tisdag 3 juni 2008

Frantz Fannon!BBC-focus on Africa-april-june 1999!

Born in Martinque in the Carribean, this great philosopher, psychiatrist and freedom fighter devoted his entire life for the liberation of Algeria,Africa and black people as a whole. His books The wretched of the earth and Black skin and white masks continue to have a great impact on readers.

Even though he was from the Carribean, he regarded himself as an African whose duty was to fight for the freedom of Africans.

He helped us to remember that as long as one is a black man one is an African. Slavery and colonialism may have cut us from our roots, but men like Fannon did not give up fighting against colonialists and racists until the last minute of his life.

Fannon died of leukaemia in 1961 when he was only 36 years old, while struggling for the liberation of Algeria.

måndag 2 juni 2008

There is only a human race!NewAfrican-November 1998!

Martin Bernal writes in Winston A. van Horne´s book, Global convulsions, that:

"The population of Ancient Egypt was extremely mixed. Nubia and Upper Egypt where pharonic civilisation was formed, had a basic population very similar to that of the modern Nubians, that is to say East African with central African admixture. Lower Egypt had a basic population of North Africa 'Caucasoids'. However, after the Fifth Millennium BCE this was differentiated from that of northwest Africa or the Maghreb, because the latter was separated from the rest of Africa by the growing sahara, the Nile continued to link Lower Egypt to the rest of the continent. The mixture of populations between Upper and Lower Egypt accelerated with the establishment of a single Egyptian state."

So it is quite difficult to to discuss issues in terms of race and I, therefore, find it hard who to regard as black or not because in the eyes of Europeans we are all "coloured" - from the Chinese,Indians to indigenous Africans. Whites are the only "colourless" people in this world, but as we all know they are more pink than white.

Anyway, it is my conviction that race shouldn't be used as an explanation for failure or succcess of anyone. The very fact that my black ancestors built the Egyptian pyramids and many other obelisks doesn't help me today in my endeavours to make life worth living. So our past glories and civilisations are not so much significant when it comes to changing our situation today. As the present is here, we have to make the best of it and seek the causes for our failure in Africa.

We need to see the whole issue in historical perspective and holistically. Africa has never been free and its people haven't been given the opportunity to decide their own destiny since the arrival of the Europeans. It isn't my intention to blame the white man for the evils of Africa, but the Europeans, truth be said, have a lot to answer for in the underdevelopment of Africa. Their rule of divide and share has left us ethnicised and rootless.

To me, it is not African "shorttermism" as Baffour calls it, or lack of education and organisation that are the root causes of Africa's failure, but rather it is Europeans and their everlasting meddling in our affairs that undermine the internal African capacity to develop.

We shouldn't forget that there are at least seven million Europeans who live in luxury in Africa and have economic and political power. I would like to see many Africans doing the same in Europe and America. Every development and democratisation process in Africa should be based on the sentiments of the African people and on their own terms.

Lastly, the pre-colonial African heritage of decentralised and participatory rule should be considered for inclusion in the present endeavour of reforming the African state.

Clinton: charity starts at home!NewAfrican- May 1998!

President Clinton has been in six countries in Africa in a bid to improve the relations between Africa and the US. But it is a well known fact that the US is just interested in having new markets in Africa in the aftermath of the cold war and Asian crisis.

So his visit was just another attempt to recolonise the continent in the name of globalisation and internalisation.

Globalisation is just another name of imperialism and does not make any difference to the life of the ordinary African.

The fact that people watch US-made movies in Burkina Faso does not make them global citizens. What we see is the Macdonaldisation and cocacolonisation of the world which is run by the West.

Africa has been part and parcel of this planet for more than 500 years in the form of slavery and colonialism by which the Western world enriched itself.

Clinton talked about the people of Africa demanding change from Cape Town to Kampala, from Dar es Salaam to Dakar, but I wonder if he has ever been to Harlem and Brooklyn? What has he done to alleviate the human tragedy among African-Americans?

Charity starts at home Mr Clinton. Leave Africa alone please! We have had enough of both the East and the West and we need time to be on our own for the first time since 1500.

We will work out our problems ourselves without your so-called aid and trade. African problems deserve African solutions.

Issayas Afeworki, may not be champion of democracy!NewAfrican-December 1997!

THE WESTERN media has been portraying the Eritrean president Issayas Afeworki as some sort of saint, sent from heaven to bring salvation to Africa, as a so-called new generation leader. The last six years since Eritrea got its independence after 30 years of war against Ethiopia tell also a different story compare to the rest of Africa.


One may as Where the democratic institutions, the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press are in Eritrea but all that is missing because of the devastating war with Ethiopia for 30 long years.It takes generations to bring about radical changes in conservative societies as the eritrean one. No one is in any illusion about that.

Afeworki may not be champion of democracy but it is important that the world community know the very fact that the country is progressing in terms of soicio-economc and health sector relatively well in comparison to the countries in the region.The horn of Africa is not probably the most stable and prosporous region, Eritrea seems though to be the exception at this moment.