I have just read the account by Sokari about Randall Robinson's book: Unbroken Agony and I cannot help but wonder how does one collectively keep walking away from one of the most exemplary rupture with dehumanization. The Africans who had been enslaved simply said: NO MORE. Yet, 200 years later, it seems easier to find excuses about why one keeps treating the people of Haiti as if they were not worth anything. Peter Hallward wrote an essay about how the media decide who counts and who does not: almost on the same night Maddie (the child who disappeared while her parents were having dinner) disappeared, a boatload of Haitians on its way to the Turks and Caicos Island capsized. Close to 100 people lost their lives, but, for the international media which decide what is news worthy and what is not, it was as if those lives never even existed. That was at the beginning of May this year. As Peter Hallward points out, quoting from survivors, the boat did not capsize on its own: a coast guard boat did everything to prevent it from getting on shore. I do not think ev en Pbn carried that story at the time. I hope a correction will be made.

I am not saying here that the life of a 3 year old white English child is not as precious as the life of Haitians trying to find a way of making a living in a world context which is dictating that they do not count. In fact, it now turns out, that Maddie may have been the victim of one or both of her parents. One should stop speculations on this particular case right here for the time being, since examples of how uncaring the system has become can be seen everywhere, every day. The tragedy is the extent to which people who see themselves as good people keep acting against their own conscience, whether in relation to one Maddie or to one Haitian.

The way Aristide has been denounced is not unlike the way Lumumba was denounced in the DRCongo, back in 1960-61. Then, too, it was easy, given the media context. In fact, the so-called elite of the Congo did its best NOT to save Lumumba's life, but to make sure that even his body leaves no trace. Today, with Aristide, the denunciation was as virulent and vicious. Someone (from the group of 184) going as far as saying that he is not a Mandela. To which one should say: and a good thing too. There has been one Lumumba, there has been one Mandela, one Aristide. Each one has and is carrying the torch of emancipation as far as he could/can. Isn't the collective task one of making sure that the torch stays alive? Isn't the task one of never letting go of the objective of complete emancipation? What would be the ethical equivalent, in today's world, of what the Africans did in Haiti, from 1791 through 1804? Shouldn't one ask oneself if what kept Aristide going beyond the formalities of being a catholic priest, was a call which has continued to vibrate in Haiti to this day, namely to bring to an end a mentality which continues to rationalize, with impunity, that some lives do not count as much as others.

Thank you Sokari for bringing attention to this unbroken agony.

Mukoma wa Ngugi's article (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/42869) article is still resonating inside me, but I did not know what to say at the time. But on this anniversary of Hiroshima (August 6th 1945), it hit me again.

Significant anniversaries come upon us now and again like flood waters and we are caught speechless, and then, the very thing you point out happens: "Oh well, next time we shall speak up", thus losing the opportunity to wake up, stand up, resist with all one's might against apathy, lethargy, accommodation to a growing cancerous mindset.

With regard to Hiroshima/Nagasaki, my sense is that the master narrative still dominates and threatens us with severe and collective punishment if we were to call it, as it should be, i.e. the modernization of Auschwitz, itself the modernization of previous unspeakable crimes against Africans and Native Americans which continue unaccountable. If we are going to repair, as in healing, the human conscience, then one should work at making it ultra sensitive to any form, intention of maiming, diminishing life in any of its manifestations. Gaia is a living organism. The level at which it has been violated is still misunderstood and/or denied through the use of propaganda which is no longer perceived as such. On this anniversary, is it possible for people to stop any business as usual? Is it possible to insert in our lives, consciously, a moratorium, a sort of time out away from the modernized enslaving system called globalization. Time out to treat our nuked selves, time out to take time to heal and rebuild, really, a conscience worth calling a conscience. Time out to reconnect with the collective conscience of those who, like the Native Americans, like Corbin Harney, who warned against the idea of messing up with the yellow cake (uranium), long before the physicists decided that splitting the atom was not an act against nature.

You asked at one point why do we have to keep laundering our history as though it was for sale to the richest bidder. From your article I get that you are wondering how and why our collective mindset, consciousness have been brought to the point where we would rather be activists than revolutionaries, to the point where Mandela sees nothing wrong in creating a Rhodes-Mandela Trust so as (my words) "to capitalize on both sides of the old and new capitalist", not that your words are less cutting, as if it is ok for Elie Wiesel to join hands with Himmler to create a Trust Fund. Some people will not forgive you for thinking such thoughts.

Yet, we are living in the kinds of times which do call for thinking unthinkable thoughts because the unthinkable, the "never again" have been said and trespassed so many times that it seems futile to remember all of the unthinkable things which continue to be committed today.

As we were talking about these things (crimes against humanity) with another person here (just met). He asked me if I were a priest. I laughed because that question reminded me of a certain mindset today in South Africa where such horrendous things are happening that it has become a custom to turn to pastors and the likes (how many?) of Desmond Tutu to provide a believable ethical compass for a humanity which has been so mangled that it can no longer recognize itself, except by way of people like Desmond Tutu, the presumed Global re-conciliator.

Here we are once again remembering Hiroshima/Nagasaki, and all of the things which led to it, industrialized slavery to individualized and industrialized ways of killing as savagely as possible, perpetrated against the Jews, the Palestinians, the Ota Bengas, the street children, the raped babies, women, the Armenians, Chinese in Nanking, the people of Rwanda, DRCongo, pygmies, Namibians, Native Americans, Amazon Indians, Aborigenes in Australia, Inuit, Untouchables, the list is almost endless. If we do not join hands with the current Hibakusha, sooner or later we shall be sorry we did not, whatever the reasons might be, because we are all being led, some knowingly, some not, to a nameless slaughterhouse.

How did we get from Hispaniola to Hiroshima and still doing even more horrendous things than then. We have become so accustomed to them that until we see another mushroom cloud we shall think it is OK. Yet, if one were to look at the Planet today, from the lens of an astro physicist trained, in quantum physics, I would not be surprised if such a physcist were tell us that the Planet is closely resembling a mushroom cloud...if one looked from a virtual telescope on the Moon.

Mukoma, you have expressed the thoughts which have run in the minds of the countless terrorized from way way way back when the roots of the current system were hardly visible. Then, women, children, men were violated, raped in unspeakable ways. Countless screamed. Are we going to need the help of quantum physicists to confirm to us their words? The list of names should be put on a roster as a sort of unfinished, in the making Humanity Holocaust, an art project. A sort of monumental, planetary reminder that the smallest, least victim, most forgotten, must also be the most remembered.

Which kind of humanity has this become when it is considered ok to kill anybody, but especially the most vulnerable people, in the name of making a killing at the bank. Which kind of consciousness are we referring to when more and more philsophers, psychologists, psychiatrists and scientists are trying to study it (consciousness), and understand the material basis of it, while sensing (from which physical sense?) that such an entreprise would be futile.

My problem is.....and, I am afraid, this rambling letter is not helping resolving it: Is it possible to reverse the mindset, the consciousness (or whatever is left of it) which has brought us to the point where one is ready to accept any unacceptable outrage, crime against humanity?

I shall start with Annwen's contribution (which, by the way could also go to Tutu's successor's comments on the G8).

Thank you for all of these contributions they have encouraged and inspired me to write a few things which, I hope, can to this sort of live parliament of the people. It could also be a Shir or a Mbongi or a baraza or a plaver. In a sense, as we keep trying to say affirm who we are, one of our difficulties is that, now and then we keep (often unconsciously) borrowing from the very definitions which have come about through the very processes we are denouncing and condemning. Africa's 'discovery'/'definitions/anthropologisation/' of Africa has created, over time, a multiple battle front.

For the sake of simplicity, let us keep it at two: one against the enemy from outside and the other against the enemy from within. The 'discoverers' have kept destroying from without and from within. Their logic is quite coherent: destruction is only destruction if it is carried out by the Africans. Discovery is only discovery is it is done by the inaugural 'discoverers'. And with this kind of mindset other things are pushed through, such as the Enlightenment which, in terms of Africa, should be refered to as the darkest period of humanity (see Louis Sala-Molins' Les misères des Lumières, among others).

Nothingness shall only become something through the charitable works of reconstruction (Here we should revisit the US historical period referred to as The Reconstruction and see what it meant for the black population following the so-called abolition in 1865, itself the launching pad for the Prison Industrial Complex - see Angela Davies' Are Prisons Obsolete?

Charity and solidarity Out of capitalist destruction/reconstruction/destruction/reconstruction huge profits have been made and continue to be made. Tax laws allow charitable giving which are tax deductible and so, the richest foundations can be found in the countries which have been pushing suicidal, genocidal capitalism to its current limits of globalized destruction/discovery.

In Africa one of the most revered values is solidarity. There is a huge difference between solidarity and charity. Thanks to exchanges with Prof. Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, here are some of them: charity means, by definition submission and silence, contrary to solidarity which means, by definition equality and togertheness. Charity as an outcome of massive accumulation of wealth cannot but reproduce poverty.

One of the reasons why the G8 and their associates can only talk about poverty and its elimination and not do anything about its elimination comes from this every contradiction: the system in place has made them collectively rich, and any attempt to 'fix' it to help the poor would/could spell disaster for their own future. That is how they see it, but just like the whites under apartheid could not help but think as whites and not as blacks, they used their own logic to block the end of a system which was emprisoning them as well.

The mindset which has been built around charity has been devastating for those who have always adhered to the principles of solidarity.

Solidarity history versus the laundering of African history. This brings me to the piece by Wazir which I liked very much, but then, Wazir, I have to ask (I am assuming you are sitting in front of me) why did you leave Haiti out, with regard to the process of healing toward togertheness of all of the Wretched of the Earth. Cuba (which you mention) did in the 20th century what the Africans in Saint Domingue did in the 19th century. For the accumulators of dictatorial wealth, such trespassing ( i.e. doing the improbable, the impossible, the forbidden) must always be punished severely, individually and collectively. I am sure you noticed the pomp which surrounded the 2007 bi-centenary of abolition of the slave trade in London in March. That kind of celebration was principally aimed at showing off the high moral ground of the accumulators after they have consolidated and laundered their gains into an unassailable financial and economic system.

By now they have consolidated the mindset of this anonymous financial and economic system where no one and everybody is responsible, so to speak. This unassaiblable system has spawned ancillory structures like a so-called justice system which is deemed superior to anything which could be the alternative.

Thank you Robtel for your piece. I would add this. It is true that Gachacha originated in the world where solidarity dominated, but the resort by a state structure to Gachacha contains dangers and problems which should not be minimize. I also agree that TRC's are fundamentally flawed and should be replaced by processes which borrow from the spirit of healing solidarity so well described in Ayi Kwei Armah's novel Healers.

Thank you for your patience.

Dear comrades, Thank you very much to all of you from Firoze, whom I have met on a few occasions to all I have not met, but without whom the 300 mark might not have been reached, or might have been reached with greater pains and greater costs.

What could I say that you already do not know?

Pushing the enveloppe all the time, moving away from the pyramidal figure of the global society toward the sphere as suggested in Ayi Kwei Armah's KMT novel.

From now till 2011 there will be several 50th anniversaries. It is easy to be satisfied, but one should above all think, it seems to me, of the largest majorities and minorities on the Continent who have not benefitted anything, except for more suffering, more misery, more poverty from 50 years of so-called independent rule.

How does one combat a mindset which has treated our Continent and its people as ready made for any resources, physical and psychic, from human to natural, needed by the forces, internal and external, which have run our countries to where we are today.

In the face of the slogan :"globalize or else..." there is surely room for battling for something else. Why is it that we find it difficult to carry on from where, say, the resisters of the past (wherever they have given it all and all the way) had reached. Following in the footsteps of Haiti (1804) and Cuba (1959), is it not time to relink those who have been divided, split, tribalized, atomized ad infinitum?

Is it not time to think of Africa, its histories, its cultures beyond the geographical borders? Is it not time to move away from fission toward fusion? It is not difficult to talk about the (African) diaspora, but it is more difficult to connect with the diaspora of those who, like Africans (before and after slavery, colonial and post-colonial occupations), have resisted the imposition of the genocidal system on all sentient beings.

From the history of Africa, we have the unusual privilege of seeing things from, so to speak, the bottom. For lack of a better way of saying it, should we not, in the name of democratizing our history, share that privilege and not be afraid of saying what we see? For example, do we not see Hiroshima/Nagasaki as the modernization of Auschwitz? In evolutionary terms, the mindset (of discovery/oppression/exploitation/repression) which was born in 1492 has been confronted with resisters to it. Isn't there a link between the Palestinians, the Haitians, the Africans, the Native Americans, in short between all of the wretched of this world, who have been battling, generations after generations, against political and economic structures, leaders at the service of a genocidal system? A system which has now been scientifically described as on its way of making the inhabitants of the Planet globally homeless.

Ku-fahamisha. Sharing knowledge while producing and reproducing it. Yes, let people hear, in their own voices, for example, someone like Aristide, like So Ann, like Wamba dia Wamba converse on the Congolese who "were separated at birth". Get So Ann (from Haiti) to go and sing in South Africa and the Congo, along with Myriam Makeba.

Pambazuka News could explode, most peacefully indeed, the blinders which prevent us from seeing ourselves completely free from the shackling mindset. Of that I am confident Fahamu shall pambazuka us to a really different world.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/296/haiti.jpgJacques Depelchin challenges global citizens to make links between poverty across the world both historically and in the present day: From Cite Soleil in Haiti; to Abalhali in Durban, South Africa; Kibera, in Nairobi, Kenya; Maroko in Lagos, Nigeria; and Ndjili in Kinshasa, DRC.

In the age of globalisation why do we not see, on a world scale, cases of twinning in solidarity with cities such as Cité Soleil in Haiti; Abalhali in Durban, South Africa; Ndjili in Kinshasa, DRC? All are places, like favelas the world over, brimming with youth and creativity, but confronted with easily eradicable unhealthy conditions of living.

Why, given its namesake, does Sun City in South Africa not come out in solidarity with the poorest of the poorest in the alleged poorest country of the Western Hemisphere?It may sound childishly naïve, but would not such a move be immanently expected from a city in the country that got rid of apartheid thanks, in part, to the selfless work of millions around the world?

From the inhabitants of all these places, there seems to only be one call that could, should bring us all together: Fidelity to Haiti, 1804.Thought through, away from nation state ideologies, away and against the corporate models of accumulation, such a call has the potential for healing humanity, taking it to the level many dreamed of while battling apartheid in South Africa.

Sun City in South Africa is known as the capital of gambling, where fortunes are spent in hopes of making even bigger fortunes. To those who would rather visit Sun City in South Africa than Cité Soleil in Port-Au-Prince, poverty is something to be running away from, not something to embrace. Even if these same people will make sure that their admiration for the one who epitomised poverty, Francis of Assisi, is well advertised and known. Should not such ongoing contradictions lead one to ask why more and more people are getting poorer and poorer, while a few accumulate wealth?

Since the end of apartheid, South Africa now boasts black billionaires, just like other African countries. Is it not possible to ask what would happen if the mindset which drives gambling turned to eradicate the differences between the Cités Soleil and Sun City?

Cité Soleil means Sun City in French, and that is where President Jean-Bertrand Aristide trained himself, beyond the reach of the mindset of the Haitian elite and beyond the bureaucratized seminarian teachings of love which sterilize at the same time as the teachings are going on.

But it was through such tight embracing solidarity with the poor people of Haiti, and not just those of Cité Soleil that President Aristide broke the comforting and comfortable chains of charity. Which is also why politician theoreticians, theologians and ideologues of all stripes, and from opposite corners, do not, or pretend not to, know where he belongs. Why, one hears them thinking, does he side with losers?

Of the admirers of Francis of Assisi we may ask: if your idol were to come back to earth, say in Haiti, where would he most likely go to ask for hospitality? Isn’t condemning poverty from the confines of billions in wealth and property the surest way of intensifying poverty and increasing the ranks of the poor? Canonised, Francis must be good to have on one’s side.

The mindset, which has been in place among the owners of capital, which led them to treat human beings as a means of further accumulation, is still as entrenched as ever: capital reigns supreme, not only through its own corporate structures, but also through subservient nation states which have become so submissive that they willingly dissolve themselves in front of it; and not just in the countries where structural adjustment programmes of the World Bank and the IMF were pioneered, such as in Mobutu’s Zaïre.

Although invented by the military for military purposes, low intensity warfare against the poor can best be conducted using both economic, financial and real weapons, especially if, as is the case in Cité Soleil, it is done through hired soldiers from such places as Sri Lanka, Brazil, Jordan and Nigeria. Black on black violence has always been easier to defend and ignore ideologically than the white on black kind, especially in Haiti.

1. From Haiti to South Africa: 1804-1994-2004

For 13 years, 1791 to 1804, people from various parts in Africa, about 500,000 people, half of whom had been born in Africa, decided that slavery was inhuman. Rather than live under it, it was better to fight it, to death, if necessary. Without generals trained in military academies, without outside help of any kind. The Wretched of the Earth gave a 13 year long lesson in organisation, discipline, solidarity in order to bring about equality, fraternity and liberty. They did so without the help of human rights. Indeed, as will be argued below, this massive and successful trespassing played a crucial role in triggering human rightism as we know it today, a charitable way of helping, while preventing the kind of solidarity called for by the revolutionary slogan 'equality, fraternity and liberty'.

The slaves went further than the enlightenment philosophers ever thought possible. They went further then the leaders of the French Revolution were prepared to go in 1789. It was not until 1792-94, during the period of the Convention (known as the Terror) that slavery was finally abolished. The slaves had done the improbable, the impossible, the forbidden. In short, they had surpassed themselves and, in the process, they also trespassed.

The overthrow of slavery is still difficult to comprehend today. It does not fit easily into the ideological narratives of the left or the right. Aside from CLR James’ The Black Jacobins, that feat was so exceptional, given the times and probability of success, that it has not received the attention it deserved from historians, philosophers, theoreticians. At the same time, it receives persistent negative attention from the powers that be in the form of imposition of debt repayments (so-called compensation for the slave and plantation owners), invasions, occupations, international kidnapping of an elected president, prison, torture, and collective punishment of people from all walks of life whose only crime was fidelity to 1804.

With president Jean-Bertrand Aristide currently in involuntary exile in South Africa, it is difficult not to examine the relationship between anti-slavery and anti-apartheid, two battles which unfolded at different times, under different conditions, both with the common objective of seeking freedom.

Given the quasi house arrest under which Aristide is held in South Africa, is it unreasonable to ask oneself how the South African political leadership sees its role in the battle to bring Haiti to where it should have been, in the first place, since 1804? Could it be that Mbeki sees his role as reasoning with Aristide to accommodate to the demands of those who are in charge of the world today? The question may sound unfair and unreasonable. But is it? After all, Mbeki was the lone African head of state at the 200th independence anniversary in January 2004. The entire South African white owned press was rabidly against it.

Too many questions which should be raised, are not being raised. Why such a deafening silence only after President Aristide was given asylum in South Africa? Could it be that the two centuries of punishment, which has been inflicted on Haiti, has dampened the enthusiasm of those who might be tempted to stand by in solidarity?

Final question, how can any country, let alone an African one, lend its services to a process which included the kidnapping of a democratically elected president? It bears striking similarity to what happened more than 200 years ago when Toussaint L’Ouverture, the leader of the Haitian Revolution, was taken prisoner by the country which is known in history for its 1789 Revolution. By then, in 1802, everything was being done to quash what the Africans had done. Could it be that the leadership of South Africa has become so subservient to the powers that be (US, France, Canada, Vatican) as to allow itself to be seen as a willing participant in an operation more reminiscent of the times when Steve Biko was arrested?

From our collective histories, we might look at the role being performed by the South African leadership as similar to the one performed by Tshombe in Katanga, when the West needed to get rid of Lumumba.

2. From trespassing to collective, relentless, punishment (1825-1938/46)

With the rise of Napoléon, the process of collective punishment was initiated. Military attempts to reverse the victory of the Africans in Haiti failed. The Africans were able to repel the three best armies of the day: French, Spanish and English. By 1825 however, the Haitian government was forced by France, with the help of the US, Canada and the Vatican, to agree to pay compensation to the slave and plantation owners, in exchange for being accepted as a nation state. Repayments for the liberty of the former slaves were made until 1938, according to some, to 1946, according to others. Having lost militarily and politically, the former slave owners sought to reassert their authority, in the international arena, where their control was unchallengeable.

From the viewpoint of the former slave and plantation owners, they had to show that emancipation by the slaves, in their own terms, could not be acceptable, regardless of whether those terms (emancipation) replicated ideological tenets held by the slave and plantation masters.

The collective and severe punishment which followed 1804 is in line with the syndrome of discovery, which can be stated as follows: discoverers shall always be discoverers, and should discovered ones discover anything, especially something universally acceptable such as emancipation, they shall be put back in their place.

In the case of the slaves overthrowing slavery in Haiti, the virulent vengeance of the response has not abated, two centuries after the event. Indeed, the arsenal has grown bigger, multi-headed, more sophisticated.

Opponents of the eradication of slavery are still being corralled by the United States which has seen itself as guardian of the treasures and resources accumulated by and through their discoveries: USA, France, Canada, the Vatican; and they are not the only ones. The resort to the political and financial punitive measures mentioned above, combined with secular and religious ideological orthodoxies, were meant to divide the Haitian people.

As it has been observed in many post-colonial situations, a small privileged elite saw itself as the only worthy Haitians. The syndrome of discovery has remained as virulent as ever: slaves must not free themselves; the poor must not end poverty on their own terms. The poor of Sité Soley, by definition, according to the elite, must not have a voice, except as filtered or reframed by the media controlled by the elite.

3. From Full rights to human rights

The slaves wanted to be treated as full human beings with the same full rights available to the masters. In their battle, there was no plan B, no halfway to freedom. From the 1804 event, those who continue to suffer from injustices, structural and circumstantial, have been told the same message, over and over: only the discoverers can discover the solutions to injustices. Whereas the slaves battled for full rights, their descendants in Haiti and all over the planet are being told that their way out of oppression and exploitation can only take place through the charitable detours of Human Rights. The average person in the world can see for herself that the 1804 event has been followed by institutionalising processes aimed at sterilising all the possible consequences which could, and should, have led to more and more emancipation from the shackles born out of the capital accumulated through slavery, land theft in North America and colonial occupation.

Despite the pious mantras coming out of political, religious and financial centers of power, the majority of humanity continues to be enslaved by a dominant economic system which thrives on poverty. When US defence secretary McNamara left the Pentagon for the World Bank after the Vietnam debacle, he vowed to end poverty within a decade.

Having lost, the slave masters, the plantation owners and their allies did everything to ensure that the process of change should never be set by those who had suffered and been dehumanised the most.

The 100 plus years of repayments were about denying the Haitians the ability to invest in their future. And so it has been since: in the US, the abolition of slavery went hand in hand with measures aimed at ensuring that former slaves did not think they could just walk away from their masters. Angela Davis, in Are Prisons Obsolete?, highlighted what other writers before her had noticed: abolition gave way to the introduction of legislation aimed at keeping the former slaves in check, leading seamlessly to what has become known as the Prison Industrial Complex. In the south, the majority of the prison population turned, almost overnight, from white to black. It took a century for the former slaves to get the right to vote, but this voting has come with all kinds of institutionalised limits.

During colonial rule in the DRC, the end of colonial rule could only be envisioned as a series of half measures. The colonial subjects were forced or indoctrinated to think of themselves through the legal, administrative, social and political prism of the subjugators. By now, it should be clear: there must always be a sharp and unbridgeable gap between the rich and the poor, as there had to be between the coloniser and the colonised. Visible and non-visible 'no trespassing' signs are everywhere with the result that the poor keep getting poorer and the rich, richer.

4. From Kongo to Haiti to DRCongo: 1706-1757-2007

The way world history has been written by the victors had one prerequisite: make sure that the vanquished have no doubt about their vanquished status. It is not just that given episodes have different names (eg enlightenment, civilization, Cold War, development, globalisation). It is above all the erasure of the mindset of those who, against all odds, refused to submit to dehumanisation, not just in their own name, but in the name of the larger community, including those who were dehumanising them.

If the French government has finally passed a law acknowledging that slavery had been a crime against humanity, why then, have those who did fight it not been acknowledged as heroes, heroines, saints? Not just in France, but also in their own countries? Why hasn’t Kimpa Vita, (Dona Beatrix), burnt at the stake for denouncing the Kingdom of the Kongo's King for allowing the slave trade and slavery to continue, not been considered for sainthood by the hierarchy of the Catholic church? What prevents the current Congolese government from declaring her, and explaining in detail why, she is a national heroine?

In 1757, in Haiti, a man known Makandal was caught and burned at the stake in 1758 because he had been accused of having killed, by poisoning, many slave owners. A generation later, in 1791, another slave, Boukman, played a crucial role in the ritual which is considered as the start of the uprising which led to the 1804 victory. These are the well known names, but over and above them, millions of anonymous people battled dehumanisation, often falling into dehumanizing violence, but holding on to the conviction that slavery was a crime against life, against humanity. Why do we not see schools, hospitals and research institutes, from Mozambique, around the Cape to Senegal bearing the above names, as a way of reintroducing the way they thought and fought into our collective consciousness?

Haitian elites, generally, with a few exceptions, have ended up siding with the descendants of the slave owners, and it is these elites who worked hard to comply with the repayments. Theoretically, Aristide was a bona fide promising member of the elite, but he veered away from the elite and the Catholic Church hierarchy to follow a course reminiscent of that of Reverend Beyers Naude in South Africa, when he refused to go along with the Dutch Reformed Church's support of apartheid. The virulence with which some members of the Haitian elite have attacked Aristide makes one wonder whether it is less of a crime to discriminate against the poor in Haiti than to discriminate against the blacks in South Africa.

5. From Toussaint L’Ouverture to Patrice Lumumba to Samora Machel

These three leaders are national heroes in their own country. At the same time, it is not difficult to see that the current elites in those countries would rather maintain some distance from them. In all three cases, there has been reluctance on the part of those states responsible for their death to go beyond formal apology.

In the case of France and Toussaint, Louis Sala-Molin suggested that full recognition of responsibility and apology, say during the 1989 bicentenary of the French Revolution, could have been followed with placing Toussaint’s remains next to Napoleon’s sarcophagus in the Pantheon in Paris. Later on, the French state gave itself another opportunity to do exactly that by proclaiming slavery a crime against humanity. We are still waiting.

Following Ludo de Witte’s book The Assassination of Lumumba, coming after Adam Hochshild’s King Leopold’s Ghost, the Belgian state showed the same kind of cowardice. Again, it is not difficult to suspect the reasons: fear that people would seek revenge. This is the same mindset which prevented white South Africans from opening up for a long time: if they - the blacks - win, they will throw us into the sea. But, at the same time, just as in Haiti, a black South African elite has emerged which finds itself closer to those who have always vilified the likes of L’Ouverture, Lumumba or Machel. All the while, of course, singing the praises of Nelson Mandela.

The case of Samora Machel is the most interesting because it is the most recent. His figure is in the process of being erased from the historical conscience of Mozambique. Having died in a plane crash on 19 October 1986, the 20th anniversary was a low key celebration. And the reason why is obvious: 20 years after his death, things going on in Mozambique which would have been unacceptable to Samora Machel.

6. An open letter to world citizens

Dear friends,

203 years since the slaves of Saint Domingue overthrew slavery, against the most formidable armies of the day, humanity, not just the descendants of slaves, should be celebrating that event. But instead of celebration, one sees almost the exact opposite. UN troops, in Haiti are carrying out regular killings of babies, women, old people in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Port-Au-Prince, Cité Soleil. We should do better than just to stand by, shaking our heads, protesting occasionally. Should we not change gear in our daily lives and vow not to stop till Haiti is completely free as it was meant to be in 1804?

Instead of outraged solidarity, there is a massive silence, aside from a few solitary voices expressing solidarity, in various cities around the world. Sadly, some of the most well known anti-apartheid leaders, outside and inside South Africa have been ingenious at explaining the apathy, which really boils down to refusing solidarity with the inhabitants of a small island.

Why? One well known and courageous anti-apartheid leader (non-South African) went for the generic, easy, comment: 'until Haiti has an ANC type party which could be supported, it is not worth doing anything'.

Then there has been the vicious attacks against Jean-Bertrand Aristide, by members of the Haitian elite, who had no shame in publishing a letter in the white owned press of South Africa saying that Aristide is no Mandela. Well, thank God for that. Because even Mandela himself would hope that there are others from the continent and beyond, to carry on from the point reached in the battle against South African apartheid.

When looking in the rear mirror of history, from the surrounding extremes of wealth and poverty, of stupendous spending on weapons systems as against the avariciousness for caring for people, it is easy to ask oneself: whether slavery, or more precisely, the mind set unleashed by the system, was ever abolished? More and more, it appears that slavery was simply modernised to get rid of the aspects standing in the way of cheapening labour.

With Auschwitz and Hiroshima/Nagasaki, it is not just labour which became cheaper. Life lost its sacredness and became dispensable on a massive scale. Leading Einstein to say, right after Hiroshima/Nagasaki that with the splitting of the atom, everything changed completely - except the way we think. Surely, my friends, it is high time to change the way we think if we are going to move on from that mindset. The same preoccupation could be asked differently: 'When did thinking as humans began to disappear?'

7. Who defines terror?

From the viewpoint of the discoverers, terror is only terror when it terrorises them, their descendants or their friends. Never, or so it seems, are they willing to imagine the terror which was experienced by the anonymous couple which, on any day in the 18th century, somewhere on one of those slave routes to the atlantic, armed mercenaries coming out of nowhere kidnapped them in the middle of the night and dragged them, screaming and crying at the same time.

Their terror can only be comparable to what would happen later during WW II, in Europe, when people would be dragged out of their houses to be put on cattle trains and sent to an unknown destination. The Africans were taken like cattle to waiting ships, packed like sardines. How would one document the terror they felt? Through their numbers, costs, bills of lading? Conceivably and imaginatively, the only archives where their terror could be found would be in the archives lying at the bottom of the Atlantic, and retrievable only through specially conducted healing ceremonies. Such terror, if it could be brought back to life for healing purposes, might help the monopolisers of terror and violence see for themselves the roots where it all begun.

Retaliating against terror with more terror can only mean the triumph of the terrorizing mindset, of terror as the best possible weapon. Fighting terror with terror is another way of taking us back to the mindset of the Cold War, which is but a continuation of the mindset which underlay slavery. It is a mindset which leads to death, not to life.

The anonymous couple was quickly separated: women on one side and men on another. Their peaceful lives had been violated, but what was to follow was beyond anything they thought other human beings could inflict onto others. Soon, their separation would be completed when she found herself on one ship; he, on another. Still, like any human being, she began to look on the positive side of things: she was still alive, in relatively good health, and, with a new life inside her womb, she had with her a bit of her husband: her duty was to protect this new life to the best of her ability. Being at peace in a context of violence is one of the most stressful tasks ever.

To summarise, it suffices to say that the ship captain had spotted her among the others, and informed the sailors to prepare her as one of his travel companions. The question is how, and who will ever tell the story of how she was raped repeatedly. How, she eventually decided to take her life by throwing herself off the ship.

More to the point, where and how to heal from such massive individual and collective indescribable wounds which are still rippling across the descendants, centuries later?

8. Who defines poverty?

Haiti, 'the poorest country of the, so-called, "Western" hemisphere' reads the lamentation billboards of the Western media. As if Haiti and its poverty is a stain on the image expected to be projected by the West. Or a tortuous way of warning those who might be interested in following the same route? You shall be crushed so badly that no one else would be tempted to think outside of the path traced by the discoverers and abolitionists.

The so-called poor of Cité Soleil do not see themselves as the poor framed by the crocodile tears shed by humanitarianists. The triumph of the slaves in 1804 happened because they did not dwell on being slaves; and so it is with the poor. The poor see themselves as being endowed with the capacity to overthrow the mindsets which keep insisting that they, the poor, can only be helped out of poverty by charitable gestures and structures.

Overthrowing poverty, like overthrowing slavery, can only be tackled, and succeed, as a political gesture. But because everything has been done and continues to be done by those who did not want the slaves to succeed, the battle over slavery, and its history, continues to this day. It extended into colonial rule, with the same message: do not ever trespass over the boundaries of power. If you do, expect the worse kind of punishment.

From 1804 to this day, the history of Haiti continues to unfold along two distinct paths: the one left by Toussaint and those who did overthrow the system; and the one which the slave owners, plantation owners and their allies could never ever let go, at the risk of losing more than their own possessions.

With globalisation, the stakes have not changed: on the one hand, there are those who state that the slaves were wrong. They did not know what to do with what they achieved, economically, politically. They inherited the economic jewel of the French colonial possessions, and 'ruined' it. Those who had lost that battle in Saint Domingue resorted to their allies to impose conditions on the new state which ensured that whatever economic gains the former slaves made would be siphoned off to those who had insisted on compensation.

In today’s world where everyone is being called to globalise or else in the wake of a system which has relentlessly modernised itself since the days of industrialised Atlantic slavery, should we not be proud to have amongst us people who are saying no to such a call? In these times of addiction to wealth seeking, is it not admirable to have people, known and unknown, who are refusing to be seduced by the promises of a system, the annihilating capacity of which, physical and spiritual, has reached incomensurable proportions?

We face today the same odds that the slaves in Haiti faced against the system, then in its infancy. Is it not true that we keep hearing that the only way to improve the lot of humanity is to forget our humanity in order to save ourselves later, by following the very mindset which has brought us to such a precarious point? Is it not true that, individually and collectively, we are being asked to stop exercising our capacity to think? Is it not true that we are being trained to look, with fear and mistrust at some of our best, non-violent life instincts?

The process of destroying humanity over the last 500 years never stopped. Now and then, it slowed down, but on the whole, from trespassing life to trespassing living, the system which emerged out of glorifying itself by attrition, against existing damning evidence, has now reached an unprecedented level of domination. By pretending that one suffering was worse than another, by pretending that comparing suffering was insulting to those who considered themselves the worse sufferers, that which was indivisible was cut to pieces.

Contemplating the disaster of Hiroshima/Nagasaki, Albert Einstein is alleged to have said: 'With the splitting of the Atom, everything changed except the way we think'. Should we not change the way we think? Should we not trace back some of the thinking which was ignored?

From Hispaniola to Hiroshima, the splitting mindset did not just attack the atom. Long before the physicists got their turn, the process had proceeded, practically unopposed, against so-called savages and barbarians, with occasional defenders. The native Americans' land was taken away from them, with it, a way of thinking diametrically opposed to splitting the atom. From Hispaniola to Saint Domingue, the Arawaks were wiped out and replaced with people stolen, highjacked, terrorised away from their homes, their land, their fields in Africa. And yet, in Saint Domingue, the spirit of refusing to be split from humanity rose again, and against all the odds, triumphed, briefly, before revenge and collective punishment started again.

9. Who is the enemy?

The arsenal in place to eradicate humanity is visible everywhere: the armament industry could wipe out life on the planet and the planet itself several times over. Yet still, it keeps growing and being modernised. Have we not heard the argument before: if we shut down this or that factory, we would be taking jobs away from working people? But is it right to have a mindset which is always looking for enemies, even though such enemies only exist in the mindset of warmongers seeking to make sure that their products shall always have buyers?

Do we not live in a world dominated by advertising and entertainment industries living off the by products of warfare? It has been shown that war fought with weapons has become obsolete. That it is possible to annihilate your enemy by just manipulating the market. Has the triumphant mindset, such as it is, left only one exit for those looking for freedom? Have we not realised that this exit, framed by such a lethal mindset shall take us to a variation of something we have already seen, but only this time, worse? Could it be that little by little, by attrition, humanity has completely given itself and its capacity to think, and its sense of balance between the spiritual and the material, over to the market?

10. Is there really any interest in wiping out poverty?

It is not difficult to see that the poor are the potential enemies of the global system, as run by the corporations and their crumbling nation state allies. A social, political and economic system which has prospered on the basis of dividing, discriminating to death and thriving on competition is wired to reproduce competition and discrimination. There will be conventions against poverty, just as there has been conventions against genocide. Charitable structures shall be used to spread some of the dispensable, tax reducing profits. The system’s growth has thrived on generating poverty. But, ideologically speaking, it must present itself as wanting to do something about poverty.

The abolitionist mode did not work with slavery. There is no reason why it would work in abolishing poverty, unless anchored in building greater social solidarity between all members of humanity. In short, fidelity to humanity as affirmed at turning points such as in 1804 in Haiti would be the way of seriously getting rid of poverty. Such fidelity will not happen overnight, but can grow out of healing processes initiated away from corporations and states, between members of humanity.

* Jacques Depelchin, Ota Benga Alliance for Peace, Healing and Dignity

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

I just read the call for solidarity with Haiti on February 7, and I felt good that our brothers and sisters in Haiti are being heard. 2007 is the 50th anniversary of Ghana’s Independence. Between now and 2011 there will be a number of 50th anniversaries in Africa including the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.

One of the things which seem to be coming to me all the time, while visiting here in Maputo, is the kind of house arrest that Aristide has been submitted to in South Africa. Shouldn't South Africans, Africans from all walks of life come out and call for Aristide's freedom to travel anywhere, including going back as a free citizen to Haiti? Is he kept under house arrest for his own good/safety, or is he being kept away from the public eye so that we all forget about him, in the same manner Toussaint L'Ouverture was taken to France and let to die?

If we are true to our conscience, if we claim we are proud of what was done when Mandela was finally freed, then, is it not logical that we ask, as loudly as one can, the kind of questions which are not being asked with regard to Aristide and his quasi solitary confinement? Is it not the case that by keeping him under house arrest or something equivalent, and not allowing him to speak up, one is in fact colluding with those voices which went out of their way to accuse Aristide of all kinds of crimes. Why is it that so many people on the left would not rather talk about Aristide's situation?

What does it mean, today, to think emancipatory thoughts? If fidelity to the Subject who emerged out of Haiti in 1804 means keeping alive emancipatory politics, why do we keep quiet when innocent children, women, human beings are being killed in Cité Soleil, simply because in that place there are people who keep calling, among other things, for the return of President Aristide? For 200 years, and counting, Haiti continues to stand out both as a place in history to be proud of, but it continues to be treated as if what happened there should never have happened. Given this history, one has to ask oneself, is that why the powers that be, looked to South Africa as the best place to keep him under House Arrest?

I really did mean to write a thank you note, but I suppose I slipped into one of my favourite exercises: could I make you (Pambazuka), you who are already doing a fine job, to reach higher and outperform yourselves? If you can look at the above as a jumbled, rumbling, rambling poor attempt, I offer my apologies, but, at the same time, ask for your understanding, and think of this way: Can we promise ourselves that, as of today, 2007 till 2020 (the same 13 years it took the slaves --1791-1804), to bring Haiti back to where it was supposed to be. If we can do it before 2020, better still, but I am sure that, along the way, we shall find ways of pushing ourselves further beyond the current emancipated oases.

* Jacques Depelchin is author of “Silences in African History: Between the Syndrome of Discovery and Abolition,” and Executive Director of the ‘Ota Benga Alliance for Peace, Healing and Dignity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’.

I want to thank Joel Bisina for the article, ‘Environmental Degradation in the Niger Delta’ which helped deepen our knowledge and understanding of all the processes going on in the Niger Delta. As we learned from Ike Okonta in previous articles http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/38119 published on Pambazuka News, we are witness to a socio-economic and political tsunami whose proportions are difficult to describe, let alone measure.

As a way forward, I would plea for us not to forget that processes such as those described by Joel,have a history which goes as far back as the process of stealing the land from the Native Americans, killing off the Arawaks in the Caribbean, and then stealing people in Africa, enslaving them in order to replace the most sought after resource of those times: labour, hunting it, maintaining it as cheap as possible has been going on ever since.

Native Americans are speaking up after, as some of them say, keeping silent for five centuries.

What is going on in the Niger Delta is just a microcosm of what James Lovelock has been describing in all his books about Gaia. Now, we hear from Al Gore in “Inconvenient Truth” (book and film) that the destruction of Earth cannot go on. He argues that the way of thinking which has led to this state of affairs has to stop, but I have yet to hear Al Gore say something like this: "Long before my great great grand father was born there were people in North America, who did see that this way of thinking advocated and propagated by European discoverers was not only killing people, but it was also killing Earth/Gaia. I suggest that we, the discoverers/destroyers atone for what our ancestors did, by taking those voices and today's, seriously." Would Al Gore, be willing to discuss with the people of the Niger Delta, with the Native Americans, with the Haitians, in short with all of the people and their descendants who have been screaming NO to a system which was born and continues to reproduce itself by way of a mind set which says it is ok for poor people to die?

Thank you Joel for letting us know about the kind of world your mother lived in, one we urgently need to hold on to.

Thank you again for trying to show how apparently disconnected histories are indeed connected and converging toward a world more and more emancipated from the shackles of a genocidal system (see I was surprised that you referred to the Irish. Not that the example is out of place, but because the African continent continues to be the most fertile ground for comparing what the Palestinians are enduring. By African, I do mean also those who were taken away. By African I include Haiti, yesterday and today.

The collective punishment currently inflicted on the Palestinians is very much like the collective punishment which has been unleashed, and has not stopped, against the descendants of those who, against all expectations, overthrew slavery by battling all of the biggest armies of the time (France, England, Spain). From 1791 through 1804, without the help of any humanitarian organization, those who were considered less than humans rose to say no to a dehumanizing system. For that act, the descendants of the slaves who managed the unthinkable have been severely punished. The treatment of Haitians today derives from exactly the same motivation as the one which has triggered the wrath of the Israeli state, supported to the hilt by the so-called International Community, against people who are simply asking to be treated like everyone else: with dignity WITHOUT THE CRUTCHES OF HUMANITARIANISM. The system has not just been bankrupt. What we are observing is worse than genocide: one of the victims of genocide has been anointed to inflict collective punishment. Collectively, how did we get to this point? Before colonialism there was something else. During WWII Hitler was THE Evil and we well remember what he inflicted to the Jews. But what if EVIL did stem from something other than a mad person? What if EVIL can also be seen at work during previous phases of our collective history? What if EVIL is genetically rooted - so to speak - in the system which rose out of turning masses of humanity into fodder for the continuation of a system which seems not to know when, where and how to stop. Are we going to be reduced to being mere spectators to the next phase, namely the turning of the Planet into an unlivable place?

A fantastic piece indeed. Slavery was never abolished, it was modernized, with everyone helping along the way. The piece could be the basis for anyone interested in making a film or writing a play. In this day and age, it seems, only art (theatre in this case) could render not just the actual facts as described by Tajudeen, but also the thinking, the emotions going on in the heads of those who traveled on that famous plane (it would be good to actually have the flight number, departure and destination). As scholars (historians in particular), we are trained to only look for facts in archives, or on any palpable concrete evidence, but what about the archives of our collective mind, emotions which are supposed to be off limits, and yet, have survived for generations.

The screams, the crying, the protest of the person on that plane sounded to me like echoes of those who were kidnapped centuries ago, in their fields, on their way to a funeral, to a wedding, or simply resting at home after a hard day's work. Back then, mercenaries appeared out of nowhere in search of slaves. There are no archives I know of where the screams, the pain, the suffering have been registered so that we can prove that, indeed long before the Holocaust, other genocides took place and create the conditions for the unthinkable to happen to people to whom such treatment was not supposed to happen.

Why should one not be outraged, "emotional" at such barbarity? Is it not because we have not been sufficiently outraged collectively that such acts continue? Is it not because one rationalizes one's silence that things which were supposed to have been abolished long ago continue to happen under a different name?

Taj, thank you for bringing to the surface one little illustration of what took place centuries before and continues today unabated. On the image of the slave ship mentioned toward the end of your piece, I would suggest the following: why not have our billionaires who might still have a bit of conscience, get about a dozen or so (or more) slave ships built exactly as they were when the slave trade was in full swing, and have a sample moored at all the ports (of departure and destination) so that, at least visually, all those who do want to see the instruments of killing the person and making a slave can be seen. However painful such replicas might be, at least they would have the shocking value that Maidanek, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, etc. continue to carry today.

I cannot say that I followed every interview Soyinka gave in his visit to the San Francisco Bay Area, but in all of them, including the one excerpted in the latest issue of Pambazuka News, there was something striking: not a word about African literature. It was almost as if the ones doing the interview had decided that the subject did not even exist or that (just as bad) it was not worthy of discussion. One is reminded of Oxford Historian, Trevor-Roper's words in relation to African History: "There is no such a thing as African history." Sure, Soyinka is very committed to politics (Nigerian, African, planetary) in ways which tend to encourage this kind of public humiliation which says without saying that there is no such a thing as African literature. And to the face of the first African Nobel Prize Winner for literature, to boot.

Clearly, the interviewers were more interested in showing off by pulling Soyinka into an arena in which they felt more comfortable rather than showing their ignorance or contempt for African literature.

Would it not have been interesting, informative, to hear from Soyinka how writers in other parts of the Continent were doing, (e.g. in Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa?). How often is there a chance to listen to someone like Soyinka share his understanding, his knowledge of the literary scene on a Continent which continues to be treated as a sort of tabula rasa? What is the state of African publishing? Why has the Western publishing industry favored certain African writers over others? Did his prize lead to greater interest, among Western publishers, in searching for new literary talents in Africa? The list of questions which could have been posed and were not is so long that their avoidance was difficult not to notice.

Interestingly Soyinka did try to steer (ever so subtly) the conversation toward his passion for theater. Still, one wishes he had pushed harder. One can only marvel at the durability of the Discovery Syndrome and the multiple ways in which it manifests itself.

Thank you for the good work and do take care.

Dear Joe,

The beginning of your piece was right on the mark (see Thank you so much, but I felt that, somehow, one needs to do better than fighting on all fronts. As you so eloquently put it, it boils down to how and who writes the equation. One needs to re-write the equation. The beginning of your piece actually does that. I do not know how to re-write it, except when I hear and read about reparation. The injustices committed in the process of building this triumphant capitalo-parliamentarist system are so huge that it defies our imagination. Be on all fronts is your response. It covers all bases, but in the process it gives up on redrawing the fronts as we should have learned from our collective histories.

Please do not misunderstand this comment. The discourse of authenticity re Mobutu is easy to dismiss and denounce, but what do we do when it is encouraged by the ones who trampled on our ancestors who, I can imagine, upon hearing of reparations might mutter under their eternal breath: "Really, now that the price is right and they have the heavy duty lawyers, are they trying to sell us a second time?"

I try to always remember what the slaves did in Haiti/St Domingue back between 1791 and 1804, without the help of human rights organizations or NGOs. There is still a possibility, as shown by the people of Haiti, of fidelity to that event. Fidelity to emancipatory politics. All fronts (read all armies of the day) were brought to the slaves and were defeated, but the same nations made sure that the emancipation did not bloom. Now we do have the proof that the system which has been built is relentlessly genocidal.

My concrete suggestion is to rally around the event of 1804 and make sure that Haiti becomes what the slaves really want it to be. Such fidelity goes beyond personalities, ideologies, left, right and center. Just one front. It is right there, begging us to join. Thank you for your piece and do take care. Thank you to the editors and workers of Pambazuka News.

Publishers: Mkuki Na Nyota Publishers, Dar es Salaam
DISTRIBUTORS: Africa Books Collective PRICE: £20.95 or $34.95

Jacques Depelchin's book, 'Silences in African History' was becoming the victim of a reviewer's silence. What you are going to read is but an initial reaction to reading this book of many parts, that reminded me of the lyrics 'coat of many colours that my mama sewed for me'. It is a very engaging book. Many readers may understand and sympathise with me, if I plead to having been very busy; leading to a pile up of must read books, journals and papers.

That's partly the reason why it took some time to get around to reviewing this book, but the main reason is that Jacques is a complex writer, who writes in the fast disappearing cross-disciplinary radical scholarship. This is from an era when intellectuals had the guts to call imperialism its real name, instead of the understated notion of 'globalisation' that is used these days.

Oppressors and exploiters were called their real names instead of the dubious notion of 'partners in development' that is foistered on us today. The book may be inaccessible to the faint hearted as it traverses history, philosophy, literature, social sciences, humanities, cultural studies, traditions, spirituality ,religion, economics, history of science and science of history, the historical method, the dialectical method. It is both about the methodology of history and the history of methodology.

In 10 chapters, written with economy of language but full of so much information that betrays the long period of gestation of the book, it is both a critique of received wisdom and contemporary practice not only about the history of Africa but the knowledge of and about Africa. While applauding the pioneering nationalist African historians of the postcolonial period for challenging colonialist constructs and exposing imperialism packaged as knowledge, Depelchin also confronts most scathingly the reversal of the nationalist gains in contemporary times, where the pro/reproduction of knowledge about Africa has again transferred back to the metropolis and predominantly non African scholars who call themselves Africanists. They are largely outside of Africa, in western and predominantly North American universities.

They are also cohabiting with an exponentially increasing number of African scholars from Africa. The contemporary African Diaspora of technicians of knowledge in these countries is beginning to dwarf that of any single African country, including Nigeria. For instance it will be interesting to compare the ratio of African professors per head within 100 kilometres of New York to those in a similar radius of Lagos, Pretoria, Nairobi or Dar Es Salaam. It is not just the big names of our intelligentsia that have emigrated, but several generations after them - and even now future generations are aspiring to jump ship.

Historical silences meet existential silences with the same outcome: transfer of power over our history to extra continental individuals and institutions. We have to wonder what will become of peoples whose cream of intelligentsia are removed from the social base of their knowledge production.

‘Silences’ is such a wonderful cocktail of gems around so many issues and concerns across so many disciplines that one is frustrated that Depelchin has written several books in one without completing any of them. It is the kind of book that a lazy student can struggle to read and get a general grasp of many issues and bamboozle his way around term essays.

But in the hands of an inquisitive and enthusiastic reader it is both humbling and inspiring. It makes one wonder how little one knows but also challenges one to want to read more. But the theme of ‘Silences’ runs through all the chapters and gives it a coherence that its vast spectrum could have denied it. It is about how what we know is shaped by the methodology we deploy, but this methodology itself is not neutral but shaped by class and ideological interests of those in control of our lives and societies.

Intellectuals fancy themselves as being 'objective', others even see themselves as being above society, but Depelchin demystifies these fantasies in the Cabralist sense of posing the class interests that inform scholarship and how intellectuals are themselves part of the struggles they are interpreting. As partisans they make choices that determine what they see and what they refuse to see. Sometimes what they did not write about is more important than what they have written.

This book deserves wider reading. It is part of the power dynamics of scholarship about Africa that to be read and be popular, African authors or authors on Africa have to be published outside Africa and mostly in Europe and the USA. The publishers of this book, Mkuki Na Nyota, based in Dar Es Salaam, once a centre for radical scholarship and emancipatorary politics of the nationalist-developmental state, are one of the more veteran core of African publishers determined against all odds to publish about Africa in Africa, creating a space for African intellectual, cultural and political ownership of Africa.

The Director, Walter Bugoya, comes from the nationalist and liberationist tradition that have refused to surrender. If we do not patronise our own institutions and entrepreneurs how do we expect them to develop and compete favourably with the rest of the world? Depelchin has chosen not to be silenced by writing this book and he has also refused to allow African publishing to be silenced by choosing to publish in Dar Es Salaam even though he could have taken the easier option of publishing from the US where he is now based. In life there are always alternatives.

The organic intellectual in Africa or of Africa has to make the choice. The choice is either to continue to perpetuate the silencing of Africa and Africans, by only researching and publishing what is acceptable to the powers that be in academia and the ruling establishments generally or making a choice in favour of liberation scholarship.

Depelchin lays it out starkly: the choice is yours, but there is a price for standing up to tell truth to power even among academics.

* Reviewed by Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

During August, two historical events are commemorated, both of which had a major impact on the destiny of millions of people and changed the face of the world forever. The first, remembered on August 6 and 9, is the horrific nuclear bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 that killed hundreds of thousands of people. The second, marked on August 23, reminds us of the abolition of the slave trade, a system that devastated African societies for hundreds of years. What is the nature of the system that allows for atrocities such as these and countless others? Jacques Depelchin goes to the heart of capitalism and finds a system gone mad.

Capitalism has been so genocidal that it is worthwhile to posit that it cannot do otherwise, despite attempts to humanize it. How it came about, how it has been portrayed (by friends and foes) over the centuries but especially now, reinforces the idea that it cannot be done away with. How and where it has slaughtered in massive and horrific ways should be understood as only the smallest manifestation of its genocidal nature - not just against one group of people, but against all human beings. Could it have been otherwise?

Those who are convinced that capitalism can be humanized shall argue yes. Unfortunately, the data are so skewed in their favor that to argue the opposite is as huge an obstacle as the challenge faced by the slaves who rose up against slavery in Haiti in 1791. If the above question is going to be discussed adequately, capitalism and its history must no longer be treated as if, by definition, it is immune from evil. The hypothesis is that the principles which have sustained it, propagate death. Capitalism kills everything it touches, especially when it claims to do otherwise. It has devised as many ways of killing as there are declared and undeclared worshippers.

Capitalism and how victims of genocides become killers

Self-appointed certifiers of evil can easily be blind to their own actions. For former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the death of half a million children in Iraq as a result of US imposed sanctions was considered "worth" the effort. Yet, why does it seem easier to accept the description of a Hutu machete-wielding genocider as beyond barbarism? It is as if certain epithets and words can only be linked to certain peoples. Yet, victims of genocides can easily become killers; more easily than can be imagined. In its history of always imposing its principles, rules and laws, capitalism shall eventually face the very practices it has attributed to its enemies.

As capitalism inaugurated itself, about 500 years ago, so it has continued to reproduce itself, modernizing its ways and refining how it sells itself. The current occupation of Iraq is a modernized, updated visual illustration of how Amerindians were stripped of their land and how Africans and Asians were yanked from their homes and land by what came to be known initially as The System - meaning slavery and all that grew out of it.

There is a tendency, even among the most critical voices (e.g. Howard Zinn's History of the United States), not to see the connections between what could be described as the inaugural homelessness of the Amerindians and the Africans, Hitler's lebensraum, today's homelessness in the richest countries of the Planet and the same phenomenon in the streets of Fallujah, Palestine and South Africa. At this rate, for how long will humanity be able to call Planet Earth home?

I do not claim to say anything new. Many have said it before, more eloquently, forcefully and inspiringly (e.g. Fredy Perlman, Against His-tory, Against Leviathan; Bertram Gross, Friendly Fascism). The tradition of resisting the system did not just start from 19th century Europe, as it included those who left no writings, but screamed and fought like hell against their kin predators. It has included the survivors of certified and uncertified holocausts. It must include the voices which continue to be silenced because their suffering did not register on the Richter Scale of genocidal certification, and remain stubbornly unacknowledged. Repetition, in different multiple ways, can be helpful in strengthening resistance to capitalism, in its terrorizing and/or user-friendly forms. For example, the well-known genocidal sequences of the twentieth century have been identified (and certified) in ways which, in one stroke, exempt and anonymize the real culprit from closer scrutiny.

Why ‘Never Again’ has always been applied selectively

And, if the famous ‘Never Again’ should really be stood by, it is necessary to look at capitalism with less benevolent, opportunistic eyes simply because the pillars of power today (military, economic, political, juridical, cultural and religious) have been molded by the manner in which capitalism emerged and sees itself as angelic, in triumphal colors. One of the measures (and by no means the only one) of how total the triumph has been, can be seen, most recently, in how the current US administration is forcing the nation-state signatories of environmental and international criminal laws to retreat from signed agreements, whether in Geneva, Kyoto or Rome. But then, this ignoring of international conventions and covenants is not new, as, for example, can be seen today by how the Convention Against Genocide (1948) has been ignored by the signatories.

Globalization as being portrayed today by the G8 has been sold in the same fashion over the last 500 years: through a combination of military conquests, territorial occupation, minimal social and humanitarian programs, corruption, severe and protracted punishment for those who, collectively or individually, do not submit (e.g. Haiti, Cuba, Grenada, Nicaragua, Lumumba, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu Jamal, to only mention a few).

By definition, capitalism carries within it an unrelenting need for total control not just of the market, but of everything, of life and death. There is no other morality or ethics but the triumph of the power principle "might is right". ‘Never Again’ cannot just apply to the WWII Holocaust, but must be linked to the genocidal sequences unleashed by capitalism, otherwise, ‘Never Again’ will never apply (or ever so selectively as has been the practice).

From slavery until today, the system has been regularly updated and modernized. In times of crisis, when its real nature is difficult to hide, capitalism takes on a reformist mantle as it did through the abolition of slavery, or in other transitional phases, such as from colonial rule, or from Apartheid in South Africa.

To those who argue that what we are seeing is no different from how previous empires have come and gone, one can only say that it is the first time in history that humans have mastered the capacity to instantly destroy all life on the Planet. From the end of World War II, or more precisely, since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, efforts have been made to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Those efforts have failed, are failing and shall continue to fail unless the deep, rarely acknowledged causes which led to WW I, WW II, WW III (The so-called Cold War) and WW IV (Worldwide Structural Adjustment Programs which have come full circle to the US via the attempt to do away with social security) and WW V (the current war, without end, against terror) are looked at without complacency. As of now it is possible to argue that nuclear power is to the physics world or to nature as capitalism is to economics: both are untamable.

The submission/integration to capital has now reached an unprecedented level: geographical, political, ideological, legal, cultural and religious. In an analysis of the crisis of political leadership in the DRC, Ernest Wamba dia Wamba (2005) pointed out that the state (as fashioned in Africa by capital, from colonial to post-colonial times) appears as genetically coded to be at the service of capital, regardless of geographical borders. Capital has no allegiance and can be truly described as "sans foi ni loi" (faithless and lawless), rewriting rules and laws as it spreads, facilitating its never ending expansion. All and everything is fodder to its insatiable appetite. Could it ever have been emancipatory as envisaged at one point? What can be answered with certainty is that, from how it has unfolded, humanity must extract some sort of emancipatory breathing space, while avoiding falling into the very same practices of seeking power by any means necessary.

What if evil had always been at the core of capitalism?

The process of definitively extricating ourselves from its shackles will require applying the following principles: resist its further spread through constant and systematic non-violence against all of its manifestations wherever and whenever they are seen and understood. Affirm the mortality of capital by upholding the immortality of the human.

‘Unrealistic’ will say some. When millions of human beings on earth are faced with living off less than 5 dollars a day, the only realistic position ought to strive to change it as urgently as possible; maybe under the form of ‘A Declaration Against Capital as Genocidal’ which could signal the beginning of a truth procedure toward rendering capitalism and its sustaining structures obsolete.

The genocidal nature of capital is hidden from view, in great part, because the rules for identifying a genocide are written in such a way that capital is safely disconnected from responsibility. In that process basic notions like justice lose their universal integrity because the system has become extremely adept at justifying and rationalizing the most unacceptable, the most unjustifiable crimes. The very history of the WW II Holocaust has preferred to focus on the personalization of the culprits while, at the same time, trying very hard to erase or downplay corporate responsibility. But even at the level of corporate responsibility, personalizing evil by actually naming corporations which benefited from the Holocaust is not very helpful from the perspective of determining with as much precision as possible what is responsible for the inability, reluctance and refusal to identify the most intractable source of evil.

It is obvious why capital, its history and all of the structures which have grown out of it should not be considered as the ultimate source of evil in today's world. Most people, even among those who suffer the most from capital's impact world wide, are willing to give capital the benefit of the doubt, if only on account of a list of "positive things" which are associated with capital. Yet, if given a real viable choice, most people would certainly prefer to be able to feed themselves without having to rely on charity.

The convergence and concentration, through and thanks to corporations, of military, economic, financial, political, scientific and religious power in the hands of very few individuals worldwide, is unprecedented. Sometimes it looks as if WW II never really ended, and that the fight for world supremacy was reconfigured for the benefit of the one capable of frightening the rest of the world into submission because its military arsenal had the demonstrated capacity to destroy life on Earth. This capacity is easy to understand when referring to the nuclear armament industry and militarism, but most advocates of peace on earth are not willing to confront the system which, according to them, sustains both the positive and the negative; because the unstated assumption is that capitalism, by definition, cannot be evil, cannot lead to evil behavior. Thus, such evil institutions as The Gulag cannot be associated with the US in any way, as Amnesty International found out upon publishing its latest annual report in which it compares the prison networks maintained by the US to the Soviet Gulag. Entertaining such comparisons, thoughts and hypotheses would undermine the basis upon which the triumphal histories of the so-called most advanced nations have been written.

Global capital vs. US capital to capital vs. all the peoples of the world?

Sometimes the proof that something no longer works takes several failures to be accepted, but what if capital has no way of recognizing failure? Capital can no longer impose itself through wars of conquests, even if some continue to think that owning the biggest military machine in history gives them the right to keep re-conquering the Planet, over and over.

Just recently (June 20-24), Beijing was flexing its muscles in a bid to buy one of the US oil companies, (UNOCAL). As if this was not enough of a sign of the changing times, Mr. Greenspan, Head of the US Federal Reserve Bank, has warned the Bush administration against trying punitive measures against Chinese imports because such a move would not help increase jobs in the US market. However, neither Greenspan's proposed remedy (among other things, specializing in "smart jobs" as once advocated by Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under the first Clinton Administration) will not work because, across the board, from India to China, via Malaysia, Taiwan and South Korea, blue and white collar workers have become smarter and more productive than their US counterparts. Mr. Greenspan's thinking is typical of a believer in the global capitalist system, joining hands with the CEOs of IBM, Intel, financiers, bankers, etc. who look at the Chinese market as the ultimate promised land.

Is it bio-technology (life) or thanato-technology (death)?

The US ruling establishment has convinced itself and a great part of the world that its monopoly of weapons of mass destruction is the safest protection against evil, even though the 500 year build-up to this supremacy demonstrates the opposite. And the situation is getting worse. One of the most important indicators of how much more lethal capital has become, is the privatization of the US Army and the flow of profits to the corporations. This domination of the military industrial and prison complex is complimented by domination in the entertainment/sport/leisure industry (which includes the food industry, the film and advertising industries) whose combined function is to prevent the citizens from thinking, or better to have the illusion of thinking, under the sedation of the entertainment industry. Thinking outside the box is only meant for profit, for increasing consumption, not for solving social issues. Outside of the box is actually within an already prepared larger box. Empowerment within the pyramidal configuration of the existing power structure can not help but reproduce that structure when what is called for is its dissolution in favor of the sphere (as beautifully shown by Ayi Kwei Armah in his last novel KMT: In the House of Life, Per Ankh, 2002) where the emphasis is away from competition and confrontation and toward cooperation and harmony among people and with nature.

The emphasis on competition has been so severe that it has transformed, for example, the meaning of words like healing. As practiced today in the US, the health industry is not about healing, it is much more about how, as the popular phrase goes, to "make a killing" by looking for (and selling) the miracle cure or the miracle medical technical procedure. The market reigns supreme in the collective and individual minds. Its relentlessness so completely blinds those who should be served that it has acquired a life of its own as though nothing can be done to dampen or control its most destructive features. Simple, common sense understanding of the relationship between one's health and what is eaten and drunk as the best and most effective way of maintaining health is losing credibility, thanks to skilful advertising.

Primitive accumulation is no longer about separating the producers from their means of production, but about stripping human beings of their capacity to think. This divisive mechanism has been so refined, so internalized, that individuals are instinctively more concerned about the survival of the system which is killing them rather than about the survival of their bodies.

Which way forward?

A criminal running away from the crime ends up committing more and more horrendous crimes in order to cover up the previous ones, and so it has been and continues with capitalism. Since the crimes have never been acknowledged as such, runaway genocidal sequences continue and are getting worse despite ethics courses being taught in law, business and medical schools, and despite the proliferation of human rights organizations. When the G8 and their formal and informal acolytes vow to fight for Africa and make poverty history it sounded like previous pious vows about abolition. The source of poverty is greed. Capitalism thrives on greed, poverty, violence, warfare and injustice. Why not make capitalism history?

A system which has been genocidal cannot help but seek to reproduce itself through what it perceives as "having worked" even though the price is becoming less and less acceptable. Given the economic, financial and legal system, conviction will never happen and could only happen if people battle for another world on the basis of principles framed by a higher law, a law which is not framed by the dictates of capital, but by the principles of solidarity, cooperation, justice and peace with all peoples of the Planet.

Every year on August 6th and 9th, the Hibakusha (survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), along with nuclear abolitionists and supporters try to remind the world, anxiously, that no one should ever suffer what they went through. Should it not be obvious that the triumphant managers of capitalism and their millions upon millions (generation after generation) of nameless victims are generic Hibakusha, before their time, of a system gone mad.

The anxiety in the voices of the Hibakusha from Hiroshima and Nagasaki comes from wondering what will happen when they die. But one is also encouraged by the inexhaustible fidelity to what is best in humanity, exemplified by Haitians from 1791 to 1804 and through to today (2005), by survivors of the WW II Holocaust battling for Palestinians, by anti-apartheid militants who have refused to cash in on their dues because, as they saw the seamless slide from South African to global apartheid, their conscience called on them to continue in the spirit of those who, in 1791, in Haiti, faced unimaginably worst odds.

* Jacques Depelchin is Executive Director of the Ota Benga Alliance for Peace in the DRC.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Thank you for the piece by Gerald Caplan on solidarity in Genocide. That effort of transcending the differences in partial or total annihilation for the sake of an ideology is to be commended, but the effort falls short. The space is too brief to deal fairly with the reasons for this.

Uniquely unique

One should accept that all genocides are both unique and generic. But, the idea that, historically, morally or ethically, we shall one day devise a sort of Richter Scale for genocidal horror is beyond sadness because it would fall into the very system which was inaugurated with the wiping out of Indigenous people, Amerindians followed by ripping Africans away from their homes in ways which can be imagined as similar to current processes in various parts of the Planet.

Hitler's words quoted by Caplan illustrate something deeper. By then, as far as the System was concerned, who remembered the Native Americans, Africans and African Americans as people? The circumstances were different, but the objective was the same: wipe out any obstacle which dares to stand in the way. The difference between Hitler and Capitalism is that the latter does not have a name even though so many crimes have been perpetrated in its name.

It is easier to scapegoat Hitler than, say, institutions which pass today as standing up for humanity. If fidelity to humanity is going to create an unassailable foundation for Never Again, then it should not fear calling for something like Reconciliation with Truth. Such a process principled by a truth process based on an ethic of truth would be organized at a distance from States or institutions deriving their legitimacy from states. It would be rooted in the kind of preoccupation which is highlighted in Caplan's piece.

Thank you for your work. Congratulations especially for sharing the most recent pieces on Zimbabwe. They make us think, not just react ideologically. Congratulations to the writers and also to those who make Pambazuka News possible.

We must work harder still. We are slowly getting to the proper framework, one which encompasses all the rupture points from 1492. It is not only in Zimbabwe that people are trying to think and practice emancipatory politics. It has been done from as far back as 1492, not only in Africa, but in all the parts of the world which came under conquest in the name of THE system. When the slaves in Haiti said enough is enough, they kept at it from 1791 through 1804, without human rights organizations, with only their conviction that slavery was inhuman. What sustained them is that conviction: fidelity to humanity. Can one revive that connection? Why not? Why should all African peoples stand by and allow the next summit of the francophone take place in Port Au Prince in solidarity with the current regime in place.

Is it possible to stand up and say NO. Is it possible, today, to practice what the slaves did back then: fidelity to humanity. If Africa has been accepted, the cradle of humanity, then, it seems to me, one should do everything one can do to make sure that it does not become part and parcel of turning the Planet into a grave. How? It is a challenge for us all.

From the editorial to the comments on the Darfur piece earlier to the piece on the UN vote on ending the embargo in Cuba, to the essay on the squeeze on land by Robin Palmer, thank you.

All of the essays and comment point in the same direction and lead one to ask one question: why and how do we (i.e. those who side with those without land, work, health, clean air, etc.) manage not to unite?

The bi-centenary of Haiti is passing us by (1804-2004) as if it never happened. In contrast, remember how 1492-1992 and 1789-1989 were celebrated?

President Bush, almost at the same time American and French troops were kidnapping President Aristide, in a speech meant to defend "American Freedom" concluded "there can be no compromise between Freedom and Slavery".

Is it possible to say that our problem can be described as "failure (hesitation, resistance?) of fidelity to the freedom achieved by the slaves who overthrew slavery in Haiti?"

Could that failure be explained by our inability (reluctance, hesitation?) to maintain Atlantic (and Oriental) slavery and the wiping out of Native Americans as Crimes Against Humanity against the dissolving effect, on our collective conscience, of what these crimes gave birth to: capitalism as we know it today, in which everyone is free to torture, maim, kill in order to maintain what is described as the one and only triumphant socio-economic system of all times.

Following the success of the slaves in 1804, the enslavers-capitalists motto has remained the same and can be summarized as follows: "the discovered can never ever discover anything, and if they try, the most severe punishment shall be dispensed". No one has been able to document the terror suffered by those who were kidnapped and shipped across the Atlantic, no one can imagine the terror suffered by those whose land was robbed.

It is easy to see wars in various parts of the Planet as driven by the search to monopolize resources. Has it changed from the time when land and labour were the keys to opening up the Promised Land of capitalism?

Not many media referred to it, but Aristide's crucial faults (from the point of view of the US and the French governments) were not only putting an end to the Army, asking for the French to repay what the Haitian governments paid between 1825 and 1947, more than 20 billion Euros. More serious was the fact that Haiti was resorting to Cuban doctors and teachers to resolve its health and educational problems.

Cuba is seen as one of the trespassers of the above mentioned "No Trespass" sign, and has been punished ever since. (There are other many examples). I agree with Tajudeen that Africans should unite (not just the governments) with the Cubans and all those who, since and before 1804 said no to slavery in any form, degree or shape.

The crisis of landlessness is not recent. It is genetically tied to the early beginnings of capitalism which has multiple roots and not just medieval Europe.

Thank you very much for your editorial (Pambazuka News 151: What choices for South African voters). Your piece shows what politics is all about: a matter of conscience, a matter of thinking. It is not about power. Sounds iconoclastic, but that is the only way to go: dissolve power. Take care.
P.S: I keep mentioning this book: 'John Holloway: Change the World Without Seizing Power' (verso 2002).

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is haltingly stumbling away from the eleventh war since its Independence in June 1960. The question, which is on the mind of all the Congolese people, is whether this peace - finalized in April 2003 - shall hold; whether, this time, the politicians who agreed to work together in the transition government of national unity will really work for the benefit of all the Congolese. Given the way in which the agreement was reached, there are good reasons to be doubtful. Government partners continue to be suspicious of each other. There are still signs that some people are pursuing the war by other means.

It is obvious that in order to understand the nature and depth of the Congolese crisis, it is necessary to deepen both the space and time parameters beyond the usual regional and continental limits. In addition to others, which will be made clear below, the principal reason for expanding the geographical and historical horizon is that globalization as practiced today looks, at the risk of distortion, very much like the modernization of Atlantic Slavery. This is also in response to Edouard Glissant's well known encouragement to "have a prophetic vision of the past" to which we could add "with an ancestral vision of the future". Only such an approach can really help us understand how and why, at so many turns of our collective history, we have not been able to take ourselves seriously and repair the effects and consequences of that Crime Against Humanity, as the UN Conference Against Racism, Discrimination and all forms of Intolerance (Durban, South Africa, August-September 2001) described Atlantic Slavery, the wiping out of Native Americans and other aboriginal populations.

From Atlantic and Oriental Slavery (as globalization was practiced then) to the current destruction observed in the DRC, in Africa, in the USA and many other places on the planet, we can learn more quickly from our specific histories if we approach them from a perspective which reveals the similarities: the search for resources be they slaves, rubber, diamonds, coltan, oil, timber, water or uranium shall always trigger conflicts. Conflicts and wars of conquest will erupt in order to access resources. The resulting violence will end with destruction. Conquering states, colonizing states, pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial, have been the central tools for carrying out these looting processes.

The search and thirst for the Congo's resources is not a recent phenomenon. From the days of Atlantic Slavery, the Kongo Kingdom became one of the prized destinations of slave traders. As a result of the conflicts generated by the search for slaves, the area was devastated by what has been described by historians as Jagga invasions, military expeditions in search of slaves. Kimpa Vita, a heroin resister against the onslaught was burned (like Joan of Arc) for having denounced the Kings' participation in the slave trade (1703), and the help of the Catholic Church.

As a result of the last war (1998-2003), there has been a tendency to downplay previous conflicts, which erupted in the Congo around the question of resources, from rebellions during the Slave Trade era to colonial and post-colonial rebellions.

Looking at the pattern of the history of the Congo, from the time of Atlantic slavery, it is obvious that the wealth (resources) of the country has been intimately connected to conflicts regardless of the historical period (before colonial occupation, during colonial rule or after). The use of violence and military force in order to secure and control access to these resources was crucial. When the country became Independent in 1960, in the thick of the Cold War, the US sought to ensure that the Congo stayed on the side of the West. For this alone, the US and its allies, Belgium (former colonial power), France and the others did all they could to make sure that the Congolese would only follow their dictates. Lumumba, the first and only elected Prime Minister, was overthrown within weeks of assuming power (September 4, 1960).

In order to seriously re-think the reconstruction of the DRC, it is crucial to look at the history of the country through a lens which allows us to see beyond our own borders. If we look at the DRC's Independence in 1960: when Independence began to be discussed by academics like Van Bilsen in 1955, it was envisioned as a process which would take place over a 30 year period. The understanding most Belgians had of colonial rule was a benevolent, paternalist episode in which the Belgian King Leopold II had 'sacrificed' his fortune in order to bring civilization to the Heart of Africa. When Adam Hochschild's book, King Leopold's Ghost came out in 1998 in both English and French, the Belgian historical establishment and the average Belgian were shocked to learn that the truth was drastically different: what had happened could be described as a genocide. Accessing rubber at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th led to massive loss of human life among the Congolese.

The achievement of Independence in 1960 and (insult to injury) Lumumba's speech at the Independence official ceremony, seeking to straighten the record, led to Lumumba and his acolytes being punished to such a degree that others were not encouraged. Not only was Lumumba killed, but his body and that of his companions had to be dissolved in acid. Later on, in Kisangani and in all the areas known to have been favourable to Lumumba, a witch-hunt was launched against all Lumumbists. Similarly, the successful armed struggles against Portuguese colonialism in Guinea Bissau, Mozambique and Angola, in 1975 (around the time of the US defeat in Vietnam) extracted a heavy price in the form of a relentless policy of terrorism and destabilization against the governments in place in those countries, by the apartheid regime, hand in hand with the US. Most countries in Africa, around 1960, the so-called year of Independence, found themselves in a predicament: how to consolidate a victory in a most hostile context, one dominated by a determination on the part of former colonial powers not to accept the former colonies as equal partners.

As pointed out in critiques of development as a failure, scaffolding was put in place to build colonial rule, development and, before, slavery. The end of slavery, and colonial rule meant the removal of the scaffolding, but the building stayed on and served the primary purpose of reinforcing subjugation of one group by another. From Slavery through colonial occupation and Apartheid, the historical end of these oppressive regimes did not mean the end of the system. In fact, quite the opposite happened as has been shown by UN statistics about the deepening of poverty for the poorest people of the planet.

Through these common histories of ours, we have learned that changes can be transformative, politics do not have to be monopolized by politicians or state institutions. Emancipatory politics require that we remain faithful to the subject which has been fighting for the very same objectives we are still fighting today: a world freed from conquering warfare, a world driven by the concern for building sustained peace between people.

* Jacques Depelchin is with the Ota Benga International Alliance for Peace in the Congo.
* This is a summary of a presentation at the Symposium, Futures of Southern Africa, Windhoek, Namibia, Sept 15-17, 2003.