The story of Haiti represents that of the Africa of today: trying to stand up, to reconstruct, to rebuild, she stumbles, hesitates, and sometimes retreats in the face of threats from the watchdogs seeking to liquidate humanity and replace it with a substitute known as humanitarianism.

My sense is that there are texts that one should be able to see (right away) that need wider audience. I think the written by Hirji on Henry Mapolu is one such text…if one is going to agree with what is said by Hirji.

What is crucial, it seems to me, is that people beyond Tanzania, beyond sociologists, beyond academics, must hear/learn about what someone like Henry stood for. One of the things that stands out, among the many things, is how he refused to go for the job of district commissioner. A presidential appointment.

In this day and age very few people know what ‘principled values’ mean. Hirji's obituary of Henry conveys that in a very clear way.

As in other parts of the world, there are signs of revolt of ordinary people against many decades of oppression and dispossession. The dictators leave, but the system which bore them remains.

‘The tragedy that is unfolding in front of our eyes is not just about the excesses of one industry… It is about the continued and deliberate silencing/sidelining of the majority of humanity by a tiny dictatorial fraction that, for centuries and generations has always gotten away, literally with murder,’ writes Jacques Depelchin.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/500/10_500.gifJacques Depelchin outlines the centuries-old exercise of power that has kept Haitians in a state of oppression. What is needed, he argues, is for common sense and humanity to emerge.

Professor Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba’s work in the political reconstruction of Congolese society, characterised by ‘remarkable self-sacrifice and humility’, is worthy of support, writes Jacques Depelchin. Let’s show solidarity for ‘one of the most committed intellectuals for another Africa, for another humanity and for another world’, Depelchin urges, to ensure that Wamba-dia-Wamba is not faced with ‘destitution and isolation’ as a result of his singular path.

‘Our deepest sympathies to the entire Haitian population’, writes Jacques Depelchin, ’and in particular to those who, prior to the earthquake were already suffering too much, simply because they were continuing a struggle started more than two centuries ago.’

Dearest People,
Congratulations a million times, thank you a billion times for your
persistence, patience and the peaceful manner you have won this
particular battle.
One only wishes that victories like these could be rewarded in a way
which does justice to
All of the people involved, but especially the ones
who have been trampled upon
tortured, raped in ways unimaginable
Hopefully your victory will open the eyes
which refuse to see
because they have been blinded by greed
Your victory shall make the poorest of the poorest
all over the world root
for greater victories
until this predatory
system is rooted out
along with the mindset set
on killing humanity
humility
dignity
solidarity

* Jacques Depelchin is a committed intellectual, academic, and activist for peace, democracy, transparency and pro-people politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
* is the South African shackdwellers' movement.

cc Jacques Depelchin is disturbed by

Commenting on the G20 (The Group of Twenty), Jacques Depelchin asks why, when Africans have suffered so much under the ’most predatory system ever invented by humans’, African leaders are helping to prop up that system, rather than encouraging new ways of doing things.

First, not quite, but we have to start somewhere,
There were the Arawaks, the Caribs and the Amerindians
Then their land became known as Hispaniola,
As Saint Domingue, as the economic jewel
Of French overseas possessions
Thanks to Africans kidnapped, chained, shipped
Processed, codified, stamped as property
While always knowing they belonged
To no one but humanity
And through fidelity to humanity
Turned Saint Domingue into Haiti
Fraternity, equality and liberty
Their only motto
Defeating the obscurantist
Philosophers of the Enlightenment
For thirteen years, 1791–1804
Without support
From humanitarian abolitionists
Defeating the most powerful armies of the day
Spain, England, France
Fidelity to humanity
Their only prescription

Plan B was out of the question
Humanity had to prevail
But its sworn enemy had a plan B:
With lethal vengeance
Napoleon reinstated slavery
Take no prisoners, his motto
Severe, if necessary, capital punishment
Against the trespassers of
Nascent capital yet to be named
Capitalism the crusher of humanity

With exemplary brutality
Long before the birth of Gaza-upon-Mediterranean
Haiti was turned into the poorest nation
– Gaza-upon-Atlantic –
For having dared simply
To challenge and obsoletify
The Black Code of Louis XIV
Rules of engagement against/for
Slaves balancing terror, torture, fear, death
Ensuring the endurance of slavery
Beyond the monarchy
Thanks to a self-proclaimed emperor
Napoleon Bonaparte the impostor

Plan B prospered so well beyond
Napoleon’s dreams of restoring slavery
We may all ask, maybe naively
Had he known his treatment of Africans
Would later inspire Hitler’s
Holocausting of the Jews
Would he have seen Africans
As humanity and not as property?

Not every French was/is a fan of slavery’s restorer:
Taubira Law of 2001 declares
Slavery a Crime Against Humanity
Could it be that France might
Be restoring Fidelity to Humanity?

But could it be too late when
Humanity or those who pretentiously
Speak for it refuse to know
The distinction between
Might and right
Right and wrong
Charity and solidarity

Could it be too late when
Survivors and/or their descendants
Of an unthinkable crime think
The best way to stand up for humanity
Is to slaughter/bomb humanity as deliberately
And brutally smart as possible?

Could it be too late when
Slaughtering humanity
Can be done with impunity
Thanks to a genocided past
As if anything can be traded, erased,
Commodified, genetically modified
To fit a globalised paradise
Where no one will know
The difference between
Gaza-upon-Atlantic
Haiti-upon-Mediterranean
Except for those who vowed
Fidelity to humanity

Can’t we see the obvious consequences of
Relentlessly violating humanity
Now Palestinians, then Africans centuries ago
Today displaced, refugees, best fodder
For humanitarian missions
The modernized version of abolitionists
On a mission which has not changed:
Violate humanity,
Eradicate it if too vocal
But Sabra, Shatila can still be heard

Palestinians are full members of humanity
Homelessed in their homeland, denied existence
By all means, constantly searching
For the ultimate way
Of getting rid of them
Their annihilation will not be called
A Crime Against Humanity because,
By definition, it has been repeated forever,
It only happens at Auschwitz, and other
Concentration camps in a World War

Palestinians are like Native Americans
Whose land was taken, whose genocide
Refuses to be called a genocide
Palestinians, Africans interchangeable destinies
Torn from their land, thrown into ships,
Refugeed in strips of land
Enslaved, imprisoned, less than property
Therefore not fit to come under
A Crime Against Humanity

Palestinians, Africans, in the same boat
When the unending story of negating humanity started
Like Africans they are being processed and branded
Fit to be fodder for humanitarian crisis because what is being done
Must not be called
A Crime Against Humanity

For fear of trespassing which taboo?

No one dares to call the slaughter of civilians
In Gaza by its proper name
A Crime Against Humanity

For fear of trespassing which taboo?

From the times of the Arawaks
Violating, torturing, liquidating
Humanity with impunity
Has led to greater and greater
Crimes against humanity
Franchised differently
Preparing the biggest holocaust
Humanity has ever known and,
When that unfolds, as before,
We shall hear the usual
Shameful lame lie
‘We did not know’.

* Jacques Depelchin is a CAPES fellow at the Universidade Federal da Bahia.
* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

In an article exploring the history of socio-economic inequality, Jacques Depelchin calls for an interpretation of the current food crisis over the historical longue durée. As a direct consequence of an entrenched, centuries-old capitalist system, the author argues, the market as a ‘modernising’ force has consistently enriched the lives of a few while impoverishing a poor majority. Understanding the food crisis, Depelchin contends, rests first and foremost on re-considering humanity’s relationship to nature and championing historical narratives true to the voices and experiences of the global poorest of the poor.

With the DR Congo crisis presenting a complex mosaic of conflict, war, violence, rivalries, alliances, and competing interests, Jacques Depelchin reviews the background behind the country’s ongoing troubles and explores broader areas of responsibility. As the DRC seemingly destructs and self-destructs, the author asks whether people’s willingness to continue consuming mineral resources extracted from the country should more properly be situated in a tradition of Western peoples’ enjoying comforts at the expense of African populations dating at least as far back as the triangular Atlantic trade and subsequent colonial period. A fuller, more comprehensive understanding of the DRC’s history and Western history at large would reveal, Depelchin contends, an established practice of ‘doing away’ with figures deemed threatening to those in power, a practice of marginalisation that will ultimately have to be effectively tackled if future crimes against humanity are to be averted.

As he salutes the ground covered in Pambazuka’s first 400 issues, Jacques Depelchin argues the publication should continue its work as a tool for emancipatory politics in the next 400 and beyond. Drawing in particular on the example of Haiti, Depelchin stresses that new emancipatory politics are being generated all the time, but their potential must be actively harnessed if governmental indifference and hostility is not to overcome the promise of healing histories.

I have followed your righteous outrage against the violence being perpetrated against women - see in Pambazuka News. I almost reacted the first time around. It was after the news on what happened to the women of Panzi.

I entirely agree with your outrage. However for this outrage to become effective, there are a few things which need to be addressed by trying to step beyond the usual frames of prevailing historical narratives. I cannot address all of them here. At one point you ask where did we go wrong? Your focus in the reply to that question is on the UN and its institutions. And then you add, again quite rightly, that for things to change, the UN and all of its institutions must take sexual violence more seriously.

My sense is that one keeps interrogating history only up to a point, especially, but not only, when it comes to African history and the histories of women and children. The violence suffered by women has NEVER been taken seriously, by this I mean in a way which could/should have led to a complete and total change of the dominant mindset. The currently dominant mindset says simply that the best way to run an economy (i.e. the world) is through competition, if necessary, to death. The dominant mindset has taken centuries to build. The violence against women and children has been going on with impunity for even a longer period in the history of Humanity, but it is in the last few centuries with the canonization/nobelization of capitalism that the violence against the weakest has been accepted as more or less ok. It is easy to speak of crimes against humanity. So easy, in fact, that the boundary such words are supposed to elicit no longer seems to be taken seriously. Why are certain crimes easily accepted as crimes against humanity and others , e.g. the violence against women (and children) not so easily accepted? Aren't women and children part of humanity?

Could it be that, historically speaking, when a particular trespassing against a segment of humanity takes place with impunity, then, through that trespassing a license is given to carry on. Punishment if, and when it happens, will then take place selectively. And so, so to speak, from trespassing to trespassing, one has arrived at this juncture. It has been a long process. There is not one particular point at which things did go wrong.

AFTER WWII, the UN was constructed to prevent self-destruction of the most advanced countries/economies, by extension, through a charitable approach, other problems were dealt with. Again, in a selective manner, depending on power relations. To this day, the UN deals with women, children and the so-called developing economies in a manner dominated by the mindset of charity. What I read in your outrage is a call for a change of mindsets: the one which led to globalization (a variant of globall apartheid) based on competition to death, occasionally relieved by charitable gestures.

The currently dominant economic system (a crucial part of the mindset) was born out of a twin genocide. Those who most suffered from it and their descendants have been kept at where they were left. Given the absence of impunity, the system has carried on, reproducing itself in the manner it has modernized/refined itself. It has done so through violence and seduction and all the means in between.

What I got from Eve Ensler's movie and the words of Dr. Denis Mukwege is that the violence is not taken seriously because no effort has been done to really tell what happens to a person who survives after having been destroyed at his/her most sensitive, his/her most vulnerable point, physically and psychically. To survive from such an onslaught is not the same as living. Especially through a continuing dominant charitable mindset. A person who has gone through such horrendous terror cannot find the words to relate what has occurred. Among them some manage to heal thanks to people who, like Dr. Denis Mukwege and others we never hear about, think and live a life based on solidarity.

Capitalism and solidarity are antagonic mindsets. Capitalism loves charity. Capitalism does accept the UN as long as it can function as a sort of charitable organization on a world scale. What would be the point of healing from capitalism if, at the same time, there is a visceral refusal (individual and collective) to heal from the violence inflicted on women/children? The responsibility to transform the mindset belongs to all human beings. One would hope that those who have leadership positions would work the hardest at changing the mindset which thinks that the violence against women/children is an acceptable collateral damage. In these long histories of Africa and Africans, we have been convinced that the dominant mindset is the best one to follow and adapt to. One day, not too long, there shall be a leadership which will determine that any form of violence against the weakest members of society, women, children, the sick, the poor, etc. shall not be tolerated, at all. For far too long what has been described as collateral damage is actually the destruction of what is substantial to humanity.

It would be good if Pbn ran a regular discussion on how this could be carried out. I do not believe the leadership will come from institutions like the UN. Thank you Stephen for pushing.

Jacques Depelchin reflects on the ties that bind Haiti to South Africa and asks: "In a country where the lethal combination of racism and competition has left a legacy of gross injustice, is it too late to suggest that those who were trampled upon should be listened to with the greatest care possible?"

This is a brief report from a visit to Durban, specifically to see for oneself places like Kennedy Road, Motala Heights, to meet with people like S'bu Zikode and Shamita Naidoo whose words continue to impact us in a way which is still generating new thinking. We were on our way to meet people who can be described as the staunchest defenders of the poor, and, by extension, of humanity.

Driving with Pauline from Maputo to Durban reminded her of her native lands in the Caribbean: sugar plantations after sugar plantations. However, for her, that was the 50s. Now, this was 2008, in the Province of Kwazulu-Natal, where Jacob Zuma, the newly elected President of the ANC, comes from. For those who do not know, it is worth remembering, in the name of always connecting the dots, that President Jean Bertrand Aristide presented a thesis in linguistics at the University of South Africa (Unisa) comparing Isizulu and Creol. I am still reading the thesis which can be found on line and downloaded. It was presented in November 2006. I hope and pray that President JBA does get invited/encouraged to visit the place from where so many Haitians originally have came: DRC. We could then look forward to another comparative thesis on Kikongo and Creol and another step in the process of reconnecting those who should never ever been separated from each other

Thanks to Richard Pithouse we were able to meet a few among those who constitute the heart of Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM), including Shamita Naidoo at Motala Heights and S'bu Zikode at Kennedy Road. Besides wanting to see the faces behind the names we had heard about, we wanted to understand how people like S'bu Zikode and his companions had attracted such wrath from Durban City officialdom in general, and from the Superintendent of Police Nayager, in particular. We wanted to understand how in the country where Apartheid was defeated, some of its practices are still alive and well.

Here were people who, living among the poorest of the poor, standing up and insisting on being treated with respect and dignity, as called for by the South African Constitution, but who, strangely, were being charged, beaten up and arrested by the police as though they were criminals. How could a police force, under the political leadership of the ANC, behave in a way that is reminiscent of the apartheid police?

This question could be formulated differently, and maybe, more generically, in a region and in a world where such drastic turns are no longer the exception: How do good people or, more precisely, people who could have become heroes/heroines of Goodness/Love took a wrong turn somewhere. Some may not like the jump, but visiting places like AbM could help understand how a Mugabe, in Zimbabwe, became what he is today, i.e. turning against his own people. Is it that easy to loose one's moral compass?

In a world where governments are stating their objectives of wiping all forms and degrees of poverty from extreme to mild, from endemic to periodic, one might be forgiven to think that the poor themselves would be the most important allies in such a project. Unfortunately, not so when one listens to AbM. Instead what one hears and what one sees leads one to a frightening conclusion. That is: how something akin to ethnic cleansing emerges, against defenceless people. The average person might balk at such an assertion. After all, cleansing has been more easily associated with genocidal behaviour against another ethnic group. Some might find it offensive and out of line to suggest that an ANC government could be accused of ethnic cleansing against the poorest of its citizens. Is it not better to think of a most outrageous hypothesis so that those who are currently responsible for its probable outcome might pause, pull back and change course?

What would it take to stop the violence against the poorest of the poor (pop)?

One of the possible explanations for the extreme hatred shown by Superintendent of Police Nayager, can easily be understood once one understands the context of the soon to be held in South Africa Soccer World Cup: in 2010. FIFA may not have stipulated that all efforts must be exerted to keep all and any signs of extreme poverty out of sight but the message comes through and RSA is doing everything to hide the offending communities away. It is not difficult to understand the reasoning behind this: people who come to be entertained by the Soccer extravaganza must not be allowed to be disturbed by the sight of shacks. Such a sight could lead some of the visiting entertainees, not to speak of the performers themselves, to ask themselves about the appropriateness of spending such huge amounts of money when significant segments of the local citizenry does not have access to adequate housing and amenities, such as water and electricity.

2010 being just around the corner, South African officialdom, at least some of them, are implementing the most radical option in keeping poverty/poor out of sight: removing the poor from the landscapes which could be in the visitors' line of vision. In the process, these poverty/ethnic cleansers have affirmed, in various and modulated ways, that the poor are not worth listening to, that their voices do not count.

In a country where the lethal combination of racism and competition has left a legacy of gross injustice, is it too late to suggest that those who were trampled upon should be listened to with the greatest care possible? Is it too late to suggest that while the TRC was a step in the right direction, it was bound to fall too short of the task at hand? Is it too late to suggest that those who understand their profession as that of repressing, oppressing and beating up, should be retrained to listen, attentively, and, wherever possible, with compassion to the poor? Surely it is not too late to suggest that as long as the poor are not free from the consequences of apartheid, no one is free. In parenthesis, that is why on Freedom Day, they, at Kennedy Road, marched to remind the South African Nation that, for them, this was Unfreedom Day.

It will be a while before I digest all of the words from S'bu Zikode and his companions, but there is a phrase I shall never forget: "We do not want money". This is the crux of the matter. In a world driven by the profit motive, competition, greed, selfishness, S'bu reminded those who would listen that they are not interested in what the self appointed discoverers of poverty would like to eliminate via charitable gestures. They want to be treated with respect, justice and dignity. In those cases where the law is broken, e.g. trying to get food, water and/or electricity, they are saying to the government "look at our situation. It is an unacceptable one to any self-respecting human being". Is such a demand so outrageous that it has to be met with the unleashing of extreme violence? Is such a demand so unreasonable that it cannot even be listened to?

When so much still remained to be said we asked S'bu Zikode "what is the way out?" "Healing", he said. Needless to say, given Ota Benga's motto –for peace healing and dignity—a very long exchange followed. In a post Apartheid South Africa, in a South Africa where the TRC had raised such expectations and led to such disappointments, is it too late to listen to those who articulate the spirit of reconciliation with the conviction of a Mandela or a Tutu? People like Nayager, Sutcliffe, Govender and many others who share their understanding – misunderstanding, really—of the poor, surely are in deep need of healing because in their minds the poor are not worth anything.

Is it too late, in the name of humanity, to slow down the race to join in globalization, the race to be part of the first world, with the collateral damage of maiming, torturing, killing those who are not strong enough to keep pace? It is our hope that the voices of S'bu, Shamita, and their growing supporters, such as Bishop Rubin Philipp, will re-energize, re-awaken the flagging spirits of those who had a different vision of Post Apartheid South Africa, one which was more in line with the prescriptions being enunciated with such clarity from the favelas of South Africa and many other parts of the world. Those voices are refusing to accept the transition which has taken South Africans, poor and rich, from the end of apartheid in South Africa to Global apartheid.

Seeing the citizens of Kennedy Road, of Motala Heights reminded us of their brothers and sisters in Haiti, in Brasil, India, and cities all over the world whose only prescription is to be listened to with respect, and justice as human beings. As they keep repeating over and over: they do not want charity, they want solidarity. They do not want to be treated as a humanitarian issue, they want to be treated as human beings. To them we say thank you for being strong, thank you for reminding us of our common humanity, thank you for your courage and serenity.

* Jacques Depelchin works with the Ota Benga Alliance for Peace Healing and Dignity. He is currently visiting Professor at the Centre for Afro-Oriental Studies at the Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil

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

I entirely agree with Firoze [China still a small player in Africa, I would add, however, that one of biggest problems that Africa has been suffering from is a type of leadership which has generally been focused on how to get richer as selfishly as possible, turning the exercise of leader into one comparable to a feudal CEO (e.g. Mobutu).  When a leader like Jean Bertrand Aristide appeared on the scene, determined to change the equation imposed by the West, and follow up on what was squashed after 1804, the West finds a way to remove/kill him (Kimpa Vita, Kimbangu, Lumumba (DRC), Moumié (Cameroon), Sankara (Burkina Fasso), Muhtar Mohamed (Nigeria), to only mention a few.  

Firoze, quite rightly points out that both China and the West are engaged in maintaining the same system (e.g. working hard to increase the rate of profit).  What he does not mention and a topic which is creating a great deal of tension in some countries is China's practice of insisting to use its own workers.  Most African countries  suffer from extremely high unemployment rates.  If I were a skilled or unskilled worker in any of these countries, I would not like the practice, at all.  But, even here, the practice of the West is not much better, especially if one looks at skilled labor.  China itself is suffering from growing rates of unemployment as the gap between rich and poor in China gets deeper. 

Will the emergence of China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, etc. trigger the badly needed awakening within the African leadership?  Issues like access to food, education and health for all have become a world problem in a way that it will become increasingly difficult if not impossible to resolve within the dominant mentality of capitalism whether Chinese or Western. 

Firoze's piece is very much welcome, but I also think that, given the situation in which humanity finds itself, important to pay attention to ideas coming from thinkers like Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, Lewis Ricardo Gordon, Alain Badiou, who have been thinking about emancipatory politics  beyond and away from capitalism and its accessory institutions.

Jacques Depelchin reflects on the growing economic, political and cultural relationship between Brazil and the Africa and urges for a solidarity from below that is cognizant of black revolutionary history.

Almost everyone knows about Brazilian football, especially Pelé; but, it is a fair bet that a very tiny percentage of the same people will know about one of the foremost intellectuals of Brazil in the 20th century: Milton Santos (MS), winner in 1994 of the Vautrin Lud prize given to the most outstanding geographer (sometimes known as the nobel prize for geography). Others have described him as the Noam Chomsky of Brazil. One could go on with the accolades. Thanks to a recent documentary (directed by Silvio Tendler) on and around his ideas, MS’ reputation (1925-2001) is likely to gain greater recognition among Brazilians as they begin to realize how far ahead his visionary understanding of humanity’s plight and challenges was.

This is not an essay on MS, it is an encouragement to those who already know him or of him and those who do not, to get to know him better. It is also an appeal to those who have the wherewithal to contact the film maker and make it available in other languages, including Kiswahili since he did teach in the geography department of the University of Dar es Salaam in the mid-seventies.

The main reason for this essay is to reflect on the growing convergence (economic, political and cultural) between Brazil and the Africa which is not delimited by its geographical borders. To paraphrase MS’ view: surely, another kind of globalization is not only possible, but a must if humanity is going to be born [1]. Inexorably, it will be thought and led by the poor, or the Wretched of the Earth, as Franz Fanon long ago, saw it coming. Will African intellectuality join them or prefer to carry on their mimicking of the West?

1. Mimicking or thinking? 1804 or 184?

In one of his interviews (and in the documentary), MS lamented the fact that most Brazilian intellectuals were more interested in copying what is happening in Europe or in the USA, rather than thinking from where they are, where they have come from and where they would like to go. Calling it intellectual laziness, he pointed out that it is easier for people to consume than to produce. Obviously, he is not the first to have said so [2], the question however, for all thinking Africans, as we enter the era of 50th anniversaries of Independence, is what happened after Independence? Is it something one could reasonably describe as an event? One which could or should have mobilized fidelity to what it meant? Were they events on the same scale as other previous emancipatory events , e.g.Quilombo de Palmares in Brazil(1597-1695), Haiti (1791-1804), and so many other unknown feats of resistance. Which kind of subject emerged out of such a collective birthing event? Did Independences rupture the colonizing enterprise, like truths puncture lies? Did there emerge an emancipated subject in our individual and collective consciousness? Which kind of consciousness prevailed in our countries, 50 years after Independence? We can point to heroes and heroines who did all they could to maintain fidelity to the emancipated subject which emerged out of that event. Each reader can fill in the dots.

In Haiti today, 184 is the number of people and institutions who signed a petition against President Aristide, denouncing him in a manner reminiscent of the Congolese who colluded with external forces to eliminate Patrice Lumumba, back in 1960/1. Could 184 coincidentally be an apt metaphor of what came to be of 1804 [3]? The shrinking and squeezing of freedom, equality and fraternity to the point of a group of 184 whishing it never happened? Could it be said that the same process has occurred in many African countries, namely that of reducing Independence not to an event, but to a transition used and abused by a small group to enrich themselves while the largest part of the population remained poor or got poorer? Shouldn’t what happens to every single Haitian today, because of that transition from 1804 to 184, be of concern to all thinking human beings?

On December 12, 2007 it will be 4 months since the disappearance of Pierre Antoine Lovinsky [4]. Kidnapping (or rendition?) might be a more appropriate word. How many (among those who knew of it) have done even a symbolic gesture calling on his kidnappers to let him free? Kidnapping used to be one of the ways people were ripped from the continent and dragged to the forts and slave ships. Wherever he is, Lovinsky could be asking himself why there has not been greater efforts to get him back from where he is. He must wonder, like many others, why the Brazilian government, headed by a president who visited Gorée and, more or less [5], apologized for slavery, does not go out of its way to go and find Lovinsky. Or, as some have speculated, is it part of the agenda of the UN mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) to silence, completely, all those who have vowed to continue calling for the return of President Aristide to Haiti?

It is impossible to think of Africa 50 years ago without, at the same time, thinking about its history from 500 years ago, because it is only by looking over the entire period that one can only begin to guess at the magnitude of the crime which has been committed with unimaginable, relentless impunity. If the Brazilian government, through its President, really meant to apologize for slavery, should it not be seen thinking and acting in a manner which is aimed at restoring the Haiti of 1804 rather than allying itself with the 184?

2. Brazil-Africa: South-South or South-North-South?

As more and more thinking Africans clamor for greater and greater South-South cooperation, it is encouraging to observe how the Brazilian government is willing to tread where its ruling clique would not like to go. The ruling clique is only interested in so-called Real Politik, and not at building a Planetary future through healing emancipatory processes. Even if, as everyone can see from the climatic changes, such a course is the only viable one. The ruling clique is more interested in fitting in the world as it is, rather than trying to build a different world, in which solidarity with Africa (and Asia) would loom large. But the world as it is, as seen from G8 Meetings and places like Davos is not interested in solidarity with Africa [6]; Africa and all of the poor of the world –they tell us in their own way-- shall be rescued by charity [7]. The charitable option is the most logical given that even the G8 and Davos have lost their grip on world decision making processes as these have been eroded by the weight and impact of financial decision centers via “the markets”. Described as self regulatory, these financial monsters are beginning to show growing signs of being out of control. How could it be otherwise given that the few regulatory leashes in place have been removed…so that these financial monsters could –so the logic went—even better self-regulate themselves [8].

The pressure for greater solidarity with Africa, in Brazil, comes from its African ancestry population and its allies (indigenous, landless, working, jobless people). Even the ruling clique cannot completely ignore the fact that more and more people in Brazil are clamoring for greater justice, and so, on occasion, it has to be seen as responding to these demands. As an emerging country, Brazil wants to have a permanent seat at the UN Security Council. This is one of the objectives which has driven President Lula’s foreign visits, including the visits to Africa, including his recent stop in Burkina Faso, on October 15.

As readers of Pambazuka News know very well, October 15 2007 was the 20th anniversary of Thomas Sankara’s assassination (along with 12 of his comrades). One can only presume that the ruling clique decided that one additional vote for the quest of a permanent seat at the UN Security Council, should be achieved by any means necessary, and, therefore, accepted the Burkina Be invitation to “celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Burkina Be revolution”. In the eyes of Sankara’s foes such an accolade from Brazil would help bury Sankara one more time. Or for good!

However, this cynical collusion to treat African history like a serviceable walking mat does help illustrate the longer process of how the splitting apart of humanity has been carried out by the very ones who apologize in one venue and do the exact opposite in another. Most academics are likely to condemn these colluders. And yet, again, should one not ask the same question raised with regard to the 184 in Haiti? However inconvenient it might sound, is it not the case that, overall, 50 years since Independence, African people have been betrayed by those who were supposed to be thinkers and who, on paper at least, always like to be seen and heard as being on their side? Independence as a truth, as an event, has been treated like a mere happening, one which did not seize intellectuals to change their world view of the past, the present and the future. Yes, however uncomfortable it might make one, each one of us should be able to ask: did I do all that could/should have been done, and more, to turn that emancipatory event into a real transformation of the colonial situation? If one thinks one did, then the result should tell one that it was far from enough.

Now and then the daily routine of the last 50 years has been ruptured by someone like Thomas Sankara who did try to live in fidelity of that Independence as an Event. As MS might have said, Sankara’s courage was to think. Thinking, in a context dominated by mimicking, submission, keeping quiet, is the most courageous act, suggested MS. Pushing further: are intellectuals in Africa, of Africa, from Africa, thinking? Over the past 50 years, have we become, more or less, like the 184 of Haiti? Faced with either catechizing or thinking, which way has been the easier road to follow? What happens when a so-called “discovered” (e.g. Lumumba, Aristide) “discovers” something the “discoverer” does not want discovered? Ever since 1804, that question has been answered unilaterally in only one way, over and over, almost like a silent but persistent internal prescription: Shrink that 1804 to 184, from the outside and from within.

3. Lumumba (1960) Sankara (1987) Aristide (2004)

Certainly none of these three would have passed the catechist exam for mimicry. In the world of African spirits, one could imagine Sankara’s spirits, from wherever they are circulating, letting us know how they understand the difference between mimicking and thinking, between a revolution and its fake. Listening attentively, one might be able to hear the following from Sankara’s spirits:

“Why and how is it, that starting with resistance to dehumanizing practices, structures, mentalities, from the beginning of humanity, but especially since our Independence, our leaders (not just in Burkina Faso) have colluded with their worst enemies to liquidate those who were trying to change course? More importantly, why not have an open dialogue so that our own voices could be heard, against those whose version of events is patently self-serving?

Right after they got rid of my comrades and I, they began to say that they were the real revolutionaries. I would not have minded if, indeed, they went on pursuing (reaching new heights) what we had started together, but, instead they started describing the revolution from the moment of my liquidation, as they went on liquidating many of the projects we had initiated. Those we had planned were archived never to be heard of again. As singers have sung before why is it that we get rid so easily of those who struggle with the poorest of the poor, and in their place put the defenders of the richest of the rich?”

And Sankara’s spirits continue: “ From where I am, it is easy to meet with fellow victims of liquidation, including those who faced their fate after liquidating countless of their own people themselves. One with a very long name from somewhere at the centre of our continent told me, crying like a child that he wished he could be back and bring back to life the leader whose punishment was so severe that they dissolved his body in an acid bath. These liquidizers or liquidationists, after coming here, were confronted with the real history of our continent, one which, given what happened, is impossible to measure even by the standards imposed by those who claim no one has ever suffered more than themselves. These spirits are in such pain for what they did that it is difficult not to sympathize with them. Here is what one of them said (there is no point naming names, but he is one of the main characters in Ahmadou Kourouma’s Waiting for the Vote of the Animals): I knew our situation was bad, but first I really believed the stories of the experts on development who kept repeating that sooner or later tickling (sic) down would get everybody laughing all the way to the bank (just like it happened to me), but then it kept getting worse, and it is only after coming down here under ground that I could see (literally from below) how bad the suffering has been. I had seen some of it above ground, but from down here, I could not imagine how extreme the level of suffering has been. It is only now --continued this crying spirit-- that I understood how terribly, and horribly wrong I was. Somehow I bought into the notion that our suffering is lightweight, so trivial, not worth talking about, let alone, complaining. No one, not even some of our best griots, has been able to convey, in words what really happened, the terror, the fear that was inflicted through those wars of hunting for slaves. Those who escaped the brutal fate, either by luck or choice (becoming part of the hunters, in exchange of a few cowries, alcohol, cloth and/or guns), and their descendants, did their best to ensure that their own role did not get to be known. In short, what we are witnessing today, is a repeat of what has happened before: it is not the first time that our kin has colluded in and with self-liquidation.”

Again in the world of the African spirits, one would hear the spirits of Zumbi (the hero of the Quilombo de Palmares) and the spirits of Sankara meeting and commenting on the systematic downsizing, downgrading of the history of the continent, leading the 184 from Haiti and from other places to the point where downgrading would coincide with denigration and, finally, simply denial. Zumbi would say to Sankara: “You know, my spirits tried to talk to Lula about that choice and making him see that doing that visit on that day would be the equivalent of laughing at our own 20th of November which has been chosen by the African brothers and sisters to commemorate when I was killed on November 20th, 1695 [9]. But there was so much interference, there was no way he could have heard me. Of course, part of the problem is that he is trying to satisfy everybody.”

Not long ago, France, under Chirac passed a law calling slavery a crime against humanity, but in a world where the nation-state has become one more instrument of the financial oligarchy, the mind set which emerged out of slavery has been reinforced rather than weakened. Every time it looked like one was about to correct the history of the continent, one goes the other way, as if the ruling principle is to keep laundering it until it becomes unrecognizable. With forces trying to negate what happened and others deforming it beyond recognition, is it surprising that 50th anniversaries or any attempt to recognize a truth, an event is turned into its opposite, like the ruling clique of Burkina Faso celebrating the assassination of Thomas Sankara as the birth of something they call a revolution.

Undoubtedly, some readers will take issue with the raising of these discomforting questions. Others might even condemn it as a disguised way of celebrating afro-pessimism or useless self-flagellation. The vast majority of Africans will not even be able to access these words, and yet, it is this vast majority which has been robbed of what could have happened, had there been more thinking than mimicking within African intellectuality.

To carry on as the African brothers and sisters (by now ancestors) did in Haiti, from 1791 through 1804, without any help from outside, without human rights organizations cheering on the sides, took a kind of courage which is difficult to imagine today. Yet, one must nurture the courage to say, as MS did in the documentary, that there has been no humanity, so far; only now is it being built, little by little. Universalism has always been preached as coming from the Enlightenment. To which MS replicated: “we, Brazilians, are not universal because we fail to be thoroughly (sufficiently) Brazilians”. The same could be said of Africans. The failure has been one of not keeping at it: trying and trying to be sufficiently (i.e. more and more) Africans.

4. Brazil and the 10.639/2003 Law

In a context dominated by hesitations and vacillations, those who have most benefited from the systematic laundering of African wealth/history would like to keep on laundering it after each new phase, even if it means reducing the entire Planet to an unlivable place for all of its inhabitants. Those who have been cowered into submission still know that they were right to resist, but are running out of the courage of 1804. They do see the 184 waving at them to join their side, which, from the distant, does look like paradise on earth. Among them a half-despairing Congolese mutters: “do not get fooled”. “Back home”, he continued, “we had someone who also built a so-called paradise in the equatorial forest at a place called Gbadolite. Nature has returned. He and his paradisiacal Zaïre are gone.”

On the other hand, thanks to the work of people battling to carry on the spirits of Zumbi in Brazil, a law was passed in 2003, calling for the teaching of Africa and people of African ancestry in elementary and secondary schools (NB pre-primary and tertiary/higher levels are not mentioned). As its passing, the implementation will depend on keeping alive the spirits of Zumbi, Sankara and so many other known and unknown truth discoverers. In and of itself the law will not change the mindset, but it is arguable that the mindset will change faster, provided that on the African side there is the courage to respond to this law –10.639/2003. There is no point spelling out the possible multiplicity of responses because each individual, each collective can generate emancipatory thoughts/responses aimed at transforming the current situation for the better for everyone[10].

More than laws will be needed. No thoughts will be too small, no thoughts will be too big once total and complete emancipation from the remaining shackles of 1804 are turned into the single minded objective for humanity wherever people of African descent live, which is everywhere on the Planet.

* Jacques Depelchin works with the Ota Benga Alliance for Peace Healing and Dignity. He is currently visiting Professor at the Centre for Afro-Oriental Studies at the Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil

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

I do want to commend Henning for his piece on Namibia and what is being lost in the process of clamping down on those who are seeking to heal the wounds of a liberation process which has maimed, tortured and killed some of the best among Africans.

Thank you Henning for pointing out what more could be lost if we do not raise the same voices which led to removing the shackles of apartheid. As I see it, the way truth and reconciliation processes have been dealt with, especially from the South African example, have left a lot to be desired. I am not interested in going through a step by step analysis of what was wrong. One could go for a long time. For those who are interested in seeing how a novelist has offered his view on how to go about healing, I recommend Ayi Kwei Armah's Healers which came out in 1978 as a disguised response to Chinua Achebe's things Fall Apart.

Armah's Healers, I am sure, will have its detractors, but it shows that the only way to heal from any wound, however deep is to go back to the most positive values of our societies, unflinchingly and without fear. Unfortunately, fear is one of the emotions most easily used and abused by those who want to insist on only one truth, their own.

Yet, healing, the desire to heal, like love, is one of the most universal emotions. Leaders who would lead their people toward reconciliation and healing would bring out all the burried truths which, like all truths, sooner or later, shall come out anyway. Such leaders should let go of their own fears or shame. Fears of being accused of being weak, shame of knowing specific cases of people who should never ever been tortured, maimed or killed.

To heal is probably one of the most difficult things to do because, given the dominant mindset, it is perceived as a sign of weakness to accept that something wrong has been done to oneself or to others. The dominant mindset stresses power through relentless violence. The enslavers and then the colonizers used to remind themselves that the only thing Africans understood was violence and brutal force. The more brutal the better. The dominant mindset can be seen at work in the Middle East, in Darfur, in Irak. It is highly contagious, especially among those who end up exercising state power. I remember reading about someone who had been in Robben Island (No it was not Mandela) and who had written a piece in a philosophy journal. His main point was that thefight against apartheid was a double fight: one to free the whites from themselves and then to free the blacks from the yoke of apartheid.

The equation has not changed: one has to continue fighting to free those who are in power to free themselves from how they have come to define power in the very same way as the previous holders. Real, deep, lasting healing can only happen as far away from the shackles of state power. If state or parastatal rationale is brought to bear it will derail any serious attempt to heal. Healing can only happen if all sides let go of habits and difinitions which are antagonistic to healing.

Can one heal without the help of state power? Indeed, the only way to heal is without the help of state power.

I shall stop here because it is my sense that Henning has touched upon one of the rawest wounds not just left over from colonial rule, but from way way back, from many layers. In that spirit, would it be wrong to suggest to the scandinavian countries which decided to pull away from Namibia that there are other possibilities (and, who knows, maybe they are doing it), such as encouraging European nations, the Vatican, the US, Arab nations which benefited from Atlantic and Oriental slavery to acknowledge what happened as a crime against humanity. The size of which is difficult to measure, except by going through a healing process where the primary concern is to heal from the mindset which developed out of the consequences (the benefits) of the crime. If it is started as a genuine process, then it could lead to real, deep and long lasting healing. Not just for Africans, not just for the victims, but for all humanity.

Thank you again Henning.

Dear Mr Nayager,

Forgive me for taking your time, but I felt that, given what I have heard about you and what is going on there, I had to do everything possible to reach you in a way that, maybe, just maybe, no one has been able to do.