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New approach to name changes

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:50:00 GMT

Friday, November 28, 2008

PRESIDENT Kgalema Motlanthe has proposed a new approach to place name changes, saying that since the advent of democracy in 1994, few things have been as divisive as the process of changing apartheid and colonial names. This does not need to be the case. Instead, handled properly, the re-examination of place names could be used as a vehicle for nation building, he wrote on the ANCs website yesterday. Just as the cities, towns, streets, rivers and mountains of this country belong to all its...

Source: http://www.dispatch.co.za/article.aspx?id=275322

Correcting colonial wrongs?

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 03:31:21 GMT

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

The result of Mr Berlusconi’s visit to Libya seems to have shocked the world; more so, it seems, due to the announcement of massive investment opportunities than for the historical significance of the high profile get-together. From the look of things, the whole world approves of the agreement between the two countries.

What we might not unanimously approve of, however, is whether the wrongs of colonialism can be accounted for in a monetary sense.

Five billion American dollars is indeed quite a lot of money. It is especially meaningful for a developing country like Libya, desperately struggling to escape the manacles of decades of bad feeling between it and the influential West.

We could be guilty of the same injustice Italy and the rest of imperialist Europe was accused of if we fail to acknowledge the significance of the step taken by Mr Berlusconi and his Italian government. If anything, the landmark offer suggests acceptance of wrong doing by the people of Italy. If only the rest of imperialist Europe can borrow a leaf from them!

However, the best way to compensate the continent would be to treat it with fairness in every sense of the word; respect and humility. Acknowledgment, it must also be noted here, ought to go with assumption of responsibility; genuine acceptance of responsibility for the decades of wrong inflicted on the people of Africa.

The colonial masters are bound by an obligation to go a step further in accepting the fact that Africa and Africans contributed immensely to the development of the Europe they are doing everything to prevent our youngsters from entering today.

Author: DO

Cheikh Anta Diop and the new light on African History

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 07:25:14 GMT

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Friday, February 29, 2008

Cheikh Anta Diop was born in Diourbel, Senegal. His early education was in a traditional Islamic School. At the age of 23, he went to Paris in 1946 to become a physicist.

He remained there for 15 years, studying physics under FrÈdÈric Joliot-Curie, Marie Curie’s son-in-law, and ultimately translating parts of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity into his native Wolof.Diop's education included African history, Egyptology, linguistics, anthropology, economics, and sociology.

In 1951, Diop submitted a Ph.D. thesis at the University of Paris in which he argued that ancient Egypt had in fact been a Black African culture. The thesis was rejected. Over the next nine years, Diop reworked the thesis, adding stronger evidentiary support. In 1960, he succeeded in the defense of his thesis and was awarded the Ph.D. degree.

In 1955, the thesis had been published in the popular press as a book titled Nations Ëgres et culture (Negro Nations and Culture). It would make him one of the most controversial historians of his time.

After 1960, Diop went back to Senegal and continued writing. The University of Dakar established a radiocarbon laboratory to aid in research.

Diop was named chairman of the lab. (After his death the university was named in his honor: Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar.) He had said, "In practice it is possible to determine directly the skin color and, hence, the ethnic affiliations of the ancient Egyptians by microscopic analysis in the laboratory; I doubt if the sagacity of the researchers who have studied the question has overlooked the possibility."

Cheikh Anta Diop’s first major work, Nations Negres et Culture (1955) is still disturbing the white historians who have make quick reputations as authorities on African history and culture.

In this book Dr. Diop shows the interrelationships between African nations, north and south, and proves, because in this case proof is needed again and again, that ancient Egypt was a distinct African nation and was not historically or culturally a part of Asia or Europe.

More myths about Africa are put to rest in another one of his books, The Cultural Unity of Negro Africa, (1959). The publication of his first book in the United States, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth of Reality, is a cause for celebration. This book and others of recent years, all by Black writers, have called for a total reconsideration of the role that African people have played in history and their impact on the development of early societies and institutions.

Nations Negres et Culture is both a reassessment of the African past and a challenge to Western scholarship on Africa. He refutes the myth of Egypt as a white nation and shows its southern African origins.

It is his intention to prove that, through Egyptian civilization, Africa had made the oldest and one of the most significant contributions to world culture. This is not a new argument that started with Cheikh Anta Diop's generation of Africans.

The Ghanaian historian, Joseph B. Danquah, in his introduction to the book, United West Africa at the Bar of the Family of Nations, by Ladipo Solanke, published in 1927, four years after Cheikh Anta Diop was born, said exactly the same thing. His statement reads:

"By the time Alexander the Great was sweeping the civilized world with conquest after conquest from Chaeronia to Gaza, from Babylon to Cabul; by the time the first Aryan conquerors were learning the rudiments of war and government at the feet of the philosopher Aristotle; and by the time Athens was laying down the foundations of European civilization, the earliest and greatest Ethiopian culture had already flourished and dominated the civilized world for over four centuries and a half. Imperial Ethiopia had conquered Egypt and founded the XXVth Dynasty, and for a century and a half the central seat of civilization in the known world was held by the ancestors of the modern Negro, maintaining and defending it against the Assyrian and Persian Empires of the East.

Thus, at the time when Ethiopia was leading the civilized world in culture and conquest, East was East, but West was not, and the first European (Grecian) Olympiad was yet to be held. Rome was nowhere to be seen on the map, and sixteen centuries were to pass before Charlemagne would rule in Europe and Egbert became first King of England.

Even then, history was to drag on for another seven hundred weary years, before Roman Catholic Europe could see fit to end the Great Schism, soon to be followed by the disturbing news of the discovery of America and the fateful rebirth of the youngest of world civilizations."2

Here Dr. Danquah is showing that African history is the foundation of world history. In the present book by Cheikh Anta Diop, and in most of his other works, his objective is the same. In his first major work on history, Dr. Diop has said:

"The general problem confronting African history is this: how to recognize effectively, through meaningful research, all of the fragments of the past into a single ancient epoch, a common origin which will reestablish African continuity. … If the ancients were not victims of a mirage, it should be easy enough to draw upon another series of arguments and proofs for the union of the history of Ethiopian and Egyptian societies with the rest of Africa.

Thus combined, these histories would lead to a properly patterned past in which it would be seen that (ancient) Ghana rose in the interior (West Africa) of the continent at the moment of Egyptian decline, just as the Western European empires were born with the decline of Rome."

While using Africa as the vantage point and the basis for his thesis, Dr. Diop does not neglect the broader dimensions of history. He shows that history cannot be restricted by the limits of ethnic group, nation, or culture.

Roman history is Greek as well as Roman, and both the Greek and the Roman histories are Egyptian because the entire Mediterranean was civilized Egypt; and Egypt in turn borrowed from other parts of Africa, especially Ethiopia.

Africa came into the Mediterranean world mainly through Greece, which had been under African influence. The first Greek invasion of Africa was peaceful and scholarly. This invasion brought in Herodotus. Egypt had lost its independence over a century before his visit. This was the beginning of the period of foreign domination over Egypt that would last, in different forms, for two thousand years.

The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality is a one-volume translation of the major sections of the first and last of the books by Cheikh Anta Diop, i.e., Nations Negres et Culture and Anteriorite des Civilisations Negres.

These two works have challenged and changed the direction of attitudes about the place of African people in history in scholarly circles around the world. It was largely due to these works that Cheikh Anta Diop, with W.E.B. Du Bois, was honored as "the writer who had exerted the greatest influence on African people in the 20th century" at the World Festival of Arts held in Dakar, Senegal, in 1966.

The main thesis of the present work is a redefinition of the place of Egypt in African history in particular and in world history in general. Dr. Diop calls attention to the historical, archeological and anthropological evidence that supports his thesis. The civilization of Egypt, he maintains, is African in origin and in early development. In his book Dr. Diop says:

"The history of Africa will remain suspended in air and cannot be written correctly until African historians connect it with the history of Egypt."

He further states:

"The African historian who evades the problem of Egypt is neither modest or objective, nor unruffled, he is ignorant, cowardly, and neurotic."

Dr. Diop approaches the history of Africa frontally, head-on with explanations, but no apologies. In locating Egypt on the map of human geography he asks and answers the question: who were the Egyptians of the ancient world?

The Ethiopians say that the Egyptians were one of their colonies which was brought into Egypt by the deity Osiris. The Greek writer Herodotus repeatedly referred to the Egyptians as being dark-skinned people with woolly hair.

"They," he says, "have the same tint of skin which approaches that of the Ethiopians." The opinion of the ancient writers on the Egyptians is more or less summed up by Gaston Maspero (1846–1916) when he says, "By the almost unanimous testimony of ancient historians, they [the Egyptians] belong to an African race which first settled in Ethiopia on the Middle Nile: following the course of the river they gradually reached the sea."

"The Greek writer, Herodotus, may be mistaken," Cheikh Anta Diop tells us, "when he reports the customs of a people. But one must grant that he was at least capable of recognizing the skin color of the inhabitants of countries he visited.

" His descriptions of the Egyptians were the descriptions of a Black people. At this point the reader needs to be reminded of the fact that at the time of Herodotus's visit to Egypt and other parts of Africa (between 480 and 425 B.C.) Egypt's Golden Age was over.

Egypt had suffered from several invasions, mainly the Kushite invasions, coming from within Africa, and starting in 751 B.C., and the Assyrians' invasions from Western Asia (called the Middle East), starting in 671 B.C. If Egypt, after years of invasions by other people and nations was a distinct Black African nation at the time of Herodotus, shouldn't we at least assume that it was more so before these invasions occurred?

If Egypt is a dilemma in Western historiography, it is a created dilemma. The Western historians, in most cases, have rested the foundation of what is called "Western

Civilization" on the false assumptions, or claim, that the ancient Egyptians were white people. To do this they had to ignore great masterpieces on Egyptian history written by other white historians who did not support this point of view, such as Gerald Massey's great classic, Ancient Egypt, The Light of the World, (1907) and his other works, A Book of the Beginnings and The Natural Genesis. Other neglected works by white writers are Politics, Intercourse, and Trade of the Carthaginians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, by A.H.L. Heeren (1833), and Ruins of Empires, by Count Volney (1787).

In the first chapter of his book, Dr. Diop refers to the Southern African origins of the people later known as Egyptians. Here he is on sound ground with a lot of support coming from another group of neglected white writers. In his book Egypt, Sir E.A. Wallis Budge says:

"The prehistoric native of Egypt, both in the old and in the new Stone Ages, was African and there is every reason for saying that the earliest settlers came from the South." He further states: "There are many things in the manners and customs and religions of the historic Egyptians that suggests that the original home of their prehistoric ancestors was in a country in the neighborhood of Uganda and Punt." (Some historians believe that the biblical land of Punt was in the area known on modern maps as Somalia.)

European interest in "Ethiopia and the Origin of Civilization" dates from the early part of the nineteenth century and is best reflected in a little known, though important, paper in Karl Richard Lepsius' Incomparable Survey of the Monumental Ruins in the Ethiopian Nile Valley in 1842–1844.

The records found by Lepsius tend to show how Ethiopia was once able to sustain an ancient population that was numerous and powerful enough not only to challenge but, on a number of occasions, to conquer completely the populous land of Egypt. Further, these records show that the antiquity of Ethiopian civilization had a direct link with civilization of ancient Egypt.

Many of the leading antiquarians of the time, based largely on the strength of what the classical authors, particularly Diodorus Siculus and Stephanus of Byzantium, had to say on the matter, were exponents of the view that the ancient Ethiopians, or at any rate, the Black people of remote antiquity were the earliest of all civilized peoples and that the first civilized inhabitants of ancient Egypt were members of what is refereed to as the Black race who entered the country as emigrants from Ethiopia.

A number of Europe's leading writers on the civilizations of remote antiquity have written brilliant defenses of this point of view. Some of these writers are Brice, Count Volney, Fabre, d'Oliver, and Heeren. In spite of the fact that these writers defended this thesis with all the learning at their command and documented their defense, most of the present-day writers of African history continue to ignore their findings.

In 1825, German backwardness in this respect came definitely to an end. In that year, Arnold Hermann Heeren (1760–1842), Professor of History and Politics in the University of Gottengen and one of the ablest of the early exponents of the economic interpretation of history, published, in the fourth and revised edition of his great work Ideen Uber Die Politik, Den Verkehr Und Den Handel Der Vornehmsten Volker Der Alten Weld, a lengthy essay on the history, culture, and commerce of the ancient Ethiopians, which had profound influence on contemporary writers in the conclusion that it was among these ancient Black people of Africa and Asia that international trade was first developed.

He thinks that as a by-product of these international contacts there was an exchange of ideas and cultural practices that laid the foundations of the earliest civilizations of the ancient world.

The French writer Count C. F. Volney, in his important work, The Ruins of Empires, extends this point of view by saying that the Egyptians were the first people to "attain the physical and moral sciences necessary to civilized life." In referring to the basis of this achievement he states further that, "It was, then, on the borders of the Upper Nile, among a Black race of men, that was organized the complicated system of worship of the stars, considered in relation to the productions of the earth and the labors of agriculture; and this first worship, characterized by their adoration under their own forms and national attributes, was a simple proceeding of the human mind."

Over a generation ago African American historians such as Carter G. Woodson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Willis N. Huggins, J. A. Rogers, and Charles C. Seifort read the works of these radical writer-historians and began to expand on their findings.

This tradition continued and is reflected in the works of present day Black historians such as John G. Jackson's Introduction to African Civilizations (1970), Yosef ben-Jochannan's Black Man of the Nile (1972), and Chancellor Williams's The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race From 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D. (1971).

Until the publication of James G. Spady's article, "Negritude, Pan-Benegritude and the Diopian Philsophy of African History," in A Current Bibliography on African Affairs, volume 5, number 1, January, 1972, and the recent interview by Harun Kofi Wangara, published in Black World magazine, February, 1974, Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop was known to only a small group of Black writers and teachers in the United States. For over seven years his books were offered to American publishers with no show of interest.. All of his books were originally published by Presence Africaine, the Paris-based publication arm of the International Society of African Culture.

Egyptology developed in concurrence with the development of the slave trade and the colonial system. It was during this period that Egypt was literally taken out of Africa, academically, and made an extension of Europe. In many ways Egypt is the key to ancient African history.

African history is out of kilter until ancient Egypt is looked upon as a distinct African nation. The Nile River played a major role in the relationship to Egypt to the nations in Southeast Africa. During the early history of Africa, the Nile was a great cultural highway on which elements of civilization came into and out of inner Africa. Egypt's relationship with the people in the South was both good and bad, depending on the period and the dynasty in power.

In his chapter called, "What were the Egyptians?," Dr. Diop explains the rise and fall of Egypt's Golden Age and the beginnings of the invasions, first from Western Asia, that turned this nation's first age of greatness into a nightmare. This was the period of the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings.

During this time seventy Jews, grouped in twelve patriarchal families, nomads without industry or culture, entered Egypt. These Jews left Egypt four hundred years later 600,000 strong, after acquiring from African people all of the elements of their future religion, tradition, and culture, including monotheism. Whosoever the Jews were when they entered Africa, when they left, four hundreds later, they were ethnically, culturally, and religiously an African people. In this part of his book, Cheikh Anta Diop leaves no room for argument.

In the chapter called, "Birth of the Negro Myth," Dr. Diop shows how African people, whose civilizations were old before Europe was born, were systematically read out of the respectful commentary of human history.

This examination is continued in the chapter called, "Modern Falsification of History." Here, Cheikh Anta Diop deals with how Western historians, for the last five hundred years wrote or rewrote history glorifying the people of European extraction and distorted the history of the rest of the world.

Those who read this book seriously are in for a shock and rewarding experience in learning. This is a major work by a major Black historian. At last, the renaissance of African historiography from an African point of view has begun, and none too soon. I will say again, the publication of Cheikh Anta Diop's book The African Origin of Civilization": Myth or Reality is a cause for celebration.

Author: DO

Roosevelt - Warrior for Freedom (and The Gambia’s part in his fight)

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 04:17:42 GMT

Thursday, February 14, 2008

President Roosevelt understood very well the threat posed to world peace by the continuation of imperialism, as was recorded by his son Elliott in his book, As He Saw It. The President told his son,

``The colonial system means war. Exploit the resources of an India, a Burma, a Java; take all the wealth out of these countries, but never put anything back into them, things like education, decent standards of living, minimum health requirements1-all you're doing is storing up the kind of trouble that leads to war. All you're doing is negating the value of any kind of organizational structure for peace before it begins.''

At the Casablanca conference in January of 1943, Roosevelt was even more emphatic:

``I'm talking about another war. I'm talking about what will happen to our world, if after this war we allow millions of people to slide back into the same semi-slavery! Don't think for a moment, Elliott, that Americans would be dying in the Pacific tonight, if it hadn't been for the shortsighted greed of the French and the British and the Dutch. Shall we allow them to do it all, all over again? Your son will be about the right age, fifteen or twenty years from now.''

On January 5, 1941 Roosevelt stood before the Congress, and spoke of ``a moment unprecedented in the history of the Union.'' He presented, as a single concept, both the domestic program for the United States and the principles of his global ``grand design.'' First he spelled out his economic bill of rights:

• Equality of opportunity for youth and for others;

• Jobs for those who can work;

• Security for those who need it;

• The ending of special privilege for the few;

• The preservation of civil liberties for all;

• The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.

Differences with Britian

The fundamental and unbridgeable difference between the United States and the British Empire, is the fact that the United States represents, if imperfectly, the embodiment of the nation-state, and that Great Britain is the modern form of the oligarchical, monarchical and imperialist system of rule.

It was obvious to Churchill and the British establishment, that Roosevelt's American Century vision of the postwar period was antithetical to the very existence of their Empire. It came down to this: the determination of the American President to nurture the existence of a community of republican nation-states in opposition to British insistence on maintaining their oppressive colonial system.

This fundamental conflict was more than evident at their meeting in August 1941 at Argentia, Newfoundland, before America's entry into the war.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the American President, Franklin Roosevelt, had heated conversations over the burning issue of Roosevelt's insistence on guaranteeing sovereignty for those nations still controlled by the colonial empires.

Churchill was forced to sign the Atlantic Charter, with its eight articles outlining the principles of freedom and economic development to ensure peace, ``after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny.''

Churchill made clear his reluctance to sign the Charter, when he said to FDR, ``Mr. President, I believe you are trying to do away with the British Empire. Every idea you entertain about the structure of the postwar world demonstrates it. But in spite of that, we know that you constitute our only hope. And you know that we know it. You know that we know that without America, the Empire won't stand.''

The Atlantic Charter, signed by Churchill and Roosevelt on August 12 1941, outlined the basic rights of nations to independence, peace, economic development and freedom from tyranny. It was seen by those people around the globe, struggling under the brutal boot of colonialism, as a sign of hope. They were inspired by the outlook of the American President and what he had uniquely put forward in the Charter.

As word of its signing spread, Roosevelt became a hero to oppressed people all over the world for his opposition to the imperialist policies of the British, French, and Dutch. Sumner Welles, Roosevelt's Assistant Secretary of State, who worked closely with the President on the wording of the Charter commented years later:

``The principles he had proclaimed in the Atlantic Charter were regarded as a source of hope and as a guarantee of a better day to come.''

The final version of Article III adopted at the conference reads as follows:

``Third, they respect the rights of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them.''

British leadership correctly understood that Roosevelt was attempting to use the language of the Atlantic Charter to force an end to British colonialism.

Roosevelt succeeded in binding the British to a set of principles, which expressed his own unique vision of the future.

The Charter was signed even before the United States had entered the war as a combatant.

Churchill knew, all too well, the implications of the Atlantic Charter for the British Empire. Only a few days after the signing, the Labour Party newspaper, the Daily Herald, carried the headline: ``The Atlantic Charter--It Means Dark Races as well -Coloured people as well as white, will share the benefits of the Churchill-Roosevelt Atlantic Charter.''

The news of the signing of the Charter affected anti-colonial movements around the globe. According to Louis, within days of signing the document, Churchill received a message from the British Governor of Burma, warning that the Burmese people would use the literal meaning of Article III to call for independence after the war.

In Africa, Roosevelt's Atlantic Charter was praised by Sudan independence forces, as an encouragement to their efforts to liberate their country from the Anglo-Egyptian condominium. Mohamed Ahmed Mahgoub, the first Foreign Minister of Sudan put it this way:

``In the Sudan, we had been reading the liberal literature published in Britain, which spoke of a free world after the war. We had read and studied the Atlantic Charter of Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt after their meetings in August 1941, which declared that after the war all people should have the right of self-determination and self-government - a declaration which Churchill later qualified with his famous remark `I did not become

His Majesty's First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the Empire.' We had high hopes that after the war we too would get the right of self-determination and independence.''

Churchill's racist and imperialist attitude came to the surface in his anger at the implications of Article III, for Britain's colonial possessions in the resource-rich African continent. Churchill said that he was sure that it was not meant to apply so:

``that the natives of Nigeria or of East Africa, who could by a majority vote chose the form of government under which they live ... [and] that prior obligations require to be considered and respected and that circumstances alter cases.''

The ``prior obligations'' and ``circumstances'' to which Churchill referred, were the British Empire's intent to control the natural wealth and population of the Nigerian state, which was, and is, economically key to all of West Africa.

Roosevelt was generally distrustful of pro-British attitudes in the State Department, and attempts by the British to win over Department personnel to their side.

However, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles had a healthy hatred of British colonialism, and shared Roosevelt's view that Britain's ``Imperial Preference,'' which the British considered a right of the Empire, was in fact a danger to world peace.

In 1942, Stanley Hornbeck, Advisor on Far Eastern Affairs, in an effort to counter Churchill's attempted sabotage of Roosevelt's grand design, wrote to Welles:

``Ought not thought be directed rather to the formulation and publishing of a world Charter which might be build upon, which might absorb, and which might be the logical, legal and political successor to the Atlantic Charter?''

Hornbeck's draft of the ``Declaration on National Independence'' quoted heavily from America's own Declaration of Independence (in which the word `independence' appeared 19 times) to project America's own experience to ``all the peoples of the world.''

The preamble to this proposed new declaration read in part:

``That the independence of those nations which now possess independence shall be maintained; that the independence of those nations which have been forcibly deprived of independence shall be restored; that opportunity to achieve independence for those peoples who aspire to independence shall be preserved, respected, and made more effective....''

The draft also included the specific timetable for de-colonization:

``It is, accordingly, the duty and the purpose of each nation having political ties with colonial peoples ... to fix, at the earliest practicable moment, dates upon which the colonial peoples shall be accorded status of full independence.''

Consistent with his earlier efforts, Hornbeck, in December 1943 spoke about the irreconcilable differences between the British and American outlooks:

``In the U.S. we place a much higher valuation upon the concept of political freedom and independence than do the British ... We assume to a far greater extent that various sundry now-dependent or quasi-dependent national groups have capacity for self-government.''

Assistant Secretary of State, Sumner Welles, one of Roosevelt's key men, clearly reflected Roosevelt's views on foreign policy. Welles, in his 1942 Memorial Day address, proclaimed that World War II would bring about an end to imperialism:

``If this war is, in fact, a war for liberation of peoples, it must assure sovereign equality of peoples throughout the world, as well as in the world of the Americas. Our victory must bring in its train the liberation of all peoples.

Discrimination between peoples because of their race, creed, or color must be abolished. The age of imperialism is ended.''

Secretary of State Hull, two months later, echoed Well's remarks:

``We have always believed--and we believe today that all peoples without distinction of race, color, or religion, who are prepared and willing to accept the responsibilities of liberty, are entitled to its enjoyment.''

Churchill fought Roosevelt throughout the entire war to maintain every inch of Britain's imperial possessions. The American President, looked at the world from an entirely different hypothesis, one that saw the end of the war as synonymous with the end of all forms of oppression, and the beginning of a new era of development, especially for those countries who had suffered under colonial rule.

Roosevelt’s Banjul Declaration, 1943

In Africa, Roosevelt saw, as we can unfortunately still see today, the horrendous, abysmal conditions of life which have resulted from British rule.

When Roosevelt visited British Gambia on the West African coast in 1943, and saw the appalling conditions there, it created a strong image in the President's mind of the truly ugly nature of British colonialism. He later spoke about it in his press conference:

``I think there are about three million inhabitants, of whom, one hundred and fifty are white. And it's most horrible thing I have ever seen in my life.... The natives are five thousand years back of us. Disease is rampant, absolutely.

It's a terrible place for disease. ``And I looked it up, with a little study, and I got to the point of view that for every dollar that the British, who have been there for two hundred years, have put into Gambia, they have taken out ten. It's just plain exploitation of those people.''

He told his son after his visit to Bathurst (now Banjul), the capital of Gambia, that workers were paid only fifty cents a day. ``Besides which,'' he added, ``they're given a half-cup of rice. Dirt. Disease. Very high mortality rate.... Life expectancy - you'd never guess what it is. Twenty-six years. These people are treated worse than livestock. Their cattle live longer!''

Roosevelt threatened the British, that he would expose what they were doing in Gambia:

'' ... if you Britishers don't come up to scratch - toe the mark - then we will let all the world know.''

Roosevelt wouldn't let Churchill forget about what he saw in his visit to Gambia. Years later, when he became seriously ill, he quipped to Churchill, that he was sick with ``Gambia fever'' from ``that hell hole of yours called Bathurst.''

Before Roosevelt had ever been to Africa, he understood the enormous potential to create new wealth on the continent through infrastructural development, as opposed to the imperialistic looting policies as practiced by the British, the French, and the Dutch. He talked to Elliott about a plan to irrigate Tunisia that would,

``make the Imperial Valley in California look like a cabbage patch.... The Sahara would bloom for hundreds of miles.''

``Wealth. Imperialists don't realize what they can do, what they can create! They've robbed this continent of billions, and all because they were too shortsighted to understand that their billions were pennies, compared to the possibilities. Possibilities that must include a better life for the people who inhabit this land.''

No Return to Colonialism

At Casablanca in 1943, Roosevelt was able to talk to de Gaulle, as well as Churchill again. He was determined not to allow the French to return to their imperialistic practices after the war. Even though there were clear differences between de Gaulle and Churchill, the anti-imperialist Roosevelt knew that the British were sympathetic to France's desire to reoccupy Indochina in order to strengthen their own imperialist plans after the war.

Roosevelt was fearful of that the French would attempt to retake their colonies after the war:

``Interests coincide. The English mean to maintain their hold on the colonies. They mean to help the French maintain their hold on their colonies.''

He told Elliott that although de Gaulle expected the Allies to give France back her colonies,

``I'm by no means sure in my own mind that we'd be right to return France her colonies at all, ever, without first obtaining ... some sort of pledge ... of just exactly what was planned.''

When Elliott questioned not returning the colonies, Roosevelt replid,

''How do they belong to France? Why does Morocco, inhabited by Moroccans, belong to France? Or take Indochina.... The native Indo-Chinese have been so flagrantly downtrodden that they thought to themselves: Anything must be better, than to live under French colonial rule. Should a land belong to France? By what logic and what custom and by what historical rule?''

In a conversation with Secretary Hull, Roosevelt said:

``Each case must, of course, stand on its own feet, but the case of Indochina is perfectly clear. France has milked it for one hundred years. The people of Indochina are entitled to something better than that.''

One question this raises is: If ``Roosevelt's scheme'' for the postwar period had been implemented, would the French have been prevented from being involved in Indochina, and might this have spared the United States the nightmare known as the Vietnam War, and its devastating political consequences? At the Casablanca summit, Roosevelt made clear what he intended for the future:

``When we've won the war, I will work with all my might and main to see to it that the United States is not wheeled into the position of accepting any plan that will further France's imperialistic ambitions, or that will aid or abet the British Empire in its imperial ambitions.''

A few days later he told Elliott:

``I've tried to make it clear to Winston--and the others--that while we're their allies, and in it to victory by their side, they must never get the idea that we're in it just to help them hang on to the archaic, medieval Empire ideas.

Great Britain signed the Atlantic Charter. I hope they realize that the United States government means to make them live up to it.''

Roosevelt remained concerned, right up until up his death in 1945, about France's postwar imperialist plans for Indochina, Burns reports:

``Independence for Indochina had become a near-obsession of the President during the past year or two. He told Stalin at Yalta that he had in mind a temporary trusteeship for Indochina, but that the British wished to give it back to France, since they feared the implications of a trusteeship for their own rule in Burma.

De Gaulle, he said, had asked for ships to carry Free French forces to Indochina. Was he going to get them? Stalin asked. The President answered archly that he had been unable to find any ships for de Gaulle.'' Regarding his idea of a trusteeship, Roosevelt said that, ``Stalin liked it. China liked the idea. The British don't like it. It might bust up their empire.''

India and Burma

Roosevelt was particularly outraged about the British policy towards India and Burma. One evening, after a day of formal discussions at the Casablanca Conference, Roosevelt told Elliott: ``The look that Churchill gets on his face when you mention India:

``India should be made a commonwealth at once. After a certain number of years ... she should chose whether she wants to remain in the Empire.... ``As a commonwealth, she should be entitled to a modern form of government, an adequate health and educational standard.

But how can she have these things, when Britain is taking all the wealth of her national resources away from her every year? Ever year the Indian people have one thing to look forward to, like death and taxes. Sure as shooting, they have a famine. The season of the famine, they call it.''

When Churchill got upset over the mentioning of India as one of the countries to be liberated, Roosevelt responded:

``Yes. I can't believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy.''

Colonial Mandates

Roosevelt sought to replace the ``Mandate system'' set up in 1919 with one of ``Trusteeship'' which would be internationally supervised and open for inspection.

The British recognized this as another effort by Roosevelt to dismantle their colonial empire, since, as Louis reports: ``At least during the inter-war years the mandates were treated as though they were British colonies.'' Oliver Stanley, head of the British Colonial Office, knew what Roosevelt was up to and objected to having ``a motley international assembly'' look into British affairs.

Stanley correctly feared that the United States would put, ``the whole of our Colonial administration under international review.''

Churchill made clear that he would not allow the Empire to be put ``in the dock,'' by having the international community scrutinizing their possessions.

The British paternal defense of their colonial system in Africa, for which we can see the ugly results today, was expressed in a 1923 policy paper on Kenya: ``In the administration of Kenya, His Majesty's Government regard themselves as exercising a trust on behalf of the African population, and they are unable to delegate or share this trust, the object of which may be defined as the protection and advancement of the native races.

``We are the Trustees of many great African Dependencies ... and our duty is to do justice and right between races ... remembering, above all, that we are the trustees before the world for the African population.''

The British knew that the Americans disliked the mandates, because in fact, they saw them as colonies, and the British tried to rationalize this objection to the American position and appease it through semantics. This is expressed in a letter to the Colonial Office in 1944, concerning the United States opposition:

``The tradition stems of course from the Revolution which produced fundamental attitudes, ideas, and symbols that are still at the core of the national thinking ... the attitude springs from this emotional source.... ``We can only by-pass this emotion by presenting our policy through ideas and symbols ... which are in line with positive American traditions.

Conceptions like `union', `partnership', `self government', `federation' fit this tradition; `trusteeship', `colony', `Empire', `British subject'--any words that smell of subjection--do not.''

The British were not going to let any outsiders hold them accountable for the colonial administration of their mandates and ``they bitterly rejected Americans sticking their fingers into colonial pies.'' Hornbeck said that,

``He felt like replying to the British that it happened to be their pie which was under our nose and which did not smell too good to us ... what becomes of these dependent peoples was everybody's concern.''

Churchill: The Empire will Survive

Under Roosevelt's assault, the British leadership were quite hysterical and defensive about protecting ``The Empire'' at all costs. In the summer of 1942, Lord Cranborne, the British Colonial Secretary, who later became the 5th Marquess of Salisbury, remarked:

``The British Empire is not dead, it is not dying, it is not even going into decline.'' He defended the Empire's colonial policy against the Americans:

``Our record was, in general, a good and progressive one, not a thing to be ashamed of, and ... the British had a useful mission to continue in the Colonies.''

Churchill himself responded to non-stop American attacks on the British Empire on November 10, 1942, in his most well known wartime remark:

``Let me however make this perfectly clear, in case they should be any mistake about it in any quarter. We mean to hold our own. I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.''

One can imagine how, upon hearing this, Roosevelt must have had a hearty laugh, accompanied by one of his famous, large smiles. Lord Lugard, a member of the British elite in formulating colonial policy, and the first British Governor General of Nigeria, immediately rushed off a letter to The Times of London, in an attempt to soften Churchill's remarks, by stating that the British Empire really had the interests of its colonies at heart, and that,

``His Majesty's Government ... as trustees for the dependent peoples would never surrender that trust, which they alone could fulfill.'' The British thought the colonies were their obligations, i.e., their property, not anyone else's business, nor did anyone else have a right to interfere with them.

A month later, in December 1942 Churchill repeated his defense of the Empire, in his more typical, racist and pugnacious language:

``We also have our traditions and as long as I am here, we will hold to them and the Empire. We will not let the Hottentots by popular vote throw white people into the sea.''

Margery Perham, one of a stable of Oxford scholars employed by the oligarchy, wrote two articles for The Times to try to deal with criticisms of the British commitment to maintain their Empire. On November 26, she wrote one of the most elaborate attempts to assuage the anger of Americans at the British:

``It was not to be expected that Americans whose ancestors broke away from the British Empire in 1776 should march to its direct defense without asking themselves and us uncomfortable questions.... America was born out of negation of the British Empire; her democracy has been bred in the tradition of anti-imperialism.

When Americans wake up to find their soldiers besides ours in India and Africa, and marshaled, it may be, for the recovery of Burma and Malaya, they have to put their minds suddenly into reverse; and this jarring process has been freely reflected in their Press during the last nine months.''

Academic excursions aside, the British meant to hold what they had. In the December 28, 1942 issue of Life magazine, General Smuts, the Prime Minister of South Africa for the British Empire, repeated the salient point:

``Mother countries should remain exclusively responsible for the administration of their colonies and interference by others should be avoided.''

In December 1944, before the Yalta Conference, when Churchill was going to meet with Roosevelt and Stalin to plan out the postwar period, he found it necessary to warn them of his intent on maintaining the Empire:

``There must be no question of our being hustled or seduced into declarations affecting British sovereignty in any Dominions or Colonies. Pray remember my declaration against liquidating the British Empire.... `Hands off the British Empire' is our maxim and it must not be weakened or smirched to please sob stuff merchants at home or foreigners of any hue.''

Roosevelt's Vision Dies

On April 12, 1945 Franklin Delano Roosevelt died, and, tragically for humanity, the potential for a brighter postwar era died with him, as that ``little man,'' Harry Truman, took over the reigns of the U.S. Presidency.

The British were confident that with Roosevelt's death, the Empire would live on, and, to the detriment of civilization, it has.

All Roosevelt's plans to dismantle the British colonial empire along with the French, Dutch, and Belgium, and his vision of entering a new era of development, especially for the ``colonial sector,'' with the end of imperialist ``18th century methods,'' vanished, instantaneously, with his death. And, as post-war history has proved, the United States of America became the next exploiting imperial power causing war and destruction around the world in pursuit of American corporate greed.

But the ideals of Roosevelt for freedom live on to inspire, ironically, those now fighting American Imperialism.

Adapted from James MacGregor Burns’s Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom

Author: DO

The true visionary Thomas Sankara

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 04:53:05 GMT

Friday, January 04, 2008

Many revolutionary leaders talk the talk, but don’t always walk the walk. But with Sankara, his revolutionary principles guided his own life. At the time of his death he had a salary of $450 a month; and his most valuable possessions were a car, four bikes, three guitars, a fridge and a broken freezer. He was the world’s poorest president, but indeed its richest revolutionary.

It is now 20 years since the assassination of Sankara and 12 of his aides in October 1987. While many know about the violent and inhumane way in which his life was ended, we still do not know the full truth about the circumstances that led to his assassination, nor do we know enough about those who were involved in planning and executing the murders.

Born Thomas Isidore NoÎl Sankara, into a Silmi-Mossi family in the northern Burkina Faso town of Yako on 21 December 1949, his Roman Catholic parents wanted him to become a priest, but he opted instead for a military career – a path that many Africans of his generation pursued as a route to a better life. In 1970, at the age of 20, Sankara was sent for officer training in Madagascar where he witnessed a popular uprising of students and workers that succeeded in toppling Madagascar’s government.

Before returning to Burkina Faso in 1972, Sankara attended a parachute academy in France where he was exposed to left-wing political ideologies – particularly as they related to France’s neo-colonial relations with her former colonies.

In 1974 he earned much public notoriety for his heroic performance in the border war with Mali, but years later would renounce the war as "useless and unjust", a reflection of his growing political consciousness. By 1976 his ascending military career brought him to the town of Po where he took command of the new National Training Centre for Commandos.

By the early 1980s the country was being rocked by a series of labour union strikes and military coups. Sankara’s military achievements and charismatic leadership style made him a popular choice for political appointments, but his personal and political integrity put him at odds with the leadership of the successive military governments that came to power.

In 1980 he was singled out for a government appointment by army chief of staff Col. Saye Zerbo who seized control of the country in a military coup in November of that year and formed a new government, the Military Committee for the Enhancement of National Progress (CMRPN). Sankara refused to join the CMRPN, but was nonetheless given a post in Zerbo’s government. Sankara temporarily accepted the position, but later resigned which led to his arrest in April 1982, along with Blaise CompaorÈ and their fellow comrade Henri Zongo.

The increasingly repressive CMRPN was shortly thereafter removed from power by another coup which led to the formation of the Council for the Salvation of the People (CSP) headed by Jean-Baptiste Ouedraogo.

In early 1983 Sankara was selected as the prime minister by the CSP, which provided him with an entryway into international politics and a chance to meet with leaders of the Nonaligned Movement, including Fidel Castro (Cuba), Samora Machel (Mozambique) and Maurice Bishop (Grenada).

This same year Sankara’s anti-imperialist stance and grassroots popularity once again put him at odds with the more conservative elements within the CSP, including President Ouedraogo. In an internal coup, Sankara was removed as prime minister and jailed once again.

In response to mass demonstrations demanding Sankara’s release the CSP compromised by putting him under house arrest in the capital Ouagadougou.

On 4 August, 1983 CompaorÈ along with some 250 other soldiers freed Sankara, overthrew the CSP and formed the National Council of the Revolution (CNR) with Sankara as its president.

In Sankara’s words the August revolution was best understood as having "a dual character: It is a democratic and popular revolution. Its primary tasks are to liquidate imperialist domination and exploitation and cleanse the countryside of all social, economic, and cultural obstacles that keep it in a backward state.

From this flows its democratic character." Sankara initially focused on applying the philosophy of the revolution to transforming the national army, improving policies concerning women, and economic development.

Why was Burkina Faso in need of such a revolution and what did it accomplish? Sankara once described his country as an embodiment of "the microcosm of the entire natural evils from which mankind still suffers at the end of the twentieth century". Upper Volta, which Sankara renamed Burkina Faso (land of upright men), was (and still is) amongst the world’s poorest countries.

It had an illiteracy rate of over 90%, the world’s highest infant mortality rate (280 deaths for every 1,000 births), inadequate infrastructure to provide basic social services, one doctor per 50,000 people, and an average yearly income of $150 per person.

A year after Sankara took office Burkina Faso became the first country in Africa to run mass measles vaccination campaigns. That year, with the aid of Cuban volunteers, 2.5 million children were immunised for several infectious diseases and even children from neighbouring countries were vaccinated.

The alarming infant mortality rates dropped to 145 deaths per 1,000 in less than two years. In an effort to slow the advance of the Sahara Desert, Sankara launched a reforestation programme that planted 10 million trees in its first year. Even today, trees are planted to celebrate birthdays, weddings and graduations. School attendance rose from 12% to 22% in just two years and was complemented by policies to encourage attendance and eventual graduation.

A campaign for the restoration of women’s dignity and recognition of their role in society was launched in order to free women from the yoke of patriarchal domination. During Sankara’s presidency Burkina Faso was a leader in employing women in government posts. In a symbolic attempt to demonstrate to men what the daily realities of women’s lives were like, he declared a day of solidarity with housewives and forced men to go to market and take responsibility for household duties.

Sankara refused to use the air conditioning in his office on the grounds that such luxuries were only available to a few BurkinabÈs.

He refused to allow his portrait to be displayed all over the country in order to prevent a cult of personality developing around him.

Shortly after coming to power he sold the government’s fleet of Mercedes-Benz and purchased the far more affordable and easy to maintain Renault 5. Sankara’s pragmatism and commitment to fiscal responsibility is still remembered: in 2003 critics of the Kenyan government’s purchase of 12 million dollars in luxury cars advised the government to follow the example set by Sankara.

The most appropriate way we can honour the lives and struggles of our slain heroes is to pick up where they left off.

As for Sankara’s widow, Mariam and their sons, Philippe and Auguste, they have, along with the Group for Research and Initiative for the Liberation of Africa (GRILA), the International Campaign for Justice for Sankara (ICJS), and an international team of 22 lawyers organised by the ICJS coordinator, Aziz Fall, mounted a successful legal case which resulted in a March 2006 ruling by the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) that Sankara’s family has "the right to know the circumstances of his death."

The government of Burkina Faso, under President Blaise CompaorÈ, has done little to address the UNHRC’s findings.

The government’s action has been limited to reissuing Sankara’s death certificate to show that he did not die of "natural causes", and attempting to pacify Mariam and her sons by offering them thousands of dollars in compensation.

The Sankara family has staunchly refused to accept any kind of monetary compensation in lieu of the truth.

On another darker side, across the Atlantic in Canada, Aziz Fall and BurkinabÈ journalist, Sam Kah, have both received anonymous death threats in the wake of their activism. All of this points to the far-reaching and geographically expansive network of interests that are invested in keeping the truth about Sankara’s assassination from coming to light.

Indeed, Africa and the world are yet to recover from Sankara’s assassination. Just as we have yet to recover from the loss of Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Eduardo Mondlane, Amilcar Cabral, Steve Biko, Samora Machel, and most recently John Garang, to name only a few. While malevolent forces have not used the same methods to eliminate each of these great pan-Africanists, they have been guided by the same motive: to keep Africa in chains.

Author: DO

Source: by Antonio de Figueiredo

A huge boost for Gambian music

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 09:56:52 GMT

Friday, December 28, 2007

It is still being asserted by historians and veteran musicians like Lie Ngum, Bai Janha and many others that Gambia was a popular music spot during the early post colonial days. Interestingly, despite the existence of a national TV, radio stations and different entertainment venues, this is not the case now. Gambians are seemingly not very proud of their own musicians and they do little to patronise them.

One Gambia Promotion is a registered charitable organisation in Sweden, that has been created to bring back the respect and glory that Gambian music used to enjoy. A special website was created and music lovers all over the world can listen to any Gambian musician online.

In an interview, the Chief Executive Officer of this organisation Pa Njie of Stockholm disclosed that his organisation is out to make Gambian music known and also to enable all musicians to enjoy the benefits of what they are doing. His organisation, according to reggae musician Singateh sponsored the production of his music videos. Apart from Singateh many other musicians benefited from the One Gambia sponsorship package and notable among them are, Njie B, Olugander, Nancy Nanz, Sambou Susso, Jollof Man, Ranking Fire, Rebellion D’Recaller, Smokie and many others.

Plans are already in high gear to produce three promising musicians and also to organise international gigs for them in Europe.

Singateh a.k.a Freaky Joe was in Europe recently under the promotion of One Gambia and it was a huge success. In Malmo, the third largest Swedish city, he was backed by a renowned band from Denmark. Apart from Sweden, he also performed in Germany and Austria. It was also the same with Sambou Susso, she was also in Europe last year under the same promotion.

One Gambia Promotion has now set up a new branch in The Gambia and there are plans to help musicians raise their own funds and support themselves. The local branch in The Gambia is currently busy conducting video interviews with renowned musicians and traditional griots. These interviews can be watched on the organisation’s website and already there is one with Pa Omar Jack.

The main branch in Stockholm is also busy trying to prepare the ground for some Gambian musicians expected in Sweden in February, as part of Gambia’s independence celebration. Besides, they are trying to locate all hidden musicians in Europe. Already they have met Mary Ndiaye and will be introducing her to the Gambian community in Stockholm on the 21st December 2007 at the popular Alvik entertainment hall.

“We want to try as much as possible to bring Gambian music to the home of all music lovers in the world. In One Gambia we felt there is need in exposing and promoting the hidden talents in the Gambia” said CEO Pa Njie, who works for a renowned international American Pharmaceutal Company and has been living in Sweden for more than a decade.

In addition to creating opportunities for Gambian musicians, this registered charitable organisation is also working with musicians and promoters from Senegal, Guinea and Mali. CEO Njie, who hardly talks about his achievements is inviting all Gambian music lovers to lend a hand in his desire to lift the standard of Gambian music.

Author: DO

Source: Alieu Khan in Stockholm

Africa says no – and means it

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 08:54:42 GMT

Friday, December 28, 2007

The unimaginable has happened, to the displeasure of arrogant Europe. Africa, thought to be so poor that it would agree to anything, has said no in rebellious pride. No to the straitjacket of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), no to the complete liberalisation of trade, no to the latest manifestations of the colonial pact.

It happened in December at the second EU-Africa summit in Lisbon, where the main objective was to force the African countries to sign new trade agreements by 31 December 2007 in accordance with the Cotonou Convention of 2000 winding up the 1975 Lomé accords. Under these, goods from former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific are imported into the European Union more or less duty-free, except for products such as sugar, meat and bananas that are a problem for European producers.

The World Trade Organisation has insisted that these preferential arrangements be dismantled or replaced by trade agreements based on reciprocity, claiming that this is the only way African countries can continue to enjoy different treatment. The EU opted for completely free trade in the guise of EPAs. So the 27 were asking African, Caribbean and Pacific countries to allow EU goods and services to enter their markets duty-free

(1).The president of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade, denounced these strong-arm tactics, refused to sign and stormed out. South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki immediately supported his stand and Namibia also decided not to sign (bravely, since an increase in EU customs duties would make it impossible for Namibia to export or continue to produce beef). Even French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who made unfortunate remarks at Dakar in July 2007

(2).supported the countries that were most strongly opposed to these agreements, saying he was in favour of globalisation but not the despoliation of countries that had nothing left

(3).The EPAs aroused wide public concern. Social movements and trade union organisations south of the Sahara mobilised against them. And the revolt against them bore fruit: the summit ended in failure. The president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, was forced to back down and accept the African countries’ call for further discussions. He has promised to resume negotiations in February.

This crucial victory is another sign that things are improving for Africa. In the past few years, the bloodiest conflicts have been settled, leaving only Darfur, Somalia and East Congo. Democratic progress has been consolidated and local economies prosper under the guidance of a new generation of leaders, despite social inequalities.

Africa has another asset in the form of massive Chinese investments. China will overtake the EU as one of the continent’s principal suppliers and could beat the United States to become its most important client by 2010. The time when Europe could impose disastrous structural adjustment programmes is long gone. Africa has had enough.

Ignacio Ramonet (born May 5, 1943, Redondela (Galicia) is a Spanish journalist and writer. He has been the editor-in-chief of Le Monde diplomatique since 1991. An editorial published by Ramonet on December 1997 resulted in the launching of ATTAC. In addition, Ramonet is one of the founders of the NGO Media Watch Global, and currently he is president of this organization. Ramonet also frequently contributes to El Pais and participates in an advisory council to Telesur
.
Ramonet grew up in Tanger. He studied engineering at Bordeaux, Rabat and Paris, and is now on the faculty of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris.

Ignacio Ramonet participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project in 2007.

Translated by Barbara Wilson

(1) The Caribbean countries agreed to initial an EPA with the EU on 16 December 2007.

(2) In his speech at the University of Dakar on 26 July 2007 Sarkozy said the tragedy of Africa was that Africans had not really entered history and were not eager to embrace the future. See Anne-Cécile Robert, "Françafrique Sarkozy-style", Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, September 2007.

(3) Le Monde, Paris, 15 December 2007.

Author: DO

Source: Ignacio Ramonet

Carlos Salsamendi – Mr Cuba in Gambia

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 06:49:33 GMT

Monday, December 17, 2007

After more than two years in hibernation, the Diplomatic Suite has come back to enrich the discourse within the diplomatic circles.

The column shall feature diplomats and high-profile personalities to reflect on their work, their countries of origin, politics, development, and other fundamental issues that have been shaping our world today. It is our hope that the column serves as a platform for better understanding of the past, present and future realities of our world, to inspire other countries and peoples to apply remarkable lessons of history.

In this edition of Diplomatic Suite, Carlos Salsamendi, Cuban ambassador to The Gambia, who was deployed to The Gambia in October 2004, is our first honourable guest. Read on:

Who is Carlos Salsamendi?

I was born in Havana, Cuba, in October 30, 1937. I had my education from primary to the university level in Cuba. I graduated with a PhD in Economics. Since 1959, I started working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where I served in different positions. But the most important period of work span was when I was serving as adviser in political affairs to the vice president, who was in charge of economic and international relations. I have been posted to the foreign services in Japan, Shanghai in China and now The Gambia. I have one more year to go but that is decided by Havana.

You have a family?

I have been married with kids and my kids have kids (laughs).

What do you know about the famous Cuban Revolution?

The Cuban Revolution started because of the long standing situation as in many poor countries of backwardness, illiteracy and foreign domination. In the case of Cuba, it was the US domination.

But Cuba was a Spanish colony?

Cuban people fought Spain for independence since 1868. Cuba was a colony of Spain since the late 15th century. From 1868 the Cuban people started the war of independence. By 1898, Cuba almost had the victory. But then the US government intervened in the war.

The US government had all the time been aiming to have Cuba as it own…to buy Cuba as one of its states. This was why in 1898, when the Spanish colonial army was defeated, the US intervened and they claimed victory in the so-called Spanish-American war, which is really a Spanish-American-Cuban war.

From that time (1898) until 1902, the US shaped and designed the political and economic situation in Cuba. And that was one of the reasons for the backwardness and poverty.

What happened after decolonisation, was there any immediate government?

There was a government in place. But it was a government made by the US.

Are you saying that the government was imposed from outside Cuba?

The political system was imposed. And through this political system, there was a multi-party system, so-called elections. With corruption, with coup d’etat, we had very bad dictatorship also. It was a Western type of democracy which did not go well with our situation.

Where were you during the revolution?

I was in Havana.

Did you take part in the revolution?

Yes, I modestly took part.

In what way?

I was involved in organising strikes.

So you did not take up arms to join the guerrillas?

No, but after 1959 I did take up arms.

You did?

Yes, to defend the revolution. I joined the army militia until after I left to go abroad.

What was the reason behind the Cuban revolution?

The revolution started because of the unacceptable political and economic situation of Cuba. The revolution started with a guerrilla warfare in 1956. Before, there were many struggles for real independence and for liberty.

But the 1956 struggle is the one which led to the victory of the revolution. The guerrilla warfare was led by Fidel Castro and it later became a popular uprising. On the 1st of January 1959, the victory of the revolution came. From that time, the whole system began to change. That is why Cuba has become a country with a very high education and a very good health system. The main objective of the revolution from the start has been the benefit of the whole population and social justice. This process immediately gained the sympathy of all the population. That is why when there are elections, 95, 96, 97 per cent of the people come out to vote. There is huge support from the whole of the population.

What happened with the so-called foreign domination?

Since 1959, America has been rejecting Cuba. And they started to take actions to overthrow the Cuban revolution through sabotage, training people, economic blockade…

What sin has Havana committed against Washington?

The Cuban government was the most faithful to the US. But Cuba became the spoiled brat when it started doing things for its own benefit. They decided that they cannot have this spoiled brat showing an example to the whole of Latin America. Cuba’s oil supply came from the US at the time, so they decided to cut that off. About 80 per cent of our sugar was sold in the US at that time. They cut the sugar quota and decided not to allow us to buy oil.

But how did Cuba survive such a difficult situation?

Cuba decided to import oil from the Soviet Union. The US ordered oil refineries in Cuba owned by the US companies not to process the crude oil from the Soviet Union. So the clash started when we nationalised the oil refineries. But we managed to give all the benefits to the population. We have real independence for the first time, sovereignty for the first time. The US blockade is now 47 years old.

Have you quantified the monetary lost the blockade has caused Cuba?

Yes, of course. It has come to US$89 billion. This is the direct damage. But despite this, we have struggled on and we have been able to survive.

I’m wondering about what it takes to survive such harsh economic oppression?

It is because of the consciousness of the whole population and the revolution working for them. So the support of the population is very important. Very few countries could survive this blockade which under Bush the administration has been intensified and other aggressive actions against Cuba have been taken.

History tells us that Castro fought alongside other comrades. Who were these people?

They were Che Guevara, Camilo, they were many at that time, and Raul Castro. He is what he is, not because he is Fidel’s brother. He was among those who fought actively in the guerrilla warfare. Cuba is not a monarchy in which positions are headed and inherited. This is because he has his own merits as Che Guevara had.

Twelve of them were able to survive after the start of the revolution back in 1956. The whole population, workers, students, and intellectuals joined the revolution.

How true is it that Che was killed by the CIA?

It is a fact that it was organised by the CIA with instructions from Washington. And the man who led this case was the one who ordered the killing of Che Guevara.

Who was this man?

Felix Rodriguiz. There were many who were killed in the arms struggle. In the last combat, there were some Bolivians, who were assassinated at that time. It was Che and two or three Bolivians, who were caught. Che came from Argentina and fighters came from almost all countries of Latin America to join the revolution.

What was the reverberation of the revolution like at that time?

A revolution has to be made by the people themselves. You cannot impose a revolution on anybody. Each people have their own history, their own characteristics and they are the ones who have to make the revolution according to those specificities. In the case of Cuba, it is a system that has provided benefits and it has eliminated poverty, backwardness, illiteracy, bad health, etc.

It has proven to be independent and sovereign. The US government is against Cuba because it shows an example in the whole of Latin America and its solidarity with the whole of the Third World.

Who among the US presidents had a close relation with your country during his tenure in office?

I will say a friend to Cuba. There was a honest man with moral and ethics. And he tried to do something in order to sort out the differences.

Who is this man?

It is former President Carter. Jimmy Carter. Before his term, there was no Cuban embassy in Washington and no American embassy in Havana. He and the Cuban government engaged to have an interest section, which is an office almost like an embassy.

There were negotiations at that time which led to important things like the migration agreement, and many other steps that could have led to the improvement of relations. We respect his position and as a matter of fact he has been to Cuba, years after leaving the White House.

But how about President Bush?

Ah! President Bush has a very strong commitment to the ultra-right Cuban-American community in the United States, particularly Florida. Since his father was head of the CIA and later president, the Bush family is very closely connected to the very old terrorist segment of the Cuban-American community in the United States. It is a fact in Bush’s first election that there was ballot rigging and that operation had in it the hands of the Cuban-American right-wing leaders. Florida was very important for Bush to win the election.

What do you think are the differences between Washington and Havana?

The problem of the Cuba-US relation is that it is seen as an internal policy problem and not external policy problem.

Can you elaborate?

It is internal because of the political elements of the Cuban-American community in Florida. If it was an external policy problem, things could have been sorted out.

This is puzzling?

No. They are the ones who are not in favour of improving relations. They are the ones who do not want the blockade to be lifted. They are the ones who do not want the families to communicate or visit relatives in Cuba and in America. They are against any sort of aid or relations.

How true is it that these people waged armed aggression against Havana?

That has been going on since the 1960s. They have tried to destabilise Cuba. You remember the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. This was organised and financed by the US government.

What happened to the invaders?

Well, those who did not die in combat were taken prisoners and released through negotiations for medical aid, amongst others.

You mean all of them were released?

None was left in Cuba.

Cuba is often criticised as having a dictatorship. What is your reaction to this allegation?

First, they accused us of being a Soviet puppet. Now the Soviet Union is no more. Then they accused us of fermenting guerrilla wars in Latin America. That is over. Then they said we are a failure in economics. And now they are saying Cuba is a dictatorship. But I do not know what dictatorship can hold elections and have 95 per cent of the population voting.

Recently, the state of health of President Castro has been the focus of international media and it has generated a lot of speculations about his fate. What is the reality surrounding his health?

Yes, it is true that he is so sick that he had to undergo serious operations. It has of course diminished his health. He is now recovering. He has less physical capacity but not mental capacity. He is very clear in mind, he is writing. What is the speculation? If he dies, if he does not die… There is a mistaken sentiment that after he died, things will change. No man can live forever. Human beings don’t live forever. Nobody thinks that Fidel Castro will live forever.

But will Castro’s doctrines remain the guiding principles of Cuba?

Things in Cuba will not be the same in the sense that nobody is like Fidel Castro. There cannot be any other Fidel Castro. No one has the merits and the total commitment he has to work for the people, to fight and to be at the frontline. In all major issues in Cuba, Fidel Castro has been at the frontline all the times.

Are you implying that things will be reformatted to suit Western perspective?

No! No! No! Things will not be the same in the sense that there will not be any Fidel Castro anymore. But the system will be the same.

Why? That system has been proven to be good for the people. There will be a batch of new leaders, young people, who were born and educated in the revolution. These are the ones who will take the revolution forward.

You are very certain about the continuity of the Cuban revolutionary system?

From 1956, I have been optimistic.

Is Cuba a democracy?

Yes, but mind you, our own democracy…democracy made in Cuba, not made from anywhere else.

I find this perplexing. I think there is one fundamental basis of democracy as in the name itself?

I will tell you why. There is no political party which will be nominating candidate. Candidates in Cuba are nominated at the grass-root level. Neighbours meet and decide who should be their candidate. A candidate moves to the constituency level, where there is no political campaigning except for the publication of the candidate’s curriculum. And people vote based on a candidates curriculum. Voting is not compulsory and election is done through secret voting. From the grass-root, municipal assemblies are elected the same way.

Provincial assemblies are elected that way and the National Assembly is elected that way too. Fidel Castro has to go through an election. He has to be nominated. You have to be voted to be able to become a member of the National Assembly. National elections are held every five years. The majority voted for Fidel Castro.

You have opposition parties?

We have no opposition party in Cuba now.

But it is said that opposition gives democracy its true identity, as in a multi-party democracy. How do you then qualify your system of governance as representative of ‘Cuban democracy’?

Everybody has the right to speak anywhere. We had a multi-party system of five, six, eight parties. And our revolution was mainly fought by three political organisations. These three organisations which have different ideologies but one common goal, formed the Cuban Party. The other parties disappeared, because they wouldn’t face the revolution.

Which political groups constitute this party?

They are the 26 July Movement, the Revolutionary Directorate mainly made up of students, and the Socialist Party, which is the Communist party. These three combined to form one political organisation, which we have now. All the dissidents come from the US. Those who accuse Cuba of not having liberty are those who are paid by the US Office in Cuba. They are very few but they can be elected. They can be nominated in the neighbourhood. But the thing is that the Cuban people know who they are and what they are aiming at. That is the situation.

Does this electoral system imply that the masses have equal power to remove their representatives?

The members of a constituency can revoke the representation of a candidate by majority vote if he or she does not deliver. The representatives present reports to their constituencies every six months.

Aren’t they in organised political bodies?

No. They do not have any unity among themselves, three or four here, four or five over there…and specially, they do not have any support from the people. They are paid salaries, they are given radios, computers, and they go to the residence of the head of the US mission for chatting.

Then how do they call themselves?

They call themselves dissidents.

And how do you call them?

We call them words which I will not say now because it could be misunderstood (laugh). They are free to say anything or do anything as long as they do not go against the law. They live in Cuba.

Are you saying their existence as oppositions has no substance?

The real opposition are in the US. Those are the ones who oppose the revolution. Those who were defeated…the politicians, the army, the rich people, the capitalists are the ones against the revolution. They are in the United States.

Why would they oppose the revolution?

Because they are the ones who benefited from the old system. When the revolution started, the new system forced the capitalists to leave for the States. They all ran away with one idea: ‘No problem, the United States will intervene and we will go back to Cuba’. They dis not stay to fight for their own interest, they fled.

The owners of the big newspapers also fled. They were expecting the United States to do something about it and the US did in the Bay of Pigs. But the Bay of Pigs invasion was defeated. So you can see that that is one reason why the opposition is 90 miles away. But mind you, if you go to Cuba, you will hear people on buses talking about everything, criticising, complaining about the ministries. In Cuba, people speak out, they speak their minds. They do not pose any opposition within Cuba, which is different from what happened in Chile with Allende.

Who is Allende?

He was a socialist president elected by the people of Chile but he was thrown out because of the conspiracy led by the USA and with the support of the capitalists in Chile.

A good number of member states of the UN recently voted for the lifting of the US blockade on Cuba, but Washington never budged?

Who authorised the US to invade Iraq? They did it by themselves. It shows their arrogance. It shows the blindness of the present US leaders.

How you think the relations between US and Cuba can be normalised?

Well, I think that is wishful thinking. But since you have asked me, I will say: let Cuba be. Let Cuba be. Lets engage in normal relations like any other state.

Is it true that the Cuban revolution was inspired and supported by the Soviet Union?

Our revolution came from our own circumstances. But at one point, this idea coincides with Maxism and Lennism. It does not mean that the Soviet Union imposed the system on Cuba. Its like two men lost in jungle and each one is heading to the north.

With the help of a compass, each will take a direction and they will meet at one point. This question is very important. Our revolution is ours. It coincided because many of the political basis of the Soviet Union, China, and Vietnam have similarities. But it does not mean that they are the same.

Your country fought alongside other armed Africans during their independence struggle?

Our cooperation with Africa started in 1963. We helped in the independence struggle in Angola, Namibia, South Africa to defeat apartheid, and Guinea Bissau.

We helped these independence movements. They were fighting against the colonial powers. There is a similarity in condition between Africans and Cubans. In the case of Africa, we have given and we will still give to Africa.

There is a principle in revolution which is solidarity with people who have the same problems we had. But in the case of Africa, it is a debt. We feel that we owe Africa a debt. Our root is from Africa. Our nationality is made up of white Spaniards and black Africans, who were kidnapped from Africa and shipped across the sea as slaves.

Some of these freed slaves joined the independence struggle and some of them rose up to the rank of generals. That is the debt we have for Africa and we do it out of the debt to Africa. We had done it during the independence struggle and we still do it in the case of health, agriculture, you name it.

What is the scope of cooperation between Cuba and contemporary Africa?

The cooperation started at a time when the political struggle for independence started in the 60s by some leaders… Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Modibo Keita, Amilcar Cabral. This is how African students went to Cuba. This was the time when the first Cuban doctors came to Africa in 1963. In the case of sub-Saharan Africa, we have relationships with all the countries, where we have 26 embassies.

We have cooperation agreements with 24 sub-Saharan African countries. We now have more than 2,000 Cuban doctors working in sub-Saharan Africa with other technicians.

What about The Gambia in particular?

Well relations with The Gambia started in 1979, but no important actions took place.

The cooperation in health started in 1996. In 1999, when President Jammeh made his first trip to Cuba, the relations were given more trust. It was then that the health cooperation was broadened. In the 1996 cooperation, the Cuban doctors got salaries, but following President Jammeh’s visit, the doctors are given only allowances by The Gambia government and the salaries are paid by Cuban government.

We now have 145 Cuban doctors working from Banjul to Basse. We have 36 Gambians studying in different fields in Cuba. We place a great importance in not only providing assistance but also giving training to those around us. That is why we started the School of Medicine at the University of The Gambia.

We also have agricultural engineers at the Kanilai Farm. There is willingness from both sides to expand the cooperation.

In your speech delivered during the launching of the Community Medicine Programme at the State House, you described President Jammeh and President Castro as leaders with a common vision. Can you elaborate more on this?

President Jammeh and his government are working for the benefit of their people. I have heard him say that to have a developed country, first you need to have a healthy and educated people. These are the same things President Castro said in the early 60s. Remember no university was here before. Why?

You tell me.

How were the Gambians able to have advanced learning? They went to UK, Nigeria and other countries. Who were able to afford that? But he said we have to get a university. Before there was no television station in the country and Gambians had to tune to Senegal to watch television. President Jammeh said we have to get a television. These things have proven to be of benefit to the whole population. Any government that can do these much for the people has my support.

What have you learnt since your deployment in Banjul?

We have learnt about the love and hospitality of the people. We receive full support from The Gambia government against the blockade at the international arena and so called human rights resolution. That is something which has to be in any beneficial relationship between countries. We treat each other as equals and with respect. The environment and the love of the people is amazing. I really feel at home in The Gambia.

Thank you Mr Ambassador.

Author: by Ebrima Jaw Manneh

Who is Robert Mugabe?

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 06:15:07 GMT

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Despite mounting criticism, Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwean President since 1980, is credited with leading the former state of Rhodesia out of the colonial age.

Robert Mugabe, President of the sub-Saharan African country of Zimbabwe, was initially hailed as the great liberator of the continent, eradicating colonial rule from then-Rhodesia while other African countries floundered under colonial oppression.

Mugabe was born in Rhodesia, the predecessor in name to the country since rechristened as Zimbabwe, the son of a carpenter. His family impressed upon him the value of education, which led to Robert Mugabe schooling in neighbouring South Africa.

Mugabe attended Fort Hare University in South Africa's Eastern Cape region, an institution whose alumni include Nelson Mandela. Mugabe graduated in the mid-sixties but has since earned a further five degrees in addition to a host of honourary degrees conferred upon him by universities around the world.

It was while studying that Mugabe adopted a Marxist-socialist idealogy, diluted to some extent over the years, but sufficiently entrenched to enable Mugabe to form a number of alliances with communist leaders during the 1980's, primarily from the previous-Eastern European countries and Angola.

Returning to the land of his birth in the late 1960's, Mugabe joined the underground black resistance movement protesting the racist policies of British-mouthpiece Ian Smith. He was subsequently jailed but released in 1975, his popularity had boomed and Mugabe was able to take charge of one of the two guerilla movements.

Numerous wars and border skirmishes ensued with the black liberation struggle recieving support from Rhodesia's liberated northern neighbours including Tanzania and Zambia but also having to counter opposition from Mozambique and apartheid-dominated South Africa, both of whom supported the white colonialists. With a groundswell of support resulting in greater internal agitation, Ian Smith's party was forced to concede defeat in 1980. With whites in the country accounting for only 1-percent of the population, Smith's system based on white-domination was clearly no longer tenable.

Smith negotiated a peace settlement with Mugabe but remained settled in the country. Mugabe's Zanu-PF party was credited as having brought peace to the country and Mugabe was elected President by a landslide in 1980. He ruled unopposed since then to the present day.

Since taking power Mugabe has surprised international political analysts with a number of harsh measures designed to root out opponents and entrench his power. Soon after taking power, Mugabe's "Fifth Brigade" slaughtered thousands of members of the minority Ndebele tribe, supporters of his rival Joshua Nkomo. Mugabe also tacitly supported violent action against the Movement for Democratic Change by his Zanu-PF party, resulting in many deaths in the country.

Mugabe's landgrab policies on white-owned farms resulted in Zimbabwe being suspended from the International Monetary Fund and inflation subsequently reached unprecedented levels. Despite this, his Zanu PF party achieved a majority in the Zimbabwean elections of 2000, edging out the MDC and laying the foundation for a longer period of rule by Mugabe, despite international opposition.

Source: essortment.com