Park, the group physically attacked a primary school that was providing education to 300 students and primarily serving a poor community, ultimately forcing it to shut down by the end of 2022.

In the face of this routine violence, it is also critical to acknowledge the work that movements and groups in South Africa have done to resist such xenophobic narratives, while advocating for the very issues that Operation Dudula uses to justify its actions, even as they themselves are facing deadly state violence and persecution.

This includes Abahlali baseMjondolo and also the ICF, most of whose members are people who have been waiting in the government housing queue and are recipients of government grants. SERI itself has faced grave threats to the point of being forced to close down its offices, with people at the organization facing doxxing threats on Twitter, phone calls, and physical threats to their safety.

“These movements [the applicants in the case] feel the very pressure that supporters of Operation Dudula feel, of unemployment, of housing, but one thing they have expressed clearly is that ‘we cannot expect dignity for ourselves when we treat other people with indignity’…and the very same things that they are asking for themselves they want for everybody else,” Zondo said.

Central to this is a commitment to recognizing and affirming the humanity of all, AbM General Secretary Thapelo Mohapi stressed, invoking the isiXhosa proverb, ‘Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu’ “which means that a human being is a human being because of other human beings.”

“It is always worrying that the most vulnerable people who are trying to make ends meet are being attacked by the state using other organs such as Operation Dudula…they claim to be representing the poor but they are representing their own agenda, which is also the agenda of the state, to push away migrants,” he told Peoples Dispatch, speaking to AbM’s decision to join the petition.

The AbM has also likened Operation Dudula’s actions, of violently targeting people based solely on whether or not they are foreign, or even perceived to be so, to the segregationist pass laws of the apartheid regime.

“This is exactly what the DHA is trying to do, looking for what they are calling “illegal foreigners,” asking Black people to prove if they are in the country legally… that their humanity should be recognized accordingly,”

Mohapi further added, “A capitalist state always divides the poorest of the poor, so South Africans who have been robbed of their land, who are being violently evicted from the cities blame migrant workers rather than to look at the system that divides us…They tell us that we are impoverished because our African brothers and sisters have taken away our jobs or resources. That is a lie… We are one Africa.”

Masking government failure
Operation Dudula’s actions speak to something bigger— “the scapegoating of migrants is not just about migrants, it is also about state failure,” Zondo said. “Operation Dudula is giving the government a silver bullet, that if we just solve this one issue of migration, we will be able to provide better education, better healthcare…”

Zondo gave the example of the former Mayor of Johannesburg Herman Mashaba. “When asked about providing housing for the poor in the inner city, his response was that 90% of them were undocumented migrants, and thus, the government would not provide housing.”

Not only does xenophobia provide a justification for state failure, she added, but what emerges is a situation where when the state does act, it acts through violence. And this violence is borne by poor communities.

Moreover, while much of the rhetoric is focused on “illegal foreigners”, the widespread economic distress being experienced by the majority of people in South Africa points to the emergence of a kind of internal xenophobia.

“In the context that we are in, where there is rising cost of living, joblessness, landlessness, many of us are also internal migrants…first it is that all African migrants must go back to their own countries, then it is going to be that all people from Limpopo or KwaZulu Natal must go back…,” Zondo said.

“What stops us from reaching a point where almost every context of your life is governed by the violence of others? Where people are using the type of violence that Operation Dudula is using to limit access to health or jobs… because here we are rubber stamping this group’s use of violence, not only as a population but also specifically as a government.”

With an election looming just a year ahead, there is a heightened risk of the use of xenophobic, anti-poor rhetoric for the purposes of political gains. Operation Dudula has also announced its intentions to register as a political party.

“There is this canvassing for votes, which the African National Congress is also part of, despite the fact that when the ANC itself was in exile it was being hosted by the same people that they are today pushing out of the country,” Mohapi said.

Zondo also said, “Just recently there was a politician attempting to evict a building… and all of this is to be able to say that we will work, and we will work means we’ll remove the poor, that you won’t be able to see our failures. You might experience them, if you are poor, but you won’t see them.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/06/07/ ... -inaction/

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Death Toll From Cholera Rises To 31 In South Africa

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The Health Department warned the population to drink water from safe sources or make sure to boil or disinfect it first. Jun. 8, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@UNICEFUSA

Published 8 June 2023

It is the second time the country has confirmed a cholera outbreak this year.

The National Department of Health reported Thursday that the death toll from cholera in South Africa now stands at 31, with Gauteng province reporting the highest number of deaths.

Gauteng, which includes the largest city, Johannesburg, and the capital, Pretoria, recorded 29 deaths, while Free State and Mpumalanga recorded one death each, the department said in a statement.

It also noted that the country has recorded a cumulative total of 166 laboratory-confirmed cases and 202 suspected cholera infections in five provinces between Feb. 1 and June 6, 2023.

The data shows that the majority of cases were recorded in Gauteng (92% / 152 cases), while Free State accounts for 5% / 9 infections. The ages of patients in Gauteng ranged from one to 91 years, while Free State ranged from 10 to 50 years.


The department said more than 600 people with suspected cholera symptoms have been treated at hospitals in the two provinces. More than 200 people have been treated at the makeshift Kanana Cholera Treatment Centre hospital in Hammanskraal, north of the capital Pretoria, which since last month's outbreak has become the epicenter of the disease.

In case-finding andcontact-tracingg activities, the National, Provincial and District Outbreak Response Teams have reached more than 300 contacts.

The Department of Health has reported that 3,000 hygiene kits donated by the United Nations Children's Fund and Médecins Sans Frontières are being distributed to local households and schools in affected communities.

In response to the waterborne disease, the department warned the population to "never drink water from unsafe sources, such as rivers, dams or streams, unless you boil or disinfect it first." It also warned to avoid food, or surfaces, known or suspected to be contaminated and recalled the importance of proper handwashing to prevent the spread of the disease.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Dea ... -0019.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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