Writes: James N. Kariuki

Obama, nuclear weapons and the race factor — Given the history of nuclear weapons relative to the non-white world, and noting the ongoing ‘loose talk about nukes’ in the US regarding Iran, it is fitting that Barack Obama should aspire to eliminate all nuclear weapons, American and otherwise. Perhaps, he owes it most to his ancestral Diaspora.

In early August 1945, the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The indiscriminate damage of life and property was immeasurable. It was a massive collective punishment, a classic case of the power of modern civilisation without its mercy.

Ever since, the world has been haunted by two questions. Was the use of nuclear devices necessary? Would the US have used nuclear weapons against white Germany? Critics remain deeply divided.

President Harry Truman’s sympathisers however, support his logic that the bombs were vital to shortening the war in the Pacific and saving American lives.

Doubters insist that by mid-1945, Japan was virtually a crippled enemy. Nazi Germany had already surrendered in May 1945.

Combined bombardment

How much longer could Japan have endured under the combined ‘conventional’ bombardment of the Allies and, possibly, Russia?

In short, the American use of atomic weapons was unnecessary, prompted and made easier by the fact that the victims were non-white. Indeed innuendoes abound that America used the Japanese as guinea pigs to demonstrate the ravaging power of its new, barbarous weapon.

Twenty years later, the same US was bogged down in the protracted Vietnam War, and language of nuclear weapons resurfaced in American politics. The 1964 Republican presidential contender, Barry Goldwater, openly recommended using low-yield nuclear weapons for defoliation of Vietnamese woodlands.

Goldwater’s ‘nuclear reckless talk’ ultimately cost him the presidency. But in the hunt for it, he had arrogated to himself the right to entertain nuclear language that could have resulted in annihilation of a Southeast Asian nation.

Again, the collective victims would have been non-whites — men, women and children alike.

Castro’s autobiography

In a 2007 autobiography, Fidel Castro: My Life, the Cuban icon narrates the story that for Angola’s freedom, Cuban and Angolan troops fought against an apartheid army and government that had eight Hiroshima/Nagasaki-size atomic bombs secretly “provided by the US through … Israel.” Were those weapons developed during the South African-Israeli nuclear collaboration or were they US-made? In either case, the targets were black people.

As SA approached freedom, the West became increasingly nervous over the prospects of blacks inheriting a nuclear state.

Accordingly, Nelson Mandela and his associates were vigorously coaxed into dismantling the bombs and signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Racist SA could be nuclear; democratic one could not.

Given the history of nuclear weapons relative to the non-white world, and noting the ongoing ‘loose talk about nukes’ in the US regarding Iran, it is fitting that Barack Obama should aspire to eliminate all nuclear weapons, American and otherwise. Perhaps, he owes it most to his ancestral Diaspora.

Poet Aime Cesaire
Poet Aime Cesaire of Martinique passed away last week. He was an iconic co-founder of Black consciousness, long before Steve Biko.

Surprisingly, of all the non-French speaking African heads of state, only South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki sent a message of condolences to the Cesaire family.

Why the silence?

In the realm of ideas, Mbeki has been particularly adept at provoking public debates. He did so in 1996 when, as the country’s vice president, he stood before the South African Parliament and proclaimed: “I am an African“. Shortly thereafter, he launched an equally vibrant discourse on African Renaissance. Two years ago, he raised issues relating to Afrocentricism. It dominated public interest for months.

It would have been ridiculous for any other African president to stand before his Parliament and declare to be African.

In White-ruled SA, however, indoctrination against Africa was so thorough that countless Black South Africans believed that Africanness was something to be scorned. Even after political liberation, it was necessary to keep reminding them that they were indeed Africans — that South Africa is part of Africa. Hence the imperative for Mbeki’s proclamation: “I am an African”.

Evidently, it was part of Mbeki’s unwritten job description to confront the arrogance of Eurocentricism by affirming the validity of Africanness. This preoccupation thrust him into the world of ideas regarding African identity. In this course, it was inevitable to encounter the ideas of Cesaire, hence, Mbeki’s affection for the great poet.

In context of colonialism, English-speaking global Africa was dominated by political means.

British form of colonialism involved actual control, direct or indirect. This systems denigrated Africans, it was perceived as racist and English-speaking Africans transformed their anti-racist sentiments into political movements that revolted and brought about independence to Africa.

Conversely, the French colonial policy was based on assumption of French cultural superiority. Black French colonies responded culturally by questioning the cultural condescension of assimilation. To challenge the arrogance, they embarked upon romanticising blackness and its attributes.

It was at the early stages of this process that Cesaire coined the term negritude. Leopold Senghor, Senegal’s founding-president, later expanded the view intellectually and popularised it.

Assimilated Black French-speaking intellectuals in France in the 1930s encouraged themselves to ask, are we really French? The answer was clear: “We have never been French, we are not French and we shall never be French”.

While at first they had been so proud to be assimilated, they now declared war on the same assimilation policy. By the late 1950s, they were demanding political independence from France in order to safeguard their culture, their negritude.

The bid to enhance Africa as a maker of history, Afro-centricity, has taken two forms. The first is Gloriana Afro-centricity that emphasises the great and proud accomplishments of people of African ancestry. These embrace castle builders, those who built the walls of Zimbabwe or the castles of Gondar in India or the sunken churches of Lalibela in Ethiopia; many would include those who built the pyramids of Egypt as well.

The other is Proletariana Afro-centricity that emphasises the sweat of Africa’s brow, the captured African as a co-builder of modern civilisation – the enslaved as creator, the slave as innovator. Slaves helped build the industrial revolution in the western world and fuelled capitalist transformation of the northern hemisphere.

What about the colonised peoples, as victims and builders of the industrialised modern world? African resources have been used for factories that have transformed the contemporary world. Without those resources today’s global economy would be vastly different.

Negritude is a kind of proletarian Afro-centricity, at least when it indulges in romantic primitivism. Negritude salutes the African cattle herder not the African castle builder. To that extent, it is part of Afro-centricity Proletariana.

By James N Kariuki

The world is increasingly divided into great beneficiaries and great casualties. The worst casualties of the divide are Africans and Black people worldwide.

To address these gross inequalities between the global North and the South, prolific Prof. Ali Mazrui has consistently advocated that the African Diaspora should include the strategy of counter-penetration.

The West through colonialism or other forms of domination once exploited black folks. It is now time for them to turn the tables and occupy positions of influence within the West itself.

The Mazruis, Chinua Achebes, Ngugi wa Thiongos, and Wole Soyinkas are classic illustrations of this strategy at work. As prominent educators in US universities, they have access to thousands of American students, a golden opportunity to sensitise America’s upcoming decision-makers to the realities and aspirations of Africa. Post-colonial Diasporans are vital to this specific assignment.

Equally critical is the role earmarked for the Diaspora of enslavement: descendants of those Africans who were transplanted to the West against their will into slavery. They are now part of Global Africa lodged in the privileged West.

Counter-penetration perspective attaches much credence to the idea of the African-American Dr. Jendayi Frazer making an on-site visitation to last year’s election related violence in Kenya and reporting her findings to her Black boss, Dr. Condoleezza Rice. After all, Frazer studied in Kenya; her doctoral dissertation was on Kenya. To her, Kenya has a human face.

In this logic, it is progressive that a Black person like Colin Powell reaches the pinnacle of American military hierarchy and then becomes the Secretary of State. Similarly, it is advancement that African-American Rice, her ideology notwithstanding, follows suit and becomes the US Secretary of State. Granted, she is not a flag-waving black activist, but her skin is black. At some point one black concern or another will touch her. How realistic is this perception?

Ten days ago, Rice, urged the US Senate to pass a law to remove the African National Congress (ANC) categorisation as a terrorist organisation from the US database. This dubious distinction was originally attained because of ANC’s activities in the struggle against apartheid. As a result of this stigma, individuals associated with the ANC still cannot obtain visas to enter the US without a special waiver by the US Secretary of State. In most cases, the mere requirement amounts to visa denial.

Rice told the Senate hearing that she found it awkward to have to personally waive visa restrictions for her South African counterpart. Additionally, it was downright embarrassing to do the same for the dignified world’s icon of peace, Nelson Mandela.

A liberal lawmaker, representative Howard Berman of California, sponsors the legislation under Senate review. His language is even more incisive. “It is shameful that the US still treats the ANC this way, based solely on its designation as a terrorist organisation by the old apartheid South African regime.”

Regarding Mandela requiring a special waiver for a US visa, his words were, “What an indignity. This legislation will wipe it all away.”

Lest we forget, this is not the first time that African Diasporans have waged a fight for South Africa within the American political system. One of the major landmarks in the demise of apartheid was the passing of the 1986 Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act. The legislation was formulated and sustained by the US Congressional Black Caucus. Notably, the passage was an override to President Ronald Regan’s veto.

This month marks the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s death. One of the most memorable acts in his life was to declare publicly his opposition to American war in Vietnam.

When asked why he risked alienating the US President Lyndon B Johnson by that action, he responded that, to him, justice was indivisible, “injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.”

He could not oppose racial injustice in America and turn a blind eye to injustice in Southeast Asia.

Before King, Black Americans in the American South could not vote, much less become legislators . In forty years, African-Americans have occupied virtually every position. Today, even the US presidency is up for grabs by an African-American. We have come a long way since Reverend Martin Luther King.

About The Author: James N. Kariuki – is head of the African Diaspora Unit at the Africa Institute of South Africa in Pretoria.

Africa Should Purge Its Past

Writes: James N Kariuki

Over the past few weeks, The Sunday Standard has been focusing on Africans, her history, impacts and the way forward.

Of major concern has been whether the continent has looked past slavery and colonisation.

The Black Holocaust is one of the more underreported events. It makes reference to the millions of African lives that have been lost during the centuries to slavery, colonisation and oppression.

The Black Holocaust makes reference to the horrors endured by millions of men, women, and children throughout the African Diaspora. In sheer numbers, depth and brutality, it is a testimony to the worst elements of human behaviour and the strongest elements of survival.

Some people are of the view that Africans themselves have contributed greatly to their subjugation.

It all started with their collaboration with the slave traders — assisting in the capture and sale of their kindred into slavery. In the US today, an African-American will in fury stand eyeball-to-eyeball with an African and charge: “You sold us.”

Similarly, post-colonial African elite has been guilty of robbing their fellows. Billions of dollars of public funds have disappeared between the cracks into foreign banks.

Best African ‘kleptocrats’ have included Zaire’s (DRC) Mobutu Sese Seko, Nigeria’s Sani Abacha, Zambia’s Frederick Chiluba and others. Now, Kenyans hope the billion of shillings stuffed abroad will be returned.

Hence the biting subtitle of Nigeria writer Prof. Rothenberg Chinweizu’s book: The West and the Rest of Us: White Predators, Black Slavers and the African Elite.

Chinweizu shows how leaders who meet the West’s needs are rewarded through debt forgiveness, occasional state visits to the White House, honorary degrees from Western institutions, Western leaders’ visits to their countries and military support.

A ‘new brand of African leaders’

In this spirit, in 1998, during former American president Bill Clinton’s visit to Africa, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda’s strongman Paul Kagame were hailed as a ‘new brand of African leaders‘.

Some concerns have been raised over the role of these ‘new leaders’ in the Congo crisis.

Given this background, one school of thought among the reparations campaigners does not subscribe to restitution for Africa so much in material compensation. If reparations were paid out today, it would merely be a cycle. The money would find its way back to foreign banks. Therefore remedy must include changing the world order such that another holocaust shall never again be visited upon the African people.

NegroPhobia at FOX News – Blacks being used to promote Racism
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The first critical step towards genuine reparations is fundamental rehabilitation of the Africans’ ‘attitude of mind’. Slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism have left deep scars in our psyche: a sense of inferiority complex, self-contempt and worshiping things Western. We are part of what Caribbean writer, Frantz Fanon, describes in his book Black Skin, White Masks.

This book was a personal account of Fanon’s experience of being a black man, an intellectual with a French education rejected in France by the French because of his skin colour.

In the book, he defines the colonial relationship as the psychological non-recognition of the subjectivity of the colonised.

Michael Jackson – A Victim of NegroPhobia Syndrome
Meanwhile, the prevailing world order has inculcated upon mankind a profound sense of Negrophobia.

Inevitably, we must work on cleansing our own psyche with a view to ultimately establishing a world order in which the Black skin is no longer a badge of contempt. We should–as Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o puts it–decolonise our minds.

Kenya has made significant strides in transforming ‘Africanness’ into a source of pride.

However, despite all the efforts we have fallen short because we are unwitting products of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism; we are victims of the African Holocaust.

To create a new world order where another Black Holocaust will never recur we need to be freed, purged of our past. One cannot make free people out of slaves; they must first be cleansed of slave mentality.

References:

1. Get Africa’s History Out of Explorers’ Diaries

2. On Negrophobia: Psychoneurotic Obstacles to Black Autonomy (or Why I just love Michael Jackson) — By Chinweizu, A Sundoor Publication, P. 0. Box 988, Festac Town, Lagos, Nigeria. — | NegoroPhobia PIC — Courtesy: africawithin.com |

3. Decolonising the African mind

4. Germany’s Black Holocaust, 1890-1945: The Untold Truth!

5. IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation

6. Lest We Forget: The Passage from Africa to Slavery and Emancipation: A Three-Dimensional Interactive Book with Photographs and Documents from the Black Holocaust Exhibit

7. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

8. Toward the Decolonization of African Literature