From WikiPedia: Idi Amin Dada (c.1925 – 16 August 2003), commonly known as Idi Amin, was a Ugandan military dictator and the president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Amin joined the British colonial regiment, the King’s African Rifles, in 1946, and advanced to the rank of Major General and Commander of the Ugandan Army. He took power in a military coup in January 1971, deposing Milton Obote. His rule was characterized by human rights abuses, political repression, ethnic persecution, extrajudicial killings and the expulsion of Asians from Uganda. The number of people killed as a result of his regime is unknown; estimates from human rights groups range from 100,000 to 500,000.

From 1977 to 1979, Amin titled himself as “His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.” In 1975-1976, despite opposition, Amin became the Chairman of the Organization of African Unity, a pan-Africanist group designed to promote solidarity of the African states. During the 1977-1979 period, Uganda was appointed to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Dissent within Uganda, and Amin’s attempt to annex the Kagera province of Tanzania in 1978, led to the Uganda-Tanzania War and the fall of his regime in 1979. Amin fled to Libya, before relocating to Saudi Arabia in 1981, where he died in 2003. — [ MORE ]
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   1975 — Fourteen white Europeans kneel before Amin and pledge to take up arms for Uganda

   Perhaps this was what Idi Amin was thinking of:

   Flashback — Mau Mau rebels captured by colonial Brits in Kenya — 1950’s

   Four Britons carry Amin into an official reception in 1975 on a makeshift throne

   Amin at a rally in Koboko, northern Uganda, in 1978

   At a press conference — Damascus Syria
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More Stuff on Amin:

1. Tales of Idi Amin’s chief chef — Joe Ombuor meets a man who served as head cook for President Idi Amin and says there was nothing strange in the late president’s refrigerator and that the former head of state never ate human parts. Days to the 1978 Entebbe raid audaciously played by the Israelis in Uganda, field marshal Idi Amin Dada ? then a raw dictator, life president and the self-styled commander of the British Empire (CBE) had literally dispatched his official cook to the gallows. Crime? Veiled rumours that the cook, a Kenyan, had designs to kill him.

2. Idi Amin — Army leaders seize power

3. Amin was born under British rule in poor, violent, and chaotic Uganda. Although he only achieved the equivalent of a fourth grade education, he managed to rise through the ranks of the British colonial army, which he joined in 1943. A behemoth of a man, his superiors felt his brawn and ferocity, which stood out not only in the boxing ring and on the rugby pitch but in the battlefields of Burma in WWII, and Kenya and Zaire. His brute force compensated for the illiteracy that eventually made him an such an inept national leader. When Uganda gained its independence in 1962, Amin was one of two Ugandan commissioned officers in the armed forces. — [ READ MORE ]

4. News about Idi Amin, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.

5. The Idi Amin Files
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When Dr. Maulana Karenga created Kwanzaa in 1966, he aimed to knit together black communities tattered by racial injustice and isolated from their African heritage. Karenga turned to West Africa and the language of Swahili to coin the term for a holiday celebration that means “first fruits of the harvest.” Kwanzaa unfolds over the seven day period from December 26 to January 1 and breathes through seven principles: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith. Though planted in Black Nationalist soil, Kwanzaa eventually flowered in black bourgeois America and has been globally recognized. A new documentary film, “Black Candle,” made by M.K. Asante and narrated by Maya Angelou, traces Kwanzaa’s origins in the black power movement to its flourishing as a holiday embraced by 40 million people worldwide.

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   Maulana Karenga celebrating at the Rochester Institute of Technology on December 12, 2003

In the United States, Kwanzaa has boiled or simmered as the nation’s racial temperature has changed. In its first couple of decades, Kwanzaa called attention to African roots and American fruits as its celebrations seamlessly united Kente clothe and homegrown cultural consciousness. Kwanzaa has prospered, it seems, when blacks have endured tough times. White supremacy in the ’60s, racial backlash in the ’70s, and anti-multiculturalism in the ’80s all lent energy to the premise of pan-Africanism: that blacks the world over should unite in common opposition to oppression. But when black folk make progress and enjoy spurts of success, reclaiming African roots is often seen as romantic and a relic of past struggle.

In accounting for Kwanzaa’s shifting fortunes, we must note the tension between a pan-Africanist and a Diasporic black identity: while the former voices common African values and a black homecoming, the latter speaks of lack, exile and migration — in short, a loss of home and what it means to black identity and the rituals that sustain it. Kwanzaa, as with all similar celebrations, is tied to the fate of the people it represents. Rituals rise and fall according to social needs and political desires. Given the Diasporic dimensions of black identity in America – where folk who’ve migrated from Africa, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom, South America and the like meet native-born blacks — the erosion of the ties that bind is predictable, even as the celebrations that hold black identity together change and reflect the broadening of what it means to be black.

The political climate affects black rituals too. A lot has been made of the number of posts that black life confronts: post-soul, post-black, post-racial, and post-civil rights. In this era of black posts, pillars fall, whether civil rights leaders whose approach is viewed as passé, or as rituals of black cohesion are viewed by many blacks as quaint and largely irrelevant. A lot of that talk picked up pace with the election of Barack Obama as president, a monumental event that eclipsed black fears in some quarters (racism could no longer keep black folk from the big prizes of American life), exacerbated them in others (because of his success the bulk of blacks who continue to struggle might be forgotten). What’s a people – and how is “people” exactly defined in such conditions – to do?

In times like these, when the politics of race have shifted, celebrations like Kwanzaa take a hit in mainstream black life, or at least the black life that’s on display in the mainstream. But they often rev up in smaller, more intimate spaces, and in quarters not often observed by mainstream eyes where the holiday has always thrived. Ironically enough, Kwanzaa gets canonized in mainstream black circles –for instance, it arrives on postage stamps that commemorate its existence, a thin slice of memory licked by black tongues that otherwise may not taste its fruits in ceremonial practices. And it is observed on college campuses where students of all races are welcomed to celebrate black life and identity in a hospitable environment whose emphasis is often less on politics than potluck dinners.

But the holiday’s most faithful practitioners proclaim its original intent: bridging black folk across the chasms of land, language, water and religion as they forge solidarity in resisting obstacles and embracing opportunities to their common destiny. As the devotees of Kwanzaa understand, those aspirations have never been of much interest to the mainstream during any period of the nation’s history. And the increased fortunes of black folk cause many of them to focus their energy and attention elsewhere. But for its true believers, Kwanzaa is as relevant and necessary now as it’s ever been.

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[Enlarge] About The Author: Michael Eric Dyson (born October 23, 1958, in Detroit, Michigan) is an American writer, radio host, and professor at Georgetown University. Dyson has a Ph.D. in religion from Princeton University. He is an ordained Baptist minister. Dyson taught at DePaul University, Chicago Theological Seminary, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Columbia University and Brown University, before going to the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. There he was the Avalon Professor of Humanities. Since 2007, Dyson has been University Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University, teaching courses in theology, English, and African American studies. A University Professorship is said to be the highest position that a faculty member can have at Georgetown. From January 2006 to February 2007 Dyson was the host of a daily syndicated talk radio program, The Michael Eric Dyson Show, which aired on weekdays from 10AM to 1PM (EST) on the Syndication One Radio Network (owned and operated by Radio One). He is also a regular commentator on National Public Radio, CNN, and the HBO TV program Real Time with Bill Maher. Dyson is best known for his commentary on American culture, particularly as it pertains to African Americans. Dyson uses the terms “Afristocracy” and “Ghettocracy” to describe a bifurcation in American black society. He is also a leading scholar on hip-hop music and the culture that surrounds it, as well as its roots in African and African-American cultures and influence on American popular culture. Dyson is well known to repeat his famous line, “Go Ahead. Axe me a question.”

Post-colonial Africa must diversify the foreign cultures from which it seeks to learn. There is excessive reliance on the West as the only source. What is there in Japanese culture that has enabled the Japanese to beat the West at their own industrial game?

In 1868, the Japanese asked themselves: ‘Can we economically modernise without culturally Westernising?’ They embarked on selective industrialisation under the slogan of ‘Western technique, Japanese spirit.’ Fifty years later, they had become an industrial power to reckon with. What was there in Japanese culture that enabled them to remain Japanese culturally and still pull off an industrial miracle before World War II?

Then, Japan was briefly occupied by the Americans after WWII. When the occupation ended, Japan embarked upon its second industrial miracle, less culturally selective than the first, but even more technologically triumphant. What was there in Japanese culture that made such miracles possible?

Africa needs to look eastwards towards the Japanese experience for cultural insights relevant to modernisation and development. Africa’s post-colonial condition is full of the baggage of the old colonialism. How do we decolonise post-coloniality? What is the exit strategy out of dependency?

Africa should look more closely at countries like South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and others in Asia that had the same per capita income as Ghana in 1957. They have since left most of Africa far behind in per capita income and industrial growth. To what extent are the economic achievements of the ‘Asian Tigers’ due to cultural factors? Can foreign cultures be studied for lessons that are relevant for others?

Of course, Africa has been studying Western culture for decades in the hope of stimulating its development. It is time that it diversified the cultural models it examines for developmental lessons. Such diversification may help reduce our dependency upon the West in other areas of endeavour as well.

One strategy in the fight against that dependency is horizontal integration. It involves not only national integration within each country, but regional integration as well. Pan-Africanism then becomes an instrument of horizontal integration; and Pan-Africanism is partly rooted in cultural and racial identification.

In reality, Pan-Movements are born out of a combination of nightmare and dream, anguish and vision. What was the nightmare and dream that released the forces culminating in the formation of the European Union as a success story?

Pan-Europeanism had two parents: poetry and war. Poetry provided the vision and the sensibilities of being European; war provided the practical impetus, either through conquest (as European nations expanded and contracted) or through a desire to avoid future wars. That was EU’s combination of nightmare and dream.

After World War II, the Schuman Plan and the European Coal and Steel Community illustrated the creation of deliberate Pan-European interdependence to avoid future risk of war.

The Cold War simultaneously divided Europe between East and East and united Europe within each camp. Once again, nightmare and dream played their paradoxical integrative roles.

Two schools of thought

The poetry of Pan-Europeanism goes back at least to the European Renaissance, as Europeans were stimulated by a new sense of shared civilisation. By the time of the French Revolution, William Wordsworth could proclaim passionately:

• Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive

• But to be young was very heaven.

However, the French revolution was also a combination of both poetry and war, the two major stimuli of Pan-Europeanism. The French revolution was both nightmare and dream.

Does Pan-Africanism have a comparable stimulus of poetry and war?

The real stimulus for Pan-Africanism has been the combined power of poetry and imperialism, rather than poetry and war. The poetry includes legends of past heroes and makers of history. There have been two schools of Pan-African cultural nationalism: romantic primitivism and romantic gloriana.

Romantic primitivism celebrates what is simple about Africa. It salutes the cattle-herder, rather than the castle-builder. In the words of Aime Cesaire:

• Hooray for those who never invented anything.

• Hooray for those who never discovered anything.

• Hooray for joy! Hooray for love!

• Hooray for the pain of incarnate tears.

• My negritude is no tower and no cathedral.

• It delves into the deep red flesh of the soil.

Conversely, romantic gloriana celebrates Africa’s more complex achievements. It salutes the pyramids of Egypt, the towering structures of Aksum, the sunken churches of Lalibela, the brooding majesty of Great Zimbabwe, the castles of Gonder. Romantic gloriana is a tribute to Africa’s empires and kingdoms, Africa’s inventors and discoverers, great Shaka Zuku, rather than the unknown peasant.

Both forms of Pan-African cultural nationalism were a response to European imperialism and its cultural arrogance. Europeans said that Africans were simple and invented nothing. That was an alleged fact. Europeans also said that those who were simple and invented nothing were uncivilised. That was a value judgment.

Romantic primitivism accepted Europe’s alleged facts about Africa –that it was simple and invented nothing, but rejected Europe’s value judgment — that Africa was, therefore, uncivilised. Simplicity was one version of civilisation. Romantic primitivism said:

• Hooray for those who never invented anything.

• Who never discovered anything…

Romantic gloriana, on the other hand rejected Europe’s alleged facts about Africa –that Africa was simple and invented nothing; but it seems to have accepted Europe’s values that civilisation is to be measured by complexity and invention.

Same African countries can produce both types of Pan-African nationalists. Senegal’s Leopold Senghor had been a major thinker and poet of the Negritude school. Negritude is associated with romantic primitivism. Senghor’s most hotly debated statement is: Emotion is black�?�Reason is Greek.

Cheikh Anta Diop, Senegal’s Renaissance man, belonged more to the Gloriana School. He spent much of his life demonstrating Africa’s contributions to global civilisation. And he was most emphatic that the civilisation of Pharaonic Egypt was a black civilisation.

This was all in the grand Pan-African tradition of romantic Gloriana.

S�un Anikulapo Kuti has made sure that his late father’s (Fela Anikulapo Kuti) ‘Afro beat’ musical brilliance and his band Egypt 80, are kept alive.

S�un performs music from both his father’s repertoire and his own. He is an exact replica of his father — Fela Anikulapo Kuti (born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, October 15, 1938 – August 2, 1997), or simply Fela, who was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, pioneer of Afrobeat music, human rights activist, and political maverick….

Seun Anikulapo Kuti & Egypt 80 Performing in Dakar, Senegal

From Wikipedia: The American Black Power movement influenced Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s political views. He was also a supporter of Pan-Africanism and socialism (although in a 1982 documentary he can clearly be seen rejecting both capitalism and socialism in favour of a third way that he described as Africanism), and called for a united, democratic African republic.

He was a fierce supporter of human rights, and many of his songs are direct attacks against dictatorships, specifically the militaristic governments of Nigeria in the 1970s and 1980s. He was also a social commentator, and criticized his fellow Africans (especially the upper class) for betraying traditional African culture. The African culture he believed in also included having many wives (polygyny) and the Kalakuta Republic was formed in part as a polygamist colony.

He defended his stance on polygyny with the words; “A man goes for many women in the first place. Like in Europe, when a man is married, when the wife is sleeping, he goes out and fucks around. He should bring the women in the house, man, to live with him, and stop running around the streets!.”

His views towards women are characterized by some as misogynist, with songs like “Mattress” typically cited as evidence. However, he also extols African womanhood in his song “Lady,” singing “Lady na (is) master.” It should be noted though that Fela was very open when it came to sex, as he portrayed in some of his songs, like “Open and Close” and “Na Poi.”

Fela once ran for the presidency of Nigeria on a platform of — Legalized Marijuana. The military Junta promptly locked him up! — – [more]

Fela Anikulapo Kuti — In Political Mood: Lamenting a corrupt Nigerian Govt.

Sadly, this great African Musician died in on on Saturday, August 2, 1997, at 4pm (local time) in Lagos, Nigeria. It had been rumoured for some time that Fela had a serious illness he was refusing treatment for, many said he was suffering from prostate cancer. But as it turns out, Fela died from complications due to AIDS. As Fela’s brother, Olikoye Ransome Kuti, said at a news conference: “The immediate cause of death of Fela was heart failure, but there were many complications arising from the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.”…[more]

RELATED:

1. From AfroPop.Org — S�un Kuti & Egypt 80, North American Tour and NYC Debut 2007: S�un Kuti and Egypt 80 – his father Fela’s fabled afrobeat band – wowed an exuberant sold-out crowd as they made their New York City debut on July 1st, 2007 at SOB’s.

Everyone was very curious to see what S�un was like, and man, he did not disappoint. What a performer! Singer, sax player, charismatic, bright, and a joyful, quirky dancer – this guy has it all. Someone in the crowd was overheard saying, “A star is born.” S�un shined performing both Fela’s repertoire and his own. Banning Eyre’s photographs tell the story.

2. Seun Anikulapo Kuti’s MySpace Page

Want More? Visit video.africanmusicforum.com

Reports – Macharia Gaitho

Delegates attend the ninth summit of African Union in Accra on July 3, 2007. African leaders have reaffirmed their common vision of a future continental union under a single government, but agreed to study the details and timing of how to achieve it.

African heads of state and government who recently attended the ninth African Union Summit in Accra, Ghana, to discuss regional integration agreed in principle on the need for the formation of the United States of Africa.

But they raised concern over the modalities of such integration, with many advocating economic and social cooperation rather than political union.

Here are excerpts from sample speeches:

President Kibaki, Kenya

We are gathered here today to focus our minds and exchange views on an issue that preoccupied the minds of the founding fathers of Africa’s independence and democracy movements.

The creation of a supranational union will require enormous resources and consensus on the modalities of achieving such a goal. Towards this end, the views of non-state actors and the common citizenry are of paramount importance.

This is principally because the desired union government must be a union of the African people, and not merely a union of states and governments.

Opinions were, however, varied on the pace this process should take. That notwithstanding, the predominant view underscored the need to accelerate integration through the regional economic communities as the building blocs of a united Africa.

We in the East African Community have made major strides in our integration process. As we forge forward towards unification, I wish to underscore the need to reinforce our shared history, language, culture and a common heritage.

Umaru Yar’Adua, Nigeria

Nigeria has consistently supported and advocated the imperative of the ultimate goal of the African Union being full political and economic integration leading to evolvement of the United States of Africa. The critical issue at this point is whether to fast-track the process or to pursue the same objective through gradual incrementalism.

Of critical importance is the identification of the vital institutional and operational challenges which the concept of union government throws up, and principles approaches to meeting this challenges. This makes a strong case for gradual incrementalism.

There are clear and present threats and challenges which we must face up to. We cannot ignore the social, economic and political inequalities within and among our member states, which if not bridged would pose daunting obstacles on the march towards the union.

Yoweri Museveni, Uganda

While economically I support integration with everybody, politically we should only integrate with people who are either similar or compatible with us. The whole of Africa has got some obvious incompatibilities when it comes to political integration. In East Africa we have been talking about fast-tracking the political federation.

East Africans are compatible, they can and should integrate economically and politically. Other areas of Africa that feel they have got a comparative degree of similarity or compatibility could also work for political integration.

Insisting on political integration at the continental level will bring together incompatible linkages that may create tension rather than cohesion.

Our recommendation is that we take a functions-based rational approach. What functions can most rationally be done at what level — village, district within Uganda, national, regional or continental?

There are definitely functions that can be done at the continental level, such as environment, trade negotiations, defence pact and common market.

Pakalitha Mosisili, Lesotho

The world has become a global village. In a globalised world ’splendid isolation’ has no place. The more countries, especially in Africa, remain as individual countries, the more marginalised they shall remain. United we stand, divided we fall.

But even as we pursue this noble objective, we cannot ignore the factors that militate against it. Full political integration presupposes total surrender of sovereignty. To some of us this may indeed be a tall order. Partial surrender of sovereignty in some areas may be the best option. The most appealing form of integration would be economic integration.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia

In 1959 Liberia called for a more measured approach [in the creation of a United Sates of Africa] through an association of African states which would focus attention on building institutions as a path towards President Kwame Nkrumah’s dream of one Africa.

These two movements led to the formation in 1961 of the Casablanca Group promoting the views of President Nkrumah and the Monrovia Group representing the views of President Nyerere and Liberian President William Tubman. In 1963, adopting the Monrovia alternative, the OAU was born.

Today, 45 years after the Casablanca and Monrovia movements, we are back to the challenge, we are in the country of President Nkrumah to discuss, once again, the unity of Africa. Today, Liberia, this promoter of African liberation, lies in ruins.

When Liberia was in the throes of self-destruction, West Africa and Africa generally intervened to save us form ourselves. We lost our sovereignty.

Liberia believes that this meeting should endorse without further study the concept of the United States of Africa.