Dangerous times in Africa

Miriam Makeba sang to white audiences across America her veiled tribute to Nelson Mandela with the song: “Tell me now where did the Little Flee go, somebody tell me!” She was singing for the freedom of black peoples under a hell called “Apartheid South Africa”.Mandela had been thrown into a prison cell on Roben Island […]

Miriam Makeba sang to white audiences across America her veiled tribute to Nelson Mandela with the song: “Tell me now where did the Little Flee go, somebody tell me!” She was singing for the freedom of black peoples under a hell called “Apartheid South Africa”.
Mandela had been thrown into a prison cell on Roben Island to stay there till he died. The 1960s and 1970s would be times of liberation wars all across Africa. Most leaders in Africa who supported actual or potential liberation wars in Africa and demanded an end to economic looting of Africa were either deposed or murdered during military coups. Patrice Lumumba (in Congo), Tafawa Balewa and Ahmadu Bello (in Nigeria), Amilcar Cabral (in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde) and Samora Machel (in Mozambique) met death. Kwame Nkrumah escaped several assassination attempts but fell to a military coup. Milton Obote (in Uganda) was hit in 1971 and 1985 with coups. As raw materials rolled out of former British and French colonies to economies of these neo-colonisers, relentless war with poverty against African peoples deepened. The times were dangerous for independence on all fronts.
The most horrendous danger was engineered racial domination in South Africa and Namibia; with close variants in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Three decades after nominal independence, President Robert Mugabe has won another re-election with a convincing margin of 61 per cent of the votes to 34 per cent for his nearest challenger. The resolute resentment of his victory by Euro-America is a dangerous signal that a ruler who shatters foreign and domestic blockages to wealth and prosperity for his people is regarded as a dangerous global bull.  A brutal cynical racism walks across global culture and degrades claims for defending universal economic human rights and human dignity.
There are currently globally shared worries over Nelson Mandela’s grave illness. Mandela’s import is linked in popular imagination to his leaving power after only five years in power while still eligible to run for a second term; and adored by his people. Brutalised by corrupt leaders like Omar Bongo ruling Gabon for 40 years; Daniel arap Moi, Omar Bashir and Yoweri Museveni running corrupt patronage networks in Kenya, Sudan and Uganda for 24 to 25 years each; Mobutu Seko propped in power for 30 years by American interests, and dying in flight from Kabila’s war armed by Rwanda and Uganda; etc., the African public was stirred by Mandela’s self sacrifice.
Mandela’s grand gift to Africa was, however, his abandoning power in barrels of  guns in a war for liberation, enthroning power in his proud fist punching the air and his metallic voice ringing out a law of forgiveness. Time must be sacrificed. Three hundred year of wars over land, European farms becoming sites of life imprisonment for able-bodied blacks captured by marauding policemen; police gunning down adults in 1960 and Soweto’s school children in 1976; murders done as entertainment by security thugs; and slave labour inside mines etc must be forgiven with a punch  and spoken words.
 It is a dangerous situation. Words do not wash mud from minds, hearts and habits in a flash. An African wit says ‘you cannot bend smoked fish’; and palm wine does not froth away its potency.  Atavistic violence in Rwanda, Liberia and Sierra Leone erupted against former groups recalled as oppressors. In this regard, South Africa will demand very innovative and creative healing measures.  Mandela wearing a rugby jersey; teams playing rugby and football as tribal games on the same day and pitch to multiracial fans – rugby, a tribal game for whites, and football, a tribal game for blacks – were very imaginative. Done to put a smile on ailing Mandela’s face, it was a most appropriate symbolic diet for all.
That these creative mea-sures are done while cynical Euro-American economic hawks and vultures pick their teeth with satisfaction as long as workers never demand high wages – and grab fair shares of their country’s vast natural resources – keeps peace in South Africa vulnerable.  Africa must join rainbow leaders of South Africa in working out fire-fighting tools and strategies for stalemating all those betting on racial forest fires after Mandela travels to After-Africa. The times are dangerous.
Professor Ali Mazrui aroused much wrath in New York State when he stated that the killing of six million Jews during World War II was smaller in numbers and duration than over 40 million Africans killed in barbaric travel from villages in Africa, across the Atlantic Ocean, and as labourers in South and North America and the Caribbean. The horror had lasted for over 300 years. Africans deserve the tag of victims of genocide, more than Jews. The value of an African life must not be returned to the domain of lower value in post-Mandela South Africa.
A French scholar accused President Clinton of suppor-ting the 1994 Rwanda geno-cide as a vaccination of African public memory to support democracy since European democracy feeds on horrors done to Jews. The more plausible reason was Clinton aiding 85 Euro-American multinational corporations desiring chronic violence across eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to ena-ble them loot coltran, gold, diamond and timber without paying royalties to a working government. Over three mil-lion Congolese have died from this violence; and Congolese await Clinton’s drive for repa-rations.
Televised pictures of Egyptian police driving trucks into crowds and crushing scores of demonstrators against Hosni Mubarak’s regimes in 2011, and Muslim Brotherhood protesting the unseating Mohammed Morsi, reveal horrendous contempt for the human status of political opponents. In northern Uganda, Darfur and Somalia displaced families sheltered in sun and rain like cattle, goats, sheep and camels. The animalisation of victims as official political violence keeps Africa dangerous. They dictate changing.