Hama Tuma Page

WHAT’S IN A CORPSE?

2012-01-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

WHAT’S IN A CORPSE?

American Marine soldiers were captured on video peeing on the corpses of Taliban fighters. They evidently enjoyed their act, these sons of Christian and civilized America which always strives to teach us Christian democratic values. At the risk of annoying some quarters let me ask the pertinent question: what is in a corpse? Corpses have been sold, mutilated and defiled in the past.

To begin with America has refused to respect many Geneva Convention laws and rejected the ban against torture. Its troops in Afghanistan (and Iraq and other places too) are there to kill people they call their enemies. Afghanistan is not that famous for its R&R spots and considering that the Talibans are also not that gentle with corpse, one can understand the frustration of the peeing Marines. Back in History Belgian colonialists were proudly photographed holding decapitated heads, chopped of hands, etc of the Congolese (15 million died in the hands of the colonials). Colonial wars were not respectful of the bodies of the natives. The German tried to wipe out the Herero people of Namibia (the Nazis got many of their evil concepts from that campaign); the British tried their hand everywhere. Italians killed a million Ethiopians chopped of head and hands of patriots and the Italian colonial Minister Alessandro Lessona even imagined “an Ethiopia without Ethiopians”. Here is one report on the British penchant to destroy entire communities: “On 29 March 1896, Rhodes’ ally Lord Jarvis wrote to his wife that ‘I hope the natives will be pretty well exterminated . . . our plan of campaign will probably be to . . . wipe them out . . .’, while in July he wrote to his mother, suggesting that,‘. . . the best thing to do is to wipe them out . . . everything black’. In January 1897, Lord Grey wrote describing the mood in the colony: even the missionary Father Biehler felt ‘the only chance for the future of the [Mashona] race is to exterminate the whole people, both male and female, over the age of 14! ” In such situations, it is not possible to expect niceties towards the dead.

Still, the American penchant to be disastrously grotesque does shock. The crimes in the Philippines, later made paler by the Indochina experience, were beyond measure and many corpses were mutilated. The Vietnam experience was of course worse. Dead Vietnamese were defiled in one way or another. In Iraq, Abu Ghraib photos of dead Iraqis being defiled by American troops are now followed by American troops peeing on Taliban corpses. Guantanamo is evidence of mistreatment of the living—why expect respect for the dead? Water boarding and other brutal tortures were sued and are still being used on live prisoners—why bother for the Taliban corpses who are dead and would not feel wet or humiliated by the urines of beasts? We should also consider the fact that Americans had been defiling the corpses of Native Americans and habits refuse to die. All this said, I am the first to admit that Africans are not saints in this respect. Anti and pro Gbagbo forces in Ivory Coast torched people to death Kenyans and Ugandans beat and torch alleged thieves in a crude mob justice that also takes place in South Africa where victims are forced to drink petrol for what is called internal combustion. Samuel Doe was cut to pieces. Even Khadafy’s coprse was defiled courtesy of America, Britain and France. Decapitation, mutilation of the dead is not a strange thing to Africans. If violence is as American as apple pie the defilement of corpses is as universal as (not as matoke, sorry) but rice.

Anyway, respect for corpses has not been an American tradition at all. Check the following report:

“On September 19, 1995, two men allegedly broke into the mortuary
at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills and engaged in
sexual intercourse with two female corpses. The next day, police announced the two men were being held on suspicion of burglary.
According to police, the two men were not charged with having
intercourse with a corpse because having sex with a corpse is not illegal
in California. This left the men liable only on charges that they
broke into the mortuary and stole computer chips from a personal computer in the building”. There you go. Necrophilia is also a favorite subject of American movies and TV programs. The genre is not, alas, Horror.

Torturing and decapitating people are, in my opinion, not as bad as anything done to a corpse. Intercourse with a dead person is vile but as California law clearly puts it no crime is involved (maybe because the corpse would feel nothing). Killing innocent people by air strikes and drones is evil and not comparable to vile attacks on dead people. Lumumba’s corpse was defiled but not many in the West cared. Today militias supported by the West have raped and attacked more than half a million females in Eastern Congo. Cutting the throat of people is disgusting but the Talibans and Al Shabab type of bizarre forces enjoy it. If people pee on these killers is it poetic justice? If we say yes then we all go into the mad, mad world of criminals playing roulette with decency and hopes of a better world. The Talibans and the Marines are in their own nightmarish world of playing recklessly with our hopes and rights as human beings. The West made fun of Idi Amin and Bokassa and even alleged they were cannibals. The RUF of Sierra Leone also came to the rescue chopping of people’s hands, arms and heads. But the whole operation there was for diamonds and orchestrated by Britain in the first place.

Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo, Afghanistan….. The image of America is not that nice. Peeing on dead people is not going to improve their image. Obama has not been that much of a dramatic change over Bush in the political field. Frustrations abound. American soldiers as harbingers of democracy or decent values are total fiction. The soldiers who peed on corpses publicly and graphically announced that America’s promise of decency and democracy is totally false. This is a proper message to all who want to be duped by Washington. It is also possible that there are many who want for Washington to pee on them but this is not the feeling of the majority. If Americans troops only pee on dead people it is also going to be a problem for those live ones who want the urine treatment. Are Americans that selective with their brutality? If so, is discrimination involved? Must you be dead to be peed on by the agents of civilization, democracy and Christianity? Very difficult questions awaiting clear answers. Again, what’s in a corpse? Dead people have been defiled for centuries. More relevantly, live people have been defiled and peed upon for centuries. This is much more important an issue. Alas, no one seems to care. Be assured, American troops would perform more grotesque and inhuman actions in the future. Defiling corpses is a crime but more than that crime against live people is even worse. Peeing on the dead is not as bad as doing worse things on the living.

HAPPY GENOCIDE

2011-12-15T06:48:00.000-08:00

HAPPY GENOCIDE !

This time around Amnesty International has got the spirit right by calling for the arrest of George Bush during his tour of Africa. Alas, Ethiopia, Zambia and Tanzania do not have independent and truly African regimes and the man accused of violating the international convention against torture (and possibly against mutilating English grammar) will be feted and honored and not arrested. Bush will surely say “they misunderstimated me”. And Meles Zenawi, whose police and security forces torture and brutalize all prisoners, would give him a hug.

The so called International Criminal Court and the head prosecutor Ocampo are part of Western instruments against the so called Third World. If genocide be the issue, then the first people to be arrested and tried would be the American and Western criminals who have supervised genocides all over the world. Talk of Indochina and Chili and you get Kissinger. Mention Kenya and the horrible crimes of British colonialism come to the fore and France is guilty of the barbaric murders in Algeria. In recent times, the crimes of America in Iraq and Afghanistan are worthy of mention and Amnesty is right in calling for the arrest of George Bush. Tony Blair should also be detained without delay and charged. But, let us be real and realize that the powers in place are beyond the law and the ICC farce of Ocampo. The pathetic puppet is only focused on arresting Yugoslavs and Africans who have displeased the Western capitals. If genocide is really the issue, the recently celebrated Thanksgiving Day is but an example of the celebration of the wanton murder of Native Americans by savage settlers from Europe who were neither pilgrims nor invited guests. Manipulated and revised History has to be reconsidered—the day is a day of mourning for the real Americans who were there before even Columbus “discovered “the place. Happy genocide is in order for those celebrating the day and it is sad to note that Africans including Ethiopians celebrating the day. But this is not the issue here.

The miscarriage of justice is best exemplified by Ocampo and his ICC. A so called embargo killed half a million Iraqi children in an event that was dismissed by Madeline Albright as just collateral damage. Bush has been identified with water boarding and a country that often boasts of being civilized has shown its naked face—wanton murder and brutal torture. From Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo it is all injustice riding high. Gbagbo is whisked, actually bundled by the French to The Hague but the perpetrators of genocide like Mels Zenawi are feted and cuddled by the West—they are theirs. A Congolese alleged war lord is taken to The Hague while the master criminal Kabila is still in power. If Beshir of the Sudan is sought by the ICC why are not Bush, Nguema, Blair and the NATO bombers not accused? The same old nauseating double standard rears its head. There are genocides and there are genocides—no news here, just the dog biting the man. If you stick with the West you can murder and torture to your heart’s content and maybe face one or two lame “stop it” s through the years. One can live with that especially if one is a sadistic butcher and dictator.
There is no doubt that Gbagbo will be railroaded though his rival and the French army can both be accused of the crimes against civilians. Yes, the ICC seems to have an appetite for black faces only. To mention racism would be just belaboring the obvious. It is still this the kind of world we live in. No one has yet paid a cent let alone serve a prison term for the genocide of Africans and the infamous slave trade. Five million Congolese have died victims of the greedy pursuit of the mining conglomerates—no arrest warrant has been issued for them. The outcry for Darfur is not at all matched by a serious concern for the Congolese victims of the mineral robbers. The perpetrators and supporters of Apartheid are still around with no credible mea culpa coming out of them. The list is long. The rape of India, of South America, of Africa and Indochina involved genocides of all sorts and few of the criminals have been made to pay. That one genocide is till being celebrated as Thanksgiving Day is enough commentary. Here is one report on that Day: “1621, year of the supposed ‘first Thanksgiving.’ There is not much documentation of that event, but surviving Indians do not trust the myth. Natives were already dying like flies thanks to European-borne diseases. The Pequot tribe reportedly numbered 8,000 when the Pilgrims arrived, but disease had reduced their population to 1,500 by 1637, when the first, officially proclaimed, all-Pilgrim "Thanksgiving" took place. At that feast, the whites of New England celebrated their massacre of the Pequot. "This day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequot," read Massachusetts Bay Governor John Winthrop's proclamation. Few Pequot survived.” Many other massacres did follow. In 1623 at the Pamunkey Peace Talks the English poisoned the wine at a "peace conference" with Powhatan leaders, killing about 200; they physically attacked and killed another 50. British perfidy is very old. The accusation that blankets contaminated by small pox were given to the native Indians is not to be brushed aside lightly. Syphilis was spread also and this is without even mentioning the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.
Evidently, Bush will not be arrested by the African puppets. In fact, he was given a prize by Meles Zenawi—as we say in Ethiopia stinking fellows walk close and hand in hand. ‘Gim legim abreh azgim’. One is out of power and the other wobbles still. The American backed regime in Ethiopia has committed genocide and massacres, and tortures dissidents brutally and as a matter of routine. That Bush took this long to come and say bravo to his puppet is actually what is surprising for he does belong in Addis Abeba alongside Meles. Time for Bush and Meles to say Happy Genocide, to one another up close, together, with their stink.

OF LIES AND DESPOTS

2011-12-15T06:46:00.000-08:00

OF LIES AND DESPOTS

““They made us many promises, more than I can remember. They only kept but one. They promised they would take our land, and they took it.” ----Red Cloud

Who was it who wailed “If only I had the luxury of lying?” I do understand the burden of French president Sarkozy who had to complain in private to Obama about Netanyahu “the liar”. Here is how the press report put it:

“French President Nicolas Sarkozy branded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "a liar" in a private conversation with US President Barack Obama that was accidentally broadcast to journalists during last week's G20 summit in Cannes.
"I cannot bear Netanyahu, he's a liar," Sarkozy told Obama, unaware that the microphones in their meeting room had been switched on, enabling reporters in a separate location to listen in to a simultaneous translation.
"You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you," Obama replied, according to the French interpreter. Obama is lying too as he has cuddled up to and tolerated many shamelessly lying despots. They are “his” liars. As we Ethiopians say, you love your baby snot and all. Politics and lies seem to cohabit comfortably, alas. Impostors who can delude the crowds make effective despots. They fear not the lie in other words. Every year at the general meeting of the African Union or the UN a carnival of liars is held. Coup makers and murderers pay lip service to democracy and the will of the people. Those who easily and readily promise the sky to gullible millions will steal the land from all of them. Easy, invade Bahrain and then weep for the people of Syria. Invade for your own limited political objectives and then swear concern for the welfare of the people (France in Ivory Coast and Libya, America in many other places). The lie is important. If Netanyahu lies as Sarkozy alleges then most French people know that Sarkozy himself plays loose with facts actual or historical.
The existence of the WMD was one of the worst lies America and Britain played on the world with Colin Powell in the role of the pathetic messenger. We all saw the carnage that was justified by that huge lie. Africans were promised paradise and deprived of their land and freedom. Ethiopians have been promised three meals per day and millions are still starving and eating once a day has become a luxury. The lies are so effective that there are still many naïve souls who believe that Western troops are in Iraq and Afghanistan to bring democracy to the peoples there. Lying has become the pillar of the State in many countries and most despots rely on lies as much as arms to perpetuate their rule. A link has conveniently been made between Al Qaida in the Horn, in North Africa and the Boko Harem in Nigeria. The Africom operations are destined to carve out a New Africa, dominated by the West and serving the interests of the West. More drone bases would appear on African soil (the latest one is in Arba Minch/Gamo Gofa/, Ethiopia) and American troops would fight along African ones (Ethiopia, Uganda, etc) to crush any resistance to western domination. A good example of the big lie is the fraud that the war against Libya exposed. Kaddafi was said to have thousands of African mercenaries (many black refugees and workers were killed as a result by the so called rebels), that he was going to bomb Benghazi and killed some six thousand Libyans (the NATO war killed many more actually) and that jets bombed civilians. The whole accusation was presented by the Libyan For Human Rights many of whose members were to become members of the Transitional Council to win power.
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, a Sociologist and Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) has put it as follows:
“The claims of the Libyan League for Human Rights (LLHR) were coordinated with the formation of the Transitional Council. This becomes clear when the close and cagey relationship of the LLHR and the Transitional Council becomes apparent. Logically, the Obama Administration and NATO had to also be a part of this.
Whatever the Transitional Council is and whatever the intent of some of its supporters, it is clear that it is being used as a tool by the U.S. and others. Moreover, five members of the LLHR were or would become members of the Transitional Council almost immediately after the claims against the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya were disseminated. According to Bouchuguir individuals with ties to the LLHR or who hold membership include Mahmoud Jibril and Ali Tarhouni.

Dr. Mahmoud Jibril is a Libyan regime figure brought into Libyan government circles by Saif Al-Islam Qaddafi. He would undemocratically be given the position of Transitional Council prime minister. His involvement with the LLHR raises some real questions about the organization.

The economist Ali Tarhouni on the other hand would become the minister for oil and finance for the Transitional Council. Tarhouni is Washington’s man in Libya. He was groomed in the United States and was present at all the major meetings about plans for regime change in Libya. As Minister of Oil and Finance the first acts he did were privatize and virtually handover Libya’s energy resources and economy to the foreign corporations and governments of the NATO-led coalition against Libya.

The General-Secretary of the LLHR, Sliman Bouchuiguir, has even privately admitted that many influential members of the Transitional Council are his friends. A real question of interests arises. Yet, the secret relationship between the LLHR and the Transitional Council is far more than a question of conflict of interest. It is a question of justice and manipulation.

Sliman Bouchuguir is an unheard of figure for most, but he has authored a doctoral thesis that has been widely quoted and used in strategic circles in the United States. This thesis was published in 1979 as a book, The Use of Oil as a Political Weapon: A Case Study of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo. The thesis is about the use of oil as an economic weapon by Arabs, but can easily be applied to the Russians, the Iranians, the Venezuelans, and others. It examines economic development and economic warfare and can also be applied to vast regions, including all of Africa.
Bouchuguir’s analytical thesis reflects an important line of thinking in Washington as well as London and Tel Aviv. It is both the embodiment of a pre-existing mentality, which includes U.S. National Security Advisor George F. Kennan’s arguments for maintaining a position of disparity through a constant multi-faced war between the U.S. and its allies on one hand and the rest of the world on the other hand. The thesis can be drawn on for preventing the Arabs, or others, from becoming economic powers or threats. In strategic terms, rival economies are pinned as threats and as “weapons.” This has serious connotations.

Moreover, Bouchuiguir did his thesis at George Washington University under Bernard Reich. Reich is a political scientist and professor of international relations. He has worked and held positions at places like the U.S. Defense Intelligence College, the United States Air Force Special Operations School, the Marine Corps War College, and the Shiloah Center at Tel Aviv University. He has consulted on the Middle East for the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. State Department and received grants such as the Defense Academic Research Support Program Research Grant and the German Marshal Fund Grant. Reich also was or is presently on the editorial boards of journals such as Israel Affairs (1994-present), Terrorism: An International Journal (1987-1994), and The New Middle East (1971-1973).

It is also clear that Reich is tied to Israeli interests. He has even written a book about the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel. He has also been an advocate for a “New Middle East” which would be favorable to Israel. This includes careful consideration over North Africa. His work has also focused on the important strategic interface between the Soviet Union and the Middle East and also on Israeli policy in the continent of Africa.

It is clear why Bouchuiguir had his thesis supervised under Reich. On October 23, 1973, Reich gave a testimony at the U.S. Congress. The testimony has been named “The Impact of the October Middle East War” and is clearly tied to the 1973 oil embargo and Washington’s aim of pre-empting or managing any similar events in the future. It has to be asked, how much did Reich influence Bouchuiguir and if Bouchuiguir espouses the same strategic views as Reich?”
The reality is complicated and like the proverbial Truth needs a contingent of lies to protect it. The West lies to pursue its objectives which are anathema to the interest of Africans primarily. AFRICOM is the new instrument of neo colonial domination and plunder and war against terror is the new name for the scramble of the new Century. The lying despots are the cogs for the wheel of the West and its predatory campaign against Africa. Human rights organizations are being used as a cover for the wars the West is waging against African and other continents. At the end of the day, it is war for valuable resources. The US imports more oil from Africa than from Saudi Arabia. The resistance to the plunder of Africa’s oil and resources comes from the people of Africa and it is this resistance that is conveniently being presented as “terrorism”. The African despots are thus part of the big lie and working against the continent and its peoples. The lie is huge. The stakes are high as Africa’s future is on balance. Meles Zenawi sells bonds to gullible people promising that they will get their money back once the huge dam get finished on the Nile. Ivory Coast is said to be fine with Ouattara and Kabila is said to be a panacea for the Congo while Tsvangirai is expected to be an improvement on Mugabe, and so on and on. All lies. In politics “relative improvement” often hides a lie, the continuation of the same under a new name, a new despot. Lies are the weapons of despots. Gullible citizens trust the lies and become victims of tyrants. The wake up call is still unheard. Many Africans still imagine their salvation will come from the West. Waiting for Godot is the reality we observe with sadness.
How long are we to be fooled?

NATO AKHBAR! WOW!

2011-11-15T03:13:00.000-08:00

NATO AKBAR ! WOW !!

There was a time when Allah Akbar only meant God is great. Alas, times have changed and in the tragedy that is called Libya Allah Akbar now means NATO Akbar, an exultation of the murderous machine called NATO that reduced Libya to rubbles and killed thousands of innocent people (all photos edited/censored-- circulate, nothing to see, thank you!). As Hilary Clinton so stupidly said: wow!

The illegal and grotesque execution of Khadafy is within the realms of a war crime. There was from the outset the decision to execute him if he were ever to be captured alive. The dictator knew too many secrets, just like Ben Laden, and an open public trial was not to be envisaged. One confidential newspaper in London has asserted that the decision to kill Khadafy was endorsed and called for by none other than Obama and Sarkozy. Imagine Khadafy enlightening us on his deals with Condoleezza Rice and the CIA, with that Tony Blair fellow (who has now become a political consultant to the tyrant of Kazakhstan at a yearly price of 8 million British pounds), with Berlusconi and France’s Sarkozy who had hosted him at the the Elysee palace and begged for more oil concessions for TOTAL. Obama has become the father of all disappointments. The man has been given an undeserved Nobel Peace Prize (but then again this prize has been given to criminals like Kissinger and De Klerk too!). He has failed to keep his promises (Guantanamo is still open for example), waged wars, interfered in other people’s affairs using force, approved and enjoyed murders and selective assassinations (Ben Laden/Khadafy) and went on to say with insensitivity that the war has been won in Libya with no casualty and “only” two billion dollars spent. This is Bush talk par excellence—it is apparent that for Obama too the lives of thousands of Libyans are of no consequence whatsoever. Obama hobnobs with dictators and arms and supports tyrants. Meles Zenawi is one example. I am sure Ugandans can point to their own despot, Equatorial Guineans and Djiboutians to theirs and Chadians to American backed Deby. Sarkozy is also obsessed with winning the coming 2012 presidency and has even had a programmed birth to project the “ papa poule” image (it has not stuck) and has resorted to force against other countries (Cote d’Ivoire and Libya) to present himself defender of the imperial and shredded macho image of France.

The destruction of Libya and the commandeered execution of Khadafy is a disgrace to Washington and Europe. Despite the trumpeted claim that the removal of Khadafy has heralded a new era, the reality is bleak. Libya has been taken one step back and there is no sign of a two steps leap foreword other than the adoption of Sharia law, the reintroduction of polygamy and the denial of divorce rights for women. Some forever naïve souls in Africa have hailed the execution of the Libyan dictator and some live tyrants may be shaking in their expensive loafers imagining such a fate being theirs. Outside of this, the murder of Khadafy does not augur well for Libya and Libyans. Reactionary Arab regimes aided the rebels, Qatar sent troops and Sudan sent arms and ammunition. It was a free for all that showed the features of the new scramble for Africa. The old devils are there, hungrier and better armed than ever before. New predators have come from the East with China leading the way. Forget the hollow talk of solidarity and concern for the welfare of Africans. In all this, the African Union has been demonstrated to be in a state of comatose that was the lot of the previous OAU, the puppets of the West dominate the so called Union and it was not long before all these who were beholden to Khadafy ( and enjoyed his gifts and aid) abandoned him in frenzy.

The NATO military fury against Libya has nothing to do with democracy or with helping a people “hungry for democracy”. The composition of the rebel leaders and their religious zeal do not promise any democratic commitments. Compared to Khadafy, they have emerged as more backward, their proclamation of Sharia law affirming the fact. Their tribal or ethnic division has hampered them up to now from forming a sort of government however wobbly. The dictator, like most tyrants, had mauled institutions worthy of the name and so allegiances and loyalties are basic—“tribal”, family, region and religious. Much as Khadafy and his folks antagonized others, the brutal and violent action against Khadafy loyalists (and the Khadafa group) is bound to undermine a trouble free future. Wow! Khadafy is gone and hail the new Libya is thus a hollow and overly optimistic cry unsupported by the facts on the ground and by our experience of “mission accomplished” and continued havoc in Iraq and Afghanistan. If truth be told, Khadafy was attacked for Libya’s oil, for his anti imperialist rhetoric and call for African unity, for his stand against the daylight robbery of the resources of Africa by foreign monsters. Otherwise, the double standard has been laid bare, only fools believe that the war against Libya was a war for democracy and the human rights of the people? What human rights? The rebels killed as many African workers and migrants as the Khadafy who was hailed by Europe for promising “I will serve as a wall to stop the famished hordes coming to your shores and lands”.

Moatassem Gaddafi, meeting Hillary Clinton, 21 April 2009. A murderous criminal who personally executed soldiers who refused to shoot at the protesters, Gaddafi's fifth son and the National Security Advisor, was also killed in Sirte.

The extrajudicial murder or rather the lynching of Khadafy was ordered by those with extensive past experience in the matter. Obama may have forgotten it but black Africans were lynched by white racists in America, the British hanged too many Kenyan and Yemeni patriots and French colonialists murdered thousands in Algeria and many other places. Yet, the “lynchers” hailed and feted Khadafy when it suited them.

Khadafy was kosher, halal, their friend and ally, before they turned against him and planned his ouster and assured his execution. The double standard is so plain to see it needs no detailed comment. The Tunisian uprising was seen in bad light by France and the West. The French interior minister even offered to provide French repressive means and experience to quash the people’s revolt. Hilary Clinton assured us that, Tunisia notwithstanding, the regime of Mubarak was stable. Assad of Syria and Salah of Yemen have murdered thousands with no NATO plane hovering over their skies or no drone bombing their strategic arms depots. Take also the African dictators allied with America (like Meles Zenawi for one) who are enjoying full Western support and no sanctions though they are labeled horrible human rights violators and guilty of genocide (Gambella, Ogaden). Tony Blair is consultant to one of the worst dictators in the world. France backs most tyrants in the so called Francophone Africa. The Libyan tragedy highlights the Western drive to re colonize Africa and plunder its resources. More than 5 million Congolese have died in a war sponsored by Western companies greedily vying to control the gold, diamond, coltan and other precious minerals of this hapless country. Not much hue and cry has been raised, at least not as much as the cry over Darfur. While comparing one tyranny from another and declaring this one is relatively benign is not a good exercise, there is for example no doubt that any comparison between say Khadafy and Meles Zenawi shows the latter crueler and more monstrous. Beshir and Mugabe are softies compared to the West’s darling called Meles Zenawi. American military bases and presence in the Horn of Africa and in Uganda augur disaster for the peoples of the region who may rise up against their western backed tormentors. This is why those Africans who wax lyrical in condemning Khadafy and praising the NATO operation are dupes of the worst kind, alas.

History teaches for those willing to learn. Not all revolutions or popular uprisings lead to democratic change. Not all transitions are for good. In Tunisia the Islamist Ennahda has won the election. This party was financed and bankrolled by Middle Eastern and Gulf countries. The west is clamoring about “moderate Islamists” though such a creature has been extinct for many many years. Ennahda is playing along trying to project a reformist image and declaring itself a Tunisian version of the Turkish regime though situations of Turkey and Tunisia are not all the same and the so called reformist wing within Ennhada is a tiny minority. The Tunisian revolution is more or less hijacked and short circuited as is the Egyptian one. The West can live with hard line Islamists and anti democrats (Saudi Arabia is an example) so long as they are pro west and hand over their oil resources. The financial supporter of Ennahda, the fiery Sheikh Youssef Al Quadrawi who lives in Qatar, did declare that any Moslem who does not vote for Ennahda commits a grave sin. The Libyan sharia will sneak into Tunisia too. France which cuddles the Burmese junta hated Khadafy because of economic interests and not because it was affected by the plight of Libyans. One of the military leaders of the Libyan rebels is none other than an Al Qaeda operative who was captured by the Americans and then handed over to Libya for torture and interrogation by Khadafy’s security. One remembers the time when diverse forces (left, right and center) saw in Khomeini a liberator!

A wanted man has been killed in Mogadishu—wow! Bin Laden has been murdered-wow! Khadafy has been summarily executed—wow! The Obama administration has no shame at all and maybe as the late Steve Jobs had said Obama may be a one term president like Sarkozy. Good riddance is in order. Ivory Coast, Libya, drones flying out of their Ethiopian and Seychelles bases to kill and destroy, American troops in Djibouti, Ethiopia and Uganda, Africa’s land being handed out to foreigners, dictators being supported by the West, NATO being used to bomb African aspirations to smithereens—the reality is frightening. The execution of Khadafy and the destruction of Libya is a clear warning for all Africans who are entering a very dangerous time that makes their struggle for emancipation and freedom even more difficult.
Wow indeed! Just look at Hilary Clinton reveling in the cruel death of Khadafy.

Observations

2011-09-22T09:39:00.000-07:00

Troy Davis executed. America is to acquire a military base in Ethiopia. Now, we feel safe and secure--this is the America we knew for decades.Old South racism and executions of blacks. America vetoing Palestinians is not also knew. It is History. All this makes Obama's America a myth, a mirage, a page saver, not the real thing. America has joined China,Iran, North Korea and Yemen as the country that executes the most people. Troy Davis's case has many uncleared and unproven aspects. The young man jailed at 22 passed at least twenty years in prison/Death Row/ and this should have been enough punishment. But this was a black man accused of killing a white policeman in Georgia. Unpardonable crime. How long has Mumia Abu Jamal stayed in prison? What does the still open Guantanamo tell us? The central Iraqi prison and the torture? Obviously, America is comfortable with its old and imperialist face and the whole Obama charade of a new deal is just a mask.Talking of China being the top official executioner I recently saw a film on the land grab inside China itself. The eviction of Chinese farmers from their lands, their being beaten by party thugs armed with iron batons.No compensation too. If the Chinese can be this cruel to their people no wonder they are merciless in their land grab in Ethiopia and other African countries. The Chinese have been given permission by the Meles regime to beat up Ethiopian workers when they feel like it. The Chinese are also racist to boot. Ethiopian land has been grabbed by them and by Indians, Arabs and others too.Ethiopia is being ruled by traitors and insatiably corrupt scums.The only solution is a revolution, a removal of the anti people regime. The question of " Is China Imperialist?" is posed.My third point why is that Ethiopian political commentators have started to refer to Meles as Zenawi (his father's name) which is not his name in Ethiopia? In Ethiopia our name is not our father''s name but what the foreigners call our first name/prenom..

2011-09-19T02:12:00.001-07:00
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK "You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them." ~ Ray Bradbury

THE NATO COUP

2011-09-01T03:18:00.001-07:00
THE NATO COUPLibya has now another new Ethiopian image—the sad face of the Ethiopian born nanny burnt by boiling water by the wife of Kaddafi’s son (Hannibal), the same one who was accused in Genève of beating his servants and in London of punching his wife (alas, she being the same one who never paid her Ethiopian nanny but burnt her whole body with boiling water). Libya was previously distinguished by its racist and brutal treatment of refugees and foreign workers (Ethiopians included), the rape of foreign worker women (and men) too. An unsavory place, a grotesque regime.And yet, we also remember the tyrant in Tripoli was a close ally of Tony Blair (the British premier who had a penchant for brutal dictators like Meles Zenawi), of Berlusconi, of Washington too. Times change and some are now alleging that the revolt by the people in Benghazi was itself concocted by the secret services of these Western countries. Be that as it may, it was time for the dictator to go (though he is still resisting proving at least he is not an isolated tyrant like some others in Africa) and the big media machine was unleashed against him, his decadent family and his brutal regime. There were even hints of Khadafy being of Jewish origin! His regime was blamed for atrocities against foreigners, especially African workers, though the so called rebels did not spare the lives of the same. In a country that is one third black the declaration that blacks are Khadafy’s mercenaries has led to violent killings in yet another expression of Arab racism against black Africans. Remember the brutal pogrom type attack by Libyans against black Africans in 2000?The Libyan situation has highlighted many points that will continue to be of relevance for the whole of Africa. The first one is the affirmed marginalization of the so called African Union. The marginalization and irrelevance was so total as to make every African who had ever imagined a role for the AU to weep in shame. Instead of a role for the AU, Libya’s fate, as in Cote d’Ivoire, was decided by the West, by NATO specifically. NATO bombed and attacked Libya with a vengeance that brought to mind not any concern for democracy but colonial wrath. The rag tag force generally presented as “rebels” was assisted by French Foreign Legionnaires, British SAS and American SEAL special troops. The rebels complained of shortage of ammunition but spent thousands of rounds shooting into the air as they shouted Allah Akbar. The NTC was set up with urgency and disparate personalities, quite a few of them late hour turncoats, became its ministers or leaders. What exactly is this rebel force, this NATO patchwork? Coming weeks will reveal the inherent weakness of this body and the very possibility of an imploding Libya. For the moment, the whole focus is on getting the nemesis of the West ( the North African Saddam, to be hanged or shot to death), assuring as it is now declared that the NATO countries get the lion’s share of the Libyan oil and reconstruction contracts.The whole event can also be taken as the new version of the perennial African coup except that this time it is a NATO coup. The sovereignty of an African country is trampled upon as the West arms its own rebels or puppets to overthrow a regime in the name of democracy. Sure enough, some perpetually naïve African souls living in Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea and other countries under brutal dictatorships may hope for a NATO coup. Alas they will be waiting for Godot. The pro West dictators like Meles Zenawi do not get bombed but financed and supported by the West. Those who get accused of crimes against humanity by the poodle of the West, Ocampo by name, will not be the masters of genocide and massacres like Meles and Nguema (or Kissinger and Dick Cheney) but the unfortunate ones who have fallen out of favor vis a vis the West. American war mongering in Iraq did not bring democracy. The situation in Afghanistan is worse and the search for a negotiation with the Taliban augurs bad days to come for the Afghan people as a whole and especially women. In Libya, it is not the democrats who head the rebellion but those who are already clamoring for a Constitution based on the Sharia. Egyptians and Tunisians, who had their own revolutions, are still struggling not to be deprived of their full victory by the military (as in 1974 in Ethiopia) or by pseudo democrats with little concern for sovereignty and dignity of their people.It is safe to conclude that not many Libyans, who had to endure 42 years of dictatorship, or peoples of the world will cry for the misfortune of the Khadafy regime. Not now anyway. Khadafy had irked the West by advocating measures that would have affected the West’s desire for hegemony over our continent. Mineral and oil rich countries are now openly at the mercy of NATO. No one will come to the rescue of the Congolese that are being murdered for their minerals. Omar Beshir and Robert Mugabe can shake in their boots. Meles Zenawi, Nguema and others within the Western hegemonic embrace can sigh contented. Even Bashir Assad has been tolerated to no end. The message is clear. The NATO coup is not for democracy but for western hegemony. Is the scramble for Africa back?

LAMENT TIDBITS BY HAMA TUMA

2011-08-22T10:32:00.000-07:00

On the window sill
The butterfly, colours-ablaze
The dirty glass has no sparkle
Jealous
of the dazzling wings
It cracks and breaks up
As the butterfly flies away
Undisturbed.

A soul among thousands,nay,
amidst millions
hovering over crumpled bodies,
High above the vultures
sharp beaks ready to pierce
no evil in their hearts, just
the natural law,
the desire to feed on a victim
ordianed by God.
The decomposing flesh is soft, rotten,
and a treat for the hungry,
as always. The rotten is a feast.
The lonely soul, sad, glides away
from the heat and crimes of today,
of Adwa and her sons.

HT

The song in the air
by autumn leaves tuned
falling softly, sad.
The song on the ground
lying quiet, mute
The sun shines above
the prairie is afire
Times have changed.

HT

The empty vase holds my hopes
Brimming, full, overflowing even
The weight breaks the vase
and my hopes mix with the dirt
perhaps, that was when I died
and left the human world.

HT

The eyes of my daughter, innocent,
scan my withered face
Maybe the crevices hide the love
and the wrinkles cover it too, for
she looks away abrupt
with confusion in her heart
facing my cold bottomless eyes.

HT

Over the hills the barren slopes
Up ran the monkey
As the Serpent slithered down
They pass without a greeting
not even a glance
And only the monkey laughs.

HT

Eating an apple is easy
we have strong teeth, African,
No fluoride bath, no,
Nature has favoured us
We can bite.
Cut by gossip and hate
into entrails and names
history and dreams,
Into apples and flesh, cutting sharp.
The panga can rest, the machette too,
we are blessed.
Nature has endowed us
with a strong teeth
and we do the rest.

HT

Every year singes us with pain
the sorrow soaks our soul
drowning our hopes.
The bile of bitterness
forever on our tongues
Our tomorrows stolen
we are robbed of the past
the change is a mirage
and the future a corpse
we celebrate
Every new year that comes.

HT

Demons dance in the red night
amid the fire lit
By sinners roasting on the grill
of their crimes
(of their daring to ask?)
frying like pork on Life's barbecue.
The smile on their faces
belying the pain
the opaque faces covering up
the truth
now buried underground.

HT

Words fly out, soaring
to touch the clouds, far,
The heavens are unreachable
When legs are chained, by hopes
and visions withered, narrow,
In each kilil/bantustan
prisons line the streets, full,
the sewers are clogged in the Palace
and the whole country stinks.

HT

The scorching sun has no pity
it has burnt its heart eons ago.
The soft moon has no warmth
fed up of selfish lovers
using it to suck and lick
their pleasure-ways to hell.
Dawn holds no surprises
it had run out of promises ages ago.
Day and night are all the same
the rainbow has aborted in our brain.

HT

The naked child
on the hot tarmac
asleep, dazed by the sniffed glue
Forgetting hunger, and
oblivious to pain
The policeman's boot strikes
The blow makes a noise
the naked child whimpers
refusing to wake
and acknowledge the pain,
the Nation's shame.
HT

Th sufi man twirled
a thousand times, nay
a million rounds
the dust covered all
The Sufi man was in a trance,
luckily
he did not see his sins exposed.

HT

Decompose,oh yes
Perish.
What thought sublime,
magnanimous,
ever saved a lost black soul.
Wither away, disappear
like prisoners in Africa's dungeons.
Who needs to know,
to remember
the victims silenced by arrogant power?

Out out brief candle,
how do you put off the sun
end the Drought,
the Famine,
The Hopelessness in our souls?

The dark lonely night
wanted an eternal embrace
I was the only one ready,
And I obliged.

Simmer, simmer, simmer low
the bile is gushing forth
Bitter. Life is an elephant
sitting on your face
Crushing, final.

The Man, stamped by fate
wears his destiny in his tears
as an albatross.
Forever weighed by sorrow
and travails
By the sins of the dead
Eternally condemned.

2011-05-24T02:04:00.001-07:00
OF CRIMINAL WALKS—UGANDA STYLE

Back in 2006, I wrote a short story called The Case of the Criminal Walk in which I lampooned the Meles Zenawi regime’s ridiculous ethnic bantustanization of Ethiopia. In the story, a man who had walked outside of “his region” was accused of being a criminal and a saboteur. And the prosecutor was interested in the type of walk the man had engaged in. Here is how that prosecutor in the story asked his question:
“Was he strolling arrogantly? Walking briskly? Were his lips curled in disgust as he walked? Were his eyes narrow like a chauvinist? Was he pounding at the pavement or moving surreptitiously like a spy? Did he dodder, falter, lumber, stagger, totter, trudge, hobble or plod? When you saw him walk did you see an innocent man like say someone rushing to church not to miss Mass? Or did you see a suspicious man with a saintly smile like all criminals, puffed up with arrogance, happy at the mere thought of having trampled on yet another sacred law, angrily pounding on our poor road? Did he prowl, tiptoe, slink away or stalk? Was he shuffling, slouching off or creeping? Did he march, surge or meander? A lot depends on that walk…Was it leisurely like a stroll, the pastime of a lazy man propagating unemployment? Was he moving briskly like a criminal trying to distance himself from the scene of his foul crime? Was he lifting his legs up like the parading soldiers of the former regime and pounding hard on our pavement to dig potholes? Or was he trying to be smaller than his shadow and walking stealthily?”
In the end the prosecutor in the story gives his own definition of the criminal walk:
“The criminal walk as we all know combines the rush and the prowl with the swoop and stomp, the trudge and the swagger, and all this accompanied by a maniacal chuckle.”

Did Ugandan opposition leader Dr. Kizza Beisgye wear a maniacal chuckle as he walked to work in opposition to the Museveni regime? Did he just walk or did he trudge and swoop on downtown Kampala? How did the authorities determine his walk was criminal and then resort to arresting and beating him up? By the way did the good doctor, who was Museveni’s personal physician in the past, get the idea of turning a walk into a political protest action from my short story? Seriously though, the intriguing question to most Africans, who are fortunate enough to have a job in the first place, is how come walking to work becomes a protest as more often than not they all walk to work? Early morning Nairobi, a stream of humanity trudges out of the notorious Kibera slum to go to or to search for work. With price of petrol skyrocketing and the price of transport too expensive to ponder many have been forced to walk not as a protest (heaven forbid) but as a necessity. Have Ugandans turned as rich as Museveni claims and are driving to work or take public transport in their thousands every day? Who cares if Besigye walks to work? For all we know, as a doctor, he may be doing it for health reasons? If walk to work is a protest Ethiopians have been protesting for decades without even knowing it.

But Yoweri Kaguta Museveni is a frightened man, haunted by the specter of a popular revolt against his dictatorial rule and his tearing up of the Constitution to be “elected” as fourth time president of Uganda. An Ethiopian proverb says no one dies looking as good as he was. Alas, things and human beings change and in most cases in Africa for the worst. Yoweri Museveni was a progressive militant, a better and promising breed than the Obotes and Amins that Uganda had to bear. In the first years, his rule was not also that bad (in Africa we do not easily say good knowing what we know) despite creeping corruption, ethnic favoritism and alarming demagogy on his part. Museveni’s declared “modernization” drive and his penchant for power clashed with tradition and customs (the place of kings in Uganda for example) and the call for a better deal by Ugandans suffering from economic hardships. Museveni wrote a book in which he identified one of the major malaise of governance in Africa as being the tendency of the rulers to stay in power for long and went on right away to cling to power for 25 years now even by changing the Constitution to run as a presidential candidate for the fourth time. Over the years, Museveni turned into a run of the mill African dictator, relying on his control of the repression apparatus and family circles and engaging in repression of any dissent. Besigye’s call for walk to work as a protest could have been taken as a patriotic gesture to save on fuel but Museveni had to rile and rant against it and turn it into a big cause and thus spurred the opposition leader to come up with walk to prayer calls.

The Museveni clan, much like the Meles Zenawi clan in Ethiopia, is controlling Uganda like their private property. None of them walks to work by the way. Museveni holds absolute power and is involved big time in the economic sector. His wife Janet Museveni, admired for not wearing western wigs ever, is a minister for Karamoja region and the owner of the Gemtel mobile telephone service that has extended its activities into Juba too. His half brother General Caleb Akandwanaho (also known as Salim Saleh) is presidential advisor on defence and a man accused of gross corruption including the plunder of gold and minerals from Eastern Congo. His brother in law, Sam Kutea, is Foreign Affairs Minister while his daughter Natasha Karugire is his private secretary. Janet’s nephew Justus Karuhanga is Museveni’s secretary for legal affairs while his son Lt. Colonel Kainerugaba Muhoozi is commander of the Special Forces guarding the newly discovered oil fields. The colonel also leads the elite presidential guard. As one Kenyan journalist recently commented-- Ugandans are not all amused by the “familiarization of the State” as much as Museveni says he is not pleased with walking to work as a sign of protest.

Museveni is bound to be history, the past—perhaps sooner than he may expect. Yet, he owes his ongoing survival, as much as Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia, to the fact that he has slavishly bowed to the superpower and became cannon fodder in the so called war against terror. His regime is a minority one and his claim to be a messiah from the Munyankole/Bahima unconvincing to the majority of Bagandans. The LRA still roams murderously uncontrolled filling the pockets of the general who are the real beneficiaries of the ongoing war. Museveni has opened up Uganda for American special troops, has rushed into Somalia to fulfill America’s order (much like Meles Zenawi before him) and proved an ally of the West. That has assured him financial help and security protection and overall backing and support against a Revolution that may turn nationalist/Ugandan and throw out the foreign agenda and diktat. After all, Idi Amin was also an Israeli and British baby before he grew a shark’s teeth and became a nuisance. But will Washington’s backing save Museveni from impending doom? Judging from Egypt and what is happening elsewhere it does not seem likely and Museveni, who has outlived four US presidents, may not outlive Obama. Still, his rule and his ministers have given other tyrants very many valuable lessons. For those tyrants who kill their people and suffer their blame Museveni’s Internal Affairs State Minister, Kirunda Kivejinja, has come out with a gem of a self defense. Admitting that people were killed and hundreds wounded or arrested in the protest demonstrations he, however, said the government is not taking responsibility for those killed and he advised Ugandans to blame the deaths “ on the British and the Americans who manufacture bullets”.
Now we know the real culprits!

2011-05-24T02:01:00.000-07:00
OUR DOG OF A LIFE

Dogs and cats as pets live much better than most Africans—this is no news really. And yet, the depravity and cruelty of it all continues to amaze. Consider one newspaper report below:
“The air kisses were flying, the Italian sparkling wine was flowing, and white hyacinths perfumed the air. Marilyn Riseman, society doyenne, was in attendance, and by 7 p.m. the South End’s beautiful people were packed so thick it was hard to reach the cheese-and-olive platters. What else would you expect at the grand opening of a boutique hotel and day-care center for dogs? Boston may or may not have achieved its dream of being a world class city for humans, but from a canine perspective we have arrived.
The Urban Hound is but one of three new luxury pet hotels, complete with spa services and flat-screen televisions usually tuned to Animal Planet, that have opened in the past few months. Boston Red Dog Pet Resort and Spa, on Southampton Street near the Southeast Expressway, charges as much as $85 a night for a room, and at Fenway Bark in South Boston, the room rates go up to $150. Pricey? Perhaps, but because it is considered a service, at least there is no room tax.
Trade spending figures are hard to come by, but Bob Vetere, president of the American Pet Products Association, said these businesses represent one of the fastest-growing segments of the $48 billion pet industry. He credits baby boomers for much of the increasing humanization of pets and everything that has followed: designer leashes, five-figure doghouses, dogs staying in human hotels, and pet hotels that serve Starbucks (to the pets’ owners).
“Their children are growing up and moving out,’’ Vetere said, “and as helicopter parents, they need to find something else to hover over.’’
With 91 percent of owners calling their pet a member of the family and with the economic downturn easing, there is increasing demand for luxury pet lodging, according to a report by Packaged Facts, a Maryland research firm. Many facilities have added upscale amenities, such as customized suites with individualized decor or advanced air purification systems, according to the company’s most recent report.”
A $ 48 billion pet industry! Talk of being a spoilt dog: consider the following report from Japan.
“Merumo, a 10-year-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, is a top model for dog magazines in Japan. Since she is a model, she is given special treatment such as two expensive haircuts a month, but the pampering doesn’t end there. A reporter visits the apartment where Merumo lives to discover the following luxuries:
• The apartment has a special security system that won’t allow visitors to take the elevator to that floor without an invitation.
• Merumo doesn’t like being hot, so her owner bought marble flooring for the living room. (estimated cost: 3,000,000 yen)
• She drinks out of a silver Gucci dog bowl.
• When leaving the house, she can ride in a Louis Vuitton carry bag (236,250 yen).
• When going for a walk, she can wear one of several brand name dog collars and leashes: Hermès (65,000 yen + 85,000 yen) or Gucci (69,300).
• Merumo’s owner rents another room in the apartment building just to store all of Merumo’s special clothing. Merumo has a fancy kimono (80,000 yen), 10 fur coats (one costs 180,000 yen), and a whole bunch of other stuff. (Total cost: about 3,000,000 yen)

Since Merumo is pretty old in dog years, her owner is determined to give her the finest foods. A typical meal consists of premium vegetables special ordered from a department store prepared alongside some expensive Matsusaka beef (2,500 yen for 100 grams). The humans of the house eat cheap vegetables and chicken from the local grocery store.
Merumo’s owner justifies the money she spends by comparing Merumo to a child. Many parents spend large sums of money to send their children to college, so why can’t she spend a similar amount buying dresses and fancy food for Merumo?”
Is there no responsibility at all? No urge to have a balance in one’s outlook towards other human beings. Consider the following report:
“According to a conservative estimate the pet owning citizens of the European Union spend about 150 million USD daily or 45 billion USD per annum on pet food. This staggering amount that the citizens of the European Union spent to keep their cats and dogs alive is nearly three times as much as the total amount that Sub-Saharan Africa annually gets from the industrialized countries in terms of official development assistance”.
This is no war on dogs but on the humans who own these dogs. Let us not generalize either. The pampered dog in Africa is way down the dog class ladder even if it lives better off than the majority of Africans. It is common knowledge that the status of pampered dogs in the USA and Europe is much higher than that of the pampered dogs in Africa just as the rich in America and Europe are many in number and more wealthy than those in Africa. In Ethiopia, anyone with more than US$200,000 becomes a millionaire Birr wise. The Mobutus, Bongos, Meles and Muabaraks are not really that many—too greedy and restrictive may best explain the situation. And yet, pampered African dogs are now accompanying their masters to Joburg and Bangkok for specialized medical care. Some apologists of the African tyrants proclaim loud and high that the health system has improved (for example in Ethiopia) while no one with real money would be found dreaming of entering an Ethiopian hospital. Why should the dogs trust hospitals their masters have no confidence in? The answer is clear. Dogs have been “humanized” and Africans “dehumanized”—go check the capsized boats and black corpses of Lampadusa for one. The African children in the arms of Madonna, Jolie and others could very well be pets of a sort.
Here is another report:
April 8/ 2011 at 11:34am
________________________________________

REUTERS
A British dog owner has splashed out an incredible £20 000 on giving her pampered pooch the perfect wedding day, says a report.
According to orange news, Louise Harris, 32, invited 80 guests to the lavish ceremony to watch her Yorkshire terrier Lola tie the knot with Mugly, a Chinese Crested.
The bash was reportedly held in an outdoor marquee in the grounds of a mansion in Essex, costing £2 500 for the venue alone.
Lola wore a £1 000 wedding dress, customized with 1 800 Swarovski crystals.
Her outfit was finished off with a £400 pearl necklace, Swarovski crystal leg cuffs costing £250, and finally a Swarovski crystal lead costing £350.
Harris also spent £1 000 on flowers, £3 000 on designers to decorate the marquee, £400 on a personal wedding planner, and even £400 for security guards, the report said.
Harris, who owns two other Yorkshire Terriers, Lulu, four, and two-year-old Larry, who acted as bridesmaid and page boy, was quoted as saying: “I wanted Lola to have the perfect day.
“My dogs are my pride and joy so nothing is too good for them. I enjoy spoiling them because it makes me happy.”
Harris, who runs a dog boutique and grooming parlour, ran an online competition on her website and Facebook to find the perfect husband for Lola.
She said she had received hundreds of entries but whittled it down to a final six potential partners and was surprised when Lola's obvious favourite was Mugly, voted Britain's ugliest dog.
According to the report, Harris said: “I must admit when I went to meet Bev and Mugly I really didn’t think Lola would like him. She is a bit of a diva and loves her clothes and jewellery so I did think she would go for a dog more like her.
“But they do say opposites attract and they happily played together all day. They seemed to really enjoy being together and had a lot of fun so I thought he was the perfect future husband for Lola.”
No need to mention that most Africans survive on US$ 2 per day. Some do not feel guilty on such spending on their pets as they claim that $26.53 billion is spent on cafes, restaurants and takeaways while dogs ( and to a certain extent even cats) at least greet you with joy and act as good and long lasting companions. Moreover, pampering dogs is not as costly or as bad for example as pampering George W. Bush who said recently “I miss being pampered” and Bush was no pet at all. We now have quite a few millionaire dogs and cats thanks to inheritance and laws allowing it. But, I still have no report if these dog or cat millionaires have given some money to charities officially claiming to help African children even though quite a few of such bodies or organizations are known to be merciless swindlers-- cruel dogs in the bad sense of the word.
In the end it is obvious that some dogs are more equal than others and possibly much better than some robbers and despots who call themselves human. It’s a sad, sad world we live in and our continent has gone to the dogs.

2011-05-24T01:58:00.000-07:00
BIN LADEN IS DEAD AND LIFE IS STILL DEPRESSING

The much trumpeted death of Osama Bin Laden brings many questions to the fore : where is the body? How come he got buried in the sea? Since when has it become burying people in the sea in accordance with Islamic rituals? Who killed him? Americans or Pakistanis? Did he die in the firefight or was he captured and riddled with bullets making a presentable photo of his corpse impossible? And so and on. The jubilation of Americans in New York and Washington DC could also be understood within the confines of revenge and closure or nationalism of the kind Bin Laden would have understood. However, the fact remains that at the end of the day the vast political hype to benefit Barack Obama can hardly cover the reality of a continuing condition of terror, war and devastation in many parts of the world. Bin Laden is dead but Bin Ladenism continues with a vengeance.

Osama Bin Laden was first and foremost an American baby, nurtured by the CIA against what Washington called the Evil Empire. The snake eventually turned against its charmer much as the American pampered anti Iran Sadam became the enemy of the superpower. Pakistani intelligence worked with Osama and other fundamentalists to spread radicalism far and wide and not only to harass the Soviets—after all the Talibans are the creation of Pakistani intelligence and if Bin Laden lived in clandestinity so near Islamabad it is sure it was done with the connivance of high level Pakistani officials. Of course these are details that do not interest much the ordinary Joe and Jane in America who function under the assumption that there is a clash of civilization and that brown and black persons and/or Moslems are jealous of America and want to destroy it. If Hizbollah is the party of God Jean d’ Arc was a “ fou de dieu” and there are many American Christian fundamentalists out there in fanatic cuckoo land burning the Quran and insulting other religions and beliefs. But we all know we live in a confused and troubled world where justice and fairness and balance are not to be found that easily. Bin laden is the one that got away, the failed experiment, “our own monster” as the Americans should have said. American ties to Saudi Arabia (Wahabism) and Pakistan (fundamentalism of the Madrasa type) and the urge to be the victor of the cold war gave birth to Osama and all the other anti Soviet mujahedeen praised by Washington but who later against America itself. No one is really jealous of America and there is no clash of civilizations as such—just American spawned vermin trying to attack their womb.

The victims of Al Qaeda are understandably happy to hear their enemy is dead but it is clear that rral closure does not really come from crude vendetta. The execution of Bin Laden (Obama’s order was “kill him!”) does not also say much about someone who had received the noble peace prize. Obama disappoints big time and the death of Osama is not going to salvage him. The sad part of this entire charade is that whether Bin Laden dies or not the Al Qaeda curse is upon us all. From the Maghreb to Yemen and beyond autonomous Al Qaeda groups have flourished with their own leaders and strategies. The death of Bin Laden will only strengthen their resolve and fanatic determination. The Taliban are alive, well and rasing hell. Obama is now forced to face the question of whether America will withdraw from Afghanistan or not? If so much hype is made on the mere fact of the death of Bin Laden (historic, great turning point, the end of Al Qaeda, etc) the next logical strp would be to ask America to withdraw from Afghanistan. Forget Mollah Omar and the Taliban, the devil is dead. Alas, life is complicated. The death of Bin Laden is not the end of Al Qaeda. The problem or danger is still out there, the hydra has many heads. This is why misplaced euphoria is a mistake not to mention that gloating over the death of one person is copying Bin Laden himself and reveling in death in a medieval way. If Obama had ordered the killing and not the capture and trial of Bin Laden the burden is heavy on him and giving him the thumb down will be in order.

Bin Laden’s tactic was to kill innocent civilians under the assumption so long as America bombs innocent people their innocent people have to suffer the consequences. It is not a rationale that can easily be dismissed if one is the victim of the constant outrage and trampling of human rights by arrogant Western powers. Africans subjected to watch America, Britian and France sustain tyrants and then find the opportunity to invade and cause havoc upon our heads are not very sympathetic to an America playing the “I am the victim” tune. Few people said bravo to Al Qaeda for killing all those people in the Twin Towers or killing innopcent Africans in Kenya and Tanzania but then again if truth be told few people sympathized with America’s so called war on terror, its intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. The hypocrisy of it all was plain to see and one had to be a True Believer American to swallow the propaganda hook, line and sinker. Those who kill are not always punished. America and the west shelter many assassins and murderers. The list is long.Baby Doc Duvalier of Haiti and many African tyrants call France home. Many Red Terror criminal from Ethiopia live safely in the USA and it was Washington that organized the exile of butcher Mengistu Haile Mariam to Harare (where he still lives).Just a few examples. Osama killed 3000 in New York while Mengistu killed more than 250,000 in Ethiopia but of course all lives and souls do not weigh the same in Washington’s scale.

For those who had to suffer from Osama Bin Laden’s criminal action proper closure should have come through due process of law and not following Bin Laden in his path of murder and revenge. Moreover, it is proper to point out amidst the euphoria and crude boasting (“an American bullet killed Bin Laden”!) that the demise of Bin Laden may augur worse than was before. The man sought the martyr’s death and he has achieved it. Throwing him into the sea so as to deny him and his followers a shrine is nonsense too as he is now engraved in the hearts of his followers more than ever before. Most people do want to see their enemy dead—this is base and primary feeling. History does teach, however, that death of one man will not be the end of evil. The source of the evil must be sought and America, as it celebrates the death of Bin Laden, should very well look into itself and examine if, surprise surprise, its policies are not one of the mothers of the hatred that send people to such drastic measures and choices.

IS DISRESPECT FUNNY?

2011-04-05T00:56:00.001-07:00
IS DISRESPECT FUNNY?

Hama Tuma

The situation in other continents may be different but I know for certain that dictators in Africa disrespect the people. The very fact of their tyranny is contempt towards the people but to add, as the saying goes, a crossed eye over goiter the dictators also go out of their way to treat us as dim-witted and dense. Didn’t one ZANU PF official declare “ if we tell the people to vote for a donkey, they will” thereby not only insulting the people but also talking a jab at dear old Robert, the master of the Zimbabwe domain, the self declared elect of the people. African elites also disrespect the people more than often and they strut and proclaim themselves men of wisdom flashing their PhDs (“call me doctor, professor please!”) like feudal elements with their titles (Sire, Emir, Prince, Dejazmatch, Ras etc).

One time lay Pastor Jacob Juma has joined the fray. With some 20 children credited to the equipment he calls his machine gun (thereby exposing the people to mockery) he has now returned to his priestly roots and shown his contempt for the people he rules over. Last February, he warned people at an ANC rally that if they vote for the ANC “"you are choosing to go to heaven. When you don't vote for the ANC, you should know' that you are choosing that man who carries a fork ... who cooks people." Vote for me and go to heaven is a political sale or an election slogan as ridiculous as any since everyone knows that at the end of the day people will return inevitable to their hell of a life. The aides of Juma tried to calm the hue and cry surrounding his declaration but pastor Juma did not relent: "When you are carrying an ANC membership card, you are blessed. When you get up there, there are different cards used, but when you have an ANC card, you will be let through to go to heaven." Admittedly no dead ANC member has come back to confirm Juma’s declaration but the whole idea of a party card opening the gates of heaven does show Juma considering his people as unintelligent dupes and, in addition, raises very many interesting questions. What if?

Africans are used to disrespect. The Westerners who back African dictators who have no respect for the rule of law show their naked contempt for the people. They are declaring in effect that the people do not deserve any better—Mobutu was good and Kabila is fine for the Congolese, Meles is ok for Ethiopians, Nguema is God sent for Equatorial Guineans. And on and on, throughout history. The disrespect goes on to whiten democracy itself—the often repeated declaration being “you are not yet developed enough for Western democracy!” The prescription for Africans is at best a benevolent despot, take it or leave it. When people refuse and in their turn they disrespect the tyrants, or in other words stop fearing them, the Revolution happens. Ask Mubarak, Ben Ali or Assad and Saleh. After all this and more is said can we consider the notion of a funny disrespect? Does it exist? ANC members getting buried with their ANC membership card (how is it going to be preserved?) and showing the same to the angels for admission to heaven is funny enough. Opposition parties do not only suffer hell on earth but also up there in God’s domain. With such threats who is the devout Christian who would opt to join an opposition party to go straight to that ugly fellow with a horrible tail who carries a fork and cooks and eats people? Better to vote for a donkey and stay with the ruling party to assure a place in heaven. On another level, lay Pastor Juma is taking himself as a Moses or an Isaiah bringing the wrath of God on all those who may disrespect him by doubting his words though no one has yet called him baldy to his face.

The idea of joining a ruling political party to go to heaven makes priests and churches quite irrelevant. I am sure some would exult and say about time! No wonder the South African church hierarchy is livid. In Ethiopia, this means no less than six million forced members of the ruling party would go straight to heaven. As will Zanu PF adherents and all other members of ruling parties elsewhere. With tyrants assured permanent tenure in heaven, would this not mean now heaven would be turning into hell? In other words, hell could be a better place than heaven. The whole thing could turn official religion and the whole concept of hell and heaven upside down. What will the Pope say? Are all the churches and mosques to close down as they are being declared not the best conduits to heaven? All the atheists out there are going to have a feast day. No need to pray once or five times a day. No need to go on Hajj or pilgrimage. Forget Holy water or all kinds of benediction-- if you want to go to heaven just join the ruling party. A party membership card to open the gate of heaven--- the revelation of the new millennium is upon us.

Back in the days of the one party rule, a party membership card could get you ration cards and some perks that were in reality crumbs. The same was the case in the new millennium until President Juma came to the rescue. No benefit beats heaven even if the allure of the place would be reduced by the alleged preponderant presence of those whom we called dictators here on earth. Jacob Juma is encouragingly continuing the frank speak of the late Tubman of Liberia who never sought to hide the truth: “I know Tubman is not the president you want or deserve but face it Tubman is the president you got”. Such direct and honest talk sometimes made the burden seem lighter. To borrow a word from the dumbest wordsmith (aka Bush junior) it would not do to “misundersetimate” the importance of honest, direct and even brutal talk. Robert Mugabe calling Carson an idiot was not an insult per se but just, no offense, a value judgment. The hue and cry about multi partism notwithstanding, most African countries are actually one party states. Your vote hardly matters—the ruling party would win by over 95% or else would kill and maim to stay in power. Yet, membership card matters. The ruling party in Ethiopia has now six million members as a graduate needs to flash not his degree but the party membership card to get a job. During the previous totalitarian regime, the party card got you the ration card and your place in the long queue for scarce commodities.

Juma’s vote for the ANC and go to heaven call has introduced new factors into the complicated reality of African politics. If voting for the ANC assures automatic entry into heaven does this mean Juma’s party is God’s favorite? Has God started to take political stands? Where does all this leave the parties of God (Hizballah and others)? Are African opposition Satanists just because they bedevil the ruling parties? Africans hardly need new and difficult questions—life is already too burdensome as it is. And to come back to the main issue: is this total disrespect for our intelligence as African citizens funny? When they tell us vote for us and you shall go heaven and expect us to believe it are we expected to smile or to scream in anger? Juma has disrespected the wise people of South Africa just like other African presidents have done with theirs. The latest report that I have suggests not many South Africans are amused by Juma’s latest gimmick. Africans do not find disrespect funny but try telling this to Juma and African tyrants who think we are babes ready to swallow any lie. It is time we tell Juma and all African tyrants that we believe they are devils on earth and following them will never be a guarantee to go to heaven unless heaven is the dwelling palace of Satan and his followers. A mischievous question raises its head here: what if?

OF WESTERN HYPOCRISY, OBDURATE TYRANTS AND CHANGING TIMES

2011-03-29T09:29:00.000-07:00
As the Bob Dylan song goes, the times they are “achanging”. But, do the lowly tyrants and dictators of our world, or those Western powers who are bonded to their hypocrisy, double standards and greed, see eye to eye with good old Bob?
Is Africa to blame for the “return-of-the-dictators” malady? An extension of a disease that makes the deadly Ebola and other viruses we are believed to have infected the West with look like mole hills at the foot of the Everest.
One notable dictator who got back to power after being ousted was Uganda’s Milton Obote. In his quest for power, Obote ended up butchering more human beings than the blood thirsty Idi Amin. Africa’s autocratic species maintain both their eccentricities and strong urge to maim or kill to satisfy nothing else but their very own whims. Benin’s “call-me-Socialist” Kerekou, crocodile-tears Kaunda and blood-drenched Mengistu are still “awaiting”, thanks to the spirit of our ancestors, as the late Chadian dictator Tombolbaye would have said.
But confining the notion of autocracy to the African continent would do no justice to people of African descent, especially Haitians whose “Americaness” has been questioned time and over again. Their penchant for voodoo, disasters (both natural and man-made), misery and tyrants screams Africa! Even more disturbing is the hero’s welcome the bloody tyrant, Baby Doc Duvalier, got upon his return to northern hemisphere’s bellwether of failure and misery. The priest dictator Aristide’s recent return satisfies an alien logic that only a few can fathom. For me, questions abound: Why do Haitians need these pests if not to put them on trial? Why were not these fellows arrested at the airport? How come tyrants have no qualms, shame or guilt about their actions, past or present?
Tyrants are obdurate and, most of the time, delusional. They imagine they are loved and missed by the very people they had tormented and killed. They think even the dead exhibit the Stockholm syndrome. How can anyone love his/her killer or tormentor? But as Gaddafi put it with cheeky conviction whilst his army ruthlessly slaughtered his own people: "They love me. All my people with me. They love me all. They would die to protect me"…
If, as in the case of Haiti, tyrants stage a comeback (from exile or unto the political stage) are they not boldly telling us that it is up to them to decide to stay in power even when the majority of the population tells them to go to blazes? The presence of Mubarak, who tried to linger on after the people decided to get rid of him, is still felt in Egypt as his system is more or less still in place. And should he decide to stage a comeback into the political setting, as in the case of Haiti, would anything have been achieved?
But at the look of things, Saleh of Yemen is finished although he is refusing to grasp his irrelevance. He is still posturing as a unifier and a bulwark against the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Assad in Syria is trying to weather the storm whilst his administration denies that the protests are, in fact, not protests at all. Gelleh of Djibouti has arrested and tortured opposition leaders and sought help from fellow dictator Meles in Ethiopia who is himself apprehensive of a mass uprising has tried diverting attention by suggesting a possible war with Eritrea. As for Gaddafi, he has sworn to fight on. An act that has forced to him to confront a destructive array of western powers whose alleged concern for Libyan civilian lives in Benghazi has not hampered them from bombarding Tripoli with the savagery the world witnessed some years ago in the former Yugoslavia. The same hype is activated, the media manipulates public opinion and Gaddafi, who is very much like Milosevic and Sadam, an already unsavory fellow for whom only a handful have any serious sympathy, has thus become a proper scarecrow.
And through it all we observe the ugly head of Western hypocrisy and double standards that had for long been a scourge on democracy at world wide level. Hilary Clinton criticized the UAE for sending soldiers into Bahrain along with the Saudis but lamented against it for not joining the so called coalition against Gaddafi. One wonders why the West, especially America, goes through this ridiculous charade of coalition when the whole world knows the main protagonists are America and its western allies. Come to think of it, even Ethiopia was part of the coalition against Iraq!
America refused to label the Saudi intervention into Bahrain as an invasion without explaining how many foreign soldiers have to cross a border with tanks and armored cars for the action to be called an invasion. Are the Saudi soldiers in Bahrain just tourists? It was interesting to hear Obama pronounce the names of Libyan towns with excellent diction whilst at the same time sounded hollow as he expressed concern for the safety of Libyans in those places. There is no doubt that the Libyan upsurge which started in the oil rich and often separatist Cyrenaica has been aided and abetted by foreign elements and later taken over by those who had for long sought the ouster of Gaddafi in order to control its oil riches. The captured Dutch mercenaries, the infiltrated American and British intelligence agents and special force elements may very well prove the assertion.
Sarkozy “the Libyan” also appears as ridiculous as the Westerners’ concern for the lives of Libyan civilians. The strutting of France as a super power, a delusion of grandeur — often exercised on small countries like Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Djibouti and Mali — would have been amusing if it had not been destructive. Sarkozy whose harsh and brutal action against Romas (Gypsies) is fresh on the minds of many; Sarkozy who is being walloped by low popularity ratings in his own country; Sarkozy who has been surpassed at the polls even by the far right wing leader of the National Front only a year away from general elections; Sarkozy, who has had to endure blunders in Tunisia where his foreign minister offered security help to dictator Ben Ali in order to quell popular demonstrations. The sudden posturing of the French President as the guardian of Libyans, arguably, has little to do with concern and everything to do with political gimmicks.
Franco Libyan relations, meaning ties with Gaddafi, were strong and financially beneficial to France and Western powers. Blair and Condoleezza Rice trekked to Tripoli as did Berlusconi who publicly kissed the hands of the Libyan dictator and praised him for being a bulwark against African immigration. In their quest for oil, Britain forgot the Libyan strong man’s sins — the death of police woman Yvonne Fletcher and Lockerbie plane bombing. Instead, they acquiesced to his whims and dealt with Gaddafi as a clean and deserving partner. Gaddafi had become kosher, an ally, halal so to speak.
Thus the task for the Western media in the face of Libya’s unrest was gigantic. The international “bedeviling” of the Gaddafi regime had to be fast. Minutes after the Feudal despot King Idris’ flag was resurrected the image had been beamed across the world. Shortly afterwards, the poorly armed but heroic rebels appeared on our TV screens waving the newly re-adopted flag. And the appearance of Gaddafi “the butcher” on TV was Sadam Hussein redux. Western mass media has indeed not revised its modus operandi.
Why did the West not intervene in Bahrain? In Yemen? Let us take it further: what has the West done to stop the bloodshed in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a tragedy that has caused close to 6 million deaths by virtue of the former’s own greed for the central African country’s mineral wealth? President Obama argues that it is US policy that Gaddafi needs to go. Good! But what about pro-American tyrants like Kabila Jr, Meles, Nguema, and the despots in the Middle East?
In 2005, Meles Zenawi stole an election and murdered more than 275 people in Addis Abeba alone — snipers on rooftops as in Sana’a — but he still enjoys massive US, British and EU financial and military support. There is much hue and cry as concerns Darfur and not a peep on the carnage in DR Congo. France did fine business with the dour and bloody generals in Burma and still pumps oxygen into the life support systems for many African dictators. Any claims by Britain, in the past or now for the matter, to be concerned about the welfare of other peoples, though not funny, is quite laughable. Hence, if Putin calls the campaign against Libya something like the Crusades he does have a point. Only this time it is not a religious Crusade. A crusading political gimmick at its best. It all smacks of an ill concealed colonialist arrogance and violence. Base and crude economic interest is at the bottom of it. Oil.
The times they are “achanging” for sure, but as the saying goes, the more things change the more they stay the same. Mubarak and Ben Ali were allies of Washington. And like them, Gaddafi and Saleh will go as it is the will of the people. The war of the West against Libya, however, has nothing to do with democracy or defending civilians. Other pro-American dictators in Africa and the Middle East will also, undoubtedly, face popular uprising. Meanwhile, Bahrain, as at now, is an indicator that helps us to judge how the West will try to salvage their allies until it becomes diplomatically impossible and it is forced to sing another tu

Haro on Hama Tuma?

2011-02-13T03:13:00.000-08:00
The article I posted, If Only they did not make us Laugh, was taken by Afrik.com,given another title and posted. As luck would have it, a web site said to be close to the Meles Zenawi regime(nazret.com) posted it and dozens of pro regime fellows have declared Haro on Hama Tuma and posted a barage of hate and invectives against poor me. Which of course made my day as anything that annoys the tyrant and his stooges is good.Meles Zenawi is a dictator, an ethnic chauvinist, corrupt and degenerate too.His wife is corrupt to her bones and as vicious as her husband. The system is rotten and hated by the Ethiopian people. I could say more. I did say some in the forementioend article and drove the supporters of the regime into a state of frenzy. Fine. More is to come.

If Only They Did not Make us Laugh

2011-02-13T03:07:00.000-08:00
IF ONLY THEY DID NOT MAKE US LAUGH!

Hama Tuma

I have to admit that vicious and cruel as they are most of our dictators take time out from sadism and try to entertain us in one way or another. Take Egypt’s Mubarak, whose demise has already been concluded by its previous Godfather (Washington) in a hurry to stop a possible Moslem Brotherhood takeover. America is peddling El Baradei and a possible coup while Mubarak is telling Egyptians, who have had enough and are not that gullible, that he backs their quest for freedom and is dismissing all his ministers. Funny man Hosni is parading as a democrat opposed to his own hand picked ministers and expecting the Egyptians to laugh. They are not laughing at all but we from afar are smiling at his ḥaṣāfah (chutzpah or dirkina in Amharic).

As I said they do take time out from plundering and killing us to make us laugh instead at their antics. Take Gbagbo, in Cote d’Ivoire, who refuses to leave State House even if the people had elected another to reside there but who is now forced to stay in a Hotel. African tyrants continue to give the impression that they have dealt with all the major political and economic problems of their countries and can afford to play the political clown like the late Idi Amin and Jean Bedel Bokassa. Take Meles Zenawi going to Europe to take part in a climate change summit along with Western leaders as Ethiopians groan under hyper inflation, high food prices and one party one ethnic rule. The king of Swaziland decreed no girl who reaches puberty will be allowed to have sex for five years so as to decrease the risk of Aids. Gullible foreigners tried to fathom the wisdom of the edict while laughing Swazis knew that the King who married maidens at the yearly so called Reed Festival wanted the maidens untouched and fresh for his picking. The wife of Meles Zenawi, Azeb Mesfin, who was recently exposed for her corruption and spending more than 1.2 million Euros to buy haute couture in Europe, stated with a serious face that she lacks money to pay for her child’s school fees. Funny? You bet! Mubarak should have learnt from her.

Funny still, there was recently a report that Malawi is about to pass a law (Local Courts Bill of 2010) that would make farting in public punishable by law. An envious observer commented that the life of Malawians is going to be very interesting. Another called it a joke on democracy while a loyal supporter of the regime backed it declaring that the act is a disturbance of public order. Someone irritated by the proposed law said: "We have serious issues affecting Malawians today. I do not know how fouling the air should take priority over regulating Chinese investments which do not employ locals, serious graft amongst legislators, especially those in the ruling party”. Another quarter reported: The Bingu wa Mutharika led administration is to introduce a draft of legislation that seeks to criminalize an everyday natural occurrence of “passing gas” with the intention to “mould responsible and disciplined citizens”. For Malawians who are afflicted by starvation and famine much like Ethiopians and other Africans, where do they get the food to eat to their hearts’ content and to foul the air? What do they eat? Are those who do not foul the public air turned by the non- act into responsible and disciplined citizens? Did the tyrants who claim to be responsible and disciplined arrive at this exalted position by avoiding farting in public even if people actually hear them doing so verbally and otherwise at every podium and National Day celebrations?

It is clear that Ben Ali has fled with his family and Mubarak has entered the exit lane. Will others also follow from Algeria to Yemen and Jordan? The Gabonese have struck the match in Africa but will the most repressed like those in Ethiopia and the Sudan (North) follow? Events to watch. In the meanwhile, African lawmakers seem to have little or no work other than to promulgate dumb laws (banning trousers as in the Sudan, underwater sex as in Swaziland, no celebration of Christmas as in Equatorial Guinea under Macias Nguema, and no playing music as in Somalia of the Al Shabab). The list is long but the more the tyrants make a fool of themselves the more we appreciate their effort to be funny no matter our predicament (horrible in most cases). But if we are on the subject of dumb laws the aforementioned can find solace in the fact that other corrupt leaders also issue stupid edicts. Saudi Arabia not only forbids alcoholic beverages and women driving cars but has declared being poor to be against the law--any man not earning a “reasonable” income can be imprisoned. Even in America Bush land Texas has laws that state that when two trains meet each other at a railroad crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed until the other has gone or that it is illegal to take more than three sips of beer at a time while standing. Dumb!

To come back to the main subject, the absurd theatrics of a Mubarak or a Saleh or even of an Ali Bongo is not going to cut it this time around. The wind of change or even Revolution that is blowing in many countries augurs bad for the tyrants. The fall of Saleh and the separation of South Yemen are on the agenda for Yemen. The change of regime and politics in Egypt will impact on the whole Middle East and that Israel and Washington should worry is only proper. The whole process rings the bell of revolt and one hopes the ears of oppressed Africans as a whole are open to hear the chiming to rise up and grasp their destiny to forge a new and fairer day. Better than hearing the pathetic declaration of new, ever strange and stupid laws and edicts which may make us laugh but at the end of the day parody our own self respect as individuals, nations and continent.

Of Paper Tigers

2011-02-01T07:47:00.001-08:00
PAPER TIGERS ARE STILL AROUND

Hama Tuma

The ongoing mass protest and popular change going on in North Africa, the Sudan and the Middle East highlights that the Western powers, for all their strutting, are in most cases paper tigers who cannot prevent a people’s revolutionary uprising. Paper tigers have no teeth and, as a Wiki leak cable revealed vis a vis Egypt, they have no ears either.

Years ago, an Egyptian activist of the April 6 group visited Washington and told the American officials that Mubarak would go before the 2011 general election but they found his information baseless, unrealistic and unsubstantiated by any other intelligence. Talk of being warned! The American officials did not listen and when the Egyptian people rose up to shake the regime to its dirty boots Washington had no other program other than to rush El Baradei to Cairo and conduct a media blitz to present him as a credible opposition leader (which he is not by any measure). Hilary Clinton said Egypt “ is stable” right after the Tunisian uprising started, then went on to call reform from Mubarak, changed tune to “ a transition to democracy” and so forth in confusion and all of it very late. The strongly organized Moslem Brotherhood organization may agree that Washington’s man el Baradei represent the opposition in the negotiations with the regime knowing full well that the main enemy is the Mubarak regime and El Baradei, with no organization behind him, would easily be dealt with. If the Brotherhood comes to power as Israel fears then the fault is Washington’s for backing a dictator to the hilt just as it had done in Iran with the Shah. Egypt under Mubarak has for long been the major US ally in the region (annual military aid US$ 1 billion) and one wonders how come Washington and Israel (the famous Mossad) were caught by surprise. For those who imagine these quarters to be all knowing and omnipotent this is a good lesson indeed. The same happened to France in Tunisia which under Ben Ali was for long the backyard of Paris (let alone the spies, more than a million French tourists visit Tunisia every year). The French were caught off guard, following the people’s protest almost just like you and me. Paper Tigers!

It has been a longstanding confirmed fact that Western powers hobnob with dictators and corrupt officials so much that they lose sight of the reality of the people no matter the number of their spies. Their persistent arrogance also covers their eyes and especially their ears and no matter how often you tell them the storm is brewing they tend to believe it is always a storm in the tea cup. They also rely on their own self declared experts who, more often than not, recycle their own pet conclusions and even prejudices. I remember a week or so into the February 1974 Revolution in Ethiopia, an expert and historian called Edward Ullendorff telling his BBC audience that the Emperor had everything under control. A week before the former prime minister (and now Pentecostal preacher) Tamrat Layne was to be thrown into prison by his former comrade (and now PM), Meles Zenawi, the French ambassador in Addis Ababa sent his government a cable affirming “ Tamrat Layne is on the rise and he is a good friend of France”! In short, they do not know and they do not listen. The more you appeal to the Western powers the more they think you are pathetic, weak, lying, besmirching the name of their favorite tyrant and, as the cable on the Egyptian activist’s warning showed, that you are dreaming and fantasizing of a people’s uprising. In Ethiopia, we have the propagandist Paul Henze and others who categorize every opposition as “remnants of the former regime and Amhara chauvinists” and sing nauseating eulogy of the petty tyrant. And then there are the lobbyists of K Street, down town Washington.

Money can’t buy me love sang the Beatles. The same in politics. The financial power of dictators can’t buy them popular support. Money can’t buy you love but sure can buy you scribes and trumpeters or mouth pieces. In our case, and in Africa as a whole, the tyrants are not so greedy as not to buy lobbyists. Still, America may be a super power but it cannot in the end block the popular revolt of oppressed people be it in Egypt or Ethiopia and beyond. Final decisive power is in the hand of the sovereign people. That this is not a cliché has been once again proven by the events in Tunisia, Egypt, etc and perhaps tomorrow in Ethiopia itself. The 2005 missed change in Ethiopia was sabotaged by America and Britain but the main culprits are the spineless leaders of the Opposition who sold out and brought defeat on the people despite the heavy sacrifice paid. If one imagines the heavy presence of America in Egypt and the massive backing it gave to Mubarak one would be excused to conclude that Mubarak would not be moved by any challenge. This appeared as truth to many so much so that Mubarak himself believed it and was conspiring to name his own son as his successor like in North Korea, Gabon, Togo and Syria. It is safe to conclude now that Washington abandoned Mubarak from the outset and is now trying to salvage the situation in one way or another. Salvage in their vocabulary means sabotaging the people’s struggle in ours. The tyrants who appear invincible are actually paper tigers when confronted by the people’s determined uprising. That is the lesson of Tunisia and Egypt for now and perhaps of Algeria, Yemen and Sudan tomorrow. And who knows of Ethiopia and other countries too. We can say with certainty that Mubarak would go the soft or hard way depending on how the situation, the uprising progresses. The Mubarak attempt to short circuit the people’s revolt through reforms and using the military is bound to fail too. The people are demanding an end to the regime and reform, sincere or otherwise, is not the agenda and would be coming too late. In the broader sense, the time of the tyrants is up. Egyptians gave warning in Mahalla in 2008 and other times too—too bad if Mubarak and his allies slept on their ears as the African tyrants that Washington still defends and supports are doing and failed to listen.

Alas, Ethiopian activists who were not easy dupes in the past –they were actually anti imperialist as they defined themselves—are in a worse situation than the hesitant Egyptian opposition from Wafd to the Nasserites and the Brotherhood. The new animal called politician in Ethiopia is a bizarre creature indeed. It is made up of some, whom we shall politely call naïve though their name is another, who seriously believe that Western troops are in Iraq and Afghanistan to bring democracy to those people and if we beg them hard they will do the same for Ethiopia and others too. The other part of this new animal does not even know who is the enemy and thus accepts the diktat of the local tyrant and the so called advice and “kurkum” of the Western officials. These hope that their patient knocking at the conscience of the West will melt its hard heart and merciless greed in their favor. They know not History. Those who have succeeded to achieve meaningful change or have sent the tyrants packing are usually those who opposed the politics of the Western governments in their countries. The go ahead and green light for a people’s revolution cannot come from Washington, London or Paris. It would be contra nature, a strange occurrence, a sad and never to happen wishful thinking. Won’t happen ever. That is the lesson of all Revolutions and of the events we are witnessing in Tunisia and Egypt. The outcome of the uprising in Egypt is still not settled but the Rubicon has been crossed. One hopes the aspiration of the Egyptian people would not be short circuited or sabotaged as was the dream of Ethiopians for change in May 2005.

check her out

2011-01-19T04:47:00.000-08:00
Magdalawit Makonnen

Magdalawit Makonnen was born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She read an English degree at UCLA and is currently studying for an MFA at Antioch University, Los Angeles. She has been published in many journals.

Wheat on Grass

Moon, you nursed my childhood bruises.
Stream, I only knew you in dreams.
Rain, you were a visitor I welcomed,
face pressed onto window-panes.
Wind, I felt you ripple in the sun.

Those who held hands know how to scatter like wheat on grass.
How to pick peaches from the old peach tree
in the backyard, leaning out from a windowsill,
and pile them in heaps for aunt Azeb
to make a pot of peach-soup with.

To make dreams from the everyday
we’d find objects with dull surfaces to smooth
with our small hands and keep:
candy-wrappers, rusty coins dug from the backyard,
and tiny beads in drawers under piles of old letters…

Knotting elbows, we’d always go walking, and would
look back for the treasures we might have left behind.
It was okay for us to look back then;
for children can do so and survive.

Anthology

2010-11-23T14:51:00.001-08:00
20 September 2010
Book: "No Serenity Here"
NEW BOOK INFORMATION: No Serenity Here
An Anthology of African poetry in English, French, Portuguese Amharic and Arabic translated into Chinese, edited by Kaiyu Xiao, Isabel Ferrin-Aguirre and Phillippa Yaa de Villiers
244 pages
Publisher: World Knowledge Publishers, Shanghai
October 2010
ISBN 978-7-5012-3895-8

Six months, about 1000 e-mails, one facebook chat and here it is: No Serenity Here, a contemporary anthology of African poetry to be launched during the Shanghai Biennale in October 2010. Original poems in English, French, Portuguese, Arabic and Amharic will be published alongside their Chinese translations. The volume includes Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, along with voices from 25 African countries, and was translated by a team of Chinese poets under the guidance of Kaiyu Xiao.

Edited by Xiao in China, Isabel Ferrin-Aguirre in Berlin and Phillippa Yaa de Villiers in Johannesburg, No Serenity Here celebrates established writers such as Ama Ata Aidoo (Ghana), Makhosazana Xaba and Lebo Mashile (South Africa), Veronique Tadjo (Cote d’Ivoire) and Fatima Naoot (Morocco), and introduce lesser known yet brilliant voices like TJ Dema (Botswana), Shailja Patel (Kenya) and Tania Tome (Mocambique), as well as Amanda Hammar and Joyce Chigiya (both from Zimbabwe).

Besides the veterans like Soyinka (Nigeria), Kofi Anyodoho (Ghana), Chirikure Chirikure (Zimbabwe), James Matthews (South Africa) and Keorapetse Kgositsile (South Africa’s Poet Laureate, whose poem lent the title to the anthology), the volume also showcases the prodigious talents of Shabbir Bhanoobhai (South Africa), Nii Ayikwei Parkes (Ghana), Tolu Ogunlesi and Obododimma Oha (Nigeria), Stanley Onjezani Kenani (Malawi) and Beaven Tapureta (Zimbabwe), Keamogetsi Molapong and Dorian Haarhoff (Namibia), Hama Tuma and Alemu Tebeje Ayele (both from Ethiopia).

“We read widely, but it was the contact with contemporary poets that brought the project to life and delivered its unique vibrancy and varied voice,” says Ferrin-Aguirre, who also worked until recently as a programmer for the Berlin Poesiefestival and researcher for the Literatuurwerkstatt, a global database of poets which collects recordings of poets reciting their work in their original languages in its Lyrikline project.

Acclaimed Chinese poet and academic Kaiyu Xiao admits in his foreword: “the poems … would make me physically quiver as the poems shattered my expectations.” Many of the poets are appearing in print for the first time, and most of them for the first time in Chinese.

“African writers have made an important contribution to the world reservoir of thought on the human condition; this is just a small part of the literary wealth that we have to offer. China has given us so much, and I’m proud that we are reciprocating,” said writer and performer de Villiers.

Published by World Knowledge Publishers and commissioned by artist and philanthropist Mr Hu, the tri-continental project also received support from the Jiang Nan Art and Design Foundation and the Moonchu Foundation.

…/ends

For further information contact Phillippa Yaa de Villiers phillippayaa@gmail.com
Isabel Ferrin-Aguirre aguirre_siemer@hotmail.com
Kaiyu Xiao kaiyu@gmx.de

Review by New Internationalist

2010-11-20T13:21:00.000-08:00
The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and Other Stories
by Hama Tuma
(Heinemann ISBN 0-435-90590-2 )

‘Writers in Ethiopia are as rare as peace,’ asserts Hama Tuma and that alone could be reason for welcoming his book. But there are others. The first half consists of satirical stories set in a court of law where such dangerous criminals as queue-breakers and incurable hedonists are tried.

Though the stories are short on plot they have a Swiftean bite: the writing is deceptively simple and admirably taut. The Ethiopia that is revealed in this collection is a land of paradoxes where everyday people must have an array of masks ready to counter the machinations of the militia. As case follows case in the courtroom, the most topsy-turvy arguments are followed to more and more bizarre conclusions. Yet the reader finds the overall picture getting increasingly clear.

Like all good satire the details are worked out for maximum effect, giving the stories a sense of inevitability. The narrator acts as a naive observer who, like the child noticing the Emperor’s nakedness, reveals every discrepancy of an absurdly repressive state through what he says and what he leaves unsaid.

New Book by Berhanu Sertsu

2010-10-27T15:11:00.000-07:00
ግፋ ቢል አዶላና ሌሎች ወጎች
የተባለ መጽሓፍ በገበያ ላይ ዋለ!!

ከየከተማዎቹ በአፈሳና በሰበካ የተወሰዱ ሰዎች በቀድሞው አዶላ በጉልበት ወርቅ አምራችነት ያሳለፉትን ሕይወት የሚዳስስ መጽሓፍ ከአሁን ቀደም ‘የደርግ የእስራት ዘመን’ የሚለውን መጽሓፍ ባቀረበልን በብርሃኑ ሠርፁ ተደርሶ በገበያ ላይ ውሏል። ገዝታችሁ በማንበብ የአዶላን የቀድሞ ገጽታ ተረዱ በሌሎቹም ወጎች ተዝናኑ።
ዋጋው £10.00
ከአውሮፓና ከለንደን በፖስታ ለሚያዙ መላኪያ £3.00
ከአሜሪካ ለሚያዝዙ £5.00
መጽሓፉ በለንደን እንጎቻ የባልትና ውጤቶች መደብር ይገኛል።
ከአስር መጻሕፍት በላይ ለሚያዙ የዋጋ ቅናሽ የሚደረግ ሲሆን በሚከተለው አድራሻ ይጠይቁን።
B_sertsu@hotmail.com

Hama Tuma book published

2010-10-26T06:31:00.000-07:00
AFRICAN ABSURDITIES IV
WHY DON' THEY EAT COLTAN?
to order a copy contact
sankisa@comcast.net
PRICE US $ 15
POSTAGE US $ 3
TOTAL US $ 18

READING HAMA TUMA IN HEBREW

2010-10-18T09:06:00.000-07:00
Reading Hama Tuma in Hebrew
21 June 2009
Written by: Ayelet Dekel

“Languages are not strangers to one another, but are, a priori and apart from all historical relationships, interrelated in what they want to express.”
Walter Benjamin in “The Task of the Translator”

Western culture has a penchant for worshipping the exotic from a safe myopic distance, overlooking the human reality rubbing up against its elbows and knees, unintentionally creating cross-cultural connections comical, frustrating, and inspirational all at once. Israel, literally and figuratively, finds itself somewhere between Europe and Africa. The “people of the Book”, are currently celebrating “Book Week” with hundreds of new titles on display in all the major cities. Despite Israel’s considerable Ethiopian population, the only work of fiction (to the best of this writer’s knowledge) published by an Ethiopian writer this year is Hama Tuma’s The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and Other Stories, translated by Dori Parnes (Ahuzat Bayit 2009). Activist writer-in-exile Hama Tuma’s book is out of print and essentially unavailable in English, and has never been officially published in Ethiopia in either Amharic or English, so if you want to read this brilliantly funny, sensitive, intelligent portrayal of life under Mengistu’s reign of terror, start learning Hebrew.

The book is written in two parts, each consisting of eleven stories. The stories in the first part are all written as court cases, described by a narrator, able to observe and comment, yet not personally involved in the proceedings. This distance allows an ironic humor to permeate the text, as translator Dori Parnes recounts, “The first thing that grabbed me was his humor…then you suddenly reach the second half – it grabs you by the throat. These are the same stories but he tells them with pain.” Hama Tuma, who has been a political activist for freedom and human rights since his student days in the 1960s, “stumbled” into fiction writing when he responded to a BBC call for short stories.

“Vendetta”, the opening story of the book’s second part, was his first work of fiction, growing out of the painful experiences of life under Mengistu’s regime, and the moral dilemmas with which people had to contend on a daily basis. Translator Parnes says of “Vendetta”: “I was stunned when I finished translating it. It wipes the smile off your face and you say to yourself – what was it that I smiled at before?” “Most of it has not been written,” says Hama Tuma of this period in Ethiopian history, “What really happened, happened in a worse way.”

The Hebrew edition is prefaced by Professor Hagai Erlich’s eloquent introduction, providing an historical perspective on the revolution in Ethiopia which began in hope and culminated in oppression. Comparing Mengistu’s reign to that of Stalin, Hitler and Sadam Hussein, Erlich notes that a key to the success of these regimes lay in their ability to release the potential “little Stalin” and “little Adolf” lurking within any of us, and let them take over the hearts and minds of the people. As it happens, while he was translating the book, Parnes read Orlando Figes’ The Whisperers: Private Lives in Stalin’s Russia based on personal archives and interviews. Parnes says, “What 50 years of that government did to a people is more terrible than what Hitler did in 12 years. People were born into it. The books complement one another, I didn’t have much comfort between the two…When you read one and translate the other, your dreams at night are not very pleasant.”

“A lot of people collaborated out of fear,” says Hama Tuma, “They denounced others or didn’t help. It is a sad part of our history, we should live it as such, or else nothing is learned. I offer my stories as a suggestion: we should look for another way of solving the problems.” Hama Tuma’s stories penetrate the heart, mind and dreams. His humor is grounded in unflinching honesty, nurtured by a wellspring of hope, a sense of fun and mischief: “to prick their serious balloons.”

Parnes originally translated two of Hama Tuma’s stories at the request of Doron Tavory, artistic director of Hazira Performing Arts Center, for a stage adaptation to be performed by the Netela Theatre Company. “It suddenly aroused my curiosity,” says Parnes, who went to great lengths to acquire a copy of the book, feeling, “there is something here that seems to me important.” In his essay “The Task of the Translator”, Walter Benjamin discusses the way that a translation reveals the hidden connections between languages, saying that a good translation will bring some of the “foreign,” of the other language and culture into the text of the target language. Reading his translation inspired my own quest to locate the author, as described in “Finding Hama.”

The relationship between Israel and Ethiopia is ancient and current, certainly complex. The Ethiopian monarchy considered themselves descendents of King Solomon and the Jewish community there, known as Beta Israel, has ancient roots. Israelis are also mentioned in the book as having trained the Ethiopian military in interrogation techniques. As Parnes notes, “Our excellent young men went to give them all sorts of tips…Why must Israel be involved in the ugliest things?” This journey from Addis Abbaba, through Paris, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv brings forth a work of fiction in Hebrew that makes Ethiopia a more vivid part of our lives, to reflect on Israel’s relationship to Ethiopia and by extension, the situation of Ethiopian Israelis. Says Parnes, “I am curious to know if the book will reach the members of the Ethiopian community in Israel and what feelings it will arouse in them.”

Our lives and histories are interconnected in mysterious ways, on a cultural and personal level. The difficulties of translation may sometimes bring us closer to the text, as in the story “Madman, Killer, Saint, You…” in which a seriously injured political activist is hospitalized, his accusers await his recovery so that they can force him to reveal information, and he asks the attending physician to help him escape this fate by assisting his death. In contemplating this dilemma the doctor reflects on his younger brother, also a political activist, and the male nurse also plays a central role. In translating the story Parnes was confronted with a problem “because Hebrew has this thing you are stuck with – the same word means “brother” and “nurse”. I was afraid it would be confusing, so I wrote “head nurse” and as the story continued I slowly removed the word “head”. Having established the identity of the character as a nurse in the hospital, Parnes gave himself the freedom to let the word and its dual associations work in the reader’s mind.

I feel that it is this kind of relationship to the text that Benjamin had in mind when he referred to a translation as revealing the relationships between languages, one that can extend to cultures and the individuals within them. To paraphrase Benjamin, Parnes’ translation of Hama Tuma reminds us that “people” are “not strangers to one another…but are interrelated in what they want to express.”

Book Launching: “The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and Other Stories”
By Hama Tuma, Translated by Dori Parnes, Ahuzat Bayit 2009–06–21

NEW BOOK PUBLISHED

2010-10-18T05:11:00.000-07:00
HAMA TUMA'S FOURTH AFRICAN ABSURDITIES BOOK HAS NOW BEEN PUBLISHED. TITLED WHY DON'T THEY EAT COLTAN? IT CONTINUES IN THE TRADITION OF THE PREVIOUS THREE WITH BITING SATIRE AND CRITICISM OF THE POWERS THAT HAVE MADE OUR LIVES SO MISERABLE.

Tragedy of Remaining a Slave

2010-09-24T01:06:00.000-07:00
THE TRAGEDY OF REMAINING A SLAVE

Hama Tuma

"Education for colonial people must inevitably mean unrest and revolt; therefore, had to be limited and used to inculcate obedience and servility lest the whole system be overthrown."

W. E. B. Du Bois

"It is the white man who creates the Negro. But it is the Negro who creates negritude."

Frantz Fanon

"White is right
Yellow mellow
Black, get back!"
Langston Hughes

Diatribe it is not. Certainly not vitriolic. Anger at a sad situation? Maybe. Fury at our inability to be free? Perhaps. The whole thing was spurred by me seeing a security guard at a super market asking (once again) a black man to open his bag for inspection.

Africans who live in Paris know a particular African species, black of course, often bald and muscular, sometimes puffed up but still looking less menacing and more pathetic, dressed in a cheap standard issue black suit, sometimes wearing dark sunglasses, often found at the doors of super markets and department stores. Maybe the species exists elsewhere. This is no African to be categorized as a paperless émigré, a street cleaner, a frightened unemployed soul, the majority, as it were, in the increasingly unwelcoming capital that Paris has become. This special species is the security guard, the keeper of His Masters gates, a trusted mastiff, underpaid but still proud--he has a job and he has his working papers in order. Two valuable things that thousands other Africans do not have at all. These guards and elderly white women share the same phobia --they fear the African. In the Metro or in the buses, if an African stands close to her, the elderly white woman will usually hold her purse tighter after casting a fearful glance towards him. The black, often African, security guard will also stare at the African entering the supermarket or the department store, follow him with his eyes and more often than not accost him as he leaves to ask him to open and show the contents of his bag just as (or while) the whites, some of whom may have indulged in shoplifting away from the prying eyes of the camera, calmly walk out. "Good day Bwana, Have a nice day Sir, Please open the bag!"-- This last one addressed to the African, of course. At the airport, the black policeman or woman soften stop the black person and rarely dare to do the same with the white ones.

It is all connected to the colonization of the mind, an inculcated self hatred and inferiority complex. There is no denying that the slave trade and colonialism ruined Africa to no end and that the wounds open up even today to debilitate Africa's search for development and overall progress. That said, it is equally true that all of Africa's woes cannot be traced back to those two evils even though 50 years after the so called independence from colonialism, the enslaved African bourgeoisie owes its rottenness and lack of nationalism to the colonial (mis)-- education and formation. Colonialism was wanton murder but it was really worse than that. True that Germans almost wiped out the Herero in Namibia, the French killed thousands over thousands in the Maghreb, the British committed heinous crimes in Kenya and in their colonies, the Belgians slaughtered 15 million Congolese, Mussolini killed at least one million Ethiopians as he attempted to colonize Ethiopia, but all this and other crimes pale when it comes to the crime of the colonization of the minds of millions of Africans. The former passed, the latter crime still persists. Slave owners of America called it seasoning, the deculturization process that knew no end, leading to total subservience of the mind and the acceptance of the slave holder's beliefs. The slave hated himself or herself, his culture, his blackness, his name his, kinky hair, lips and nose and in general his very being. This variety of "epistemic violence", as some call it, afflicted many colonized Africans and Indians too. Structurally, British colonial control over India ended a longtime ago but the British left "persons, Indian in blood and color, but British in taste, in opinions, morals and in intellect". Indian society worships the white skin, hates black and millions of the untouchables are, yes, quite black. In Kenya, a typical example was the Attorney General Charles Njonjo who assumed he was British and refused to shake hands with ordinary Kenyans thereby provoking the anger of Kenyan students who, when they demonstrated, often held placards calling on Njonjo to " Go Home to England!". And they were not joking at all.

Brainwashing is another word for it, massive brainwashing or what some have called "menticide". Mental colonialism as the Iranian Jalal Al-e Almadi argued in his book Occidentosis. It has afflicted most colonized peoples. African Americans had to struggle against "seasoning" to decolonize their minds, to realize that black is also beautiful. It took a long time and is still not victorious. Even James Baldwin, as Eldridge Cleaver put it in his "Soul on Ice", could himself qualify as a "reluctant black", Malcolm X and others had to spend hours "conking" their hairs. The struggle for national liberation in Africa was not accompanied by a cultural struggle that was just as fierce. The African leaders and ruling elite left in power by colonialism were black in colour but white at heart and in desire. The Western companies that make skin lightening creams and lotions profit millions in Africa and India as their products spread skin diseases and reinforce the feeling of self loathing. Having a pale or white skin has become a must. Many colonized people bleach their skins, want to identify themselves with the colonial entity, are ashamed of their origin and punish their hairs. The French refer to light skinned blacks as the "saved colors" (couleur sauvé) meaning saved by a miracle from the disaster that would have been "being black". Even in Ethiopia, where colonialism never took place, we talk of color of various hues, differentiating Ethiopians as black, red and brown--ignorance being bliss and you can imagine what color is frowned upon. Wearing wigs over kinky hairs has earned millions for wig makers (Comedian Chris Rock has made an interesting film on the hair issue amidst African Americans). And the African male is accused of going wild for blondes fulfilling the white stereotype of ages--the black man yearning and lusting for blue eyed blondes. We are the eternal King Kongs, no? This is the most serious colonial crime committed on Africa--the colonization of our minds, now continued by the West under new forms. The African yearns to be a caricature of the white, to ape the white man's culture, to have little or no self respect. We do not even consider ourselves able to express our woes and look up to self appointed stars and foreign self declared do-gooders to voice our plight and find us some solutions. The African was colonized and now he himself, devoid of an independent mind, continues with his own colonization, perpetuates negritude.

I am, however, of the opinion that Afro centrist positions often reflect, albeit in reverse and at times unwittingly, the base inferiority complex that characterizes the colonized mind. We do not have to insist that everything under the sun originated with the black person or in Africa to be proud of our heritage. Mobutu launched the authenticité campaign and changed his name from Joseph Desiree Mobutu to Mobutu Sese Seko Wazabanga but that did little to change his colonized mind or state of servility to the West. Civilization, what is right, progress and what is or is not modern are all relative and not always white. The concept of the mind as an occupied territory, this same mind becoming the enemy within of the assimilated "natives", filled with self contempt, who imbibe the education of the colonizer (language and all) and become carbon copies of the colonizer highlights the confusion and debilitating trauma and tension the colonized have to live under. Ngugi wa Thiongo, in his book "The Decolonization of the Mind", raises the problem as it relates to language and the dominance of English. He argues that writers should write in their native languages as a means of decolonization of the mind. How far is the relevance and even importance of Western education? Should the African elite feel proud and gloat just because, as one Western African put it, he has "sat at the foot of the white man and drank from the fountain of knowledge" in some Western university and got a degree. And yet the resort to what is generally known as tradition is fraught with deadly mines. Automatic deliverance is not offered--actually this solution may be worse than the problem in many instances. Harmful traditions are many; the overall rejection of all that is labeled Western (what is really Western and not universal?) could also be disastrous. After all the Taliban mind is not decolonized, they and the likes of the Somali Al Shabab, who rile against music, sports and the rights of women and decapitate, stone or throw acid at the faces of young girls going to school, are not a better deal over the colonized mind. Choose your poison.

Hence, the black security guards and policemen who tend to believe that all blacks are first class suspects are not to be blamed--they need to be pitied. Next time you go to a supermarket or a department store, do open your bags voluntarily to give the black security guards articles and books on the need to decolonize our minds. It is tragic to stay a slave and not know it at all. Fifty years after mostly fake independence, the real liberation of Africa demands an end to servility and to the colonization of our minds.

Letter sent to Columbia University president

2010-09-15T23:54:00.000-07:00
Office of the President.
Columbia University,
New York.

SIR,

i am an Ethiopian writer and some years back I had presented my book in your university. I am addressing to you this protest letter following the announcement that Columbia University has invited the bloody Ethiopian tyrant to make a key note address on African leadership. What makes the matter worse is the eulogy made by the university concerning the dictator,presenting him as an innovator and falsely declaring that Ethiopia has progressed under his leadership and that of his TPLF cabal.
Meles Zenawi, the predator of the free press, is responsible for genocide in Gambella, massacres in the Ogaden, Water, Adebabaye Iyesus, Anwar mosque and many other places. He holds close to 35,000 political prisoners including Judge Ms Birtukan Midiksa, has disappeared dozens of political dissidents including Ms Aberash Berta and Tsegaye Gebre Medhin. Torture is routine and very very cruel and inhuman punishments the norm. In 2005, Meles had more than 200 people killed in Addis Abeba because they legitimately protested against his rigging the general election. Mels Zenawi presides over an ethnic organization and practices discriminatory ethnic politics. There is little in the record of this gross human rights violator that calls for admiration and , hence, the surprise and indignation at the whitewashed presentation of the tyrant by Columbia University.

As an Ethiopian and as a citizen struggling for democracy in Ethiopia,I strongly protest against the invitation made by the University to the dictator Meles. It is an injustice and a sad example of supporting a dictator to the detriment of millions of people who are repressed now but will surely rise in the near future to get rid of the dictatorship.

Stand on the side of justice, human rights and solidarity with oppressed peoples.

regards.

Hama Tuma

of Gadafi and Arab Racism

2010-09-04T08:36:00.000-07:00
OF COLONEL GADAFI AND ARAB RACISM

"We don't know what will happen, what will be the reaction of the white and Christian Europeans faced with this influx of starving and ignorant Africans,"( Col Gaddafi said in Rome, August 30/ 2010.

Arab racism to wards Africans has for long been taboo subject--it is politically incorrect to even say that Arabs who are Moslems are racists to boot and consider Africans--Moslem or Christian it does not matter- as inferior.

Reference is made to the Genesis and the three sons of Noah – Ham, Japheth and Shem with Arabs claiming that “the accursed Ham was the progenitor of the black race; that Japheth begat the full-faced, small eyed Europeans, and that Shem fathered the handsome Arabs with beautiful face and hair.” Arab philosophers also laid the ground for the racism of their kin towards Africans and all blacks. Ibn Sina (Avicenna 980–1037), Arab’s most famous and influential philosopher/ scientist in Islam, described blacks as “people who are by their very nature slaves.” He wrote: “All African women are prostitutes, and the whole race of African men is abeed (slave) stock.” He equated black people with “rats plaguing the earth.”
Ibn Khaldum, revered especially by Algerians, an Arab historian stated that “Blacks are characterized by levity and excitability and great emotionalism,” adding that “they are every where described as stupid.” Al-Dimashqi, often described as an Arab pseudo scientist wrote, “the Equator is inhabited by communities of blacks who may be numbered among the savage beasts. Their complexion and hair are burnt and they are physically and morally abnormal. Their brains almost boil from the sun’s heat…..” Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadhani said of black people: “…..the zanj (the blacks) are overdone until they are burned, so that the child comes out between black, murky, malodorous, stinking, and crinkly-haired, with uneven limbs, deficient minds, and depraved passions…..”

Colonel Gadafi of Libya has continued in this tradition albeit masquerading as a Pan Africanist though he has been attempting since the early 70s to Arabize Africa.
Gadafi may not be an honorable man but he sure is a desperate man. He paid two hundred Italian female models 70 to 80 Euros each to listen to his lecture on Islam and his infamous Green Book. He told them quite blatantly that "Islam should become the religion of Europe" and gave them free copies of the Koran, after he had lectured them for an hour on the "freedoms" enjoyed by women in Libya. Where does one find women who are free in Libya? Is he referring to the majority forced to wrap themselves up like burritos in black covering dresses in the stifling heat? Or to the majority of women beaten as a matter of routine by the males including his notorious son Seif al Islam who has already shamed himself in Genève and Paris as a criminal spoiled brat? And then again, Gadafi may be called a realist in that he knew not many people would voluntarily come to his lectures unless they get paid. For a vain dictator that he is, this is a commendable foresight and grasp of the cruel reality of his cheap worth especially when compared to other dictators who relish and wallow in their own lies and propaganda.

It is all a matter of perspective and having a modem of respect for the truth, for numbers, for the people and Africa as a whole. For all his claims to the contrary, Gadafi has no respect for Africa and Africans. This is not just manifested by how he treats African workers and asylum seekers (very, very inhumanely), nor by his self declaration as the King of All African tribes but mainly by his deeply ingrained chauvinism and pretension to be an African Messiah. No wonder he refers to Africans as starved and ignorant and violates the rights of Africans in Libya. Gadafi, in his recent visit to Rome, even went as far warning Europeans to beware of the starving and ignorant barbarians: "We don't know if Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions." The desert prisons of Libya (some just containers for goods) are filled with African asylum seekers. Algeria refers to blacks as Kahlusha and black Africans are spat upon in many Algerian cities. The same is true in Morocco and Tunisia. Mauritania, its majority black and its minority considering itself as Arab, still has the salve system in place as was the case in Southern Sudan where the "natives" were compared to "haiwanin" (animals) by the self declared Arab North. The same so called Arab Sudanese are considered as abeed or slave in Saudi Arabia. The claim that Muslims cannot be racist is debunked in the Holy Land of Moslems itself where Africans on the Hajj pilgrimage are victimized by Arab racism and contempt. Lebanon has time and again shown its ugly racism towards Africans in its vile treatment of domestic workers from Ethiopia and other African countries. This crude racism was in evidence when an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed just off Beirut and the Lebanese authorities ignored the Ethiopian victims and their relatives and focused on the few Lebanese who were aboard. Even Arab Sudanese were called Nubian monkeys by the Lebanese police at one time. Egypt, itself an African country calling itself Arab, the Nubians and all blacks are discriminated against. Anwar Sadat was not happy when he heard a film on his life would have an African American actor portraying him and the late Hassan II of Morocco was never amused by a reference to his black ancestry.
Arabs think they are superior and exhibit racism towards Africans. This is the undeniable truth. Let alone white skinned Arabs even the black skinned ones (Sudan for example) consider themselves superior by virtue of their self declared Arab identity. Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia hoodwinked Gadafi and got Libyan aid during the struggle against Mengistu by assuring Gadafi that Ethiopians are Arabs, Zenawi (Meles' father) a Yemenite and that Ethiopia under Meles will join the Arab League. Over the years Libya has been accused of racism and of officially provoking the beating and killing of African migrants. Gadafi's pan African pretensions have always appeared shoddy and hollow as a consequence and his recent statement in Europe-- calling Africans ignorant and barbarian invaders-- has nailed his coffin as an Arab racist. Gadafi has brutally deported thousands of Africans and Saudi Arabia is doing the same every week. The degenerate Sheikhs and princes (who drink alcohol and maintain harems) have hypocritically been subjecting blacks to cruel punishment on flimsy charges of drinking alcohol, adultery and what have you. An Ethiopian woman was hanged in public in Riyadh a few years back while Saudi women who beat up and throw acid at the faces of African domestic workers have never been charged or tried. How many black skinned Libyans, Omanis, Saudis, Algerians and Moroccans hold high positions of government in their own respective countries?
There was a time early in his reign when the young colonel was somewhat funny with his proposal of unity to all and sundry countries with Sicily excepted, his female bodyguards, his tent palace, and his air of a true Bedouin lost in oil and a modern century. But that time has passed. Gadafi the racist has for long been also Gadafi the dictator, killing off his opponents both inside and outside the country, financing the likes of Fode Sankoh in Sierra Leone and meddling in the affairs of other countries like Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Liberia, etc. During his Rome visit recently , Gadafi asked the EU for 5 billion Euros to block black Africans from Invading Europe and turning the continent into "another Africa" ( that is for Gadafi into a continent of starving and ignorant black barbarians). Yet, he told Europeans to open their doors to rich Libyans and offered to the Italian female models he paid to attend his lecture that he can find them Libyan husbands so that they can be free like Libyan women. We can still take all this as funny but his alliance with Berlusconi has not augured well for Africans. Gadafi in not funny, no--he is just a pathetic racist Arab who should be shunned by all of Africa.

Are Despots Intelligent?

2010-06-24T12:15:00.000-07:00
ARE DESPOTS INTELLIGENT?
Or (Forgive Me for Asking)
IS MELES ZENAWI INTELLIGENT?

This is really a joke, a pastime actually as dictator and intelligent are oxymoron. Sort of an idiot Savant, a fine mess, a little pregnant, accurate rumors. An Amhara Weyane and abundant poverty. Of late some quarters have insisted on calling the tyrant in Addis Abeba intelligent at a time when he is blatantly rigging an election while at the same time insisting on calling Robert Mugabe a blundering fool. When Idi Amin of Uganda was engineered by Britain and Israel to stage his coup against "Socialist" Milton Obote the British media was quick to mention and even praise his "native" intelligence. Native was the code word used for covering up "almost illiterate brute soldier of British colonialism". Toe the line and you will be called intelligent.

The whole charade stems from two sources or motivations: the fist one being that notorious racist prejudice which makes a coherent black person intelligent, "surprise, surprise the Kaffir boy knows how to talk at least!". Or as the surprised Italian fascist officer said in a famous Ethiopian poem: "I saw the blacks eating like human beings" sort of surprise. In my own experience I have met this monster many times, with my listeners being surprised that I could explain the situation in my country and Africa as a whole and even debate with them. Without being cruel I have to state it is like the monkey doing new tricks very well, the ape speaks English and he can hold his own in a debate, hallelujah! And thus every street smart smooth talker becomes an intelligent person, with qualifications of course. As Santiago Carrillo, the late leader of the Spanish CP said it, "to ask for Western type democracy in countries like Ethiopia and Vietnam is to bray at the moon". He was arguing that Ethiopians have to make do with a brutal colonel called Mengistu and his fake democracy as Carrillo, a pro Soviet to boot, was supporting the tyrant backed by Moscow. Thus, intelligent is by our own reduced standard, no one is comparing Meles with even any joke of a western miserable leader, mind you. The tyrants have used this prejudice to their own advantage as expected, they wear their Yes Bwana smile as a permanent fixture, they do the slave dance to perfection ( as Meles did sometime ago backing Sarkozy and Obama and betraying Africa in Copenhagen), repeat the buzz words that please the ears of the donors and, presto or voila, whichever you prefer, they or he appear as intelligent. When they say Meles is intelligent they do not mean he is crafty, devious, sneaky, able to hide his ignorance, intriguer, cruel, and a docile puppet, no. Meles said give me an opposition lest I become corrupt with absolute power and they clapped (intelligent was the cry). The dictator of Turkmenistan was one step ahead as he said: there are no opposition parties so how can I give them freedom? An intelligent chap!

The second reason for some calling these depots intelligent is because they are their puppets, instruments of neo colonial domination, and their mercenaries. Albert Camus called an intellectual an unsuccessful idiot and the late Walter Rodney defined the dictator as follows:
"A dictator is defined as one who elevates himself above all other citizens and often makes claims to be closer to God than mere mortals. Emperors, kings and nobles of the feudal period easily became dictators because they could justify despotic acts on the grounds that royal power and authority were of sacred origin. In more modern versions of dictatorship, the absolute ruler has to fabricate an elaborate cult of the personality to prove that he is more intelligent, more potent and generally superior to any other human being. Idi Amin fancied himself not only a physical giant but also as an intellectual giant. Besides, he boasted of a direct line to Allah. Eric Gairy, our Caribbean ex-dictator, dabbled in obeah and convinced himself that he was better than the world's leading scientists and would personally solve the problem of unidentified flying objects. This is the stuff of which dictators are made". Not intelligence at all unless one mistakes vulgar notions and instinct for intelligence.

Back in 2008 TV personality Barbara Walters went to Damascus and called dictator Bashr Al Assad an intelligent and charming man. The friend of many African dictators, peanut farmer Jimmy carter, went to Korea and declared "I find Kim Il Sung to be vigorous and intelligent". Castro came to Addis Abeba, talked to the killer who declared: "I hate hurting even a fly" and publicly declared "Mengistu is an honest revolutionary!" America's admired and "intelligent" allies ranged from El Salvador's General Maximiliano Hernandez (the very man of the occult who said "it is a great crime to kill a fly than a man because men are resurrected while flies die forever") to Ian Smith, apartheid Botha, Mobutu and Samuel Doe, Franco and Videla, Pinochet and Papadopoulos, Suharto and Nguema ( the latter who said "I am in permanent direct contact with God and the only man who can kill and will never go to hell" and then went ahead to slaughter thousands in Equatorial Guinea), So long as the dictators are theirs they are called intelligent. Washington, London, Berlin and the EU as a whole bankroll the dictator in Ethiopia. One western diplomat in Addis Abeba has gone on record admiring Meles Zenawi's capability to lie outright and in more than four directions. He is so intelligent he can rig elections, slaughter hundreds and stay in power! The man who makes a fine mess-- intelligent!

The admired native intelligence of Idi Amin (His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Conqueror of the British Empire [CBE] in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular and King Of Scotland”)
fast evaporated when he started to step on British and Western interests. He quickly became a monster, a fool, a cannibal, a savage, anything but intelligent. The "demonization" of all those who refuse to toe the line of the West is swift, cruel and relentless--just ask Gadafi, Mugabe, Sadam and others. The very people who praise Baathist and dictator par excellence Basher as intelligent would not be caught dead uttering one word of consideration as regards Sadam for example though he was a close ally of America at one time. Mengistu became crude and cruel because he was pro Soviet and not because he killed Ethiopians en masse which the new darling of Washington, a.k.a Meles, has also been doing more discreetly and in earnest. The political alliance and consideration dictates the qualification. In actual fact, where there is intelligence there is knowledge and this does not mean vulgar and pedestrian groping to get one's way by all means necessary, selling the country and the people wholesale if need be as Meles and others have done without qualms. It does not also mean power or authority but rather on how one obtains power and how he or she uses it. The West back then in the mid forties considered Mussolini civilized and mocked at Ethiopians trying to defend their country. The fascist was intelligent as was Hitler with whom many American companies such as General Motors, DuPont, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Davis Oil co., Ford, ITT, Chase National Bank, etc did brisk business, forget Nazism please, be intelligent. "Henry Ford was a good friend of Hitler and his book The International Jew inspired Hitler's Mein Kampf and the Fuehrer kept Ford's picture in his office and Ford was one of the four foreigners to receive the German's highest civilian award", wrote one fact finder. Intelligent people all around--they pay the piper and even the song is theirs. The intelligent West also did business with and backed the intelligent regime of apartheid in South Africa.

Of course, we may be crying foul because we have failed to understand the very meaning of being intelligent. If being intelligent means being a tyrant, a cruel murderer. a corrupt embezzler, a liar, an election rigger, a Western puppet, a traitor to one's own people and nation, a complete idiot with the right buzz words and not so terrible English, then Meles and other tyrants and their thieving wives are indeed intelligent. If we take intelligence as cleverly disguised stupidity then intelligent people are ruling us and making our lives so miserable that we want to intelligently but definitively remove them from power and the face of the earth. In the end all this can be taken just as an important trivia.

Useful Delusioon

2010-04-23T08:48:00.001-07:00
THE USEFUL DELUSION OF BEING INDEPENDENT

Without going deep into the not so negligible difference between an illusion (more of a perceptual problem) and a delusion (concerning belief despite facts to the contrary) it is safe to state that most of Africa suffers from the delusion of being independent fifty years after some 18 African countries allegedly gained their "independence" from Colonialism which was a tricky monster if there ever was one.

Colonialism came with the Bible in one hand and as the Africans bowed to pray the white man took the land and their alleged freedom (at least from being colonized by a foreign country). Colonialism played many tricks on gullible Africans and its most damaging joke was to declare that it has left (front door exit) while actually rushing back in through the back door (neo colonialism using the black bourgeoisie). The puppets wearing black masks, denounced so bitterly in another way, Black Skins White Masks, by Frantz Fanon for one, were quick to declare that formal independence (flags and a native government that played the puppet role to the hilt) was actually the real thing while the delusion was being promoted as actual. A national flag, a black oppressor in a Mercedes Benz and a Rolls Royce, palaces and corrupt and hedonistic existence for the few and Africans were expected to hail this as freedom and salvation. Those who said the Emperor was actually naked and that colonialism has continued in a new garb (with the old stink in place) were quickly silenced. Belgian and CIA agents collaborated to have Patrice Lumumba murdered. Freedom fighters Um Nyobe, Felix Moumie and later on Mondlane, Machel and Cabral were gotten rid off in one way or another. Pan Africanists with a strong anti imperialist stance were made victims of foreign engineered coups as in Ghana and Nkrumah. Colonialism never left but wore a new mask, Africa was doomed as the traitors had a field day selling the whole continent without any scruples or qualms.

The one party state that was the darling of the West fleecing Africa through a corrupt and malleable strongman (Mobutu is a good example) went against any notion of democratic governance. Rebellions were bound to erupt here and there and the colonizers had to spread again the virus of what Nyrere called "tribalism"and is nowadays referred to as "ethnicism", the "Ethnic assaulting the Nation" as Samir Amin put it in a book. Africa's desire to consolidate nation states broke against the iceberg of ethnic assault and the division helped carry the goal of the rapacious West to its zenith. (Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union were also to become victims of this sponsored ethnic or nationality assault). Worse still, even the ethnically or nationally cohesive people like the Somalis succumbed to the virus, divided on clan levels and are still going on with their carnage no matter what. Yet, we must admit that, fifty years on, the delusion of independence is no more a big problem--we all know few African countries are really independent. Actually, the two countries that had never been colonized, mainly Ethiopia and Liberia, are also fine examples of dependence and neo colonial servility. Liberia was handed over to freed American slaves and these imposed their corrupt rule over the "natives" with the help of America and North American companies like Firestone rubber company and when the jury of revenge came (via the Samuel Doe coup) it was indeed violent (Tolbert and many ministers were summarily shot). Liberia was not independent in the 19th century and is not so now either. Ethiopia was never colonized (maybe the Ethiopians read the Bible before the white man and were not duped to close their eyes and pray) but the regimes in power for more than seventy years were/are puppets of foreign powers (USA and the Soviet Union) and Ethiopians have never realized their dream of democratic governance. This is not to say that there was little difference between the colonised and the not colonized (perhaps there is some in the psyche and type of wounds) but it is to assert that colonialism did not leave, not ever, but stayed on with more fangs and new garbs. As I said, colonialism is a tricky monster.

Like it can even change colour and appearance given the fact that China is now busy replacing the old and known plunderers. As a Young Turk plunderer, China seems to have little or no scruples other than fiercely pursuing its own national interests but it has learnt the moves and gives lip service to the "delusion", the flag and the false belief in a non existent sovereignty. Buttering up our ego, telling us we are rich and proud when we are poor and miserable and they are taking away our wealth and backing our killers (Beshir, Meles, Mugabe, etc). In reality, the assault on our pride and self respect has been so strong that most of us have succumbed to self hate (a bonanza for the skin lightening product manufacturers for example) and lack of self confidence. We claim that partaking wisdom at the feet of the white man is all, we speak English or French and we are wise and we know it all (as opposed to the "ignorant" majority that doesn't), and our salvation can only come from the good will of the new colonizers. The pathetic souls who pray "Our Father who art in the White House" are good examples of this malady. The dependence and absolute lack of belief in the strength and power of one's people is very damaging especially in light of the real situation in which there seems little hope of achieving meaningful social change peacefully. And yet, it is sadly true that the armed rebels claiming to fight for our liberation have turned out to be murderous thugs ( Renamo, RUF, LRA and others), lumpen guerrillas if you want. Our misery is compounded; colonialism is dead but long live colonialism is not a dead cry.

It is of course possible to contend that we should be left alone with our delusions. It is probable that if one takes one's hell as a paradise then the suffering may appear less (illusion). Ethiopian say if we call it life dwelling in the graveyard may be comfortable or warm. The perspective matters. If the poor man does not drink butter in his dream he would have died sooner from constipation is another favourite saying in Ethiopia. Delusion plays a role. Instead of a white Bwana governor we have a black native oppressor--is there no difference? Isn't it better if we delude ourselves that there is a difference especially when we cannot find an iota even using a magnifying glass for investigation? Less expectation, less frustration. More delusion, less pain. The bastards have not left (blood diamonds, blood Coltan, a whole continent plundered without mercy) but why not delude ourselves that they have? Viewed from this angle, the delusion of independence makes our graveyard feel warm. We all know we live in a "cold" continent so why harp on it and shiver when we can embrace our delusion and sweat from the imagined heat?

The Return of the Coup

2010-04-23T08:46:00.000-07:00
THE RETURN OF THE COUP

Those who had been claiming that Africans enjoy sequels and the comfort of the misery they are used to have now been vindicated. The return of the coup d'etat highlights and confirms this for all to see. Expectedly, there would be those cynics who would ask "why not the coup?" indeed when civilian power holders are corrupt and their sanity really in question.

Take the case of Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, another of the African leaders who want to pass power to their sons. For long, old man Wade acted almost as if the Cabinda mess was not in his house and paraded as an international peace maker ("let me help in Kashmir please" but there were no takers, alas).The delusion or confusion went on to mess up the situation in Senegal (so much so that some claim the country will soon have its own Islamist hardliners problem) and has led to the ridiculous project of spending more than US$ 30 million to erect an African Renaissance monument. Unmitigated waste and the monument has already been called ugly by none other than the world famous Senegalese sculptor Ousmane Sow. Isn't Wade really asking, nay begging, for a coup? Travel to the east of our continent and the Ethiopian dictator, who has sold 3 million hectares of fertile land to the Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, Saudi Arabians, etc has also spent millions on a monument (one of many) for the victims of the Red Terror of the previous regime while almost all Ethiopians know that the present dictator is also hunting down the same people (the EPRP) who were victims of the Terror. The Swaziland King is also begging for a coup as are Deby of Chad, Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Beshir of the Sudan and the sick and incapacitated Nigerian president. No wonder the coup has come back with a vengeance removing fossil in Guinea, Mauritania, Guniea Bissau and Mali and threatening to do the same elsewhere too.

Actually, many of the present African leaders going through the funny motion of refusing to accept within the AU any coup maker are themselves notorious coup makers. Campaore, Sassou, Nguema, Beshir, Gaddafi and more made their own coup in their own time. Others usurped power, few are freely elected and almost all are corrupt dictators. The AU atmosphere reeks of coups and the military, the Armani suits notwithstanding. The African situation continues to make the coup an enticing alternative. If ignorant military officers like Idi Amin and Bokassa and Samuel Doe can take over power who can blame other sergeants if they say why not me or us indeed? It is our turn to eat sort of claim as they say in Kenya. The lowest level had been reached; there is nowhere to go but high up even with a slightly educated sergeant. Who can also forget that the coup was a gift given to Africa by the former colonial powers and new would be masters like America? Independence in the sixties led to unfurling a flag and going through the motions od being free while colonial or neo colonial puppets came to power to rob the countries blind. The deception was great, the disappointment unbearable. An yet there were sparks, harbingers of hope or at least those promising change and national pride and self governance but these were extinguished fast and furious by the West. Patrice Lumumba was murdered and Mobutu helped to stage his coup eventually and to assume absolute power. Nkrumah was ousted by a coup. Sekou Toure survived by the skin of his teeth by turning into a despot and wiping out ruthlessly any aspiring or potential coup maker. We Africans are nothing but good students of Bwana pale face and thus the coup was born, assisted by the West or freelanced by our own.
And no coup was dull, we must admit. They had flamboyant names with promises of all or nothing--Redemption, Salvation, Correctional, Revolutionary, Resurgence and Nationalist and what have you. They were of course anything but. We liked the fact that they ended many falsehoods called Constitution, parliament, democracy and even the One Nation claim. Tribalism or "ethnicism", as it is said today, came out of the hole, became halal/kosher, the politics to uphold. The coups came to put an end to the one party system of the civilians ands set up the one man military rule, with or without a party. And as time went by, the coup became refined, it even happened accidentally once, it came again and again in Dahomey (now Benin), baptized itself as a movement and not a coup and soon after it happened started to go through the motions of an election (thoroughly rigged) and the coup maker dumps his uniform for Armani suits and his military title for the less intimidating His Excellency. Yet again, some naive souls who took their own dreams for the reality, that is to say like Sankara in Burkina Faso, were physically removed by a sober and correctional coup that brought the situation back to its rails, no more talk of being free and self reliant. Still, the coup may try hard to be a non coup but we can still see that its main features linger on. In Guinea Bissau we now have the latest version: the confused coup. Coups and violence against the people and any notion of the rule of law have been synonymous and the tradition is being kept as we saw in Guinea (Conakry). And only the naive amongst us still imagine that Britain, France and Washington are in no way involved in the coups and counter coups and conflicts bedevilling our hapless continent.

Emperor Tewodros of Ethiopia, who killed himself rather than surrender to a British invading force, told the British to send their invading troops outright and not to waste time by sending missionaries and spies. No meandering and procrastination. We tend to welcome the return of the coup because it is ending the fiction of democracy and good governance, of free elections and popular participation. The real thing in Africa, all these talks of elections notwithstanding, is the lack of democratic governance and the predominance of neo-colonial powers. We hail the return of the coup because it highlights the reality we live in, the massacre in the Conakry stadium, the murder of political dissidents, the campaign against the free press, the arrogant and murderous swagger of almost illiterate officers and generals, the blind violence against defenceless people and the real face of the African State. The truth shall set us free, no? We want and we shall get more coups. Amen.

Hama Tuma's Case of Socialist Witchdocotor reprinted

2010-04-23T03:08:00.000-07:00
For long out of print, Hama Tuma’s book:THE CASE OF THE SOCIALIST WITCH DOCTOR AND OTHER STORIES has now been reprinted and is available for the public. To order your copy e mail to Menberu.lemma2@gmail.com. Price: US$ 12 plus US$ 3 for mailing cost paypal address: menberu.lemma2@gmail.com

Review of Hama Tuma's poems

2010-04-23T03:04:00.000-07:00
»Of Memories and Dreams in Hama Tuma’s”Of Spade and Ethiopians ‘
By arefe
By Kumlachew Fantahun

‘The struggle of the writer is the struggle of memory against forgetfulness.’

Milan Kundera

Many critics are of the opinion that Ethiopian literature in English is a closed book. Apart from a few novels, poems and plays, one can find scattered here and there; writing in English is not the norm in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia boasts of an ancient writing tradition and unique alphabet in Africa and accordingly it has a rich Geez and Amharic writing heritage. But when it comes to English, it lags very far behind other African countries.For example, our neighbor, Kenya far surpasses Ethiopia in the amount of literary production in English. The reason of course, is not far to seek. Debebe Seifu in his master’s thesis ‘Ethiopian Literature in English’ has the following to say about the dearth of writing in English. ’Looked at from the point of view of the hoary Geez and Amharic literature creative writing in English is a baby tradition in Ethiopia…. It has brief history of only two decades. When we look at the amount of English writings produced in some other African countries, the output in Ethiopia strikes us scanty intermittent and not very encouraging.’

The reason for this paucity of creative writing in English are the following, according to Debebe
1.Ethiopian writers have a strong background in Amharic that disallows them to resort to or at least give an undivided attention to writing in English … And, English has never been the first official language in Ethiopia.
2.English has not been given emphasis in Ethiopian schools; hence, lack of adequate mastery or command of the language inevitably barred those who might otherwise have as pined to write in English
In I In particular, English poetry is a rare phenomenon in Ethiopian. There are notnotnot many writers trying their hands at poetry.

ha Debebe’s theses treat only two poets writing in English, Tsegaye

Ge GebreMedhin and Eyasu Gorfu.

E Nowadays, the situation appears to be improving with many writers

incr increasingly trying thier hands at poetry English.Hama Tuma ‘s poetry pc collection, ‘Of Spade and Ethiopians,’ (Free Ethiopian Press, 1991) is a cas a case in point.

The predominant theme in Hama Tuma’s ‘Of Spade and Ethiopians’ is that of cultural memory and an attempt to make archeology of wrongs and cruelties of the Red Terror, and infamous phenomenon that followed in the wake of the misdirected-1974 Revolution. It seems that those who survived through those dreadful days are nowadays looking back and putting the memory of this Ethiopian Holocaust to writing, there by redeeming the lost, if only in imagination. They reminiscence on the horror and heinous acts of the ‘inhumanity of man against man’ wrought by the then rulers. Fictional and non-fictional works that are coming out bear testimony to this tendency of invoking the past and reminiscence on it.

Himself a significant actor in the EPRP and with first hand experience, Hama Tuma often dwells both in his fiction and poetry on the horrendous acts perpetrated by the architects of Red Terror. We read of such appalling cruelties as cutting the penis of a man and make his mother eat it, women’s genitals ripped open by hot iron, bottle of wine filled with sand hanging by thread on a person’s penis. In particular, his poems, ‘Of Spades and Ethiopians’, “To Bury a Brother’, ‘No Wine Bottles please!’ ‘Voice of the Dead’, ‘The Grader and Dreams. ‘Responsibility’, ‘Breaking the Monoculture Economy’, ‘Some Threads from History’ deal with those evil days and the attendant atrocities.

In ‘Of spades and Ethiopians’ the poet not content to write about the events says

What I need is not a pen, but

A shovel with which to dig the dirt

And throw it down the garbage can of non-history’s oblivion.

A country of ‘an ignorant mass, backward and more’, though blessed with ‘a modern king far sighted to the core’ was still wallowing in misery and poverty until the monarch’ successor took the throne and assert “it pulled Ethiopia out of the middle ages in just a handful of years.” by introducing land to the tiller, Soviet style democracy and mass-organizations. Since the country is lucky enough to have the privilege of being governed by this ”cool, intelligent, wise and determined leader’ in order for his noble objectives to be achieved and for the country to remain safe, nobody should be-allowed to tamper with the progress of the revolution. The mighty wave has to go untrammeled, sweeping everything that stands in its way to reach its destination.

All revolutions devour their sons

be they French or Russian

Why do you want an exception in the Ethiopian one?

Reminiscent of the communist saying, ‘revolution is not a dinner party’, the next stanza gently reminds us of the sorry but ineluctable choice the revolution was faced with;

So don’t exaggerate the Terror bit

For the enemy must be hit

Too bad if a generation dies

Revolution means trying times

As is the case with his brilliantly ironic stories, his poems also are full of wry humor and subtle irony. The laughable silliness as well as the slavish servility of the revolutionary leaders are portrayed very vividly and also mocked.

If Brezhnev hums a tune,

Mengistu will sing it loud

The stupidity that results from total allegiance to an alien creed is brought out in the following sarcastic poem;

I have been to Russia and even Georgia

But the worst Russian I’ve ever met lives some where in north Ethiopia

He thinks Stalin’s death is an imperialist plot directed against Ethiopia.

Some of the atrocities of the red terror were so horrible that any question as to appropriateness and rationality of the actions could be silenced with a resort,’ it also happened in Russia.’

Human life was rendered so cheap amid easily expendable that towns were turned into killing fields where minions off the powers that be could shoot people at will and with impurity, so eyewitnesses tell us. The Red Terror people were busy killing and with so many people to shoot they eventually run short of bullets, which therefore had to be retrieved from the corpses and be paid for by any one who came to claim the bodies of the dead. The following lines depict this gruesome picture; the lesson ostensibly being in a worthy revolution nothing comes gratis.

The soldier outside

counted the bullet holes

in my brother’s corpses.

I paid the price

got the receipt

and took my brother away.

Away from the pile

forgotten already

I still had a burial to pay.

Here we are faced with the irony of paying for having for brother killed for the sake of revolution, which promised better days.In ‘No wine bottles, please’, the poet relates the gory spectacle he witnessed in the third police station. A wine of bottle filled with water is hung with a nylon thread on a penis of ‘anarchist recalcitrant’. In case some find this too horrible to contemplate, the poet adds some mitigating remarks, which implies that this manner of torture pales in comparison with other crueler ones;

A torture to make you holler

But some say it is bland

And not so bad

Compared to other threatens they have had.

In ‘The voice of the Dead’, the personae of the poem confronts its implied readers with penetrating and piercing questions to which, one has to give satisfactory answer or be tortured with guilt feeling. It seems that the one to whom the question is posed won’t able to escape unless he can account for what course of action that he took in relation to the massacre.

Where were you?

When you brother screamed for help

When young girls got raped

And mothers went mad seeing their children butchered

Right in front of them.

In another similar poem, those who felt it unwise to be engaged and dirty themselves with realities of the day are castigated and brought to task. The crude and absolutely deeds were such that, the poet seems to say; it would be a crime to simply stand and watch, unengaged and non-committal.

When the knife entered

your brother’s heart,

You simply watched

worse still,you walked away

without a protest or a shout.

The tragedy of the Red Terror was not only physical. It killed bodies yes. But it did much more than that. It killed and buried a nation’s beautiful dreams and hopes. The student movement which helped to overthrow the centuries old feudal system gave rise to hopes of better future and emancipation. But no sooner was the monarch ousted than a new and more sinister leader took his place, there by dashing the hopeful expectations of the people by snuffing out the lives of the educated youth who with enthusiasm and verve were trying to inaugurate democracy to the nation.

The short poem, ‘The Grader and the Dream’ deals with this poignant loss,

The ditches are filled

The burial complete

no speeches are made

no epitaphs planned

no building rises up

It’s only dreams

of a fair tomorrow

only the nation’s hope that is getting buried .

However, though the revolution is chiefly to blame for the dashing of hopes and dreams of the nation, the poet points out that we Ethiopian as a people are not much given to dreaming and imagination. He seams to attribute this paucity of imagination and incapacity for being visionary to moral cowardice and pursuit of ephemeral pleasures.

In “An empty cry” he deplores what he takes to be his fellow countrymen’s myopic vision and inability to transcend inconsequential hedonistic pursuits, He asks rhetorically.

Are we born so wretched

that our dreams

got only as far as a woman’s thighs.

as to clap for the boots

which crushes the flowers to dust.

The poet seems to imply that our fear of change is such that it would amount to visionary quixotism to dream of an Ethiopia free of war and famine. Of course, when a people are so accustomed to a succession of misfortunes, it would take courage of utopian scale to ever imagine a radically different future. This appears to be the idea contained the following lines, suggesting incredulity at the thought of an Ethiopia bereft of strife.

Who knows what will happen

If Ethiopia finds peace.

Will the world turn upside down?

Or will is stay the same

The point, of course is not lost on the reader. A peaceful Ethiopia is almost impossible to imagine. Their phonetically similarity nonetheless, Ethiopia and utopia are poles apart. Hama Tuma says facetiously to dream of utopia in Ethiopia is crime, a treachery because it would threaten its pact with its plight. In a supremacy ironic poem, ‘I love my nightmare’, the poet echoes the observation many writers have made about the Ethiopian (and African) fear of change.

Last night I had such a dream

an utopian unEthiopian dream

I thought I saw famine gone

He goes on to relate a bright scenario he envisioned, people smiling “with their hearts and eyes; a noise of festive drums, well-fed peasants, mothers going to church to praise not to pray. But somewhere along the poem, the poet tells us that he wakes up from his dreams in-fear for having such ‘a terrible dream’ because he saw the future and it was not… bleak’

I woke up in fright

scared the kebeles might jail me

as a dissident not content

with his nightmare present

and dreaming like those in forest.

As the above sketch attempted to show, memory and dream are the salient features of Hama Tuma ‘s poem.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH FILM MAKER HAILE GERIMA

2010-04-23T00:47:00.000-07:00
OF DEMONS, CHARLATANS AND RREVISIONISTS

WHAT IS WRONG WITH CINEASTE HAILE GERIMA?

By KASSAHUN

First of all, let me get rid off the notion that the artist/the intellectual in a given society is/can be apolitical, uninvolved, non partisan. To quote an authority (as this seems to please certain quarters) let me cite the late and very committed intellectual, Edward Said, who wrote: (in Representation of the Intellectual, page 110)

"Every intellectual whose métier is articulating and representing specific views, ideas, ideologies, logically aspires to making them work in a society. The intellectual who claims to write only for him or herself, or for the sake of pure learning, or abstract science is not to be, and must not be, believed. As the great Twentieth century writer Jean Genet once said, the moment you publish essays (or make and distribute films--K) in a society you have entered political life; so if you want not to be political do not write essays or speak out" (or make films--K).

Famous Ethiopian film maker, Haile Gerima, often claims to be "beyond or outside" of politics. He is royally mistaken if he is talking honestly. For, the film maker dabbles in politics big time though he does so in a bad or wrong way. A renowned film maker, his most famous film (Samoa) deals with the slave trade and racism and in many interviews he has made it clear the issue of racism affects him deeply. So be it. His latest film, Teza (which has won some international awards) deals with Ethiopia and again with the question of racism, displacement and alienation. Haile Gerima says he knows little or nothing about the Red Terror but both in Teza and previously in another film chronicling his return to Ethiopia after the fall of the Derg regime he had to deal with it in his own way, with prejudice and a practical disservice to the martyrs and those still bearing the scars.

And here is where some of us have been forced to come in, to raise our voices in defense of our own history, to safeguard the memory of the martyrs, to honor our brave and steadfast comrades who sacrificed their dear lives or endured atrocities for the sake of their country and people. And in the process to commit lese majesty as some of these elements consider it a crime to utter even a mild word of criticism against them (of course having been out in the rain so often I am not that scared of such admonitions). It must be admitted that there is presently a fierce revisionist campaign being waged by a variety of forces to denigrate that generation that struggled against the imperial and the totalitarian military regimes for the sake of democratic change. The campaign is on but the commanders have different motives--some are covering up their criminal roles, others shamed by their cowardice and betrayal in those trying times and dishonorably attacking those who dared to fight, the present power holders who took part in the Red Terror and who have never ceased campaigning against the organization (EPRP) that was targeted by the bloody repression, the nostalgic of the old regime who hold that generation responsible for the demise of their paradise. Haile Gerima can situate himself in one of these categories that I refer to as demons, charlatans and revisionists for he has not ceased, by film and words, from attacking the generation that fought for change, a fight in which he did not take part in any direct and meaningful way.

Haile Gerima told the Addis Abeba based FOCUS magazine (no 7, Jan-Feb 2009) "I don't even know what the Red Terror was all about". Admitting ignorance could have been one first useful step towards enlightenment but alas, no. Teza carries scenes that depict the Red Terror time but in a non factual way much as that Ethio-Canadian writer whose alleged memoir read as bad fiction and who lied that the EPRP would approach to recruit you and if you declined they just shot you point blanc. Haile recently told a New York Times interviewer the following: "I am from a generation that genuinely wanted a better society and to do something for poor and oppressed people, but which got blinded and lost and turned against its own humanity to become the opposite of what we wanted to be.” Haile says he is 64 years old and he sure is (age wise) from that generation but that does not mean he is of that generation that struggled for change. He stayed for more than 40 years in America and his involvement in the struggle of that generation, if any, was only peripheral, especially if we consider the period of the Red Terror and what followed. Haile told the same Focus interviewer " Oh ya, (I hate politics) because politics is an art of deception; all politicians are liars". As the Edward Said quote aptly explains if Haile makes film and thus makes politics and thereby his claim to hate politics is empty talk. I hate politics is by itself a political position/stand. Secondly, Haile claimed in the same FOCUS interview that he had not done "any Red Terror movie" (I actually think he has touched upon it at least in two films) because, in his own words, "First, I don't know the Red Terror and (second) I have not done it because it is not my experience." (Of course Haile says right after this he would like to make films about Lij Eyasu, Zerai Deres, love story of Menelik and Taytu--experiences he lived through perhaps!)

That generation genuinely wanted a better society and laid its own life for the emancipation of the poor and the oppressed. The commitment was not verbal, nor was it from afar. As Walelign and Tsegaye Gebre Medhin (aka Debteraw) wrote in the early seventies that generation knew that "the enemy of the Ethiopian people cannot come to Madison Garden for a fifteen rounds bout" and so the generation did not flee but confronted the beast in its own lair, i.e. in Ethiopia. An experience that was not lived through in any way by the film maker. But that generation did not get blinded and lost and did not at any point in time turn against its humanity. That each generation gets its own share of monsters and sycophants is almost a natural law but the generation that fought for change in Ethiopia did not lose its humanity or commitment to the cause of the people. It did not shrink from the sacrifice that the struggle called for, did not hide on an Amba or in foreign refuge claiming I hate politics. It was there with and amidst the people, living their fear and dying their death and dreaming their dreams and hopes. It just did not want "something" for the poor and the oppressed--it wanted their total liberation, their sovereignty. There were those who betrayed their vows but they never represented a generation and Haile's generalization not only errs but does injustice to a generation that history emulates. Such false premises and mistaken conclusions tar his films, especially the last one Teza.

The ongoing revision of History has targeted that generation that consciously and genuinely fought for change, defaming it in one way or another and trying to depict it as non Ethiopian. It is as if that generation turned against its culture and history while in actual fact that generation championed the history of resistance and fierce love for the country. What the revisionists actually chafe at is the fact that generation rose firmly against the injustice and oppression, the blind worship of temporal and absolute power, harmful traditions, oppression of women, bowing to the ferenji or the colonizer and in this way launched an upheaval, a revolution as it were, to end the feudal system and the autocracy. And, consequently also, to end the brutal military rule under whose boots many intellectual worms sought false refuge and comfort. Hence, the attack against that generation, the chorus against the vision and ideology of change, the championing of conservatism and conformism under the guise of being modern, aware, "siltun", the proliferation of scribes of modern Darkness at Noon stories, and of eulogies for capitalism and new breed oppressors, and in the final instance the recourse to reaction under the cover of rediscovering oneself, one's "true" identity, history and culture. One relives the Zemene Mesafint through Article 39, the ugly past is embraced wholly and as was, and the fiery Maoist becomes a hard line Copt, a weeping Pente or a bearded Wahabist, or even a monarchist to boot. We have seen it all but then again all this has nothing to do with that generation and much to do with those who rile and fume against the generation that genuinely struggled for meaningful change and got short-circuited by despots and tyrants.

Judgment without knowledge ends up as garbage. If Ato Haile Gerima has turned against his humanity then he has himself to blame in the first place. That generation was not blinded, was not lost, did know where it was going, was fully aware of its goals (not just "something for the poor"!) and more importantly was clear on the sacrifice needed to achieve it. And it did pay the ultimate sacrifice. So, a little bit of respect please. Ato Haile should follow his own advice and talk of things he knows about and make films on subjects he is not ignorant of. Otherwise, so long as we continue to breathe and exist we shall raise our pens and voices to defend the memory of the generation that cried "Away with all Pests" and bravely assaulted the fortresses of cowardice, philistinism, tyranny and oppression.

WAS THE REVOLUTION.....

2010-04-23T00:46:00.000-07:00
WAS THE REVOLUTION TRAGIC AND BRUTAL?

by Kassahun

Someone close to my taste said "what is very tragic is to sleep through a Revolution", doing a Rip Van Winkle on the momentous event shaking the given country. Let me state from the outset that I have not (yet) read the book by Maaza Mengiste (Beneath the Lion's Gaze) and I do not know the person or the politics of the reviewer of her book, Ato Abebe Gelaw. However, his labelling of the February 1974 Revolution (Yekatit 66) as tragic and brutal spurred me to write the following lines. More motivation has also come from others who have been revising History and projecting that popular revolution in negative terms and also by the denial of the Red Terror made by the lamentable Dr, Hailu Araya (a Derg loyalist now wearing another mask) and criminals trying to hide their past despicable deeds.

No lie can live forever said another wise man. The same man who penned the poem of the truth on the scaffold and the lie on the throne. Was the February Revolution tragic? Like the Russian revolution of 1917 can it be bombarded with the question: were you premature? Was it brutal? Did it usher in a period of violence and brutality that was, as implied in Ato Abebe's comment, unknown in our past? Revolutions do not occur out of the blue though they may appear spontaneous. For all Revolutions, the Time comes, none are really premature. The Yekatit 66 Revolution exploded because it was time for it to do so, the feudal system had become moribund, the people were fed up with their condition and more importantly determined to sacrifice all to bring change. And the ruling class was unable to govern as before, its crisis had come to a head, its mechanisms of control totally derailed. The Revolution had to be and thus it came about surprising even those who had been expecting it, it was not, however, premature.

It was not tragic either. It was a people's revolution that erupted to put an end to a feudal system, to the autocracy of Emperor Haile Sellasie. And it did just that. It was thus a successful revolution that brought victory to the people. The Revolution was hijacked by military officers--that was what became tragic. That was what brought in the brutality as the officers could not peacefully defeat the popular unrest and struggle against the military rule. When it comes to violence, it must be said without any qualms at all that violence has been endemic, part of the Ethiopian systems for decades if not centuries. The campaigns of the Emperor's (we can mention Tewodros, Yohannes and Menelik) were very brutal, and violence and cruel treatment of the civilian population has been sown into the politics, the means of governance. In this way, the States were all absolute, all were violent. For the people, the State has always been alien, cruel, capricious, something on top of them, heavy. It is in the respect that Ato Abebe's reference to Hobbes becomes relevant: Here is what he wrote as he reviewed Maaza's book:
"The tragic 1974 revolution was not just a bumpy transition from a feudo-capitalist monarchy to a more progressive system as we were told time and again. It was also the beginning of untold brutality that has still continued to haunt us. It is a story of man against man, comrade against comrade, citizen against citizen…. It was simply akin to what the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes called a state of nature, where “men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man." In the state of nature life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.".

The February Revolution did not usher in "untold brutality" but the counter revolution just continued what was imbedded in the political system of Ethiopia--rule by violence and terror. The violence did not just begin, it was there, it was revived by a brutal military regime. And what followed was not a state of nature by any stretch of imagination. Hobbes mechanistic view of life or what some called his "philosophy of fear" does not apply here. The Red Terror was not a free for all, citizen against citizen, comrade against comrade. Hobbes state of nature was inapplicable by all accounts . The State was neither Leviathan nor the violence haphazard and aimless. After the Revolution was hijacked by the former bosses of Dr, Hailu, that is the Derg, there was popular protest mainly organized by the EPRP. The demand for a provisional popular government was tabled, the Revolution and the people needed no military guardian it was said. This popular protest was confronted in a short while by the violence of the State as the Ethiopian State, almost instinctively, resorts to violence when challenged. I leave out here the futile argument by the criminals of the Red Terror who want to allege that the EPRP launched what they so wrongly call the "white terror" and "forced the Derg to resort to the Red Terror". The truth cannot be hanged always and the fact remains that the repression and the violence was launched by the military regime and its intellectual allies grouped within the POMOA. The scenario of a peaceful and gentle military clique being catapulted into the realm of violence and terror by provocation on the part of the people is ridiculous and would have been funny had it not involved the deaths of hundreds of thousands. That aside, the violence was not a free for all and haphazard---the State unleashed its terror on the people, on the EPRP and its supporters. The Terror had clear cut aims: to destroy the EPRP and to cow the people unto fearful obedience. On the part of the EPRP, its actions were directed at those perceived as enemies of the people. That the Red Terror was so vast does not belie the fact that it had its aims, knew its targets and objectives. Thus, the Hobbesian State of nature, of a war pitting every man against every other man was not the reality of the Red Terror or the violent period that followed the February Revolution.

Not having read Maaza's book, I sincerely hope that her rendition of the events of that period (even if fictionalized) does not echo this aspect of the reviewer's interpretation or the crowning of lies in the form of a memoir attempted by another writer called Nega Mezlekia in "his" first book. The February Revolution is a historic event in the annals of our people as it was practically the first instance of a popular revolt overthrowing a brutal regime. It was historic also because of the fact that the Revolution had noble aims, not the coming to power of another ambitious despot but the transformation of the society in a democratic way, the empowerment of the people for the first time in the history of Ethiopia. Hence, it was neither tragic nor brutal and one should take care not to confuse a revolution with its sequel of a counter revolution that negates the revolution itself to take its place. As one revolutionary put it "Revolution, in history, is like the doctor assisting at the birth of a new life, who will not use forceps unless necessary, but who will use them unhesitatingly every time labor requires them. It is a labor bringing the hope of a better life to the enslaved and exploited masses". That was the February Revolution. The brutality came after, with the counterrevolution of the Derg.

Admirers and those nostalgic of the dead and gone imperial regime have never pardoned the progressives whom they hold responsible for the end of their beloved regime and monarchy. A vigorous attempt to revise History has been put in place with endearing and eulogizing (Ababa Janhoy) pseudo biographies of Haile Sellasie being printed. That system, that autocracy was rotten to the core and a curse on the majority of the people of Ethiopia. The revision cannot prevail-- the time is short and those with the memories and the wounds are still alive and around. The February Revolution was thus a tragedy to the ruling class of that period and a historic and beautiful event for the people who succeeded to get rid of a backward system. What followed is another matter altogether as the fall of the Mengistu regime would not be considered a bad thing just because those that replaced him are not any better. Revisionists may, to quote Brecht, wish "to dissolve the people and elect another" but the people cannot be wished or washed away and their memory, stifled as it may be at any given time, stays vivid and alive. For those of us who fought for a Revolution, Yekatiit 66 was a festival that, we hope, gets repeated against the present regime too.

The age of big ideas and robust ideologies may be over but that period of the Revolution cannot be analysed or investigated devoid of its ideological reality. Those who want to rewrite History and allege that "the intellectuals massacred one another" are not only factually wrong but also intellectually uninformed. The truth is that the military dictatorship slaughtered the people; it was not a mere spectator or a secondary player in the tragedy of the Terror. It was the perpetrator of the carnage it called the Red Performance (key tiryit ). Hailu Araya is feebly trying to cover up this fact when he blatantly denied there was any red Terror in the first place. History will not absolve but condemn him thoroughly along with his former masters and as those who deny the Holocaust are guilty of a crime so is the shameless Hailu who has denied the brutal killing of more than 250,000 Ethiopians by the regime he served so loyally to the end. Yesterday's Marxists (Hailu and company) are today's liberals, eulogizing the market, admiring pluralism, swallowing their every spit against the system they had been castigating as anti people. This conversion has not, however, led them to reassess their role and nefarious practices in the fallen system/regime, none of them have recanted or asked forgiveness from the people they had hurt so much. They have just glided smoothly, with no conscience harassing them, from being the loyalists of a Terrorist regime (that of Mengistu) to loyal followers of another equally murderous one but this time conveniently and gratuitously labelling themselves "the opposition". That being the case they justify their previous crimes by denying it altogether or by alleging that their regime "was provoked" to excesses and also by doing a somersault back to the February Revolution which they firmly castigate as "brutal, a mistake, a curse brought upon us by young devils imbued with a foreign ideology".

Forget utopian vision for today the very imagination of a better world has been dimmed and the prevailing tendency is to regress into condemning the past during which courageous people not only dreamed of a better world but fought and died to make it real. Valiant citizens who still echo Che's cry : Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this, our battle cry, may have reached some receptive ear, that another hand may be extended to wield our weapons, and that other men be ready to intone our funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine guns and new battle cries of war and victory.

Long Live the February Revolution!

THE TIME OF THE BLOVIATORS

2010-04-23T00:44:00.000-07:00
THE TIME OF THE BLOVIATORS
or
HOW TO SAY NOTHING IN FIVE HUNDRED WORDS

by Hama Tuma

I am sure not many of you know the word bloviator--I did not till someone told me to check it in Google. It means pompous, someone who puffs his chest and makes boastful declarations. The word defines many Ethiopian pseudo and self declared intellectuals of our time. Of course, who is an intellectual is worthy of a debate these days. One who finished Scondary School? Anyone with a diploma or a degree from a foreign institution? Who? Anyone with that Dr or Professor tag? Any fool who speaks averagely coherent English? Anyone with delusions of grandeur? Feelings of elitism?

Sadly, the bloviators are too many. They start out with the assumption that speaking and writing English is expensive to begin with. Not for you and me poor souls with miserable monthly incomes if any. African intellectuals, totally brainwashed alas, boast: "we learnt at the foot of the white man" which, it seems, give them the right and capacity to tell a plant from afar by just sniffing at the air. Ethiopian intellectuals fall in the same pit: their credential is the foreign/ferenji degree, earned in most cases not even from credible or prestigious places, sometimes from correspondence universities who will give you a degree even if you fail!(check Meles, Tamrat and other mentally challenged TPLF officials). Yet, the Dr or Professor tag is all, supreme, it tell us all to shut up and listen, the bloviators have a degree, they are "intellos" par excellence. Alas, they are shallow, ignoramus to boot, word spinners, not worth the ink on their so called degrees. Take time off to listen to any of the loud pal talk rooms and you will hear many not only punctuating but drowning their Amharic with English phrases. Words like State, information, intelligence, saboteur (actually said "sabotateur" by our hyphenated souls), agenda, diversify, struggle, oppression, etc are words that seem to have no Amharic equivalent. I had previously attempted to call upon them to be modest and received a tongue lashing for may alleged "jealousy" concerning their degrees which, I am proud to say, will not accept even if offered on a golden platter.

The half baked "bloviators" use English words to impress, to be unintelligible to my mother and yours, to be pompous. I wish I had written all this in Amharic but as I am trying to deal with those who write and speak pompously in English I have chosen the foreign language and by implication cornered myself in the dilemma. Why can't we write our pieces in our own language so that the majority of our people understand what we are trying to say? The hypocritical attempt is to be above the mundane as it were, to rise above the masses, to parade before them with puffed out chest, to show we know and do speak English and can write articles in it no matter the spelling and grammar errors. We boast and silence our own parents and people, and fools as we are we feel proud as we shame ourselves. Delusion is taken as knowledge, ignorance becomes wisdom and we deny our identity to find some mirage of a respect for our demeaned self. The more they bloviate, the more they become incomprehensible, shallow and hollow. The exercise is to say nothing in many words, to use phrases from the Thesaurus, to say perambulate instead of walk, to sound like a Southern USA fiery Baptist preacher, to pepper one's articles with quotes and references that are either out of place or pedestrian. I remember one "bloviator" who had to refer to Galbraith or Tagore to tell us "yenat hod zingurgur new". The worth of an intellectual is thus situated firmly in an Ivory Tower, away from the majority of the common people, saying not I fell but declaring my verticality changed to a horizontality. One Weyane scribe, a former "tiraz netek" of the bars in Washington, recently wrote from Addis Abeba a vitriolic attack against Isayas Afewerki (of course in English and to please his Masters), and informed us of the need to "indigenize democracy in a collectivist African cultural matrix". Now, what the hell does this mean other than bloviating over our heads parading as a deep thinker, philosopher and a master of the foreign language? There is another Ethiopian who writes incomprehensible regular columns and whom I tried to criticize mildly and provoked his adoring fans (who do not understand what he writes but admire him just for that) to attack me with venom. One asked me in anger "who are you?" and I must admit I was tempted to do a French on her and answer back "I am still searching for my identity" (the French like such replies and will not make it easy where they can complicate). Fake through and through, inferiority complex of the highest order when our so called intellectuals (many have become professors recently by some collective baptism like the Moonies) look down upon our language, culture, heroes (every political pretender is taken as a Mandela if he or she lands in prison for a month or a year), and our own experience.

The bloviators are also official scribes of the dictatorship. One such pathetic person, a stain on the proud history of her martyred brothers and cousins, recently wrote the following effusive nonsense:
"It is such an incredible win and an amazing era for us to witness the open and fast gain of Ethiopia’s democracy these past eighteen years. Never in the history of Ethiopia have we witnessed such an open dialogue. A free expression of ideas among different parties is what we are witnessing for the fourth democratic election. It is so heartwarming and encouraging for those of us that live outside Ethiopia to have the privilege of being eyewitnesses to the myriad developments that is going on in the country. Thanks to humanity’s elevation of technology we are privy to follow the events of the country on a daily basis" If this is not empty talk what is? Democracy and the Meles regime are anathema, incompatible, opposites. The regime she lauds is known as the predator of the free press, the enemy of free expression, a repressive one holding some thirty five thousand political prisoners behind bars, has committed many massacres, is the one that disappeared dozens in its dungeons and practices systematic and wide spread torture. That makes the woman who wrote the above eulogy either totally ignorant or a shameless sell out. She says nothing in so many words even if she may gain some favors from her Masters in Addis Abeba. The art of saying nothing in five hundred words is often mastered by bloviators and the state of our intellectuals is such that they have all become experts at it. They want to browbeat us with verbosity, with the usage of "hard" English phrases and concepts (which they use not in the correct sense but who cares?), with their determined refusal to use their own language to communicate. I must say I am not amongst those African authors who insist that writers must write in their mother tongue or stop writing ( though the usefulness of communicating in one's language cannot be denied) but the impact of a political message is if it reaches a broad cross section of the people and influences them. Last time I checked 95% of Ethiopians are not very familiar with the Queen's English and if truth be told not many of our self declared intellectuals write proper grammatically correct English either, notwithstanding their tendency to resort to English when they could communicate better in their own language. I could even be mistaken in this assumption of mine as most of them have no clear idea of what they want to utter and whether they do it in English or Amharic ( or any other mother tongue) their mumbo jumbo is not saved from being just that.

Alas, to add insult to injury (be inkirt lye joro degif) our bloviating intellectuals are not funny. Just take the above crazy eulogy and try to say you find it funny. It is actually boring, pathetic, an example of dog- like snivelling and servitude not to say shameful narrow ethnic identification. In other contexts, bloviators can be funny--they are so ridiculous that they become clowns. He was not an intellectual per se but Debella Dinsa comes to mind while in the imperial regime Yilma Deressa was another example of the funny officials. Our present day official scribes cum intellectuals take themselves too seriously as they bloviate and thus are dour and never funny. Otherwise their declaration of democracy under Meles Zenawi should have cracked us up but they believe in it and so they squeeze out the funny in their declaration. George Bush and Rumsfeld were funny with their declarations., they pretended to believe their lies but we all knew they were playacting like their claim of WMDs in Iraq. Take Rumsfeld's foray into The Unknown:
"As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.
—Feb. 12, 2002.

Is not this a gem? Such bloviators can and should flourish to give grim politics a funny tinge.

Meles Zenawi, who got his degrees from a correspondence course, also plays at being an intellectual but his feeble bloviating come out disgusting and only fools take his street smart talk as a sign of intelligence.

The redefinition of the intellectual is called for in the Ethiopian context unless we confine ourselves to the basic definition of the intellectual as someone who attempts to speak English, tries to use confusing words, and is irredeemably alien to his own people and lies as a matter of routine. Come to think of it, this defines our intellectuals "indigenized in their own matrix". Whatever that may mean of course.

Ali Saeed in Action

2010-02-25T10:48:00.000-08:00
Winnipeg man troubled by airport security findings
Last Updated: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 | 8:19 PM CT Comments95Recommend50.
CBC News
Ali Saeed says traces of explosives were inexplicably found on his hands during an airport security check. Officials have apologized. (CBC)
An award-winning human rights activist based in Winnipeg says he's now afraid to fly after security screeners at the city's airport found traces of an explosive compound on his hands during a random security check.

Ali Saeed was travelling to Colorado in January for a screening of a self-produced documentary detailing the story of his life, which included periods of being jailed and tortured as a political prisoner in the African countries of Ethiopia and Somalia.

While going through security at the James Richardson International Airport on his way to a U.S. departure gate, Saeed said he was pulled aside by officials with the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA).

His hands were swabbed with a chemical and then he had to place his hands into a machine, he said.

He was then told traces of trinitrotoluene – or TNT, an explosive material — were found.

He said he had no idea why his hands set off alarm bells.

'Is it human error, is it the machine error or am I being labelled because I'm Islam name?'
—Ali Saeed"She said, 'you have got contact with explosive material — TNT,'" Saeed told CBC News. "I don't know what TNT means. Is it candy, is it sandwich? I don't know what this explosive material is."

Saeed said he was allowed to board his plane and his return flight home to Winnipeg was uneventful, but he is concerned because CATSA told him the information about the incident will be kept on file for future reference.

He worries the information could come back to haunt him because of his activist past and Islamic-sounding name.

"Is it human error, is it the machine error, or am I being labelled because [of my] Islam name?" he wonders.

Policy not followed
In a letter to Saeed, CATSA apologized and admitted that officials at the airport broke protocol by telling him about their findings.

"CATSA's procedures stipulate that screening officers must not discuss an … alarm with passengers," the letter said.

"We are sorry that this is not what occurred. We extend our sincere apologies for the screening officers' actions and the stress it caused you."

On Tuesday, an agency spokesperson told CBC News that Saeed will not have any trouble travelling in the future, and will send him a letter telling him so.

In December, Saeed was awarded the 2009 Human Rights Commitment Award of Manitoba by the Manitoba and Canadian Human Rights Commissions for his work in sponsoring refugees from Ethiopia.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2010/02/17/human-rights-activist-winnipeg-airport.html#ixzz0gZhiR5Tc

ZE FOLLIES OF AFRICA

2010-02-17T15:52:00.000-08:00
"ZE FOLLIES" OF AFRICA

From the son of Zenawi to Zuma, the follies of Africa are indeed the presidents and prime ministers, the power mongers and corrupt officials staining the face of our beloved continent. Some are funny, most are not but they all add up to spell folly and destruction for Africa, It is evident I prefer Zuma to Meles Zenawi, the goat faced tyrant who runs an ethnic discriminatory politics making some 80 million Ethiopians suffer.

Jacob Zuma is a character, perhaps from some ancient Zulu folklore but it is clear that many South Africans consider him harmless and benign only when compared to his predecessor Mbeki. We have to admit he is a caricature who warms the prejudiced heart of any white racist. This is a man of power who is accused of raping an HIV positive woman and then counters he had consensual unprotected sex with her but had taken a shower to reduce the possibility of Aids coming his way. Zuma was accused of corruption and survived the rough power struggle to become South Africa's president, to rule disgruntled citizens who have seen no positive change in their lives but are allowed to vent their anger now and then on refugees from Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, etc...Already with three wives and a fiancée, Zuma has fathered a "love child" from another woman bringing the total number of his children to 20. A field day for the haters of Africa for sure but then again Zuma is an honest and honourable man who has done his share to increase the number of Africans and who has lived up to his words and admitted his peccadilloes (compare with Bill Clinton and John Edwards!). He does preach safe sex and one partner relationship to the people in order to combat Aids but who said he had to follow his own advice? Isn't he the president? As for having 20 children (Big Daddy Amin had 33 and the Sheikhs in the Middle East can count more), he has at least helped school children avoid tough questions: a primary school student was asked "where do children come from?" and he was able to answer "from Jacob Zuma" outright. But, let me say definitively that the report of Zuma never again making any move to greet children for fear that they may call him daddy is a fabrication by anti-Zuma forces. Zuma's personal song is titled "My Machinegun" and many South Africans are blaming him for not keeping this weapon of his zipped up or covered up
(How can I shoot? a reckless Zuma is said to have asked). Zuma is a tough man at 67 years of age who shoots no blanks as he would like to say had he not feared the outcry. As for polygamy, let the Americans talk to their harem happy Middle East sheikhs and to the followers of the ancestors of Mitt Romney (Mormons) who had more than a dozen wives.

If Zuma is funny son of Zenawi aka Meles is dull and boring. This is the man who invaded Somalia and claimed it was not an invasion; "we just crossed the border". This is the man who blamed the West for the famine in Ethiopia: "they did not send food aid in time". This is the very man who indefatigably claims the economy is growing by 10% per year while the people are starving (14 million need food aid) and the country is in ruins in general. And this is the man who spent millions on monuments and to add insult to injury erected a monument for a donkey called Desalegne that transported arms, ammunition and goods for the guerrillas. Countless Ethiopian heroes have no monument in their name while an "ethnic "donkey has deserved one instead. This is the same Meles whose ultra corrupt wife claims she does not afford to pay school fees for her elder daughter, the same Meles who justifies a massacre (200 shot dead in Addis Ababa in 2005) by claiming that his police were not well trained in riot control. Damn the British who were supposed to train the police and intelligence services!

And Gadafi, the self declared King of Kings of all African tribes (sic), who tried to be second time president of the comatose AU and was angry he could not. This is the same Gadafi who has allied himself with Silvio Berlusconi much to the detriment of African refugees. Salva Kirr, the cowboy manqué, who presides over a corrupted South Sudan government that is seemingly obsessed on whether women should wear trousers or not while the whole region is aflame with violence. Up north, the dour faced Beshir does his massacre routine with gusto, preparing to be re elected as President even when the accusations against him for genocide kick up. In a few months, both Beshir and son of Zenawi will go through the motion of an election that has been rigged already. Swazi King Msawti III has 13 wives and takes up a bare breasted virgin as a new wife at the annual Reed Dance-- a show to make many white colonials chuckle with satisfaction. The young Swazi king is corrupt, he has, for example, spent US$ 500,000 on a new Daimler Chrysler Maybach 62 with all possible luxury extras, including a fridge and DVD player while two thirds of Swazis live on less than one dollar a day. Mention Kabila jr, the Bongos past and present, the Nguema fellow in oil rich Equatorial Guinea, the Congolese Ninja president Sassou Ngueso, the Chadian Deby and royal level corruption rears its head. Abundant folly.

As they say "ze oil" speaks volumes. Corrupt African leaders are backed by predators like the USA, Britain and France. Chinese presence and greed for Africa's wealth and resources has also aggravated the complication--Peking has allied itself with malleable African dictators like Beshir, Meles, Mugabe and more. The rich African countries are the main victims but the poor ones are not spared too--Djibouti sells its land as a military base to Washington and Paris and Ethiopia is being mortgaged to the highest bidder. Corrupt leaders are given more aid so long as they toe the line of the metropolis and persist with their folly that ridicules and damages Africa. Chinese ministers openly admit that they routinely pay bribes to win contracts and the recent collapse of the tunnel of the much touted Gilgel Gibe II dam in Ethiopia (the Italian construction firm reportedly paid bribes both in Rome and Addis Abeba) just ten days after its inauguration is a case in point. The white elephant projects of the seventies are alive and well.

The Ziegfeld Follies were quite a show in their time. "Ze follies" of Africa may stage shows but at the end of the day they are not funny at all. The cost is too much, the destruction too great. From the son of Zenawi to Zuma, to Sassou and Kabila, from Mugabe to Gelleh, the "follies" of Africa are on a rampage to destroy the continent. Time to end their disastrous show,

THE DEVIL AND HAITI

2010-02-09T08:23:00.000-08:00
Some of my Anglo -Saxon friends have for long suspected that the distance between an African and Satan, if any at all, is not that long at all. To begin with, it is common knowledge that Satan is black as are Africans. There are. of course, some Africans who imagine that they are not really black and belong to that category the French boldly call the "couleur sauvee" or the saved colors, that is saved by a hair's breadth from being black (God Forbid!), Métis, light skinned, brown, what have you. In any case this African affinity with Satan has been mentioned often to explain the African's alleged propensity to cause calamities and problems of all kinds.

The catastrophic earthquake in Haiti has been duly attributed to the devil worship of the voodoo practicing Haitians. One of the preachers of ignorance, the right wing Christian Minister Pat Robertson, has openly declared this and revealed to the uninformed that the Haitians made a pact with the Devil in order to throw away French colonial rule-- Quote:"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it," the televangelist said. "And they got together and swore a pact to the Devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you'll get us free from the French.' True story. And so the Devil said, 'Okay, it's a deal.' . . . But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another". By the way this is the same Robertson who signed a gold mining contract with Charles Taylor and lobbied the Bush administration in Taylor's behalf. It is safe to say that many in the West have not forgotten that the Haitians started the very first slave revolt back in 1791 and fought to success in 1804 setting up their independent republic. How dare they! It is like Guinea's Sekou Toure's NO to continued French tutelage or domination, a rejection that Paris never forgot and tried to make Sekou pay for-- ( not a savory individual our Sekou, but a courageous one at the time when he opted for independence). The afflicted Haitians have become the center of approbations for causing an earthquake upon themselves, for being sinners, poverty stricken and even lazy. Some expected the usual "black" violence with looting and mayhem in Port au Prince and could not explain why it did not really happen even though some TV stations were gloating over footage of two alleged thieves shot by the police and desperate people struggling to get food handouts. The CNN, true to form, came with a titled series called Saving Haiti (from what? from whom?). American Marines, who took the opportunity and came in thousands, were seen distributing food and doing camera--attracting charity work in an effort to improve their tarnished images in Iraq and Afghanistan. We give out not bombs but flour and rice---our eyes are destined to see wonders, no? The militarization of aid in Haiti will evidently have many grave consequences in the future.

It is obvious that Haitians brought the "biblical tragedy" upon themselves. They believed in the tenets of the French and American Revolutions and staged their own only to find rejected both by the then vicious colonial power, France, and the US, a slave holding country that recognized Haiti only in 1862. Actually, an angry France demanded huge reparation payment from Haiti in exchange for recognition and the chance to take part in international trade. Haiti should have done a Barbados (which became independent only in 1966 and is still a Commonwealth member), no revolt, no Revolution, accepting colonial rule with docility. Haitians have been blamed by one Washington Post columnist for bringing this man made disaster upon themselves-- what "with their weak public institutions leading to the collapse of buildings" (no matter if the collapsed presidential palace was built by Marines during the US occupation from 1915 to 1934). Haitians should have long abandoned this obdurate desire of theirs to be a free nation and welcomed instead with open arms, as quite a few African countries do, the very many interventions and plots of Washington to impose its diktat over them. And why did they burn the hundreds of corpses on the streets instead of suffering the consequences such as a devastating cholera epidemic? Cruel people who, like those Africans from Kenya to South Africa, are prone to torch thieves and rapists and corpses!

I really think the Haitians should actually be commended for their contribution to the West by giving it a chance to pose and improve its image. One can say Haiti has learnt from Ethiopia on all levels as it has now received its own "We are the World" song and has become the primary concern of celebrities. Larry King and Anderson Cooper are dwelling on it and Darfur can eat its heart out this time! The local boy Wyclef has also learnt the bitter lesson that Western NGOs brook no patience when they come with full force to occupy the terrain all for themselves. Jean Wyclef's foundation was accused of misuse of funds, the singer driven to tears and of course brought into the fold by being invited to the Grammy awards ceremony. Haiti gave the West, especially America, the chance to strut big time as a savior force. So much so that the bizarre creature called Rush Limbaugh had to complain on Obama's alleged affinity to his black or light skinned kin ("slackers kept up by American tax money") and his "using the tragedy to burnish his image". Idle NGOs (who wants to go to Eastern Congo?) were given jobs and the opportunity to gather millions of dollars to "save" Haiti. While many pundits waxed bitterly lyrical against Haitians without ever setting foot there some correspondents and reporters did make it to Haiti and report drama from there making it appear as if they were in the heart of a war zone. Haiti also gave the child traffickers great opportunity to smuggle children (or be caught doing it) thereby bringing into focus the child adoption racket that has been going on in Haiti and is taking place in Ethiopia, Cambodia, Malawi, Russia where children with living parents have been sold and bought in a thriving market. Remember Jolie and Madonna.

If Haiti's poverty is to be exclusively blamed on the slackers who call themselves Haitians and if earthquakes come due to a pact with the devil then a number of questions rear their heads to ask for an n answer. How about the earthquakes in California in the past? What about the decades long suffering of Haiti under foreign invaders and interventionists? Who overthrew Aristide? If most of the buildings in the Haitians capital collapsed is it a bad thing or a good thing? Does it indicate that American engineers and Marines are bad architects or should we blame the Haitians in exclusivity? How come Benin, the Motherland of Voodoo, has not suffered from earthquakes yet? How come many talk of corruption after the earthquake and in connection with many NGOs? Some cynics argue that America is mobilized for Haiti to keep the Haitians in place, to stop them from trekking en masse to the USA. Preventive charity has been seen in the past and it is not sure it works but it helps keep the natives in their own hell hole as THEY would say. The tragedy has also given us uninformed souls the chance to hear sofa bound experts expound on the alleged weaknesses and peculiarities of the Haitian culture. Benefiting from a tragedy is how we can term this. Thank you again Haiti.
As Toussaint Louverture, the leader of the Haitian Revolution (whom some called the Black Napoleon) said when he was captured by the French: "In overthrowing me you have cut down in Saint Domingue only the trunk of the tree of liberty, it will spring up again from the roots, for they are many and they are deep". Earthquake or not the tree of liberty in Haiti will still bear many branches, leaves and fruits.

My sympathies and solidarity to the people of Haiti.

2009-11-23T06:03:00.001-08:00
WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

In the old musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, there is the chorus that sings the question: Jesus Christ, Superstar, who do you think you are? A very pertinent question to someone claiming to be the son of God and wanting to redeem souls through his message but choosing to be born in the wrong place at a backward time instead of coming today to pass his message via the internet and the new mass media to the world at large. The question of identity is perennial. Who are you? Who do you think you are? Are you who you think you are?
Of all the people I claim to know there is none more preoccupied by identity like the French. This is best expressed by the French bureaucracy and its persistent and obsessive need to know and ascertain who you are. A naive person may infer some serious concerns for his or her welfare but the problem is elsewhere. Actually, France does not know itself really. There was a time it considered itself an Empire, an era that ended after Vietnam and Algeria, though someone has forgotten to tell France that, and thus it continues to strut as a big Empire with tin pot dictators of small countries in Africa fawning over or under it in a Franceafrique that is as laughable as the British Commonwealth.
The Empire syndrome gives an obsession with History and the need to mould others into one’s will or under one’s rule and diktat. Furthermore, France has suffered many humiliations (1870, 1940, etc) but it has refused to accept or acknowledge this heavy weight of history and pretends all is well in its pursuit of grandeur. For the confusion, poor souls of colour have to pay, of course. The identity crisis that has struck France has thrown it into a contradiction in which it considers islands inhabited by dark skinned fellows as its overseas territories and the people as French at the same time, as it yearns feverishly to keep its basically white identity. Hence, the present need to debate its national identity spearheaded by a minister of immigration (Eric Besson) who himself has changed his political colour so radically that many wonder who he really is. Who are you people? Are you proud of being French? Can Eyoum, Mamadou, Latifa, Kim or Ananda be really French? Who do you think you are? And the trap question: are you proud of who you are— that is to say are you proud of being French?

The Kenyans had an attorney general called Charles Njonjo who believed he was British and looked down upon his countrymen. For a while, Idi Amin imagined he was a Scot. Emperor Bokassa called De Gaulle Papa and took himself as French. Some Arabs think they are white and discriminate against Black Africans while in Ethiopia, the birthplace of human kind, the people think they are the one and only chosen people. Delusions and illusions over identity, a mess into which the argument seeking French want to wade in.

Alas, the non-white French are thus trapped. What with their non French religion, their penchant for scarification, genital mutilation, witchcraft, polygamy, barbarity, marabous, bizarre cultures and languages. What with their noise and smell as one old French politician said without shame. Who are they? Are they really French? Are they proud of being French? If so, why are they still clinging to their other identity? What is it being French? The whole concept of national identity was first spawned by the right wing National Front, headed by a paratrooper who excelled in torturing Algerians, to affirm that French means white and may the darkies and their turbans, the Arabs and their hijabs please go away. Sarkozy tweaked the fear of being flooded by immigrants to garner votes away from the Socialists who, in my view, have yet to prove themselves free of the malady of racism and have time and again shown that they also pander to the right wing prejudices. Is being French defined by “nepotism a la Sarkozy?” Is "Frenchness" singing the national anthem that has lines about "impure blood irrigating our farmlands"? Or does it refer only to, as Parisian kids used to sing, "our ancestors the Gaul (who) had blue eyes and blond hairs"? Does France symbolize the land of refuge when last year it expelled some 30,000 asylum seekers (some sent back to the dungeons and their deaths), the present immigration minister (the very man heading the debate) vows he will surpass this figure and more than 200,000 refugees are denied recognition and legal papers? The Senegalese born French Minister of Sports, Rama Yade, tried to define what France means to her, talked of de Gaulle and the "greatness of France joined with the liberty of the world" almost as if she believes in such inanity. Wild!

Clichés and platitudes aside, the deafening assertion of France being the land of liberty ((egalite, fraternite et liberte) aside, the present reality of France is poignantly captured by the suffering of the “sans papiers” (undocumented immigrants), the pain of the deportees, the poverty of the African street cleaners, the institutionalized racism, the rage of the marginalized youths, and the neo colonial interference in the affairs of African countries. France is also a Pascal Sevran blaming the "African penis for the African famine" and calling for mass sterilization, a Kouchner defending the Burmese junta and Total, a Giscard d’Estaing dealing with Bokassa over diamonds, a Sarkozy declaring Africa has yet to enter the doors of modernity, a Chirac complaining of our noise and odour, and of the common people giving millions of votes to the likes of Le Pen.
France, being a country of contradictions and with a multi ethnicity and multi-culturalism that it is refusing to accept as legit, is indeed fascinating to observe and dissect. The French obsession with splitting hairs and complicating all and sundry when it can be rendered simple once again makes the discussion on national identity a hurdle. As an obsession of the right wing, this search for a lily white national identity (our ancestor the Gaul), is doomed to a resounding failure. As a discussion to enhance integration and build a multi cultural and multi ethnic France its beginning does not augur well. The very man in charge of the ministry of immigration and promising to deport our black and brown bodies back to our own backyards is the one in charge of the discussion on this crucial issue. Up to now, the declarations have on the whole proved to be platitudes. Equality is a myth, integration an illusion no matter if, during naturalization, you accept the insistence to change your name from the original to a French one (the Turks also buy athletes from Africa and force them to change their names). Liberty? As James Baldwin who knew France said of another matter: go tell it on the mountain outside of France if you can, please. Fraternity? Between the ones organising the deportation and the deportees? Between the street cleaner and the Neuilly (upscale Parisian suburb) residents? In your dreams, Madame et Monsieur.
As elsewhere in the world, where double standards triumph, the question of identity rests on wealth and colour of skin. A Sarkozy or Pontiawoski is easily accepted as French more than a Mamadou and Kwaku or Abdella and Kapoor. A useful and rich African or Arab (tennis or football star) will be identified as French more than the impoverished and blighted resident of the Banlieues/Projects/Ghettos/Council flats. And yet again, even for those who may be accepted, naturalized, officially called French, there is always the question: where are you originally from? I was born and raised in Paris. Oh yeah, good for you. But your parents come from Bab el Oued, Dakar, Bangui, no? The name, the accent and above all the colour are important giveaways in determining national identity. And yet, the trend is against those who want to go back to the lore of their blond hair blue eyed ancestors and the mythic pure race. They came to us first as colonizers and, warm hearted as we are, we have believed their message of fraternity and came back to them as émigrés.
What’s in a name? The French national identity will have to include everyone, good or bad, just as it has embraced the Sarkozys (Hungary), the Moscovicis (Romania), Balladurs (Turkey) and even Eric Besson (the present Franco-Lebanese immigration minister) among other foreigners in the past. There is really no need for a discussion on this. Foreigners, as it were, are becoming presidents not only in France but also in the USA and well-bred Parisian kids will one day sing of "our kinky haired and brown eyed ancestors". For the time being in France, Jesus Christ, as it were, remains a French speaking, blond and blue-eyed man of Northern European stock.

WILL CASTRATING TYRANTS HELP?

2009-11-04T09:04:00.000-08:00
Will Castrating Tyrants Help?

The rest of the world has not got it yet. Many still think that Africa's major problems concern famine, AIDS, conflicts and wars, poverty, rigged elections, nepotism and corruption, fevers of all types that are said to originate from the continent and more. How wrong. No one knows Africa like its cruel tyrants and they have time and again told the world that Africa's problems are elsewhere.

Tyrants in Africa are often considered as lazybones but this is also very wrong. Our tyrants are very busy souls, often burning the midnight oil to find ways and means of making our life more miserable. They are hardworking busy bees. Bringing famine to a country with fertile land and a hardworking peasantry requires not only talent but diligence. Organizing rigged elections is not child's play even if it has been done before and experience gained. Getting money out of the tight fisted World Bank requires finesse and persistence. Even if the West wants to go along, convincing it that a one party regime is basking in a multi party system requires not only shamelessness but also hard work. Siphoning off the revenues from oil and minerals to one's private bank accounts demands not only perfidy and greed but vigilance and diligent activity as it is a 24 hours undertaking, seven days a week and tolerates no slackening. Contrary to photos of overfed dictators dozing or napping at international meets, our tyrants are addicted workaholics as dictatorship and laziness do not go together. Oppression is no joke and exploitation demands indefatigable energy.

Robert Mugabe is a man of many problems, some made by himself and others by the good offices of London and Washington, ranging from the economic to the political and you name it. Naive observers would of course conclude that with all this on his old lap he would have no time to focus on gays or chemical castration of rapists. Wrong! He continues to rile against gays and his ministers want to imitate the Czech Republic and decree castration laws in Zimbabwe. Up north in Uganda where Museveni has sadly turned into the usual African corrupt power monger, the government wants to decree homosexuality a crime and to punish gays by severe imprisonment (not less than 7 years) as if Uganda does not have several insurgencies to contend with along with economic and political problems of all sorts. In Somalia, where carnage and chaos have built castles, the hardliners are busy destroying graves and cutting hands and feet of petty thieves while the country remains without a State and a trace of peace. In power or aspiring to take it, Africa has so many busybodies watching over its misery and continued suffering.

The call for castration ( taking away the gun of the rapist as one Zimbabwean minister put it) brings to mind the possibility that this measure could have relieved Africa by making its tyrants non (re) productive. Off hand, such a measure would have deprived us (and what a pleasure!) of an Ali Bongo, a Kabila or Eyadema junior, a Seif Al Islam and a Gamal Mubarek, sons that have taken or are in line to take over power. Castration is an ancient practice that should be revived for political ends while the so called chemical castration now being advocated in Harare, aimed at reducing the libido, is a waste of resources and expectations. Someone has said correctly that behind every phallic hero there lurks an "unsocialized" monster. The cock that spares no chicken otherwise known as Mobutu Sese Seko, the big dictator Idi Amin, and all the other polygamous tyrants were/are macho monsters par excellence that could have been or are perfect candidates for castration. But then again, a castrated and sexually frustrated Idi Amin may have brought more havoc on our Ugandan brothers and sisters. After all, according to some articles in the Pet Friendly sites, castration changes the personality of dogs. The same could be true in humans though eunuchs are revered in some countries and oppressed in many others. This means that there is the dangerous possibility that a castrated tyrant may be worshipped and allowed to wreak havoc. Eunuchs had also a purpose, some use ( Eunuch goes back to the Greek word eunoukhos, "a castrated person employed to take charge of the women of a harem and act as chamberlain") while we say castrate tyrants to make them useless. Men said to be "emasculated and castrated" by "dominating women" reportedly have serious psychological problems and we do need tyrants with more mental handicaps. The ancients ranging from Theophilus of Antioch to Augustine condemned the pagan gods demanding castration and called the action villainy and foul. Will castrating tyrants make them more vicious though such a state may be hard to envisage given the fact they have all reached the highest level of viciousness already. Hence, we must really make sure that castration leads to a change to the better in the temperament and personality of the tyrant.

The African tyrant minus his personal private gun may be impeded from producing off springs that replace him and perpetuate our misery. This by itself is a good thing and we can only hope that Mugabe for one will opt for the full Monty castration instead of imitating Western wimps and their chemical castration option. Why send gays to prison and deplete the money of the State (money that can be stolen by the tyrants) while they can be castrated and rendered unarmed for their "criminal" activity. A black friend of mine claiming to be an expert on the make up of the African tyrants ( a field of expertise monopolized by Whites) asserts that a castrated African tyrant will wilt and shrivel as what defines the tyrant is his macho phallic hero posturing. Will castration put an end to the "unsocialized monster"? It is not sure but it sure is worth trying as Africa would benefit from ending the rule of the tyrants and the sons that continue to rise. And it would be a costless procedure as volunteer castrators would line up in their millions. Count me in.

WORTH READING--FROM MAMDANI

2009-10-21T09:04:00.001-07:00
Beware of human rights fundamentalism
Mahmood Mamdani (2009-03-26)

FOUR WRONG ASSUMPTIONS

The prosecutor's application makes four erroneous assumptions, all of them so he can pin the full blame of the violence on al-Bashir. This is how the prosecutor put it to journalists at The Hague: 'What happened in Darfur is a consequence of al-Bashir's will.'

The first error is to identify the duration of the conflict in Darfur with the presidency of al-Bashir. Yet, the conflict in Darfur began as a civil war in 1987, before al-Bashir and his group came to power, and long before the cycle of insurgency and counterinsurgency that began in 2003. The civil war has become entangled with the counterinsurgency, though they have separate causes. Whereas the insurgency was a rebel challenge to power in Khartoum, the civil war was triggered by the effects of drought and desertification, and intensified by two factors, one internal, the other external, one the failure to reform the system of tribal homelands and the other an effect of the ongoing civil war in Chad.

The second error is to assume that excess deaths in Darfur are the result of a single cause: violence. But the fact is that there have been two separate if interconnected causes, drought and desertification on the one hand, and direct violence on the other. World Health Organisation sources – considered the most reliable source of mortality statistics by the US Government Accountability Office in its 2006 evaluation – trace these deaths to two major causes: about 70 to 80 per cent to drought-related diarrhoea and 20 to 30 per cent to direct violence.

The third error is to assume a single author of violent deaths and rape. In his eagerness to make the prosecution's case, Moreno-Ocampo not only obscured the origins of the violence in Darfur, he also went on to portray life in the internally displaced persons camps in Darfur as a contemporary version of life in Nazi concentration camps in Europe, with al-Bashir cast in the role of the Führer. At the press conference announcing the case against the president of Sudan, the prosecutor said: 'Al-Bashir organised the destitution, insecurity and harassment of the survivors. He did not need bullets. He used other weapons: rape, hunger and fear. As efficient, but silent.'

To be sure, there were ongoing incidents of rape in Darfur, as there are indeed in most conflict situations where armed young men confront unarmed young women. This much was recognised by the US special envoy to Sudan, Andrew S. Natsios, in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 11 April 2007: 'The government has lost control of large parts of the province now. And some of the rapes, by the way, that are going on are by rebels raping women in their own tribes. We know in one of the refugee camps, it's now controlled by the rebels, formally. There have been terrible atrocities committed by the rebels against the people in the camps.'

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The fourth erroneous assumption is that the situation has not changed in Darfur since the onset of the counterinsurgency in 2003. In Moreno-Ocampo's own words: 'In April 2008, the United Nations estimated the total number of deaths since 2003 at 300,000.' This estimate came from John Holmes, UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs. This is how Holmes put it in the first place: 'A study in 2006 suggested that 200,000 had lost their lives from the combined effect of the conflict. That figure must be much higher now, perhaps half as much again.' There are two qualifications here, and Moreno-Ocampo glossed over both. The first was that these mortality figures were said to be the result of 'a combined effect', referring to direct violence and drought. The second qualification was explained by Reuters: 'United Nations cautioned reporters that the number was not a scientific estimate but a "reasonable extrapolation".' The assumption underlying the extrapolation – that the level of mortality has not changed in Darfur from 2003 on – was contradicted by the UN's own technical staff in Sudan. As Julie Flint explained in the New York Times of 6 July 2007 and the Independent (London) of 31 July 2007, UN sources spoke of a sharp drop in mortality rates in Darfur from early 2005, so much so that these sources report that mortality estimates had dipped to as low as below 200 per month, lower than the number that would constitute an emergency.

That the ICC has politicised the issue of justice is no reason to sidestep the question of accountability. The kernel of truth in the prosecutor's application concerns 2003–04, when Darfur was the site of mass deaths. This was mass murder, but not genocide. Its authors were several, not just the government of Sudan. There is no doubt that the perpetrators of violence should be held accountable, but when and how is a political decision that cannot belong to the ICC prosecutor. More than the innocence or guilt of the president of Sudan, it is the relationship between law and politics – including the politicisation of the ICC – that poses an issue of greater concern to Africa.

* This article was originally published by the Mail & Guardian.
* Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government Columbia University. Mamdani's latest book, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror, is published by Pantheon Books.
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BEGGING 101

2009-10-21T09:02:00.000-07:00
BEGGING 101

I am sure there are a lot of people who think that begging needs no training, all you have to do is look miserly (which you will look if reduced to that state of starvation and stress or anxiety anyway), roll your eyes, and beg. How wrong they are! Begging is an art like all other such callings, it needs training and expertise and the recent report that in one Indian village such a beggars' school exists has highlighted the necessity of stopping the amateur beggars in Africa, a continent known for its ultra professional beggars.

In the good old days you could just beg (have pity on me oh passer by, I am starving!) and tug at he hearts of otherwise disinterested citizens. Modern times have hardened the ordinary human being; pity is a scarce commodity, giving help turned into a business unto itself. Consider the number of charity organizations and NGOs around the world (more than seventy in Addis Ababa dealing with the thriving business of child adoption) and the point becomes clear. Begging has become a competitive business, cut throat all the way, very capitalist. You can't have the millionaire without the beggar. One begs the other, the contrast is all. Beggars have to be professional, modern, savvy-- the times require this. In Egypt, India, Ethiopia and other places professionalism has reached the level where a beggar can rent a child for a day; organize an open bleeding wound to expose to appear pitiable and very wretched. The hard hearts need shocks, in the Indian school of begging children are taught how to sound and appear miserable while in places like Ethiopia there is really no need of training for this--we are very miserable.

Professional begging has now become as African as cassava, foufou. matoke, ugali and Injera. Any African tyrant worthy of this name is first of all a beggar par excellence, the only difference he has with the beggar on the street is that he lives in the palace or State House. Those who refused to beg from the Mau Mau, to the "NO" man Sekou Toure, the Amilcar Cabrals, Netos and Machels--where are they now? Those who opted beg had a better end---some ruled for long like Houphet or Bongo senior, Mobutu or Kamuzu. They had the art of begging down to a capital B. One of the main tenets of professional begging is for the beggar not to exhibit inferiority. The assertive beggar is the successful one. The begging tyrant hoards millions, drives posh cars, lives in palaces and yet treks to the West to beg. But, before such pilgrimages and hajjes are made there is a dangerous animal to kill and it is called humiliation. The beggar should never feel this thing called humiliation. The people may be starving, the capital city may be stinking to the seven plus heavens, the oil millions may have disappeared down into the tyrant's secret bank accounts abroad and hundreds of thousands of starving children may be sleeping on the streets but, as we say in Ethiopia, he must wash his eye with salt and beg. The beggar artist called Meles Zenawi for example begged the West for food aid for the famine stricken millions by boldly accusing the West of not delivering food aid in time. If the young African girl called Dambisa Mayo riles against foreign aid, the fruit of begging, it is because she knew not poverty and the need to beg as she came from a well to do family. The artist beggar must be adept at spinning captivating stories--extending the palm and wailing for help is of no use. Have a story line, drama and suspense, falling down the ladder, endurance and suffering and spin it with good presentation skills. Make the donor part of the operation--give and you shall receive. That is why donors give our tyrants money after money and take back quite a big part of it back while the tyrant gets a considerable sum to add to his coffers. Why should the World Bank give Meles Zenawi and other dictator millions? Surely, it is not because they tell the Bank grim tales of human rights violations, broad daylight massacres, concentration camps and war mongering. The World Bank and the IMF, or the donors in general, do like cruel dictators but they do not like to be told of this in public. They want lying beggars. I once saw in one American city a homeless person with a begging bowl in front of him and a written sign which stated "No need to lie: it's for the drinks". Many a kind elderly person passed him by, angry. Few donors want the truth. Likewise, the tyrant beggar cannot openly claim I am begging for money to steal or to buy arms with. He must spin a convincing story of worth, combining arrogance (make them feel guilty with neo colonial and imperialism references if need be) with a we are going to perish like flies if you do not fork some millions over and he must convince the donors who instinctively wonder "what is in it for us." The beggar must learn to share.

No country is FOB (Free of Beggars) and one of the countries teeming with beggars, India, is trying to use repressive measures to clean Delhi from its thousands of beggars before the October 2010 Commonwealth games. This country touted as a democracy and still practicing the caste system that has rendered millions untouchable and without rights is using courts in vans and trucks to send beggars to detention centers and prisons. Such a round up was also tried by Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia, Arap Moi in Kenya and their attempt to monopolize begging by eliminating the street beggars has failed miserably. If the top man begs the white man the ordinary folk can beg from the black man or woman. It is a desperate situation and in downtown Nairobi enterprising street kids cover themselves with human excrement and threaten office going women to throw some at them unless they give them a few shillings. This aggressive begging has proved effective. Meles Zenawi at the G20 meetings tried to look as one of the donors or the big countries giving us a good example of the professional beggar without any notion of humility. Profitable as it is, begging has branched out and become a nation wide profession. Some expose their wounds and deformities as in the past while others perform, sing or stand as stone statues to beg. The latter do get more money but begging 101 also comes along with teaching stealing expertise as our tyrants have taught us over the years. Beg and steal go together--show me an African tyrant who begs for help from the West but does not steal from it or the people. The tyrants are so in it that they steal elections and innocent lives too.

The beggar is a pauper who has no money and begs for it. And the beggar is also the one who takes the money that is not his and in this definition we can bring in the tyrants and the corrupt ministers like the British MPs who were actors of the recent scandal of appropriating public money fraudulently and illegally. They really do not need money but they cannot kick the begging monkey off their back. Mobutu, Bongo, Meles, Moi, the list is long of those who have become rich by begging and stealing but still continue to beg. They have so crowded the field that the paupers and poor people in need of help are edged out, rounded up, harassed and jailed. It is a tough world out there. The beggar's school in India teaches how to overcome this and survive in the face of big and voracious beggars called ministers and leaders. The millions of beggars in Africa do need such a school. Can India help instead of taking over our lands and riches just like China and the West?

2009-09-16T09:36:00.000-07:00
TOO LATE, TOO SUPERIFICAL

(A Brief Comment on the ICG Report on Ethiopia)
Hama Tuma

"The ideological identikit of some of the rebel forces is alarming. The TPLF, for example, are considered as ferocious local replicas of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge". (Domenico Quirico, La Stampa, Italy, 26/4/1991)

"Ethiopia sadly is one of the most politically repressive countries in the world". Makau wa Mutua in Ignoring the Lessons of History, December 1994

"Tribalism is an atavism, retrogression back to the embryo. Tribal thinking is extremely primitive." (Mwalimu Julius Nyrere, September 1994)

"I am convinced that there are better ways to address Ethiopia's ethnic problems without giving ethnicity primacy above all issues in the political system. The danger of an ethnic based system is that it encourages disunity and hostility, especially in a country such as Ethiopia", (US Senator Harry Johnstone, September 1994).

The Ovambos of Southern Africa say the fool laughs at himself. Some present day Ethiopians seem to enjoy doing just that. A number of Ethiopian web sites of the Diaspora have recently posted a September 4 report by the International Crisis group on "Ethnic Federalism and its Discontents"". None of these sites have ventured a critic on the 45 pages report but it is safe to assert that they seem to be delighted. Not surprisingly though, the clique in power in Addis Abeba has cried foul because the ICG criticizes it though it gives it credit that it does not deserve at all (see Aiga Forum article on the subject). However, this report of the ICG is too late and very confused and superficial and therefore one more evidence of how and why such so called experts and the US administration have failed to understand the reality of Ethiopia.

An objective appraisal of the Ethiopian situation has been lacking for long from foreign quarters. Their premises have often been flawed and their conclusions quite mistaken. The International Crisis group had in the past an analyst/member called John Prendergast (now with Enough Project) who was a State Department official at the time when the Tigrean front took power (1991). He backed the repressive and ethnic chauvinist Tigrean front to the hilt and wrote, with the Meles Zenawi advisor Paul Henze (former CIA and Rand Corporation employee), articles attacking as "Amhara chauvinists" those who stood against the TPLF. Here is what Prendergast and Henze wrote back in September-December 1993 (Ethiopian Commentator--a TPLF funded magazine):
"Heated rhetoric is raising the political temperature in Addis Abeba. Through the deceptively named All Amhara People's Organization and the Coalition of Ethiopian Democratic Forces, this possessed elements who have vested interests in the maintenance of the Mengistu regime, are baiting the new government with racially and religiously divisive rhetoric. They are being funded and encouraged by exiles abroad, some of whom were collaborators with Mengistu. They hope to provoke violent reactions which will lead donor governments and agencies to cut off aid to the Transitional government and to isolate it diplomatically" (p.58).
Racial rhetoric? What does that mean? The apologists of the repressive regime ( it is being provoked) do fail to mention (as they lie shamelessly) that the All Amhara People's Organization was formed after the TPLF takeover and worked legally in the country while the Coalition (COEDF) was made up forces like the EPRP, the EDU, and others who had for years struggled against the Mengistu regime.

That bias and prejudice seem to have lingered on within the ICG. While the ICG report does criticize the Meles Zenawi regime, it should be said that the basic criticism is superficial and confused and continues to echo the TPLF's insidious assertions and fallacies. The ICG report is soaked with the TPLF's Amhara oriented prejudicial conclusions. The report states that Amhara elite opposed ethnic federalism because it goes against and impedes, in their view, a strong unitary state. The conclusion is that the opposition (designated as Amhara in the ICG report) wants a "strong unitary state "and is opposed to ethnic federalism on this ground. This is totally baseless and false. The Ethiopian opposition with the EPRP included called for years for decentralization. In fact, almost all the programs of the EPRP advocated for a federal system. The EPRP also proposed a federal solution for Eritrea, a stand for which both the TPLF and the EPLF (Eritrea) attacked it as chauvinist and more. The ICG writers could have made some research before making such a fallacious assertion. The ICG report shares so much of the TPLF prejudicial positions against Amharas that it concludes that "the 2005 elections were shaped by Amhara and nationalist discontent with the loss of Eritrea..." Shame on the writers of this report! At least one should research, try to get an objective appraisal. Let us briefly deal with the mistaken assertions and conclusions.

The 2005 elections were historic in that the majority of the Ethiopian people confronted all odds and cast their vote against the TPLF/EPRDF. It was not an Amhara nationalist affair at all. The assertion that all opposition is Amhara is a basic line of the Tigrean ruling front and it assumes that the Amharas, as a people and/or ethnic group, ruled over Ethiopia and benefited from it. This is just an echo of the anti Amhara propaganda of the ethnic fronts and secessionist forces who tried to rewrite history through their skewered ethnic prism (their fantasy of Ethiopian colonialism, Abyssinian settler colonialism, etc). Any decent research would show that the majority of Amharas (poor peasants like most other Ethiopians, suffered from the repressive regimes and if truth be told the Amhara peasant of rural Shoa and mountainous Semien/Dashen was worse off than the peasant in Tigrai or Eritrea. The ICG report goes on to refer to the Diaspora as dominated by Amharas and Amharanized urbanites. Take it this way, read it in any other way, the ICG reports strongly asserts, directly and otherwise, that the Ethiopian people's opposition struggle is Amhara or Amhara dominated and we all know that these 'devilish Amharas exploited and oppressed the vast majority and are now furious because they lost their privileges'!!! It smells of Henze and Prendergast doesn't it? No wonder the ICG report quotes the likes of John Young who were pathetic TPLF scribes.

The 2005 elections in which the opposition CUD and UEDF were able to mobilize the majority against the TPLF was a historic occasion whose dimension and impact has escaped the ICG report writers. Millions of Ethiopians of almost all ethnic groups took part in the election and the EPRDF was resoundingly defeated. Even thousands of Tigreans in cities like Addis Abeba voted for the CUD and unless the ICG calls them Amharanized urbanites they hailed from the birth province of Meles Zenawi. The loss of Eritrea was not the main and biggest issue of the 2005 election--the repressive and ethnic discriminatory rule of the TPLF was. By the way, the ICG takes the EPRDF fiction as fact and refers to the satellites of the TPLF gathered within the EPRDF as TPLF -friendly forces. The reality is that there is no EPRDF (in fact some even argue that the TPLF per se does not exist) as a bona fide front made up of independent organizations. During the 2005 elections, the Ethiopian people rose as one to defeat the TPLF at the ballot box and it is grossly unfair to designate this event as "shaped by Amharas and nationalists". Who are these nationalists if not the "damned" Amharas? Amharanized urbanites? The ICG shames itself!

The ICG report is also flawed in its analysis of the pre 1991 situation. Its reference to EPRP and Meisone as "student organizations" is surprising to say the least; though it is true that both organizations emerged from the student movement and intelligentsia they were by mid seventies mass based parties in opposite camps. The defeat of the Derg regime was not the work of the TPLF alone either as the report bluntly asserts. The ICG report states also that by mid 1990s the only party with an identifiable program was the EPRDF. Really? What happened to the OLF, the EPRP/COEDF, and the legal opposition groups? None of them had a program or was it all invisible? A certain kind of myopia, heavily influenced by the TPLF and the ethnic groups, seems to have afflicted the ICG personnel who wrote this report. Their appendix on rebel groups presents the history (and formal and superficial at that) of only the OLF and the ONLF. Are there no other rebel groups now? Were there not then during the time of the Derg? The ICG tendency to assume as true certain TPLF assertions goes as far as taking at face value the present TPLF/EPRDF claim that it now has 5 million or so members and the Meles resignation charade (he wanted to step down but has been pressurized to stay is how the ICG report presents it with no desire to be funny). But this is not the only problem.

The ICG reporters start out seemingly with a desire to criticize the ethnic federalism of the ruling Tigrean clique but they end by doing the opposite. They credit the TPLF/EPRDF with "radically transforming the political system" and assert that it was not the principle of ethnic federalism per se that has proved problematic. This is how they elaborate on it: ethnic federalism has dramatically enhanced service delivery as well a rural inhabitants access to the State allowing the EPRDF to extend its authority deep into the countryside: Are these experts writing about Ethiopia? What extension of services? All existing services are actually in the pits. The rural population having access to the State can be read as fiction. The ruling group has spread and extended its authority mainly based on and through its repressive power and apparatuses. For anyone who has any inkling of the Ethiopian reality the above assertion of the ICG report jars and offends. They go on to claim that "economic growth and expansion of public services are to the regime's credit". Such wild statements make their declared attempt to be critical of the regime and objective a sham.

The ICG report is, despite claims of on place interviews, a tattered piece which gives more credit to the repressive regime than criticizing it. Moreover, the focus and sympathy is again on other ethnic groups and not on the right or struggle of the Ethiopian people as a whole. That ethnic federalism is bankrupt and the base of the whole problem of bad governance has been denied by the ICG report which tries to blame the alleged Amhara yearning for a unitary state to be the core of the problem. This done and even the historic 2005 election reduced to an Amhara protest, there was no chance for the report to redeem itself. Diaspora web sites (Amhara and Amharanized in the ICG view) must be accused of masochism for giving publicity to this report that does injustice to the people of Ethiopia. Back in the seventies groupies of the ethnic and secessionist fronts (Peter Niggli, Dan Connell, Kristy Wright, Gayle Smith, Firebrace and Holland. Abdurahman Babu, etc) and later Prendergast and the Paul Henzes were attacking the Amhara people at every opportunity. In the process, the TPLF and company have slyly sold their unholy diatribe against the Amhara. Their falsification of history has been taken as the truth by so called experts who apparently are prejudiced and totally disinterested in facts and do not make any effort to research on the truth of the situation. Thus, the ICG report may please some of the usual quarters, but is flawed, impaired and an affront to the people of Ethiopia.

2009-09-16T09:33:00.000-07:00
LAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE

Africans may be miserable and subjected to poverty but they are on the whole nice people forever thinking of the welfare of others even in crazy times when they may be forced to indulge in a genocide or cut arms and legs with machetes. It is a dour and grim world we live in and so the Africans' untiring attempt to make us laugh now and then should be appreciated.

From the land of the Sudan, where once idle chiefs ordered a man to marry a female goat and warmed the heart of may a racist, came the indecent trousers show. A Sudanese woman, Loubna Hussein, working as a journalist wit the UN was arrested because she was wearing a trouser in public and it was deemed indecent. The world which did not know that the stiff necked fundamentalist regime has been flogging women on the basis of their clothes was surprised at first and then amused. What makes a trouser indecent? Tightness? Colour? What? We all know the Sudan has grave problems in its hands. The regime has to make sure its killing spree continues in Darfur and that does require effort (not every lazy regime can handle a genocide!), that the impending secession of the South does not materialize, that the starving millions get enough food--huge tasks, big priorities. But, the generals took time out to give us the trousers show, dragging a brave woman to court and sentencing her to prison or fine (flogging left out this time--too much world attention). The dynasty or succession show presented to the world by Syria and North Korea was justifiably taken away by Africa for the enjoyment of all. Eyadema of Togo left power to his son, Kabila senior to Kabila junior in what was Zaire and now Ali Bongo of Gabon is succeeding his corrupt father. "Monarchy-- republics" are in vogue and up North Mubarek is coordinating his own similar show and Gadafi may very well leave his place to Seif Al Islam, his son. Funny shows.

Talk of Gadafi and the showman in Tripoli held a big bash to which African "kings and chiefs" in their colourful dresses were invited over to declare once again Brother Moamar Gadafi the King of Kings of Africa. He was given a throne as a gift (among other offerings) and he wore huge gold rings and a necklace. After a heavy meal quite a few of the tribal chiefs and so called kings napped as Gadafi spoke, but no the show still went on and tried to surpass Bokassa's coronation as a central African Napoleon some decades back. The funny show aside, Gadafi is no fool. He has used his oil to buy the old British Empire and to make it bend to his wills, to release the alleged Lockerbie bomber and then to ridicule itself by claiming it did that on humanitarian grounds only. From Somalia, we got the funny event of terrorists of Al Shabab buying arms from the alleged enemy, the Transitional government led by Sheikh Ahmed. The arms come from Uganda bought and paid for by America. Once again our wily neighbours are being supplied with arms by their own enemy, Washington, and the naivety of the often arrogant American officials makes us laugh. In Ethiopia, the often unfunny despotic regime of Meles Zenawi came up with its own Orwellian joke banning the word cholera and baptizing it instead (very many thousands even in the capital are afflicted and hundreds are dying even in the capital Addis Abeba) as "Atet" or dangerous or fast watery diarrhoea. No doctor can use the C word or would face jail and the routine beating. This has given ideas to other tyrants to re baptize killer diseases and make them appear benign or innocuous. Ugandans used to call AIDS "slim" but some are now considering calling it "severe diet syndrome (SDS), giving the idea that the loss of weight is linked to fanatical dieting "like the ones engaged in by some models. Malaria can be renamed Saturday Night Fever and so on.

Cameroon's Biya spent 400,000 US dollars per night for hotel rooms and services fee
(the average Cameroonian earns a dollar a day) but his spokesmen retaliated with a
"he has been allocated the money and he can spend it as he pleases" thereby making everyone--including Cameroonians--laugh. Don't be jealous! Who gave him all this money to spend? Bad question, just laugh and enjoy the noble gesture of our tyrants who spend so much money to maintain our prestige in foreign lands (where God knows why they still think we are poor and begging for help!) and give us the chance to enjoy by proxy. The latest joke on the streets of Addis Abeba is that the tyrant Meles will win the 2010 general election hands down ( he lost the last one but stayed in power killing and jailing those who cried foul) because of millions of hens and chicken will vote for him as he raised the price of a hen to 80 Birr (they used to cost less than ten Birr in the past) and millions were not able to afford them for the kill come the Ethiopian new year (September 11) and the chicken and hen folk are elated. A South African boy, who did not know of Idi Amin who had at least 33 children, answered the question "where do babies come from?" with: "they come from Jacob Zuma" (who has 18 children by the latest count). The problem with Africans, if you want to call it that, is that they are an open book, not hiding details of their personal lives. Many a European and American have concubines and very may children out of wedlock but silence is the edict on the fact. Not Africans who flaunt their peccadilloes. Idi Amin paraded his wives and very many children, the old Mzee Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya dragged his wife, Mama Ngina, to a public forum so that she can testify he may be old but was as active as cock It was all before the blue pill). In all cases, we supplied the fun; we let those who think we are savages and bizarre have the laugh at our expense. We told the world we married goats, believed in traditional witch doctors (who consulted bones instead of the computer), declared an arrogant Arab colonel king of kings, denied diseases their existence by giving them benign names, ignored the existence of famine, elected again and again pour own tormentors, like to slaughter one another for nothing, and that our riches are there for the taking. The world laughed at us. We were useful, we are useful.

An acquaintance of mine I shall call Professor Mendal (a combination of the names of there educated Ethiopian fools) suggests that Africans can get back at their tyrants by laughing at them. The run of the mill African dictator takes himself very seriously and has very many laws dealing severely with any lese majeste. You cannot laugh at he tyrants who can only laugh at the Nation at will. The practice of laughing at the tyrants, of not taking them seriously at all, of ignoring their edicts, of roaring with laughter at their endless antics will surely drive them crazy. Idi Amin stole the people's laughter and enjoyed his own fun and aggravated the misery of the people. Take our constipated looking tyrants ranging from Kagame and Meles to Ngueso and Dos Santos and imagine what being laughed at or being ridiculed will do them. We can also laugh at the opposition and give them a taste of reality. Back in the early and mid seventies Algeria's Boumedienne (he hardly ever smiled out of choice and not because he had crooked teeth) played at being revolutionary and invited dozens of self declared liberation fronts to Algiers. One of these was a self declared Ashanti prince who brought over a political program which had an introduction, his photo, other books written by the author and a long article on the personality of the "prince revolutionary" with a final call foe the then president of Ghana, Busia, to resign (because "you are a sophist") and concludes by stating if Busia does not resign the Ghanaian army should overthrow him via a coup d'etat. A curious political program in which the self declared prince states that he met Busia and the [president suspected he was a roving agent of Nkrumah ("which I was not") or a "big personality disguised as a common man"("which I was"). Such funny "rebels "and "Marxist- Leninist- Lumumbist " con men from the Congo are no longer around. Politics has become boring and the politicians humourless. That is why the African should laugh at those oppressing them and at those who declare themselves their liberators but are caricatures of those in power. Laughter is indeed the best medicine.

2009-09-10T11:05:00.001-07:00
TOO LATE, TOO SUPERIFICAL

(A Brief Comment on the ICG Report on Ethiopia)
Hama Tuma

"The ideological identikit of some of the rebel forces is alarming. The TPLF, for example, are considered as ferocious local replicas of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge". (Domenico Quirico, La Stampa, Italy, 26/4/1991)

"Ethiopia sadly is one of the most politically repressive countries in the world". Makau wa Mutua in Ignoring the Lessons of History, December 1994

"Tribalism is an atavism, retrogression back to the embryo. Tribal thinking is extremely primitive." (Mwalimu Julius Nyrere, September 1994)

"I am convinced that there are better ways to address Ethiopia's ethnic problems without giving ethnicity primacy above all issues in the political system. The danger of an ethnic based system is that it encourages disunity and hostility, especially in a country such as Ethiopia", (US Senator Harry Johnstone, September 1994).

The Ovambos of Southern Africa say the fool laughs at himself. Some present day Ethiopians seem to enjoy doing just that. A number of Ethiopian web sites of the Diaspora have recently posted a September 4 report by the International Crisis group on "Ethnic Federalism and its Discontents"". None of these sites have ventured a critic on the 45 pages report but it is safe to assert that they seem to be delighted. Not surprisingly though, the clique in power in Addis Abeba has cried foul because the ICG criticizes it though it gives it credit that it does not deserve at all (see Aiga Forum article on the subject). However, this report of the ICG is too late and very confused and superficial and therefore one more evidence of how and why such so called experts and the US administration have failed to understand the reality of Ethiopia.

An objective appraisal of the Ethiopian situation has been lacking for long from foreign quarters. Their premises have often been flawed and their conclusions quite mistaken. The International Crisis group had in the past an analyst/member called John Prendergast (now with Enough Project) who was a State Department official at the time when the Tigrean front took power (1991). He backed the repressive and ethnic chauvinist Tigrean front to the hilt and wrote, with the Meles Zenawi advisor Paul Henze (former CIA and Rand Corporation employee), articles attacking as "Amhara chauvinists" those who stood against the TPLF. Here is what Prendergast and Henze wrote back in September-December 1993 (Ethiopian Commentator--a TPLF funded magazine):
"Heated rhetoric is raising the political temperature in Addis Abeba. Through the deceptively named All Amhara People's Organization and the Coalition of Ethiopian Democratic Forces, this possessed elements who have vested interests in the maintenance of the Mengistu regime, are baiting the new government with racially and religiously divisive rhetoric. They are being funded and encouraged by exiles abroad, some of whom were collaborators with Mengistu. They hope to provoke violent reactions which will lead donor governments and agencies to cut off aid to the Transitional government and to isolate it diplomatically" (p.58).
Racial rhetoric? What does that mean? The apologists of the repressive regime ( it is being provoked) do fail to mention (as they lie shamelessly) that the All Amhara People's Organization was formed after the TPLF takeover and worked legally in the country while the Coalition (COEDF) was made up forces like the EPRP, the EDU, and others who had for years struggled against the Mengistu regime.

That bias and prejudice seem to have lingered on within the ICG. While the ICG report does criticize the Meles Zenawi regime, it should be said that the basic criticism is superficial and confused and continues to echo the TPLF's insidious assertions and fallacies. The ICG report is soaked with the TPLF's Amhara oriented prejudicial conclusions. The report states that Amhara elite opposed ethnic federalism because it goes against and impedes, in their view, a strong unitary state. The conclusion is that the opposition (designated as Amhara in the ICG report) wants a "strong unitary state "and is opposed to ethnic federalism on this ground. This is totally baseless and false. The Ethiopian opposition with the EPRP included called for years for decentralization. In fact, almost all the programs of the EPRP advocated for a federal system. The EPRP also proposed a federal solution for Eritrea, a stand for which both the TPLF and the EPLF (Eritrea) attacked it as chauvinist and more. The ICG writers could have made some research before making such a fallacious assertion. The ICG report shares so much of the TPLF prejudicial positions against Amharas that it concludes that "the 2005 elections were shaped by Amhara and nationalist discontent with the loss of Eritrea..." Shame on the writers of this report! At least one should research, try to get an objective appraisal. Let us briefly deal with the mistaken assertions and conclusions.

The 2005 elections were historic in that the majority of the Ethiopian people confronted all odds and cast their vote against the TPLF/EPRDF. It was not an Amhara nationalist affair at all. The assertion that all opposition is Amhara is a basic line of the Tigrean ruling front and it assumes that the Amharas, as a people and/or ethnic group, ruled over Ethiopia and benefited from it. This is just an echo of the anti Amhara propaganda of the ethnic fronts and secessionist forces who tried to rewrite history through their skewered ethnic prism (their fantasy of Ethiopian colonialism, Abyssinian settler colonialism, etc). Any decent research would show that the majority of Amharas (poor peasants like most other Ethiopians, suffered from the repressive regimes and if truth be told the Amhara peasant of rural Shoa and mountainous Semien/Dashen was worse off than the peasant in Tigrai or Eritrea. The ICG report goes on to refer to the Diaspora as dominated by Amharas and Amharanized urbanites. Take it this way, read it in any other way, the ICG reports strongly asserts, directly and otherwise, that the Ethiopian people's opposition struggle is Amhara or Amhara dominated and we all know that these 'devilish Amharas exploited and oppressed the vast majority and are now furious because they lost their privileges'!!! It smells of Henze and Prendergast doesn't it? No wonder the ICG report quotes the likes of John Young who were pathetic TPLF scribes.

The 2005 elections in which the opposition CUD and UEDF were able to mobilize the majority against the TPLF was a historic occasion whose dimension and impact has escaped the ICG report writers. Millions of Ethiopians of almost all ethnic groups took part in the election and the EPRDF was resoundingly defeated. Even thousands of Tigreans in cities like Addis Abeba voted for the CUD and unless the ICG calls them Amharanized urbanites they hailed from the birth province of Meles Zenawi. The loss of Eritrea was not the main and biggest issue of the 2005 election--the repressive and ethnic discriminatory rule of the TPLF was. By the way, the ICG takes the EPRDF fiction as fact and refers to the satellites of the TPLF gathered within the EPRDF as TPLF -friendly forces. The reality is that there is no EPRDF (in fact some even argue that the TPLF per se does not exist) as a bona fide front made up of independent organizations. During the 2005 elections, the Ethiopian people rose as one to defeat the TPLF at the ballot box and it is grossly unfair to designate this event as "shaped by Amharas and nationalists". Who are these nationalists if not the "damned" Amharas? Amharanized urbanites? The ICG shames itself!

The ICG report is also flawed in its analysis of the pre 1991 situation. Its reference to EPRP and Meisone as "student organizations" is surprising to say the least; though it is true that both organizations emerged from the student movement and intelligentsia they were by mid seventies mass based parties in opposite camps. The defeat of the Derg regime was not the work of the TPLF alone either as the report bluntly asserts. The ICG report states also that by mid 1990s the only party with an identifiable program was the EPRDF. Really? What happened to the OLF, the EPRP/COEDF, and the legal opposition groups? None of them had a program or was it all invisible? A certain kind of myopia, heavily influenced by the TPLF and the ethnic groups, seems to have afflicted the ICG personnel who wrote this report. Their appendix on rebel groups presents the history (and formal and superficial at that) of only the OLF and the ONLF. Are there no other rebel groups now? Were there not then during the time of the Derg? The ICG tendency to assume as true certain TPLF assertions goes as far as taking at face value the present TPLF/EPRDF claim that it now has 5 million or so members and the Meles resignation charade (he wanted to step down but has been pressurized to stay is how the ICG report presents it with no desire to be funny). But this is not the only problem.

The ICG reporters start out seemingly with a desire to criticize the ethnic federalism of the ruling Tigrean clique but they end by doing the opposite. They credit the TPLF/EPRDF with "radically transforming the political system" and assert that it was not the principle of ethnic federalism per se that has proved problematic. This is how they elaborate on it: ethnic federalism has dramatically enhanced service delivery as well a rural inhabitants access to the State allowing the EPRDF to extend its authority deep into the countryside: Are these experts writing about Ethiopia? What extension of services? All existing services are actually in the pits. The rural population having access to the State can be read as fiction. The ruling group has spread and extended its authority mainly based on and through its repressive power and apparatuses. For anyone who has any inkling of the Ethiopian reality the above assertion of the ICG report jars and offends. They go on to claim that "economic growth and expansion of public services are to the regime's credit". Such wild statements make their declared attempt to be critical of the regime and objective a sham.

The ICG report is, despite claims of on place interviews, a tattered piece which gives more credit to the repressive regime than criticizing it. Moreover, the focus and sympathy is again on other ethnic groups and not on the right or struggle of the Ethiopian people as a whole. That ethnic federalism is bankrupt and the base of the whole problem of bad governance has been denied by the ICG report which tries to blame the alleged Amhara yearning for a unitary state to be the core of the problem. This done and even the historic 2005 election reduced to an Amhara protest, there was no chance for the report to redeem itself. Diaspora web sites (Amhara and Amharanized in the ICG view) must be accused of masochism for giving publicity to this report that does injustice to the people of Ethiopia. Back in the seventies groupies of the ethnic and secessionist fronts (Peter Niggli, Dan Connell, Kristy Wright, Gayle Smith, Firebrace and Holland. Abdurahman Babu, etc) and later Prendergast and the Paul Henzes were attacking the Amhara people at every opportunity. In the process, the TPLF and company have slyly sold their unholy diatribe against the Amhara. Their falsification of history has been taken as the truth by so called experts who apparently are prejudiced and totally disinterested in facts and do not make any effort to research on the truth of the situation. Thus, the ICG report may please some of the usual quarters, but is flawed, impaired and an affront to the people of Ethiopia.

Time to Brand them All

2009-08-11T09:51:00.001-07:00
TIME TO BRAND THEM ALL
Hama Tuma

There is a time to die and a time to live (in Africa there is always more time to die) but there is also a time to brand. Cattle owners and slave drivers did it. The Nazis did it on Jews. Meles Zenawi's guerrillas used the scythe to singe and brand their innocent victims. Branding was in for long and may be due for a comeback if we are to heed the advice of a Swazi member of parliament. He demanded that people with AIDS be branded so that their potential victims get a forewarning as they are being prepared for a dangerous foreplay. An interesting idea, to say the least.
But the Swazi MP could not withstand the hue and cry by Swazi men and had to withdraw the suggestion. Swazi Member of Parliament and gospel singer, Pastor Timothy Myeni, has now blamed the devil for suggesting at an MPs' workshop, that there should be a law making it "compulsory to test for HIV" and that people testing positive should be "branded on the buttocks". Here is a news report on his retraction:
"The devil has trapped me so that he celebrates that, from a Christian, such an uncalled for statement has come out. I am very sincere. I am very sorry. I understand very well that this was a blunder", said Pastor Myeni at a media conference, in Johannesburg.
"There are infants who get infected in the womb or during birth. Does he want HIV-positive infants to be branded also? What does he say about rape survivors?", asked one angry official without explaining if he was talking of women or men rape victims and why the branding should not involve babies with Aids. Myeni has retracted but his was an interesting suggestion if anything. Swaziland is a country where a young king marries young maidens and carelessly spends the country's meagre resources over cars and palaces for himself and his women. His 13 wives shop in Dubai most of the time and his birthday parties cost millions while the Aids afflicted people suffer for lack of drugs. He ordered the Swazi girls and women not to have sex for five years, not to wear miniskirts and long pants and then goes on to hold the so called Reed Dance ceremony during which more than 50,000 bare breasted and scantily clothed young girls vie to be the absolute monarch's next wife--for the money and prestige of course. The king, Mswati III, uses this ceremony to acquire young maidens as his wives. Shouldn't such a person be branded on both his buttocks as a profligate, polygamist and tyrant? MP Myeni's branding idea could very well have been an idea whose time has come but he was cowardly and threw it on and to the Devil.
To begin with, there is no reason why the branding should be for Aids carriers alone and why it should only be done on the behinds. If branding as a warning and as ID catches on, it can be used for tyrants, embezzlers, official thieves, decadent politicians, "genociders", mass killers and more. Imagine the corrupt tyrants with a big THIEF brand on their foreheads. They will never show their ugly faces in public. The brutal military regime in Ethiopia did try its own sort of branding when it unleashed the Red Terror against its opponents (mainly the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party) and nailed an "I am a counterrevolutionary" placard on the foreheads of the murdered EPRP followers. It did not catch on because the brander was the one that had to be branded and exposed while, on the other hand, popular branding by people on the tyrants can catch on. There is branding and there is branding and the Nazi numbers branding is out of date unless we insist on branding Sassou Ngueso and his likes No 1 Thief. African tyrants who like to be called No 1 Patriot and No 1 Genius could deserve to be called number one Despots and Robbers. Branding the forehead may not also be very effective given that fact that with fundamentalism spreading not only women but also bearded fanatical men cover their foreheads. The hands can also be covered with Michael Jackson gloves. Thus, where to brand becomes a problem.
Lest some ill intentioned people think that the Swazi pastor is one more African savage advocating a cruel act let me say that branding people is an old practice of the Western civilizations. Romans branded even thieves with the letter F and burning people with iron was also considered punishment. The Greeks did burn and brand. Res servus est, the slave was a thing, a biological entity somewhere there with any ordinary livestock who had to be dehumanized to make it know its place. Following the Romans and Greeks, Americans and Europeans branded their slaves/in most cases black/ just as they branded their cattle. The practice of branding did spread to affect deserters, adulterers, blasphemers and prisoners. Branding was legal in ancient laws of England. "The British Mutiny Act of 1858 provided that the court martial may, in addition to any other penalty, order deserters to be marked on the left side, 2 inch below the armpit, with the letter "D", such letter to be not less than an inch long. In 1879 this was abolished". The

Dutch, the Spaniards and the Peruvians were cruel slave holders often joining branding to neutering of the slaves. Yet, there are those who argued that branding gave the slave a sense of pride, it was proof he belonged to someone, had an identity and was not a "nobody" Nowadays, the border police take our photos and finger prints so that no rejected modern slave flees to another country and becomes an accepted immigrant (or slave). It must be said that not all branding, or facial marking, was done involuntarily. Many Africans cut their faces with knives to carve "railways lines" or designs to show their ethnic identity and/ or even social status. You brand yourself and you differ and, as one Nigerian put it, based on that difference you slaughter or get slaughtered.
The problematic of where to brand lingers. Below the armpits is a hidden place where many eyes do not get the chance or the will to go. The Swazi pastor suggested the buttocks but that is only visible if one takes of trousers and pants-- and even poorly clad Africans manage to cover that part somehow. In other parts, the Burka--type covers frustrate any branding on any part of the face. The shame is thus hidden, the ID not seen. The Swazi pastor also made the mistake of assuming the males in his place will be nude when they spread the virus with diligence and cruelty. Given the fact that people tattoo themselves anywhere and everywhere with meaningless designs and indecipherable characters the place for the ideal place for the revealing and exposing branding may not be found that easily. Can the Devil help? Maybe, hopefully. But branding is an idea whose time has come. Imagine our joy if we could see the despots that have made our life miserable carved up with a big DD on their foreheads: Decadent Despots. Time to carve them up, time to brand them all. R for racists, B for those disciples of Bush and his butcheries, T for tyrants, MM for mass murderers, G for those who commit genocide, E for embezzlers, S for stooges, C for the corrupts, and a big MO for monsters, scoundrels, Talibans, ruffians, marauding militias, sick fanatics, mad mullahs, the Joseph Konys and other such disasters who have made the world a terrible place to live in.

Obama and Africa:More of the Same

2009-08-11T09:48:00.001-07:00
OBAMA AND AFRICA: MORE OF THE SAME

"An obliging fool is more dangerous than an enemy" says a Russian proverb. In Amharic we say "kemogn dejaf mofer yikoretal" or "mogn indenegerut, beklo indasegerut". Those Ethiopians who hailed the Obama speech in Accra and rejoiced at the possibility of a new deal for Ethiopia and Africa thanks to Obama remind us of such obliging and dangerous fools.
Ours is a continent that had endured so many speeches of eloquence and style. African leaders have been mostly demagogic, we have heard it all. Nkrumah, Ben Bella, Nasser, Nyrere, Banda, Sekou Toure and more were moving speakers and yet we found out, much to our dismay, that words and realities are two different things. Well crafted words and flowery phrases do not a good policy make. Hence, it is inexcusable for Africans to be swayed by public speakers who shroud the real issues with self evident truths ("the future of Africa is up to Africans"--isn't it precisely to affirm this that Africans have been struggling?) and cover their dearth of knowledge with paternalist "you must do this" advice and veiled threats. At the end of the day, the Obama speech was a rehash of the old American policy towards Africa, all bones and no meat, and an expression of the continuing incapability of Washington to come to grips with the real problems of Africa. One wonders why some Africans beat the festive drums over the Obama Accra speech even though such drummers as Raila Odinga of Kenya do prove the point that "it is business as usual" for Africa's corrupt leaders. Obama did say once that his knowledge of African realities is equal to the knowledge of those who had occupied the White House seat before him--just imagine Reagan and Bush and even the Clinton fellow who hailed Meles, Kagame, Museveni,etc.. as democrats. Not very encouraging at all. Doing the ritual visit to the slave prisons is just a photo op that even Bush had done in Senegal and it is by now an empty symbolism from a country that has refused to pay due reparation for the slave trade.

Is Obama ending the misguided policies of Bush or extending them wrapped in demagogy? As Americans are wont to say: where is the beef? Is he showing us the money? That Obama's father was a Kenyan is neither here nor there as Condoleezza Rice, Susan Rice and Johnnie Carson are African Americans/blacks/ and they did not hear the heartbeat of Africa at all. Colour and birth considerations aside, Obama is an American, elected to safeguard the interest of America in Africa and the whole world. Obama's vision of Africa is American and that of the ruling power holders of the big country. His refusal to acknowledge that Africa's woes are mostly the results of neo colonial plunder and machination is at the center of his failure to understand the woes of Africa. He said accusingly that the West did not cause the economic problems of Zimbabwe and the West has little to do with wars in which children become soldiers. What? Zimbabwe's economy was wrecked by embargoes, sanctions and sabotage by the West ever since Britain raged against Mugabe for taking action against white landowners. No one n the west cried foul when Mugabe was torching Matabele land to crush an insurgency. The child soldiers of Sierra Leone for one were involved in a diamond war in which Britain and even South Africa played a major part. Who were the allies of Charles Taylor? Who financed Renamo? UNITA? And the ongoing war in the Congo? Western mining companies like the AngloGold Ashanti corporation finance the militias wreaking havoc, recruiting children as soldiers and raping women in thousands. Obama harped on corruption and good governance in his attempt to attribute the blame on Africa itself but the reality shows us different. "No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20% off the top," said Obama. Is this true? Absolutely not. The foreign companies actually want those scoundrels who can be bribed. From Lumumba to Nkrumah and more, nationalist African leaders have been victims of coups mostly engineered by the CIA and the West. Leaders that rig elections and repress voters enjoy American aid and backing. The butcher in Equatorial Guinea is sustained in power by American oil companies. President Nguema's stolen millions were stashed in Washington's Riggs Bank and Condoleezza Rice feted the tyrant. Western oil companies who ran after Africa's oil have been allies of the despots be it in the Congo, Gabon, Nigeria or Angola (for a good exposure of how these giant companies practically manipulate the tyrants and the governments do read Nicholas Shaxson's: Poisoned Wells--The Dirty Politics of African Oil ). And this affirmation by Obama that "we must support strong and sustainable democratic governments" or "no good governance no aid" is an old song crooned by Western leaders from Mitterrand to Blair to Clinton. Actually, American and Western aid had actually gone to despots, to apartheid South Africa, to Egypt's Mubarek, to Meles Zenawi, to corrupt Dos Santos in Angola, etc. Britain and France have also backed despots in their particular enclaves and as the competition from China (ruthlessly nationalist and arrogantly racist too) heats up the West is grovelling before the dictators in countries with oil and minerals. Foreign investment has thus been mainly in countries where scoundrel and thieves are in power. The issue of corruption is not also just an African internal affair as Obama wanted to imply but something that has been fanned and extended all over Africa by Western embassies and companies working intimately with African officials. Governments cannot skim 20% off the top if the Western companies were not in accord with them. Western investors hate honest and nationalist leaders (who overthrew and had Lumumba murdered? Allende? Mossadegh? Arbenz?) and are comfortable with corrupt rogues.

That is why Meles Zenawi is one of the usual guests of the G8 meetings and the very person picked by Tony Blair to head an African committee. Nigerian dictator's Abacha's stolen billions are still in British and other western banks. Meles Zenawi and his corrupt wife have hidden millions in Citibank. The eight African leaders recently invited to the G8 meeting are all corrupt and seven of the eight are leading countries considered not free by Freedom House itself. Ghana may fare better now than others but it is also rife with corruption. In the UN Development Index report, Ghana is not that glorious (among the 20 poorest--142nd while Kenya is 144th). Corruption flourishes in Africa with Western collaboration. Africa is wrecked by wars in most cases financed and fanned by the West as it chases its greed for oil and minerals to the detriment of Africans ( more than 4 million have died in the mineral war of the Congo). Obama talked of the need for a strong parliament, honest police force, independent judges, independent press, a vibrant private sector, and a civil society. Fine requirements. However, if development depends on good governance and if America will not help those who have not instituted good governance then one is at odds to explain the actual and real policies of America in support of despots all over the continent. This is why Obama's glossing over the damages of colonialism and neo colonialism grates and sprinkles salt on our wounds. Diseases and conflicts have ravaged the African continent but who is to really blame for that? Poverty is linked to the system; Ethiopia is suffering from famine not because its land is infertile. But who supports these regimes that impoverish the African people while opening up the country to the greedy western oil and mineral companies? Who is impoverishing African farmers by subsidizing its own farmers and making the African products cheap in the world market? Questions that Obama, like Bush, did not want to address at all.

There is the possibility that some hardened fools may still argue that all this was in the past and that things have changed now with Obama. Where and when? Besides repeating the usual (and mistaken) official diatribe against "genocide" in Darfur and terrorists in Somalia, has Obama really broken with the past? Let us take the Horn of Africa, a region we know much better than the American president. Somalia's intractable clan war was complicated by Washington when it decided to arm the hated warlords against those it called terrorists linked to Al Qaeda. Like the WMD, it was said there were three or four top Al Qaeda operatives hiding in Somalia (they were never found) and the support to the venal warlords made the fanatics of the ICU appear better in the eyes of most Somalis. And then, Washington prompted Meles Zenawi to send in soldiers and actively supported the disastrous invasion which any Ethiopian would have told them was doomed to failure. The troops of Meles helped the Al Shabab gain more support, were forced to withdraw and Somalia is now in the pits with the fanatics in ascendance. And what is new American policy as concerns Somalia? Arming the so called moderates of the Transitional Government, paying Uganda and Djibouti (!!) for arms and training, fuming against terrorists, accusing Eritrea of arming the "terrorists". More of the same. The misguided notion of considering the Somali mess as part and parcel of the so called war against terror is very flawed. Let us take Ethiopia where a ruthless dictatorship is in place. Taking Obama's measures, it fails miserably to qualify as good governance: the parliament is rubber stamp and even the rubber is threadbare, the police force is brutal, corrupt and repressive, the judiciary is controlled by the State, civic society has been denied independent and vibrant existence, the free press is muzzled (Meles is named one of the worst predators of the free press), the private sector is stifled by the monopolistic economic firms of the ruling Tigrean front (TPLF). In 2005, the ruling front lost the general election but used violence to massacre more than 200 protestors, to jail thousands and to stay in power with the help of America and Britain. This repressive regime and its cold blooded head called Meles have remained to be the West's darlings and Mr Obama was sitting together with this murderer in the last G8 meeting. W cannot talk of change because the new Secretary of State for African Affairs, Johnnie Carson, who recently visited Ethiopia, praised the anti people regime as an ally and as the one that has brought democracy to Ethiopia. There is no new policy, no new deal, no firm American stand against dictators and tyrants.
So, if we judge the Obama speech in Accra from the real and bitter realities of poverty, war, AIDS, corruption and sovereignty. that is if we ask did he say something new or has he heralded any change, the answer is no. The "future of Africa is up to Africans" is an refrain we have heard before so many times from Western leaders that do not waste time to forcefully take our sovereignty away. It is empty talk. To rile against poverty, corruption, the lack of good governance without mentioning the lion's share of the guilt and responsibility of the West is to bray at the moon and to hoodwink the victims. Talk of neo-colonial plunder, talk of oil companies robbing countries blind and backing tyrants and murderous militias, talk of subsidies that impoverish and debilitate African farmers, talk of taking real and concrete actions against tyrants and then we can listen. The West needs corrupt and repressive regimes in Africa for it to rob best the continent. President Obama should say no to this addiction, to this greed and craving of a junkie. Up to now, he has not done so. He is continuing the Bush policy incensing it with confusing speeches. Those Africans who imagine that "the end of tyranny is now" and that "with Obama in charge our sufferings will end" only prove the truth in the saying that a fool will laugh when he is drowning.

Of Modern Slavery and Same Old Slaves

2009-06-30T02:54:00.000-07:00
Of Modern Slavery and Same Old Slaves

We all hear countless accusations and denunciations being hurled at what has come to be known as modern slavery. Talk of slavery and it is only on June 18/2009 that the US Senate issue a formal apology. One news report put it as follows:
"The Senate adopted a resolution Thursday (June 18) offering a formal apology for slavery and the era of "separate but equal" Jim Crow laws that followed. After the clerk finished reading the resolution (S Con Res 26) in full, Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, the measure's sponsor, noted that Congress has never before issued a formal apology for slavery".
Americans sort of enjoy being surprised, a "we did not know that at all (whatever did we do to "Eye-ran"?)" type of denial. Ignorance is no excuse of course. The ongoing shock at Americans torturing prisoners is another self serving Ostrich politics. The world knows that America was torturing prisoners all the time. Forget Native Americans and scalping and using dried human skin/breasts/ for tobacco pouch--check out the Los Angeles Times article of June 18/2009 on torture:
"Torture, after all, is a venerable American tradition. We were water boarding captives in one of our earliest wars of occupation, the Philippine-American War, which cost as many as 1 million civilian lives. In 1902, Teddy Roosevelt himself wrote with laconic praise of "the old Filipino method."
The slave trade was as American as apple pie and as British as fish and chips. Belated apology does not a reparation make but how do you calculate money wise the damages that the slave trade made to a whole continent? The slave trade laid waste to Africa and damaged its future for long. Africa's call for reparation has been ignored royally. That African chiefs and Arab merchants took part in this nefarious trade must also be mentioned--after all Africans have always been at the centre of their own misery. Slavery was evil and enough commentary has been made on it thereby relieving me from the need to belabor the point. But what is this animal called modern slavery? Is it an animal, a vegetable or a mineral? Let us just say damn the slave trade because one of its bad consequences is that our tyrants are using it even now to excuse the pitiful state of poverty in which they have put us in. Take away the slave trade and colonialism and the African despots would not have had any external excuse for their drastic failure in assuring good governance.

Officially, slavery is dead and gone but as many things deemed dead it still exists and is in fact flourishing in new forms. Debt bondage and forced labor are realities in many countries from the Congo to Peru. In Niger, Mail and Mauritania for example, ethnic difference has led to a master and slave situation with people being considered as slaves at birth. Dalits or bonded laborers are in their millions in India and Pakistan. Many child slaves wear leg irons. In Mauritania, slavery was formally proclaimed dead on August 8/2007 and a fifth of the country's population, dark skinned Mauritanians known as Haratines, were supposed to be free from bondage but not many of them had radios and TV to even hear the news and slavery still thrives there. As one news report puts it: "Dark-skinned men, women and children known as Haratine carry out orders under the threat of being beaten. They work as laborers and shepherds, as servants and cooks, as nursemaids and security guards. They are penniless and uneducated. Their masters are pale-skinned, Arab-speaking Moors". Thousands of people from Africa and Asia are trafficked (this is the new word, mind you. that could make you imagine a paved congested highway leading to Eldorado) to the West and the Middle East to work as modern slaves. Some 200,000 people, mostly young women from Ethiopia, the Philippines, etc, are modern slaves in Lebanon, working as domestic maids and servants, unpaid, raped and beaten, with no rights and subjected to the crude racism that is very Lebanese. Modern-day slaves can be found labouring as "servants or concubines in Sudan, as child 'carpet slaves' in India, or as cane-cutters in Haiti and southern Pakistan, to name but a few instances". There are currently over 27 million people in bondage and slavery. UNICEF estimates that 200,000 children from West and Central Africa are sold as slaves every year.
This time around the slavery is modern not only because we live in modern times but also because the slaves go to their bondage sometimes willingly in search of work as it were. The slavery in Mauritania and other such places is as antique as 800 years ago but the modern slaves found in the West and the Middle East are different. No one abducted them, though they are indeed still trafficked. They themselves face up to danger (and many die in the Red Sea or the Mediterranean) to make their way to the lands of modern slavery. "Domestic workers" really means or refers to modern slaves in private houses and brothels. It is a multi million dollar business and as we all know our unelected leaders go where the money is to be found and they are the ones facilitating this traffic. Few modern slaves pick cotton, very few are lynched. Instead, they slave for 16 hours in rich people's houses and sweat factories and they are thrown into shark infested waters, beaten to death, pushed to suicide, drowned and shot by callous border guards. There are no galleys though the slave ships are still there crammed with hopeless souls. Modern day traffickers, ruthless employers and old time slave drivers share the same cruel streak.
All this said, we African must be the first to admit that modern slavery has its benefits. To begin with, it is modern even if this remains a mystery to us as many other things of this modern unfair world. Due to progress, modern slaves come cheap, they do not cost much. Modern slavery is not so much about color or race--it is about poverty and economic deprivation. It is not even about religion either as Moslem Saudis, Lebanese, Libyans, and even Sudanese and Yemenis hold as slaves Moslems from their own and from many other "Third World" countries. For once, we Africans, or blacks as we are called, can sigh with relief as others not so black are also subjected to modern slavery. What is so good about others suffering just as our ancestors did and as our kin in many places are still suffering? 27 million modern slaves and the number on the increase--maybe one day Africa's demand for reparation may be heard or is that a desperate hope? The more Disposable People abound in this modern world--meaning modern slaves-- there is more probability that the whole evil may end as more people suffer and if this modern slavery thing which has started to involve Eastern European women continues to trap more Europeans and then there may be some concern and protest. It is not forbidden to have big expectations. Slave labor is at the core of the destruction of the Amazon rain forest which means all these environmental and Green and ecology people may rise up against slavery. Of course, it could just be another Waiting for Godot. The role of Arabs in the old and modern slavery, the involvement of Europe and America in the old and modern slavery is continuous. We have no surprises, the culprits are known and that is one better thing. Know the culprit-- no sweat, we know them already. Modern slavery does not have many secrets and surprises. It is modern. And those who may be nostalgic of old style slavery can still travel to Mauritania, Nepal, India, Sudan and Pakistan.

Where did our Decent Murders Go?

2009-06-15T03:43:00.000-07:00
WHERE DID OUR DECENT MURDERS GO?

Ethiopians, who have had to endure brutal deaths over decades, have a common wish which asks God “to make my death decent” (amamuaten asamirew). I am one of those who wonder why Ethiopians pray since He hardly ever listens to them but then again Ethiopians are a hopeful lot who will die hoping and praying for better days that never seem to come.
We have to admit we have had decent murders over the years. I was a boy of six when I first saw a man being hanged by the State. It was outside a nearby church and there was a big crowd and the hanged man was accused of being a mugger. It left an indelible impression on me, the image of the hanged man with his tongue sticking out somewhat stayed in my mind for long. There was nothing decent in this hanging at all. The next hanging I saw when I was in my preteens involved a woman and a man who were hanged near the Weizero Kelemework School in Addis Ababa. The man was the woman’s lawyer (and as rumours had it maybe her lover too) and he was arguing her case against her husband involving a land and property dispute. The husband and the lawyer got in a tej bet (shebeen or local bar room) brawl and the lawyer stabbed the husband to death. The wife came to the scene and threw a rock at the corpse, it was alleged. A court sentenced the lawyer to death and the woman to ten years imprisonment. The case was appealed and reached the Emperor’s Chilot, an illegal feudal proceeding in which cases were brought before the Emperor and he dispensed pardon or not. Though Ethiopian law, which I tried to study in the University, stipulates that the sentence cannot be aggravated in the appellate court, the Emperor (who, perhaps, woke up angry that morning—if one had good connections and a case pending in the Chilot those who present the cases to the Emperor would not present one’s case if they see that the autocrat was in a bad mood) ordered the hanging of the woman too. And the woman was hanged next to her lawyer.
The decent thing about her hanging was that she was dressed in traditional white shamma netela and skirt but with cotton trousers underneath lest the wind blows her skirt high and makes her appear indecent. This concern about her being decent was touching. The system was murderous but still concerned about indecent exposure. Those were indeed the good old days. And then came the military regime of murderous thugs who massacred more than 250,000 people in a terror campaign they dubbed Red Terror courtesy of the Soviet experience. Even these thugs were at times concerned to do decent murders. Though they buried thousands in mass graves in the dead of the night they still gave respect to corpses by selling them back to their kin after the payment of the bullet price. Corpses were not just useless but valuable—if the person took four bullets to die then the kin paid the price of four bullets to the government that killed him or her. And when the dead were not buried in mass graves the corpses were either thrown outside their houses and the kin forbidden to weep but ordered to sing (an original therapy some argued) or thrown at garbage dumps with slogans nailed or pinned to their body ( thus passing educational messages to the living). Corpses had their uses. They just did not die but by dying also became useful and as deaths go in Ethiopia it was decent of the regime to think of making them useful.

Nowadays, we have no decent murders. The sadists just enjoy it and that is it. The killer regime in Addis Ababa kills and buries people in total darkness. Or it massacres people from the Ogaden to Gambella, to Sidamo and Gondar and denies it. It even travels abroad to Somalia to cut the throats of people or rain cannon shells on houses and then denies any crime. So indecent, the denial kills the victims again as it were. Compare with the previous military regime whose Chairman broke bottles filled with red ink or blood in public and vowed to kill thousands of his opponents. That was respect, it was decent. The murder was acknowledged and defended and, in reverse, it gave respect to the victims as enemies worthy of slaughter. The murderers now in power have no sense of respect or decency. They shoot to death an unarmed human rights activist and teacher coming out of his house to go to work and then claim he was resisting arrest and running away from the police. They stab to death another human rights activist and deny they had anything to do with it. They station sharp shooters on top of buildings and randomly shoot to death peaceful demonstrators and deny that they did such a thing. They have secret prisons and do disappearances routinely. No one even knows you are dead-- how indecent can a murder get!
I was in the Sudan when the over drunk president Jaffar Nimeri have had enough (the Sudanese joked that whiskey was pouring out of his ears) and decreed Sharia over our heads and just made all liquor expensive. According to this law, thieves were amputated (right arm and left leg or left arm and right leg) after the doctor gave them anaesthetic. How decent of the Sudanese authorities you would say, no? However, it was not a decent act in that the anaesthetic in the Sudan took days to take effect and the victims suffered their pain anyways. The rebels of Sierra Leone gave victims the choice on amputation but were not decent enough to ask their victims whether they preferred to die by the bullet or the machete. Times have indeed changed and have become brutal. No one asks Ethiopians if they want to die of famine but the regimes just bring the famine year in and year out. The concept of decent murder is sometimes known as Forrester's paradox. “It proves that if you murder someone, then you only did what you ought to do. For if you murder someone then you ought to murder them gently. If you ought to murder them gently, then you ought to murder them. So, if you murder someone, then you ought to murder them”. But it should be done decently. Is this too much to ask? The Emperor ordered the hanging of the unfortunate woman but she was dressed decently for the occasion. It was not costly at all. I have seen in 1960 my politically unconscious compatriots sticking sticks into the bullet shredded legs of a hanged coup leader to turn the corpse towards this or that direction as they joked and snickered and hurled insults. So indecent!
It could very well be that the tyrants have become exhausted by the murders and have forgotten to be decent about it. If you have to murder people just massacre them, period. Yet, it does not hurt to be nostalgic for some respect and decency in murder so long as we are doomed to do the dying.

Of Swine Flu and Africa

2009-06-15T03:42:00.001-07:00
OF SWINE FLU AND MOTHER AFRICA

Thank you swine flu and Mexico! For once Africa has not been blamed for being the source of a deadly virus. From Ebola to Lassa Fever, Rift Valley Fever, White Nile virus, the Marbrug Virus, the “Jealousy” malady and even AIDS and all so called haemorrhagic fevers have been attributed to poor old Africa.

The ongoing swine flu has been first detected in Mexico and the reports indicate that a small five year old Mexican boy was the first victim. Imagine it if his father or any other Sanchez or Mexican had been on safari in the Serengeti plains and the swine fever would have been called the African swine flu and Mother Africa would have been blamed for a mild yet deadly flu that you can avoid by wearing a face mask and washing your hands! This time around the Mexicans are to blame even though it could very well be gringo/American tourists who took the virus there and brought it back to their homes. Back in 1981, the first AIDS victim was an American but somehow the scientists argued that the deadly virus must have originated from the “dark” continent. By the way, the Israelis have reportedly protested against the present flu being called the swine flu. Not kosher at all. The virus is said to be a combination of swine, bird and human flu, a combination that poor Africa cannot really afford come to think of it. Now that this deadly flu is beginning to ravage the Western world a vaccine may be found for it fast as it is no malaria killing millions in over populated underdeveloped countries.

I still would like to argue that the swine flu may very well have originated in Africa itself. We have a swine fever attacking pigs in many parts of Africa. We have had flu of various types and a too many birds to count. And we claim we are the origin of human kind. Why can’t we be the origin of all its fevers, maladies and viruses? George Bush called the whole continent disease ridden and one similar racist blogger also referred to Africa as a collection of filthy disease ridden lands. Insults aside, if our continent, which has at least 53 distinct countries, is the origin of human beings then it should evidently be the centre and origin of all the viruses and diseases. Logical, no? On another level, we are often told we do not have proper attitudes towards hygiene though our detractors do not bother to query how come we have so many rivers and no clean drinking water, how come we are destitute while our lands have riches and how come we cannot afford modern medicines. Recently there was a big hue and cry by so called Western twitters (mostly actors and entertainment personalities) to buy and send us mosquito nets aplenty. I read a message from Dead Aid author Dambissa Mayo that in some places the ladies have turned the mosquito nets into wedding dresses. It reminds me of Emperor Menelik of Ethiopia, the victor of Adwa, who was fascinated by the electric chair and imported one and since there was no electricity used the chair as an ordinary chair for himself. Misplaced importing move on his part. When it comes to our self appointed aid givers they often give us Dead Aid or irrelevant material. Like refrigerators where there is no electricity, vaccines that require a fridge where there is no electricity, blankets to desert people, fish soup powder to people who detest fish, fishing nets to highlanders, dates to those who do not eat dates but would brew it into a potent arak and cause deadly brawls in refugee camps, etc. The charity business is often profit oriented or many times a balm for the guilty conscience of the West and decadently rich people.

The contention that all evil viruses originate in Africa is part of the old and persisting prejudiced and selective perception propagated by the Western media on and about Africa. The news agencies often quoted by African newspapers themselves (AP, UP, AFP, Reuters and AFP) are not African at all and even the Russian news agency and Xinhua are more or less in the same can. These agencies often circulate the negative image of Africa, focusing on “savagery and wars, tribal unrest and carnage, shocking corruption, flogging and rape, a South Sudanese marrying a goat or a Nigerian raping a child to cleanse himself from Aids,” and so and on . The war in Bosnia or Croatia is ethnic but “tribal “in Africa. Bestiality and cannibalism are features of decadent Western societies but highlighted when it allegedly occurs in Africa. It is part of the “dark continent” syndrome, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness rhetoric of Empire (to quote the title of David Spurr’s book). Primitive and savage, raw meat eaters, all of them “The White Man’s Burden” awaiting salvation and enlightenment from the West—the image sticks. The Africanization of the viruses falls in place. Saudi Arabia is an ally of the west but an obscurantist regime that hangs women and beheads people every Friday and oppresses women to no end but one hardly reads a continuing denunciation of this. The presentation of Africa in the western media, the harping on the viruses, on the “tribal” wars (by the way why are the Sans people called Hottentots and the Ewes Pygmies?), the famine, the viruses, Aids, the diseases—all are part of the rhetoric that the Empire has maintained throughout the long decades to demonize Mother Africa. Of course, we cannot deny that considerate Africans despots have chipped in to help!

So, if the Swine Flu had been attributed to Africa we could have welcomed it gladly. Bring it on kind of attitude. Africans are resilient and tough—didn’t they survive the slave trade and brutal colonialism? If one more virus is attributed to them what can it do to them? Nada as the Mexicans would say. If Africa is the origin of the creature called human, Africa deserves to be the mother of all its maladies and viruses. Mother Africa makes no apologies as it lets the Mexicans and others enjoy their pathetic swine flu.

Maggots and Urine and A Royal Pardon

2009-06-15T03:39:00.000-07:00
OF MAGGOTS AND URINE
“ EATING A CONTINENT TO ITS BONES ”

A long long time ago a French agronomist wrote a book called False Start in Africa and it did not take long for African bashers to argue that Africa had not even started going anywhere and the continent was doomed as Lewis Carroll said in “Alice” : to “run just to stay in the same place”. Decades later, today, it would not be Afro pessimism on our part if we affirm that the decline of Africa is undeniable and accelerating. The continent is being eaten to its bones by local and foreign predators or thieving cannibals.

The usual culprits are of course there. Africa is plundered and hurled into the pit of war and carnage by those greedily going after its wealth. The war in the Congo that has cost more than 4 million lives is a war for the resources of that country. Murderous militia have been financed and armed by mining corporations and multi nationals from the West and even UN’s so called peace keeping forces have been involved in the rape and pillage. Sierra Leone was all about diamonds. The French President is forced to visit poor Niger to counter the Chinese influence there and to control the uranium resources of that country (the French nuclear energy body Areva has been accused of backing the Niger government’s anti Tuareg war and of polluting the region). At the end of the day, Darfur is oil, Angola is oil, Equatorial Guinea is oil, Chad is oil, and the Niger Delta is oil. Africa has been plundered and bled by its predators, by colonialists old and modern.

The modern scramble in Africa concerns above all oil. Western companies are enjoying the benefits while the Africans are getting nothing from their own wealth. The Chinese are in the game and they are voracious and without scruples. An attempt by people of the Niger Delta to oppose this led to brutal killings and the hanging of Ken Saro Wiwa. Angola’s economy boasts a 15% increase every year but Angola is, according to a UN survey, one of the worst places on earth to be born as a child. Angola receives food aid, Gabon’s oil has been already sold off to a French company that has paid Bongo personally 45 million euros every year. Impoverished Chad got America’s attention when oil was discovered there in the late 80s. As in Equatorial Guinea, American oil men have their special compounds and privileges and have built a 700 mile pipeline that ends at a tanker a few miles off the coast of Cameron. Yet, Chad remains one of the poorest countries on earth (of the 9 million Chadians more than 7 million earn less than a dollar a day) while the GDP has reportedly grown and Idris Deby and family have become millionaires. Oil in South Sudan has meant no fortune for Sudanese—Sudan, Angola and Chad continuously need food aid. The misery of the poverty stricken populace of the two Congos exposes the plunder and pillage of Africa. The militias of the various forces that rape and plunder in the DR of the Congo earn more than $150 million each year by selling off the tantalum (coltan), tin, gold and tungsten that Western companies need among others for their cell phones and Blackberries, MP3 players, Digital computers, TV monitors, etc.. The miners in the Congo do not earn more than $1 to $ 4 at best per day. The needs of the companies of the West fuel the Congo war that has now claimed the lives of more than 4 million people.

Nevertheless, the responsibility of African politicians and tyrants is not to be under estimated in all this disastrous decline of the rich continent. And there comes the issue of maggots and urine, the stinking reality of many African dilapidated cities from Luanda to Lagos to Addis Ababa, of open sewers, horrible toilets if at all present, of maggots and the pervasive smell of excrement and urine. The reactionary Pope who recently visited Africa and riled against the use of condoms in the AIDS ravaged continent did say some sensible things in Luanda against the indecent riches of the few and the stifling poverty of millions. An oil rich country like Angola has had to face famine and most of its people are depressingly poor and the stink of Luanda a big shame on the corrupt leaders. Talk of corruption and the picture is as dirty as the millions of street children in almost every country of the continent.
Let us take the case of Gabon’s Omar Bongo who was married to Edith Lucie Sassou-Nguesso, daughter of Congolese president Denis Sassou-Nguesso. (Edith died in Morocco recently). Bongo and his family are said to own 39 properties including luxury villas, 70 bank accounts and nine luxury cars in France. According to the British Sunday Times one report, the late wife of Bongo, Edith, used a cheque, drawn in the name of “Paierie du Gabon en France” (part of the Gabon treasury), to buy the expensive Maybach car. Bongo’s daughter Pascaline, 52 , used a cheque from same account for a part-payment of s £29,497 for a £60,000 costing Mercedes. Bongo bought himself a Ferrari 612 Scalglietti F1 in October 2004 for £153,000 while his son Ali acquired a Ferrari 456 M GT in June 2001 for Sterling pound £156,000.
Sassou Nguesso of Congo Brazzaville and his family own 24 apartments in France and 112 bank accounts. Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea and his family own one posh apartment and eight cars in France. Obiang Nguema’s son has faced the court in South Africa over two luxury villas he owns there. Obiang Nguema himself also had problems in 2006 over a $35 million California beach house he owns there and had close to 700 million dollars in Washington’s Riggs Bank. A former postal worker, Bongo has been ruling Gabon since 1967 while Sassou Nguesso, 63, ruled Congo from 1979 to 1992, and then returned to lead the country after a coup in 1997. According to reports Bongo’s family spends more than 65 million US dollars every year. Nigeria’s corrupt leaders are also world famous.
It is not only the tyrants of the rich African countries that are corrupt but also those ruling over poorer ones too. From Burkina Faso to Ethiopia to Kenya the ruling elite is robbing the people blind. As millions starve and the countries go to ruins the likes of Meles Zenawi, Mwai Kibaki, Compaore and others are amassing millions in Western banks. And the so called First Ladies are not far behind, corruption is a family affair and in some places like Ethiopia the wives of the tyrants are the more voracious thieves. Azeb Gola, the piranha wife of Meles, owns properties in the USA where she has stashed millions in a New York bank, has control of several businesses in Ethiopia itself including the sale of Khat and has recently become the deputy head of EFFORT, the ruling Tigrean party’s economic conglomeration. Kibaki’s wife Lucy not only slaps journalists but partakes in the plunder of Kenya. Anna Mkapa down in Tanzania has used her husband’s presidency to amass huge wealth. And so on and forth-- heartless men, cruel wives, robber families.
Corruption is not exclusively African say many African corruption giants. General Abacha denied till death that he had stolen at least five billion dollars from the people of Nigeria. Bongo and Sassou are not admitting that they are thieves even though they are now being formally accused and some of Bongo’s assets in France have been frozen. The wily Biya in Cameroon has little that is directly his or in his name but the fact remains that he has stolen millions from Cameroon. What about other tyrants? No questioning really necessary. Africa has declined not only because it is being plundered by the rapacious West and China ( with India trying to jump in along with Arab millionaires) but also because its own so called leaders have been mercilessly fleecing it too. The cities of oil rich countries are “maggot filled and urine soaked”, hundreds of thousands of people sleep under bridges, in hellish slums, and millions continue to starve. The World Bank and IMF plaster news of unbelievable economic growth while regimes claiming food surplus and economic miracle stretch out their fat hands asking for food aid and this not for the famine stricken millions but for their own benefit. Not enough drinking water, electricity rationed, the health systems down and out, price of basic goods beyond the reaches of the vast majority, misery aplenty.
Of course, there is the other way of seeing or considering the whole problem as a non problem. As Mobutu was reported to have said you do not expect an African president to live in a hut. Palaces are needed not only in Africa but especially abroad. Why do we expect an African president or his wife not worthy of luxurious cars? Even a half Kenyan in the White House with no history of inherited wealth or royal parentage is chauffeured around in a $300,000 “Beast” of a car And for those who came by the barrel of the gun (in most cases via the coup as Sassou Nguesso and others did) the argument can be made on “we did not fight to remain poor” basis. If the African presidents or prime ministers are the embodiment of the Nation then the personal wealth of the ruler is by proxy a source of pride for his people. In the Ethiopian case, Meles Zenawi and his Tigrean gang have made it clear that they hate Ethiopia and so why shouldn’t Meles and his family rob the hated country blind and substitute gold plated iron and brass for the gold in the National Bank? As Indira Gandhi once said, we can also say corruption is a world wide phenomenon and we ought to live with it. Or echo the late Peter Ustinov and declare corruption is nature’s way of restoring our faith in democracy, Or as the Chinese officials said in one African country, corruption can be taken as part and parcel of business. And yet again, we can imitate Meles Zenawi who blamed the Ethiopian famine on the West and accuse the West of fanning corruption by sending its tempting foreign aid and corrupters. Didn’t Tony Blair appoint the corrupt Meles as head of his Africa Commission and didn’t Britain refuse to hand over the money General Abacha stashed in British banks? Isn’t the European Union sending money after money to dictators in Africa? Isn’t there one rich man called Mo Ibrahim who is trying to pay the tyrants money as a bribe/incentive/ to make them practice good governance? But, one wonders why they should consider his one million dollar prize when hundreds of millions are there for the taking in the national treasury.
As they say, the more corrupt the State, the more the laws and thus almost every African country has an anti corruption commission that has proved in most cases to be the nest of corrupt vipers itself. The AU has declared zero tolerance for corruption—it is like hardened thieves declaring robbery is no good and then going right back to their thievery. In the end, one goes to the palace to eat and for no other purpose and this can also be trumpeted as a noble African (if not world) tradition. You just do not hassle, torture, plunder and kill to reach the biggest “Eating House” and then renounce eating, do you?

OF A ROYAL PARDON AND FRENCH DENIALS

“…the African man has never really entered history”
Nicholas Sarkozy, the French President, in a speech on Africa made in Dakar, Senegal on July 26th, 2007

To be fair, Nicolas Sarkozy did say Africa deserves to be happy just like other continents. But in the above quoted speech in Senegal he did say also: “The (Africans) have never really launched themselves into the future," and Mr. Sarkozy did add "the African peasant, who for thousands of years has lived according to the seasons, whose life ideal was to be in harmony with nature, only knew the eternal renewal of time ... In this imaginary world, where everything starts over and over again, there is room neither for human endeavor, nor for the idea of progress. The problem of Africa ... is to be found here. Africa's challenge is to enter to a greater extent into history ... It is to realize that the golden age that Africa is forever recalling will not return, because it has never existed."
The Sarkozy speech caused a lot of stir in Africa though many “France Afrique” members (or if you want to put it crudely many French neocolonial puppets) did not utter any strong protest. From far away South Africa, Mbeki, the faux pas man par excellence, wrote to Sarkozy and praised him as a citizen of Africa. "What you have said in Dakar, Mr. President, has indicated to me that we are fortunate to count on you as a citizen of Africa, as a partner in the protracted struggle to achieve the renaissance of Africa within the context of a European renaissance and the rest of the world," Mr. Mbeki wrote. And Mr. Sarkozy was reported to have written back: "You have been kind enough to highlight the 'courage and truthfulness' of this speech. As you very well know, Africa needs truthful friends in order for her to meet the challenges she is facing." Sarkozy did also say colonialism did not exploit anybody echoing a revision of history that is becoming fashionable in France and some other European former colonial countries. The speech of Sarkozy is now headline news because his rival, the Socialist Segolene Royal, who happened to be born in Senegal, went back to her birthplace and offered an apology for Sarkozy’s slight on Africa. Apologies, apologies for those humiliating words that should have never been uttered in the first place said Madam Royal and the whole French right wing establishment has gone ballistics against her accompanied by that Bush loving nominal Socialist shameless Bernard Kouchner who is the current foreign minister of the right wing French government. The Royal apology has engendered a royal bashing while ordinary Senegalese and many Africans are delighted.
France has definitely a lot to apologize and atone for. As one of the notorious colonial powers, it is responsible for heinous massacres in the Malagasy Republic, Indochina and North Africa. French colonialism was a curse for Africa and did not have much to envy from Belgian or British colonialism when it came to barbarism or exploitation. The French war against Algerians and Indochinese has gone down in history for its atrocities. After the colonial Empire collapsed France maintained its neocolonial grip on its former colonies (stationing Foreign Legion troops in Djibouti, Chad and other places), staging coups, brazenly exploiting resources (the oil of Gabon, etc..) and acting as an arrogant overlord. Yes, France does have a lot to apologize for but then again asking the colonized victims pardon is not in vogue. Instead, blaming the victims themselves, calling them terrorist when they try to resist is what is fashionable. This is why the French establishment riled against Segolene Royal. This said, one can also go the politically incorrect path and join the Mbeki fellow who praised Sarkozy and perhaps wonder if the African has indeed entered history. Did the African only know the eternal renewal of time? Was the African even aware that time changed given that his agricultural activities have been dismal? Maybe he planted in summer and stayed in his hut during winter? Africa had no golden age said Sarkozy but did it have a bronze one even? No wonder the henchmen of Sarkozy felt humiliated and shamed by the apology of Royal in Senegal. How can “golden- aged” France apologize to an Africa that had no golden age at all?
Forgetful of the world by which they were forgotten the Ethiopians slept for three thousand years, wrote one European historian. This was worse than Senghor’s “the great sleep of the Negro”. Sarkozy has upped the ante—the African has never entered history in the first place. Where on earth was this black giant wandering? From Songhai to Axum to Zimbabwe to Kingdoms of Mali and Ghana, to Kilwa Kiswani and the Gambia and Timbuktu, etc, we are invited to forget Africa and her civilizations and asked to wonder where Africa was roaming in the wild unable to find the door to History. It is not only rabid racists who claim that colonialism did wonders for Africa and that Africa’s main problem is not anybody else but the African himself. Many raise the question that resource starved Japan is advanced while resource rich Africa is not and that the main difference is that Japan has the Japanese people. No one has explained in detail whether this refers to the shape of eyes or the color of skin but the general take is that Africans are lazy no good song and fun loving “darkies”. We Africans know otherwise of course. The ordinary African toils from dawn to dusk and more but the fruit of his labor has always been taken away from him by robbers from afar and near. After all, the African was brutally taken away from his land as a slave and has built Europe and the Americas and even Middle Eastern countries and therefore all talk of sloth is nonsense. Sarkozy’s paternalist and veiled racist comment denies this basic fact and casts negative light on the speaker himself.
Yet, one can still say the African has not entered history if by history one means the history of Monsieur Sarkozy. Otherwise, Africa had its history and as any Ethiopian would proudly assert Africa was the birthplace of humanity itself. How history--imbued can one be in the light of that? Sarkozy’s claim that the imaginary world the African lives in has no room for human endeavor is hard to grasp given the fact that the African people have been endeavoring and sweating to their bones to make progress and change their lives if only they had not been hindered by France and other colonial and neo colonial powers. Africa has also an ailment called her own leaders. But if we take Gabon, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Djibouti, Cameroon where France crushed the nationalist struggle of Ruben um Nyobe of the UPC (1955), etc and ask the toiling peoples who is behind their unending misery we will find out that the black calloused fingers would be pointing to the direction of Paris whose dirty streets still get cleaned by African workers who are treatedless humanely that the littering dogs. And did Africa lack “an idea of progress”? Little Nicolas was not even born when Africa had bright ideas of progress. Actually, the struggle for independence waged by Africans, the resounding NO of Sekou Toure, the Pan African and “Africa should be free” vision of Nkrumah and Lumumba, of Felix Moumie killed by France, and more were all loud and clear visions and ideas of progress stifled by France and other neo colonial powers. So, how can the Sarkozy fellow sanctimoniously blame Africa of having no idea of progress and of living in an idealist naive babies land?

Still, if we want to be the devil’s advocate and feel sympathy for both Sarkozy and Mbeki we can ask where the African was all these years shut outside the doors of history. Imagine if there was no Sarkozy to tell him there was never ever an African golden age and the African should wake from his thousands years long “sleep of the Negro” and try to enter history! Disaster! But where is the key to the door of history? Who holds it? America or France? Will they give the African the key since they are already taking his resources for free? The Sarkozy fellow did not elaborate on this but we must ask and wonder about this. As we do this, the Royal plea of pardon does warm our heart. After all, as lazy Africans we want to blame others, we still fail to understand that colonialism was good for us, that no one rally did exploit us, that we are actually our own worst enemies and we just dream of a non existent golden age that will never really come in the future. And so, when Segolene Royal came back to her birth place and said sorry for the humiliating speech of Sarkozy we say thank you lady for the kind words even if we still have no idea of how to enter into the history the Frenchman talked about. Is it as Mbeki suggested through a European renaissance? Will they allow us to tag along or will they continue to chase us out of their continent and their so called renaissance? Mbeki is no longer in power and cannot answer us and Sarkozy has no ears for us Africans with no idea of progress. All this said, I would still be happy if Sarkozy or any other person would enlighten me on where the African was roaming all these centuries when he was said unable to enter the door of history

kudos for Malawi

2009-04-08T07:08:00.000-07:00
KUDOS FOR MALAWI

Hama Tuma

Some of you may surely think that I am praising Malawi for observing its laws and rejecting the attempt by the Madonna woman to adopt yet another Malawian child. A judge who is now being praised less and condemned more in Malawi itself did suddenly realize that the law of Malawi are in the book to be applied and he declared that Madonna, who has not had an eighteen months residency in Malawi, cannot just fly in with her military trousers and chequebook and take off with another Malawian child. Adoption denied said this judge and the whole of Africa looked up in surprise especially in Ethiopia where the sale of children for adoption is a brisk business and if you have money and you are called Jolie you can fly in and buy any child you want no matter if the parents are still alive.

My kudos is not for the judge who is admittedly a rare specimen in Africa for being serious about the laws he had vowed to uphold. Seasoned Africans will pity him for his Thomas Sankara complex and wish him well as he may not last long in his post even if the devotedly Catholic president of Malawi, who is rebuilding the 200 mosques burnt in 1999 during election time riots, strongly vows he is here to uphold the law and stamp out corruption. My congratulations is in fact to this same Malawian president who backed my earlier call of “Adopt Us All!” launched to Madonna, Jolie and all other Westerners who are whisking off children from Africa. My previous call was based on the reality of the adoption racket since the sale of children did not adhere to any national law, children are being kidnapped for sale, the adopted children were not in most cases orphans and since the criteria is that their parents are poor the poverty index makes the parents themselves eligible for adoption. My sensible argument or call, as sensible as Jonathan Swift’s call for the famished Irish to eat their children, was scoffed at by many people and some even went out of their way to suggest I may be hankering after a modern day softer and disguised version of the infamous slave trade for which Africa has yet to receive a proper reparation. Now, the president of Malawi has boldly backed my call in his own way and brought the whole issue once again to the surface. He frankly told the Sunday Times of Aril 4, 2009:

. “I wish someone had come and taken 10,000 Malawian children because then I would know that 10,000 Malawians would have better education and opportunities,”
Now this is a crystal clear call for a broader concept of adoption. No one can accuse the President of Malawi of being the white man’s stooge. This is the person who changed his name from Brightson Webster Kyson Thom to the more African and nationalist Bingu wa Mutharika. Known affectionately among his supporters as “Chitsulo Cha Njanji” or railway track metal, Dr. Bingu is generally considered an honest man. He is openly and frankly saying the more Malawian children taken out the merrier. Why? As the President said, this is because they would have a better life, better education and opportunities in the West. In other words, if more whites take more poor people out of Africa to the West it would be great. In short, adopt us all please. I am sure the vast majority of people in Malawi survives with a dollar a day much like Ethiopia where the adoption racket is thriving and the ruling elite, with the thieving duo PM Meles Zenawi and his wife in the lead, is pocketing big money. The recent G20 meeting has shown once again that Africa is considered irrelevant and the so called mouthpiece of the continent at the summit, left after “cowering in the shadows” ignored by all. It is better to seek another solution.

A few years back one “Africanist” did write a book suggesting that Israelis and Japanese should replace Africans in Africa and the blighted continent would develop in no time. (Of course the book sold well in Europe—what did you expect?). Emptying the continent sounds a bit abrupt and crude, if not cruel, but doing the same through adoption would be gentler and kinder much like that promised to us gullible people by the New World Order. If having better education and opportunities is the criteria then adult Africans suffering the lack of education and opportunities can be prepared for adoption and the whole program can be organized by the IMF and the World Bank instead of indebting Africa again and again and intensifying its poverty. America resettled en masse the so called Somali Bantus and the Lost Children of the Sudan (yes, Washington has yet to learn that the majority of African children are lost). Moreover, if say the Congolese of Eastern Congo are adopted en masse and taken to Belgium, France the USA, then there will be no one to wage war and no more five million more deaths over Coltan and other minerals will occur. Instead of being called the Coltan Murderers the West would be praised as the Coltan Adopter and life saver. Imagine!

Dr Bingu, who is a president and will be listened to even if Malawi is a poor country, has pierced through the hypocrisy and called for the West to adopt thousands and not just a few hundreds. One does wonder how come Madonna adopted the child called David from Malawi in the first place if the residency requirement was still part of the law back then but this is an irrelevant question. We are poor because were sold out by our own corrupt “leaders” and fleeced by foreign predators since colonial times. We are being adopted, uprooted from our lands and cultures and parents because we are poor. The vicious circle of African reality affirms that tomorrow is dismal for the children and adults alike. Thus, those who claim to feel for us, those who shed many tears for Darfur and some drops for Eastern Congo and none for others, should go the adoption way. Most of these rich actors have big ranches that can accommodate many African farmers who can till the land (we picked their cotton as slaves, didn’t we?) and make them richer still. If Africans are adopted they cannot endanger the West as clandestine and illegal immigrants and they shall not pollute their shores by dying en masse. Evidently, this would be one more plus for protection of the environment. Dr. Bingu has come a long way in backing my call for wholesale adoption before it becomes too late. Kudos for Malawi.

COMMENTARY ON BESHIR'S ARREST WARRANT

2009-03-09T04:06:00.000-07:00
CONTEMPT FOR AFRICA OR JUSTICE SERVED?

(COMMENT ON THE ARREST WARAANT FOR BESHIR OF THE SUDAN)

The controversial International Criminal Court has finally come out with an arrest warrant for President Omar Beshir of the Sudan. The warrant is out for war crimes and/ or crimes against humanity but not for genocide—a point that would surely not matter that much for the accused.
Let me say from the outset that I have little or no sympathy for the tyrant in the Sudan who, aside from causing the slaughter of so many in South Sudan and Darfur, has deported many Ethiopians to their deaths or diappearance and has sent his troops to occupy Ethiopian land. That said, the decision by the ICC and the clamour it has engendered from quarters that have proven contempt for Africa calls for some reflection. As I tried to point out in my previous article, “Of Courts and Hypocrisies”, the ICC seems to be in reality the ACC, the African Criminal Court, as it seems hell bent to deal ONLY with alleged African war criminals (up to now) from the Congo, Sudan, Central African Republic and Uganda. From Milosevic to Charles Taylor and the Congolese war lord, that court in The Hague has yet to deal with notorious war criminals from the West.
The ICC arrest warrant for Omar Beshir thus leaves a bitter taste in our mouths not because the accused is innocent or does not deserve to be tried (which should be done by the people of Sudan and not by others for that matter) but because it is one more clear contemptuous action directed against Africa and signifies the nauseating double standard and hypocrisy that has been so damaging to the oppressed peoples of the world. War criminals abound all over the world and the top ones are the very ones manipulating the ICC prosecutor and making all this hue and cry. Just a look around shows that while in Cambodia one trial for genocide is in progress the butchers of Indochina from Henry Kissinger to so many American generals and CIA officials are not only free but honoured. In Iraq, where war crime of huge proportions has been committed by Bush and Cheney we hear no whisper of a court action against them or any other suspects other than the speeded trial and execution of Sadam and his officials. Even in Africa, pro-West butchers are hardly bothered. The war criminal in Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, is untouched and even rewarded with aid and praise for his crimes against the Ethiopian and Somali peoples. The tyrant in Equatorial Guinea is enjoying Western protection by those greedily taking that country’s oil. Omar Beshir’s political and ideological position brought on him this wrath and not his bloody actions against his own people. Had he been pro-Washington or pro London, the ICC would have ignored him no matter how many he may have killed. Did London and Washington criticize Mugabe when he ran rampage in Matabeleland to “deal with an insurgency”? There is presently a cry out for the arrest of former Chadian dictator Hissen Habre but his replacement Idris Deby also deserves to be tried but the oil factor comes in to grease the ICC silent. How many war criminals are enjoying comfortable exile in the USA, France and England? Wasn’t Sadam the dear friend of the West for so many years as he killed so many Iraqis and gassed Kurds and waged war against Iranians?
The shame of the past seems to be carried by the ICC now. Real crimes and criminals ignored. Has Germany paid for the brutal massacre of the Hereros? Italy for the death of one million Ethiopians? Belgium for the butchery of 15 million Congolese? Britain for all its crimes of Empire all over the world? Britain, France and America for the slave trade? France, Spain and Portugal for their colonial crimes? Can we say Lebanon? Sabra and Shattila? Chechniya? Dare we even mention other recent crimes perpetrated by the powerful on hapless and defenceless people? Africa is shamed again and again and that dead body called the AU has yet to be buried with indignity. A frustrated Revered Desmond Tutu once said young South Africans ‘should not listen to Desmond Tutu”—I find his recent comments on Zimbabwe and Sudan not worthy of an African ear, young or old. Anyway, the ICC warrant against Beshir will mainly serve to complicate the problems of the troubled region and may even gain him some support from angry Sudanese. Other victims of Beshir may rejoice but it would only be a pyrrhic victory. The real victory is when the people bring the tyrants to their own court of law and when all war criminals, white or black, rich or poor, are brought before a proper court of law. The parody and political machinations by those who should be tried themselves is only a continuation of the injustice, a cruel and crude joke, against oppressed peoples.
Hama Tuma

Africa's Woes and Jokes

2009-02-02T06:10:00.000-08:00
Africa’s Woes and Jokes

Hama Tuma

“The time has come, » the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things;
Of shoes and ships—and sealing wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.”

Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventure Through the Looking Glass)

Somalia has done it again. For 18 years it showed the world that a country can exist without a State (which makes the Somali fundamentalists the first real Marxists) and still accomplish all the functions of a proud African State—kill, maim, destroy the country, displace millions, bring in famine, commit atrocities and more. And now, as the whole or at least half the world watches, Somalia has elected its latest president (no fake claim like Meles or other dictators who allege that 99.9% elected them)--, meaning some 500 MPs from various clans—themselves unelected-- elected Sheikh Ahmed as president and did the election not inside Somalia but in a neighboring country, Djibouti.

Imagine the lesson of this novel experience. Instead of having often dangerous elections inside the country (and being forced to rig or cancel ) our tyrants can just take a few hundred of their supporters and party loyalists abroad and have them vote His Excellency as president. Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Angola who have had forays into the D.R. of the Congo can benefit from this—an election in Kivu by their battalions of soldiers. It would be legal. The MDC in Harare would be forced to eat its heart out for one. Sheikh Ahmed is being lauded by his former enemies in Washington and Addis Ababa and he may eventually make it back to Mogadishu or Baidoa and claim the palace if it still stands. Who says elections must be held in one’s own country? It can now be held abroad or in one’s own restricted ethnic enclave and then imposed on the whole country. Who says the whole people have to take part? They never did anyway and even if and when they did their votes have been thrown away and the fraud perpetrated. Why waste energy and money for a charade that has been exposed all over the world?

Another country has tried to steal the thunder of Somalia and to hog the limelight and it is that “off shore” island called Madagascar. In that usually quiet place, civil protests and killings are being registered these days. A 34 years old former DJ who complained that the president of the country ordered the closure of his TV station has taken in charge an opposition movement and as I write this he is claiming he is charge of the country until a transitional government is established. A first in Africa in that everyone is wondering how the military can allow a simple DJ (actually protesting against an impending unemployment) to cause this much havoc. In Guinea, where the military made its coup just after the dictator Conte died the coup makers are aflame with fury. In Mauritania, where another coup maker general has taken over, the officers are also fuming. Madagascar has no army? The president cannot order them out to crush the protesters as has happened in Ethiopia in 2005 when the ruling front lost the election? How can all self respecting and coup addicted African officers let a DJ wreak havoc and claim “I am in control” as if the general and colonels do not exist? The Madagascar experience is another first in its own way. The latest AU meeting in Addis Ababa, attended by tyrants and coup makers and no DJ, could be discussing it in secret as it augurs not good things.

The situation in Eastern Congo is also weird in its own way. Take the Tutsi rebel pastor, Laurent Nkunda, whose jungle wardrobe could make many in cities jealous. Film footages of Pastor- General Nkunda showed him in different attires, holding different canes like a serious Mzee, jovial and dancing to sweet Tutsi tunes. The whole world knew that he was backed and guided by Rwanda which, like Uganda, has had its own predator interest over Eastern Congo hidden behind an official claim of going after Hutu rebels hiding there. All of a sudden Presidents Kabila (DRC) and Kagame (Rwanda) seemed to have found a ground of common accord and action and Rwanda has detained Nkunda (what was he doing in Rwanda while he claims he controls much “liberated” territory in eastern Congo?) and the armies of the two countries are operating in the Congo against the Hutu guerrillas. In this same Congo, Sudanese, Congolese and Ugandan troops are on a joint hunt for Joseph Kony, the commander of the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army which survived all these years thanks to Sudanese full scale backing. As I had written some years back, the notion of Armies Without Frontiers (AWF) has led to Rebels Without Frontiers (RWF) too and the LRA operates in the Sudan, the Congo and in Uganda. This is a development to watch because, in a short while, we may completely fail to understand who is fighting who and where.

Add to the who and where the basic question of why and for what too. Two years after Meles Zenawi sent his troops to invade Somalia and to oust the Islamic Court Militia the very man that the troops chased out has become the new Somali president and the Islamic hardliners have come back strong and with a vengeance. The troops of Meles have left of course. Why then the bloodshed and the deaths of so many Ethiopians and Somalis? Meles and his patrons achieved nothing at all. Thus, the lesson that we are expected to get is the old fact that, in Africa we fight for nothing and we destroy people and countries for no apparent gain. This is not a first by the way. To suffer defeat and trumpet victory is not original either, Mission Accomplished and all that “Bushism. The other argument, that Sheikh Ahmed is a moderate (as opposed to who else? His friend Aweys? The Taliban?) , is also a lame one after all the cry we had heard about moderate Ayatollahs and how the regime of Meles (which is murderous but “not as brutal”) is moderate compared to the military regime of Mengistu. A comparison that splits hairs and has little or no meaning to crushed skulls and lost lives in the hands of so called moderates. The Islamic Court Union being Sheikh Ahmed’s baby and the brutalities of Al Shabab in accord with his teachings and exhortation, the change or the difference is illusory. In other words, the invasion of Somalia was an orgy of bloodletting that changed little in Somalia. It also does not require a prophet to state that the woes of Somalia re not over yet. Bad as this may be we can take solace from the possibility that Somalia may give us another first and make the Horn, if not the whole, of Africa an interesting place to watch for pioneer developments.

I STILL DON'T WANT TO BE AN AMERICAN!

2008-12-06T22:00:00.000-08:00
I STILL DON'T WANT TO BE AN AMERICAN!

The statement by Rama Yade, a young Senegal born woman who serves under the French president as a junior minister for human rights, provoked my foray into this mined field that often triggers wrath from the "we love America" camp. Yade was euphoric that Barack Obama got elected US president and said: "This is the fall of the Berlin Wall times ten. America is becoming the new World. On this morning, we all want to be American so we can take a bite of this dream unfolding before our eyes".

Rama Yade is biting a piece of a right wing French dream as Sarkozy's human rights minister and, judging from her record up to now, no tin pot Francophone African dictator is trembling at the possibility of being pricked by her probes or disapprovals. This is how things are expected to be and should be, France riding her puppets in Africa from Cote d'Ivoire in the West to Djibouti in the Horn, no mention of human rights. What makes Yade provocative is her open affirmation that "we all want to be American" and want to have a "bite of the dream". For official America that has great fears that everyone wants a bite of her and everyone in this world wants to be an American, this is a dangerous confirmation coming from a black woman no matter the significance of the Obama victory. "Rogue foreigners" refusing to change have always angered self indulgent America which has been interventionist and consequently missionary and now talks a lot about rogue states even. The contention that the world is flat, to quote Tom Friedman, and that the world is flowing into or can be made to flow into one American dug reservoir of American values and ethos is believed in by America but is dubious at best. Globalization has not erased the differences and levelled everyone into one dreary lot. On the contrary, every assault by the multinational has led to the search for roots, the ethnic is bedevilling us in the so called developing world where nation building has been wobbling for decades. The American dream, itself fuzzed by the materialistic and individualist insistence that accompanies it, is not the envy of all notwithstanding Hollywood and the cultural invasion. The contradictory nature of the American position--on the one hand wanting the whole world to be like America, to dream the so called American dream and on the other falling into the siege mentality of "the hordes are coming to bite pieces of us" (the schizoid mentality of the isolationist as it were) has made this world a tough place to live in as confused American foreign policy metamorphoses friends into enemies overnight (check Bin Laden, Noriega, Sadam) and makes foes into friends (Pakistan and Libya to mention a few) with a jarring double speed and double standard. American altruism or generosity, a credit to its people, is officially accompanied by the desire to control and humiliate. Aid has not been the panacea and America has used and abused its position in the world and caused the hatred against it that we see today in many parts of the world. The praise seeking do- gooder is often a blatant bully.

What has been called the capricious inconsistency of America is at the core of the problem. On the one hand the belief that other peoples and countries have no culture and value, no vision and future of their own worth keeping and that they should be dragged or bombed if need be to the American way. This zeal of a cult leader imbued with his self- worth and eternal correctness then clashes with the notion of "they are jealous of us the chosen people". Ethiopians, and up the Red sea the Israeli and the Chinese afar, are familiar with the notion of the chosen people that considers all others envious (and disadvantaged) and leads to a syndrome that, to say the least, is not healthy throughout. The chosen people syndrome assumes that God or some power is behind "us only" as opposed to the others and it meets a cement wall when it is confronted by a rival "chosen" (Allah is with us and hates the others). As they say, the masquerading saint, often the religious zealot, is more dangerous than the open bully. The consideration of oneself as unique leads to the desire for a special treatment, we are special and you should bend to our will kind of logic. For example, the conclusion that Iraqis wanted an Iraq as seen and composed by America was shattered when "Mission Accomplished" turned out to be a sham and the war continued. Hypocritical from the outset, this has led to the obdurate refusal to accept the cartoon character Pogo's famous saying "we have seen the enemy and it is us". We came to liberate them and to make them have a taste of the American dream but how come they are resisting us? Unable to question the very basic premise that led to the primary act or mistake itself, resort is made to anger at and contempt for the one refusing to be so liberated. The recipe for disaster, for massacres--from Hiroshima to Vietnam, Yugoslavia and Iraq the road is littered with the victims of this fundamental misconception.

Obama aside, the Civil Rights Movement aside, America was, and still is to an extent, a white supremacist society. Change is coming for sure and Obama's victory is an example of it so long as we refrain from taking the symbolic for the real and done deal. The drafters of America's Declaration of Independence owned slaves (Jefferson had 300) and the first American president George Washington had 316 slaves on his plantation in Virginia. Nowadays, the lynching is done differently but the prisons of America hold a big number of African Americans and even the outgoing president Bush had signed and approved the execution of many black men prisoners. The injustices abound and barring the euphoria, to my mind, the road ahead is bound to be tortuous. That is why I will like to assure all Americans that I for one and many others like me do not want to be American just because a half African has made it to the White House and we do not dream of biting a slice off your American dream, no. We know Hitler refused to shake the hand of African American high jumper Cornelius Johnson but it was Roosevelt who did not shake the hand of Jesse Owen when he returned victorious from the Berlin Olympics. Maybe, all this is neither here nor there just now but the praise heaped upon Obama's election (echoes of "Berlin Wall fall times ten" by Yade ) by African dictators makes us worry. The claim by Obama that America will lead and change the world is bothersome. Are we to be dragged and bombed into accepting the American way whatever that may be even if (we may dare not say it along with some others) it represents the "cesspool of morality and religious decay"? A Sudanese official found the election of Obama "inspiring" without clarifying what are the Darfurians to expect from this. Somalia's warlord par excellence colonel Abdullahi stated it was a great moment for Africa (is he hankering for an invasion?), Mwai Kibaki gave Kenyans a day off to celebrate, Luos claimed Obama's father as their own and Sudan said Obama has Sudanese roots given the "fact" that Luos were.......and so and on. The Nigerian president said "we have a lesson to draw from this historic event" without specifying if it has anything to do with fair election or not or treating the Nile Delta people and all Nigerians fairly. President Amadou Toure of Mali said America has given lesson in maturity and democracy without adding that he will try to learn from that if ever. And a Chadian official bluntly stated: it is an example to follow especially in Africa. What? The election? Electing a president who had/has an African father? The same official added that democracy knows no colour, religion or origin? Is this really a Chadian official in a country ruled by an ethnic chauvinist dictator called Idris Deby? And from Congo Brazzaville, the man who rules by the force of his horrible Ninja troops, Sassou Nguesso, said that Martin Luther King's dream "has come true". I do not know what the tyrant in Ethiopia said but I am sure it would be another useless hypocritical statement. The crux of the matter is that if an event makes both tyrants, their victims and democrats euphoric then there must be something wrong somewhere.

Without attempting to steal the thunder and lightning of the Obama victory, reality demands from us to be wary. The appointment of "Madams disaster for Africa", that is to say Hilary Clinton and Susan Rice, by Obama jolts us awake. We want a tamer, gentler and more humane America. Hence, we do not want to spread fear by openly claiming we want to be Americans (to a paranoid country that says every visa seeker is a potential immigrant) or that we want a slice of the apple pie, the American Dream. We want to stay put in our own places to nurture our own dreams and values, to follow our own visions and roads. Americans are as wonderful a people as others are but it is not true that everyone on earth wants to be an American. After all, it may be a historic event for America to elect a half African (half white person) to the presidency. For us, we have had full blooded Africans ruling over us for centuries and it has not meant much in terms of our freedom because, colour aside, they were not really Africans, and more importantly, not gentle human beings at all. Our scepticism on real change in America being around the corner must be excused, perennial victims have the habit of exaggerating their pain--didn't some one say even the American declaration of Independence was a "maudlin list of grievances"? Even the Bible asks rhetorically: Can the Ethiopian/African/ change his skin or the leopard his spots? Will Obama's America ever understand us when we say we do not want to be Americans?

WHY YOUNG CHILDREN SHOULD FIGHT IN WARS

2008-11-25T11:21:00.000-08:00
IF THEY ARE YOUNG ENOUGH TO DIE, THEY ARE OLD ENOUGH TO KILL

OR

(WHY YOUNG CHILDREN SHOULD FIGHT IN WARS?)

Hama Tuma

Or, it can be called a timely call to end the hypocrisy over child soldiers. I know my position would draw some fire even from close quarters who had been dealing with the issue of child soldiers. But, let the abscess be pricked and opened-- young boys and girls should take part in wars especially in those wars that can possibly render their lives better. In other words, if they are old enough to die they should be considered old enough to kill.

The hue and cry over the use of children in wars, that is to generally refer to those who are under 15, is currently made against those in the so called developing countries while some have even gone as far as arguing (mostly without basis ) that African traditional society called for the use of children as warriors . Imagine a child carrying (let alone throwing) a spear! Actually, the use of children in wars was very much practiced in the West. Tsar Nicholas I recruited by force Jewish children (called "cantonists") as young as eight years old. In the battle of Waterloo, children were used and many died--they were called "powder monkeys" and carried gun powder and other military items. In the First World War Baden Powell used minors as scouts and later modelled the Boy Scout movement after them. Many 13 year olds enlisted in the British Army to escape the numbing life as chimney sweepers, workers in the coal mines or in the dreary British industry. In the American Civil War, many children were used by both sides and bugler John Cook, who was 15, was among those decorated by the Army. The same happened in the Second World War--- Hitler had his Hitler Youths and young Jewish boys fought in the Warsaw Ghetto and in the resistance against Nazism. Children were incarcerated and sometimes even killed by orders of courts. In 1642 Thomas Graunger of Plymouth was executed for a crime he committed when he was 16. In present day Iran, minors are hanged by the ayatollahs and the Mollahs of Afghanistan were also ruthless. Nowadays, many in America rile against the "lunacy of lenience" and want minors severely punished and many (it must be said mostly blacks and Latinos) are actually executed for crimes they allegedly committed as juveniles. In the face of vindictive States, the child is always a victim.

Children die, children get killed. If you are old enough to be killed why are you young enough not to kill? There is no logic to it. Modern society commits crimes against children. The sanctimonious reference to children losing their innocence in war is empty talk. Victimized at an early age, many of the world's children are old enough before they reach puberty. They are victims of abuse of all sorts before they even reach puberty as the Vatican can adequately inform us. Early marriages are common in many countries. Children are labourers starting from an early age. Thousands of them are street children exposed to all kinds of suffering and abuses, the pain of which the constant sniffling of petrol and glue cannot sufficiently cover up. Of the 2 million deaths every year from dehydration and diarrhoea 95% of the victims are children under 5. Thousands of children die daily from preventable diseases and poverty. All over the world, at least 750 million people are malnourished and the majority are children as is the case now in the famine stricken Ethiopia where a heartless tyrant does take good care of his own three children. We can continue with the grim statistics of Europe and America spending 17 billion dollars on pets while the spending of 9 billion dollars for safe water and 13 billion for basic health and nutrition could save millions of lives, and effective investment in education and fair trade practices could lift 300 million people out of poverty by 2015. After all, life expectancy in most parts of the world is at 40 while it is 80 years in the West. So, what life are we really talking about?

The argument in favour of letting children take part in wars is not only derived from the need to have them fight for their own well being like the Jewish children of the Warsaw Ghetto or like the children of Soweto who fought against Apartheid (how many school children were killed by the racists!) There are other arguments too. Children who become soldiers can be far away from their parents. Many a Western expert has told us that parents in the Third World are uneducated and resort to beatings and mistreatment of children. This is not entirely false by the way and thus children can escape early marriages, brutal beatings and onerous work (especially in rural families) by going off to war. For once, they will be at the other end of the gun or the ones dealing the punishment like the child soldiers of Sierra Leone chopping off hands and arms. The other basic argument is that children have no life, no future to speak of. If they survive to reach puberty, they would still face horrible conditions and odds, starvation, abuse, sleeping on the streets, and can also be shot by trigger happy policemen from Rio to Addis Ababa. So why not go to war and have a fair chance of survival or die trying? Not all children can be adopted by a Madonna or a Jolie. Mercenary as they are, our rulers cannot sell all the children to foreigners. Their blood thirsty, vampire nature demands that they keep the majority for their own savage oppression. On another level, if children do not go war what will all these Save the Children and Protect Children from Violence groups do? Thousands of employed Western youths would be out of work. Do imagine this in the present times of recession. Are African children expected to compound the economic problems facing Barack Obama, a kin, just because he has become American? If no children do the dying in different war fronts where will the charity business be?

Victor Hugo wrote: "the deepest misery, an opportunity for obscenity". The system is obscene; it is responsible for the existence of the child soldiers. All the Bill Gates' and Sarkhozy talk about creative or responsible capitalism is, as they say, hogwash. It is a world where the pets matter more than the child. It is a system that needs "powder monkeys", children to exploit, children to be blown up. Soweto and Intifada showed the result of the injustice. In Ethiopia, thousands of minors were killed by the previous regime and the present one came to power by using child soldiers, both male and female. The road to power and riches is built over young and frail corpses. The obscenity of the system is such that innocent children are exposed to death every second (2000 children are infected by AIDS every day) and millions are already AIDS orphans. Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen, is 15 but considered old enough to suffer Guantanamo. Old enough for the pain? Old enough to inflict it too. That is how we see the hypocrisy over child soldiers. In Sierra Leone, the government also used child soldiers and chopped off hands and heads of its enemies. Children were not spared this way or that. The movements using children, from Renamo of Mozambique to the Lord's Resistance Army of Joseph Kony have found out that it pays--Renamo shares power and Kony is being prepared for that. Who cares for children when children killers come to power?

Not that stories recounted by "we were child soldiers"("as told to someone" from the West in most cases) sound true. One Eritrean woman whose tale has been made into a film wrote of carrying an AK-47 at the age of six in rebel ranks and those who have little inking of the size of a six year old female child's hands and arms and the weight of a full fledged Russian or Bulgarian Kalashnikov did believe her. Sierra Leone and Southern Sudanese "child soldiers" have also come out with tales that made them stare down ferocious lions where no lion roamed. No matter, the story, as Blair would have said, has to be "sexed up". The Western media and the NGOs need that. This said, the tragedy of the situation is not to be taken lightly. Ethiopians who do know much about dying say: "may God make my death nice and beautiful"; rather than (to) die in cold streets hungry and diseased it may be better to die with guns blazing and the staccato of machine gun fire accompanying their last breaths. I will not pretend to know the feelings of child soldiers in the face of death--I am no Bernard Henry Levy, the French media man, who wrote in detail about Daniel Pearl's last thoughts before being killed by fanatics. Yet, I do know that the life our children live under the brutal systems is no life at all. Who am I to tell them not to be soldiers? After all, the civilized West worships its armed forces and soldiers. The obscene part of it all is that children are exposed to suffering and death in the first place and not that they die lying under stinking bridges or shot by criminal policemen in a dilapidated City or in a fire fight. Death is death and the child soldier is but a victim of the obscene system imposed on us by greedy child killers who will never admit to their crime.

Goma Darfur--Of Competitions Aplenty

2008-11-22T09:25:00.000-08:00
GOMA --DARFUR: OF COMPETITIONS APLENTY

An Ethiopian proverb says: someone who has been out in the rain will not worry of getting wet. Having been out in the rain for far too many times than I care to remember I am presently unperturbed by the slack I may pick when I deal with weighty and sad subjects in what some may consider a lighter vein. Of course, satire being an altogether different ball game, some fail to grasp its core and often accuse me and others of trivializing "serious subjects". Here goes anyway.

I contend that the present mayhem and havoc in Goma and Eastern Congo is caused by jealousy and fierce competition with Darfur. Someone claiming more knowledge than poor me, has authoritatively stated that jealousy first originated in Africa much like human kind-- Dinkinesh or Lucy of Ethiopia being the first one to date. It is evident that this assertion is flawed, as jealousy and the rivalry engendered by it are to be found all over the world. According to Bush junior, the Al Qaeda attack on America was motivated by their jealousy and envy of America which suggests that at least Arabs are also jealous. Huntington's clash of civilizations is really a jealousy theory. Most Ethiopians think the world is jealous of their beautiful country, the Japanese think they are a special race envied by others and the Chinese consider the whole world inferior and jealous of their aged civilization. To come to the mundane or what the French, trying to be Anglo chic, call "people" topics, Madonna was red hot jealous of Angelina Jolie and when the latter adopted a small girl from Ethiopia/not an orphan but poor/ and so she went farther South and adopted a small boy from Malawi/not an orphan but poor/. Will Madonna next go to Asia to compete is not an issue that is riveting anyone's attention but let it be said that even rich pampered dolls are jealous of each other.

That said, the contention that Eastern Congo became jealous of Darfur needs a reminder in that the havoc in the Congo predates the one in Darfur and is not comparable at all. Four million Congolese have perished in a free for all carnage that was ignored even by Kofi Anan and led to the Armies without Borders phenomenon when numerous African countries intervened in the Congo to destroy or prop up a regime and, in the process, rob the mineral rich country blind. The war in the Congo was sponsored or pushed ahead by multinationals like the British Anglogold Ashanti corporation and other gold diggers and Coltan chasers, with rowdy militias being paid by the companies to wreak havoc and assure the mineral extraction. Congo lost its patriotic nationalist son Patrice Lumumba in the same way when Washington and Brussels collided to have him murdered brutally and to bring in puppet Joseph Desiree Mobutu. You are rich and everyone bothers you, you are poor and no one lets you alone to enjoy your poverty--this has been the sad fate of our continent. Did anyone hear the two candidates for the American presidency mention Eastern Congo? The Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise promised to give 20,000 dollars to a charity against hunger if and every time Obama or McCain mention world hunger--they did not. What chance could Goma have had then? Darfur is another matter altogether and there is why Eastern Congo has flared up in envy and jealousy. The problem of Darfur has a whiff of oil in its wake but it hogged the limelight because of the nature of the regime in Khartoum which, if truth be told, is not anymore odious than the mercenary one in Kinshasa. The hatred for the fundamentalists in Khartoum made Darfur very, very interesting. All of a sudden, right wing Christian fundamentalist groups and the White House got interested. Even Britain that has funded and still supports many a murderous group in Africa cried foul at Khartoum. Beshir of Khartoum was cornered and the casualty figures in Darfur went up. Well known actors like George Clooney chimed in. Who talked of Eastern Congo? Maybe Ben Affleck from the actors group, no more. Ghanaian Kofi Anan talked more of Afghanistan than Eastern Congo where his UN troops were not protecting anyone but raping young girls. And so Darfur became a hit song....and every George and Brad was mouthing the word Janjaweed taken by some to mean ganja weed or marijuana. Poor Goma. Poor Kivu. Sad Eastern Congo. 4 million dead and no one to rile and cry-- no one to pull out his or her hair and wail!

I am particularly sympathetic because my country Ethiopia gets little or no attention unless Mr. Famine visits it as it does, lucky us, every few years. Take the Enough Project of concerned Americans--they are concerned about Somalia but not Ethiopia. Take the International Crisis Group--the same. The stars in these bodies from John Pendergast to Gayle Smith were former groupies of the Meles Zenawi cabal who chose to castigate all opposition as Amhara chauvinist and the nostalgic of the deposed military regime. Ethiopia has had its massacres from Arba Gugu, Areka to Water and Gambella but not many bothered. The blood stained regime of Meles is presently dancing with joy at the possibility of Hilary Clinton being named as Secretary of State and with reason as she had hailed in the past the most ruthless dictator in the Horn as a democrat and was only topped by her husband who added the Great Lakes dictators as democrats too. Talk of the short end of the stick! Eastern Congo lost four million--is this comparable to half a million in Darfur? Eastern Congo has many regimes and forces battling over it--is this comparable to Darfur where disparate rebel groups have to confront just one regime? Take any measurement and by all standards eastern Congo deserved the primary attention that Darfur was basking in instead. So, who is to blame if Eastern Congo raises the ante and calls on all of us: "hello, there is a bigger mess here, please take notice"? Does Darfur have flamboyant rebels like Laurent Nkunda of Eastern Congo, who changes chairs and uniforms and attire so often right there in the jungle and tells foreign journalists his idol is Charles De Gaulle of France , the very country accused by his backers in Rwanda of supporting the genocide in Rwanda? So, Eastern Congo had to explode and attract foreign attention away from Darfur. If only....! And then the Somali pirates had to appear, chewing their kat and swaggering in their "shirit" skirt- like wear, brandishing their ordinary Ak-47s. Given the fact that the Somalis have been at it for the last 20 years, Nkunda could not be expected to cope, could he? And where could the rebels around Goma find so many ships and super tankers to sea jack? And to cap it all, most of the Congolese of all hues in the East are not even Moslems !

Life is not fair in Africa. And so we simmer and boil in our jealousy and rivalry and competition and die in millions and not much changes. A half Kenyan has come to power in the USA but who said even full blooded Kenyans were ever sympathetic of anybody else. Obama will surely make some noises over Darfur and Somalia. Eastern Congo? They have to die more and hope for the best. And if Hilary Clinton becomes Secretary of State? Will a dove be hatched from an egg of a serpent? Between Nkunda, Kabila and Hilary... and Darfur and Somalia ....the Congolese will, if we can imagine it, be in a worse mess. Of course they can take solace in the fact that this is Africa as we know it and that there are others worse off than them that are forgotten even more.

ቅኔ ከድሮ

2008-11-22T03:24:00.000-08:00
ቅኔ ከድሮ

ዋለልኝ መኮንን 1968

ቦረሳው ካሳ መካር አጡ
አንዳይሆን ሆነው ቀበጡ
ብዙ እያወቁ አንደጅል
የማይሆን ነገር መከጀል
ለድሃ እንዳይሆን እያወቁ
ዘውድ እምጡ ብለው ደረቁ
---------
ከለበሱ እይቀር ሱሪ
የጥንቱን ነበር የተፈሪ
ግና እይመችም ለስራ
አጣብቆ ይዞ በቀኝ በግራ

ደንዳር ደንሳሞ (1968)

ባውዳመቱ ዋዜማ
ስሰማ ከርሜ ላህየ ዜማ
በመጨረቫ ሲደክመኝ
ግዋደኞቼ መከሩኝ
ሊነጋ ነው እሉኝ
እሮገ ዘመን ልንቨኝ

ጸገየ ወይን ገብረመድህን (1968)

ነፎ መስዬ እባያ
ባዶ እጀን ቆሜ ከገበያ
እንገበገበኝ ንደቱ
ሲቨጥ ሲለወጥ ማየቱ
ብዙው በርካታው በጥቂቱ

POEMS FROM THE OLDER GENERATION

2008-11-22T02:57:00.000-08:00
Poems from the Older Generation

Laureate Tsegaye Gebre Medhin (1967)

VOW

As long as there are morning birds,
To fill the air with songs
As long as there are folk tales
To be told by the fire side
As long as there are offsprings
To kick and riot with joy
I shall bathe in the shimmer of the moon
I shall inherit the sun
I shall follow the rainbow trail.

Baalu Girma (1959)
CROWS

Crows from the south, west and east
Gather round the kitchen for a morning feast
Nature gave them right to share
the crows considered this unfair.
The dove and the sparrows got their alright,
And went their way, content and quiet.
For the crows nothing is enough
Nothing is fair, all is rough.
Crows must have all things their way,
And leave the rest astray.
Over matters trivial they croak and moan,
And make mountains of a mole.
Contented they need fly up and pray
And keep their tempers and dirty play.

Eshetu Chole (1967)

SILENCE

Silence
Is like Infinity
Majestic
Its depth unsurpassed
By talk-glib, gossip, proud talk
And other human trash.

Silence is beauty;
For truth is silent
And truth, they say, is beauty

Silence is peace--
Peace absolute
Peace consuming.

Silence is joy
Unparalleled
Undiluted by the cheapness of our lives.

A tear is silent
A smile is silent
And is too silent.

And death is silent
Oh! If only life were
As pure as silence.

Shiferaw Asfaw (1968)

" "

Yes, between Today's dim light
And Tomorrow's complete darkness
I am.
Rolling naked on a cold wave
Of a vast, indifferent ocean
I live
To observe
My fellow man drown.

Tamru Gobena (1960)
THE SUNSHINE

The sun shines bright , they say
After a rainy day:
Behold the shooting of the bay
As if it came to say.

O yesterday was grim and cold
Like a rainy day
Yet today is so fresh though old
Older than yesterday.

Yesterday was so dim and dull;
Bleak was life with me:
But yet today I sleep and lull
Though busy as a bee.

Behold that poor old man:
So cold is life with him
But yesterday the Sun did tan
His skin. His fill was to the brim,
Day doth follow night.
And night doth follow day;
Darkness doth follow light
And so we drift away.

to be continued

OF ALPHABETS AND DISASTERS

2008-11-19T07:04:00.000-08:00
OF ALPHABETS AND DISASTERS

Jean Paul Sartre once said that words are loaded pistols. The same can be said of alphabets, at least where it concerns Ethiopians. Back in the late sixties and seventies, there was tendency within leftist groups and parties of the world to split, with the splitters still keeping the mother name but adding alphabets to it. CP (R), CP (ML), CP (D) and a whole parade of qualified names. The R stood for Revolutionary or Renovated, ML defined true blood Marxist- Leninist, the D stood for democratic, and so on and so forth. There were many times good reasons for the splits but the alphabet soup, as it became known, was like a poor man's soup, short on the meat and just plain water.

In Ethiopia, since the nineties, the D tag has spelt disaster and betrayal, often given to pro-regime or satellite groups that existed in name only. Given the fact that the ruling front was not itself democratic its offshoots or stooges could not deserve the democratic tag. The same can apply to other groups who took up the D to be attached to names that really neither belonged to them nor defined them. That being the case D defined other things like:
• D for disaster;
• D for division like the ethnic politics of the regime, article 39 approving secession, being a faction to weaken the patriotic forces;
• D as in deadly, massacring innocent people, committing genocide;
• D as in deterioration, a catastrophic setback, a fall unto the pit of ethnicism;
• D as in dilapidated, worn out, old, hopeless;
• D as in destruction of a country or an organization,;
• D as in degrading of a country's culture and history, the valiant struggle of an organization;
• D for dismantling of a country or a party;
• D for dissolve, break up and liquidate;
• D for deracinate;
• D for demolish.

D has not stood for democratic, alas. D has often stood in for dog as this is the only friend you can buy for money but then the D tag on groups signifies disloyalty and not the loyalty of even a dog.

And when an R has followed the D it has not been a relief at least in the Ethiopian context. I venture to quote Alexander Pope:
"The bookful blockhead ignorantly read
With loads of learned lumber in his head."
The Drs have become in many instances Disasters Refined, pedants and snobs, elitist to boot. The African intellectual or/and politician , the one castigated by Fanon for his/her black skin and white mask, disappoints as it acts as if bravery or courage are out of fashion. I agree intellectuals are "of their time"; they should be situated within the specific, country and culture, and era too. The demands on an intellectual in Africa and the one in America may not be the same. It is possible to be generous and to define the intellectuals or, as in the Ethiopian case, those who devotedly attach the Dr and PhD tag to their names, as a minority "pursuing knowledge and research", surfing in the realm of pure art, aloof in its own ivory tower, untainted by the mundane that is the reality. There is also what Edward Said called "political trimming, a technique of not taking clear positions but surviving handsomely nonetheless". Most intellectuals of this inclination have proved a curse for Africa, survival becoming their main preoccupation even in/and especially in/exile.

Given our own historical context and problems, it is imperative for us to refer to the public or the real intellectuals, those who are friends of critical discourse, who are committed to justice, who take the side of the weak and the dispossessed, the disadvantaged. This goes beyond sheer exaltation of the national, the identity. Those who not only champion their own culture and national heritage but go above it to "universalize the crisis" as was said, to not fall into national jingoism or narrow ethnic exclusiveness, to seek the alternatives shrouded by the priority of the so called main battle. The task of the intellectual is therefore not to organize what Julien Benda (who wrote "The Treason of the Intellectuals" in 1928) referred to as "collective passions" such as sectarianism and national belligerence. There is often a reference made to the Meji Restoration of 1868 in Japan which brought the monarchy back, abolished feudalism and charted a way towards building a new Japan but the facts show that the process led to extreme and even fascistic nationalism. Shido minzeku, the notion that Japan was a leading/special race (an ideology that justified the massacre of the Chinese and the crimes against Koreans and other peoples) was upheld by intellectuals that championed their national Japanese identity and interest as it were. During World War II, American intellectuals reciprocated with a similar debasing attitude towards the Japanese. In other words, intellectuals who are said to be in tune with their nation and time can also veer off and create havoc. Tagore of India and Jose Marti of Cuba are admired because they were nationalists whose position did not hinder them from being critical. They fought the main battle but did not lose sight of the alternatives. Fanon's critical appraisal of the FLN of Algeria and the struggle against French colonialism is to be seen within this context. That is to say the struggle against the existing malaise (colonialism then or dictatorial regimes now) should always be accompanied with a critical appraisal of the struggle for change and a clear understanding of the substitute for which sacrifices are being paid. This is crucial because the oppressed can become oppressors before the euphoria of victory has even calmed down. The victorious FLN imposed a dictatorship on the Algerian people. The Boers who fought against British imperialism brought apartheid on the South African people. The February Revolution of 1974 in Ethiopia overthrew the feudal autocracy but the military took power to establish one of the bloodiest dictatorships in History. Those who preach liberation will not necessarily be liberators and, alas, every would-be dictator vows in the name of democracy.

During the prevalence of the one party system in Africa any talk of justice or any critic of the regimes was considered as treason. The "national cause and national interest" drum was beaten to silence any critical voice. Parties were not the results of existing class and interest differences but taken as creators of these conflicts. This was how the one party system was justified, through an illusory common interest and identity, with the ruling party embodying the whole nation and the dictator being its symbol. Anyone one who opposed the American war in Indochina was considered a traitor for quite a while. In such a situation and in critical times, the intellectual is called upon to rally to the flag, to be silent on the crimes being committed in the name of the nation. Leave the sixties aside and observe the present reality in which under the cover of national interest or so called national liberation, crimes are being perpetrated. The Rwandan intellectuals who broadcast Radio Mille Collines and championed genocide, the Algerian and Somali intellectuals who expounded extremism and the warlord carnage, the Ethiopian intellectuals who shamed their age old country with ethnic chauvinism, were not patriotic and loyal at all. They sought refuge in their own ethnic or national cocoon to justify their inability to be intellectuals worthy of the name.

The intellectuals need, in the words of Edward said, to "speak the truth to power". This is no easy task, it requires not only transcending the narrow confines of stunted nationalism but also demands courage as the power holders are not keen to hear or heed any criticism. The intellectual must not only question authority but strive to undermine it wherever it is illegitimate. Reciprocating the evils of the system in reverse (fighting ethnic chauvinism by preaching ethnic genocide for example) is not an option. As Edward Said so aptly put it, 'to regress into hand wringing impotence or into muscular reassertions of traditional values, as characterized by the global neo-conservative movement, will not do. I think it is true to say that the critique of objectivity and authority did perform a positive service by underlining how, in the secular world, human beings construct their truths, and that, for example, the so-called objective truth of the white man's superiority built and maintained by the classical European colonial empires also rested on a violent subjugation of African and Asian peoples, who, it is equally true, fought that particular imposed "truth" in order to provide an independent order of their own. And so now everyone comes forward with new and often violently opposed views of the world: one hears endless talk about Judeo-Christian values, Afro centric values, Muslim truths, Eastern truths, Western truths, each providing a complete program for excluding others.... One of the shabbiest of all intellectual gambits is to pontificate about abuses in someone else's society and excuse exactly the same practices in one's own". (Underlining mine --HT).

Aime Cesaire wrote of the need for the "invention of new souls". Beyond the victory over a regime or system, there must be a vision of a new construction, a new society to be born from the sacrifice, new souls to be invented so to speak. It is in this realm that real intellectuals have their role. Not to reboot the same system anew but to forge an alternative. Not to regress back to traditional times (Africa had no golden age before colonialism for example and Ethiopia's imperial past was an unmitigated disaster), nor to seek some "centrism" or ethnic ghetto that excludes others but to soar high and beyond and above mediocrity and more of the same to seek a new and brighter vision, to build the country on a democratic basis that unites the people on the basis of equality. In this the role of the intellectual is to "actively represent the truth", to stand with the people, to look ahead and never to regress back into the pit of a nostalgia of disaster. It is said the "true intellectual is always a secular being", that is to say very much different from the Christian or Islamic fundamentalists that are trying to drag us back to the dark ages of ignorance and intolerance. Morality is defined in the concrete, here and now, in whom it serves and benefits. And the real intellectual should thus find his/her place in the public role, in the upholding of truth, in refusing to be directed and ordered about by the authority in place. Blind obedience to power, to greed, to selfishness, to an arrogant superpower, to harmful and narrow ethnic or sectarian interests will in the end turn the intellectual into a historical coolie of shame and cowardice.

PhD can define knowledge and a continuing search for it or, alas quite often than not in the Ethiopian and African context, it could mean a pile of horse dung. We can struggle to invent new souls or to reboot the rotten ones. The choice is limited and gratuitously labelling oneself democratic or an intellectual is just an exercise in futility.

Lessons of the Obama Victory

2008-11-05T06:22:00.000-08:00
Some Lessons from the Obama Victory

I was wrong and as I said before this was one time I was happy to be proved wrong. I was one of those who said America would not elect a black man or a half black man to the White House. America has surprised me and many others by stretching its hands towards hope, daring to swim the current of prejudices and conservatism, looking foreword and defeating the apathy that was said to have gripped the young generation.

Barack Obama will face very hard and difficult hurdles and it is not clear, as he himself admitted, that the jump would be easy. That aside, the lesson of this Obama victory is not, for me, in the bright possibility that Africa would now get a better deal from callous Washington. Those Ethiopians who dream of Obama giving us Ethiopians and Africans the moral and other tools to achieve liberation are still missing the mark. Hail Obama but be real is my message. The gracious concession speech by McCain did show that American democracy for all its failings is still worthwhile to observe and educational in that such a similar situation in Ethiopia would have to be based on years of struggle, sacrifice and experience. The Obama victory gives us the lesson on the primary importance of organization. We now have half baked politicians who rile against political organizations and imagine they can achieve victory over a ruthless enemy like the TPLF by just acting like a movement. The Obama machinery was based on an extensive and meticulous organization, from the grassroots up and in the Ethiopian context this highlights the need for patriotic political organizations to be strong enough to reach out and mobilize as many people as possible for the all round struggle. We do not have in Ethiopia a peaceful democratic situation in which we can go from door to door to rally people. Yet, in our context, this does mean not the dissolution of political organizations but their consolidation, not the adoption of tactics that make the struggle victim to the machinations and whims of the ruling clique but makes the people part and parcel of the final push for radical change--the downfall of the regime. In other words, the lesson is get up/wake up and strengthen the political organizations genuinely fighting against the anti people regime instead of prattling about a non party movement from exile or setting up laughable exile "government" by political nonentities.

The other lesson is that people should put their money where their mouth is. Ordinary people worked hard and donated their hard earned money to Obama. Have we worked that hard to help the struggle advance? In our context, have we done the necessary to push the struggle ahead, to make the people's organizations strong? This is one primary question that must be asked to derive the pertinent lesson from the Obama victory. Of course, the other issue concerns leadership and strategy. Obama doggedly followed a course charted with clarity and was able to go against odds to achieve victory. Do we have such determined leaders with a clear idea of who is the enemy and how to go about defeating it? Or have we been backing false prophets while heaping insults and attacks against those who were and are practically struggling to bring the regime down? The ongoing attempt by some groups to take part in the fake 2010 election of the TPLF is but a wrong strategy and choice and fails to realize that you must know what fights to fight and avoid the wrong path to the wrong destination.

Obama has mentioned a new dawn of American leadership of the world and this is one thing no genuine African can or should accept. We do not need American leadership be it by Bush or Obama as we want to lead ourselves. We do not want a world dominated by one super power however enlightened it may claim to be. We want to lead ourselves; we want to be free and so the new dawn of American leadership that Obama is talking about cannot be ours. In fact, it may be a continuation, albeit softly softly holding the big stick, of the arrogant "I am your leader" stance of Washington. The American assumption that it is the world or the world wants it to lead should be laid to rest. But it is still there and this is yet another lesson that e have to digest in the place of our baseless hope that America under Obama will deliver us wretched souls from pro Washington dictatorships. The election of Obama shows that America has still the capacity to surprise us and we can only hope that it continues to do so pleasantly and not be being more of the same, demagogy notwithstanding. Obama owes his victory to massive vote of the youth in his favor and this was a youth that was said to be deep in political apathy. This has a lesson for Ethiopia too. The politicians who holler at the "apathetic youth" need to rise up and mobilize it for action. Obama showed this can be done with new ideas, hopes and dreams of change that touch the youth at its core. In the Ethiopian context, a replay of the fetid ethnic chauvinism that ruined the country up to now cannot be galvanizing. Elites who recycle worn out political clichés (and badly at that) cannot fire up anybody but their own illusions. Leaders who dare not lead and pay the sacrifice necessary cannot lead the people out of the desert.

We Ethiopians can and will defeat the Meles dictatorship and we can save our country and reclaim it for democratic change. This is the task of the people. Let us not short-circuit ourselves by handling over our destiny to others or by shirking away from the sacrifice that the struggle demands. Obama's victory has this lesson too. We can bring change but we as a people must fight for it. There is no other way.

SO WHAT IF OBAMA WINS?

2008-10-31T05:06:00.000-07:00
SO WHAT IF OBAMA WINS?

Imamu Amiri Baraka called hope a delicate suffering while someone else called it tomorrow's veneer over today's disappointment. No question that Ethiopia's suffering millions need hope, but then the same Ethiopians say he who lives on hope dies with desire. Very realistic you would say but it won't be correct all the way. Ethiopians, or at least her so called intellectuals, are complicated.

I hear that Ethio-Americans are alive with expectations of an Obama victory. One intellectual who has yet to fathom the evil mind of Meles Zenawi and the complicated situation in Ethiopia has vowed to address all Ethiopians on the spirit and message of Barack Obama. Another promised an Obama victory will give Ethiopians the tools and moral equipment to defeat their enemy-- the same regime of Meles that is being backed by America because it is a foot soldier in Washington's so called war on terror in the Horn of Africa. Hope springs eternal said someone else--hope is the poor man's bread. I am the first one to admit that years of close contact with Ethiopian and African politics has made my cynicism strong. To be fair, of course, I would prefer defining cynicism as sentimentalism on guard, guarded optimism. This requires no prophetic ability but just observing experience and facts. Decades of US foreign policy towards Ethiopia and the region has been cynical, cruel and often mistaken and against the interests of the people. US and Ethiopian interests have hardly ever been synonymous.

I remember many Ethio-Americans contributing money and hoping for a better understanding from America when the Clinton fellow got elected. It was not long before his wife Hilary flew to Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, to praise Isaias Afewerki as a democrat. Clinton himself went on to lable Meles, Isaias, Yoweri Museveni and Kagame of Rwanda as a new breed of democratic leaders for Africa. The Clinton administration backed the repressive Meles regime and aggravated the plight of millions of Ethiopians. Let me say right here that this has not much to do with the American people who are as generous as any other and have helped Ethiopians in their time of need but official America is another thing altogether. True believers of Obama would argue that he is different from Clinton and would chart a better deal for people suffering under dictatorships. Aside from this being a song we have heard so many times before and taking into account that our fate should not be handed over to any foreign power or leader, it is obvious that Obama is first and foremost an American. He may have had a Kenyan father but as the Kenyans themselves say "Mweri mwega umenyaagwo na ngetho" ( the good millet is known at harvest time). Come January, President Obama will first and foremost fulfill the plans and priorities of the US of America. Clinton or Bush, these priorities have not changed much in terms of Africa and are unlikely to change under Obama. The ethnic chauvinist Tigrean regime has served America well and will continue to be a pliant stooge in the coming years. Obama may be black but this would have no weight at all in determining his policy towards Ethiopia and Africa. The rogues and barracudas like Cheney and Rice may be out of power--a good sight to behold-- though the replacements may not warm our hearts in Africa. To let the cynicism ride its dark horse, for those who want more problems and chaos for America it is true that McCain is the right choice. Such people can hope, if he is elected, his adventures into Iran, Syria, more obdurate policies in the Middle East and elsewhere will aggravate the crisis of America but we cannot wish the American people that much pain while wanting our own to disappear.

A realistic appraisal of the weight of Africa in American politics is called for. Take the Congo where more than 4 million people died and American and British companies running after minerals are behind the bloody militias. Who has cared enough to raise a voice in defense of the Congolese people? Ask Kofi Anan for one. Equatorial Guinea is in America's good books because American companies are taking its oil. Ethiopians suffer under one of the most repressive regimes in Africa--does Washington care? Are they not more interested in the mercenary role of the regime? Obama may be black but American foreign policy is, so to speak, white. White in the sense that it has no heart for the suffering peoples of Africa. Those who are experts at discerning the internal political and economic situation in the USA may adequately explain how Obama would be, domestically, an improvement on Bush or McCain but I will bet all the dollars that I do not have that for Africa Obama will be more of the same, demagogy to the contrary notwithstanding. The American comedian Woody Allen said reality is the leading cause of stress for those in touch with it. Yet, stress or not, we have to be realistic (without quotations) and much as it is historic and pleasant to see Obama in the White House his presence there would not change much for Ethiopia and Africa. Let it be said though the enthusiastic reception that Obama got in Germany (a country that wants no blacks on its soil), that he made it this far in America and may even get elected is historic indeed. America may yet surprise us positively and we hope it does.

For those of us who have a country or a continent to save, time presses and the luxury of giving time to our hope to be real is not there at all. No choice but to fight for our own liberation relying on ourselves and knowing full well that this may possibly pit us against president Obama too if he does get there.