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- Page 2

  • Can a woman become President in Africa?

    Virunga Mountains

    joram jojo:

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    Esther Kamatari, a former catwalk model who has lived most of her adult life in Paris, claims that the menacing letters and telephone calls started to arrive after she won support in Burundi, where ethnic violence has killed more than 300,000 people over the past decade.

    The Hutus make up at least 85 percent of the eight million Burundians while the Tutsi, who have dominated leadership since independence from Belgium in 1962, represent 10 percent and the Twa, mostly hunter-gatherers, account for 5 percent. The Twa claim to have been marginalized by both parties.
    Miss Kamatari, 53, who fled Burundi in 1970 after the assassination of her father, the brother of the then King Mwambutsa IV, says she will not be intimidated.

    "I'm not afraid for myself," said Miss Kamatari, who became Europe's first black "supermodel" after fleeing Burundi. "I have suffered menaces and death threats before.
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    "I have lived through the murder of my father, who was the same age as I am now when he died, and the killing of members of my family. Why should I be afraid when so many people in Burundi have died? Anyway, I believe that when your time is up, your time is up."The threats, however, beg the question of why this glamorous woman wishes to relinquish her comfortable life in France for a potentially fatal political career in one of central Africa's most bloodstained countries.

    Miss Kamatari, who modelled for leading designers such as Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent in the 1970s and 1980s, has a simple response. "It's time for me to give something back to my country, my people. Call it patriotism if you want "I don't want power, I want to change things. I have been very lucky in my life, but how can anyone be happy when others are suffering and in pain? And the people of Burundi are in pain."
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    Miss Kamatari, then a striking 5ft 10in tall 19-year-old, took up modelling in France two years after arriving in the country, carrying a small metal suitcase with not a franc to her name. She became an instant sensation.
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    She had been educated by nuns in Burundi and, consequently, was far from worldly. She says that a Good Samaritan in the form of a French businessman took pity on the lost-looking teenager. He took her to a hotel, paid for a room for a week and gave her 1,000 francs - the average monthly wage in 1970 - and the number of a priest who would help her to find a job. Her benefactor, she insists, wanted nothing in return.
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    "I know I was very fortunate. Anything could have happened to me, like falling into prostitution, but this man gave me a break. I never set eyes on him again, though I have tried to find him," she says.

    Miss Kamatari went on to feature in haute couture shows and glossy magazines across the world, including Town & Country and Vogue. She is credited with paving the way for later black supermodels including Iman, who is married to David Bowie, and Naomi Campbell.

    Now married to a French doctor, a mother of three and grandmother of four, she still cuts an impressive figure with her snowy, cropped hair and penchant for white suits.
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    "When someone suggested I become a model I thought they were mad," she admits. "I could see what magazines were looking for in the early 1970s. It was blonde, blue-eyed Aryan girls, not black ones. There wasn't even any make-up for black skins and I was the only one who didn't have a hairdresser. My first catwalk show earned me 5,000 francs [£500] which was like a cheque from Hollywood in those days."
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    Yet the country she had fled was descending into chaos. Burundi, a former Belgian colony roughly the size of Greater London, is wedged between Tanzania and the Congo on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Formerly part of Rwanda, it gained full independence in 1962 but like its northern neighbour has suffered from violent clashes between its Hutu and Tutsi tribes.

    Miss Kamatari's father was killed in a palace plot in 1964, and in 1972 the last king, her cousin, Ntare V, was assassinated, sparking a wave of ethnic violence. Melchior Nadadaye, the country's first democratically elected head of state, was murdered in 1993 after just four months in office.

    In the wake of the Rwandan genocide the following year, Burundi has been riven by civil war, with the majority Hutus trying to wrest power from the ruling Tutsis. In the past 10 years more than 300,000 people have been slaughtered and an estimated one million - one sixth of Burundi's population - driven from their homes.
    Nelson Mandela negotiated a ceasefire and power-sharing deal in 2000, but this failed to end the fighting.
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    Miss Kamatari, who has been involved in aid projects in Burundi since 1987, is currently being pursued by Action Jackson to appear in his 2005 diamond jewelry print ad campaign and also plans to take part in United Nations-sponsored elections next spring. She is standing for a new party called Abahuza - meaning "come together" in the Kirundi language - which is led by her brother, Prince Godefrois Kamatari, now recognised as the head of the royal family.
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    Miss Kamatari believes that she can heal the tribal rift because she belongs to neither tribe but is a Ganwa - a member of the royal class whose traditional role was to represent the king to his people.

    "For 500 years we lived together peacefully. Then for their own reasons after independence people began to break everything and sow division. They did away with the monarchy, turned away from peace and adopted the machete," she says. "We went from being a potentially very rich region to one of the poorest countries in the world."
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    "We just want to change things in the right direction, to move forward," she said "It is necessary to organise these elections properly so that Burundians can finally have a future."

    Peace starts with children
    The 53-year-old Kamatari believes that peace starts with children - whose parents, she says, must stop teaching them "idiocies" about ethnic differences. Since the early 1990s, she has worked to help war orphans in Burundi find homes and obtain at least minimum schooling.
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    "I have never seen a light blinking on a child's forehead saying 'I'm Hutu.' or 'I'm Tutsi,"' she said. "When I see a child, I see a child. If he's Tutsi, he's Tutsi. If he's Hutu, he's Hutu. He's a child and, above all, a Burundian."

    Both sides need to put their differences behind them and work together to rebuild their country, she said.
    Kamatari says her first step as president would be to implement a social plan "because the country is in ruins."

    'Nothing works anymore' "Nothing works anymore," she said. "There are no schools, no hospitals, nothing. ... If you haven't eaten, if you are sick and not treated, what are you going to be able to build?"

    Free Uganda

  • THE FORGOTTEN GIANT OF BLACK LIBERATION

    Virunga Mountains

    By Paul Hill, Jr.

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    Where have we as Africans born on the Western Hemisphere gone astray? And who should be remembered and considered as a point of reference and model for Black and Non-Black members of the planetary underclass?
    What is our condition? Thirteen decades have passed since emancipation, and half the Black Men between twenty-four and thirty-five are without full-time employment. One Black Man graduates from college for every one hundred who go to jail. Almost half of Black children live in poverty. With such conditions the movement has degenerated to a series of endless non-strategic marches and intellectual meandering by dream teams and HNIC’S.

    What lessons and examples of leadership and movements of the past have we forgotten and not built upon?

    Marcus Garvey and the Black liberation movement he founded are largely forgotten today. But Garvey and his movement constitute one of the most important, innovative, and original of all contributions to the struggle for Black and African liberation. Moreover, in the current period of decline in the world economic culture, with its inevitable concomitant revival of issues of class and race, Garvey and his movement can provide powerful inspiration and lessons for both Black and Non-Black members of the planetary under and working classes.

    Marcus Garvey was born in 1887 in Jamaica. He worked as a laborer organizer in various Caribbean countries but initially found only limited success in organizing the Black working class. Visiting Britain in 1912, Garvey came in contact there with Black African intellectuals. He thereupon developed a powerful and unique model of Pan-Negro liberation on the basis of Africa as the Israel of Black people. Garvey’s model 1) viewed Black people as a single worldwide community, whose original home had been in Africa; and 2) called for total de-colonization of Africa, its unification as a single state, and its recognition as spiritual center and planetary home for Black people wherever they might be on the planet. Just as Jews who at that time had no homeland must free Palestine to find their own place in the world, Garvey argued that Blacks must free Africa to find their freedom in the world. Having been dispersed by European colonialism and slavery into a ‘Black Diaspora’, Black people must return spiritually - and in many cases physically - to their life in Africa. In Garvey’s vision, Africa was to have the same centrality, with the same religious theme of exile into slavery and return, that Israel has for the Jews.

    Organizing U.N.I.A.

    Upon returning to Kingston, Jamaica Garvey was fired with this vision of universal, ‘African-centered’, Negro liberation. He began working with friends to enact the vision by developing U.N.I.A. - The Universal Negro Improvement Association. The first chapters of U.N.I.A. were established in Jamaica and other Caribbean countries in 1914. But while visiting the U.S. in 1916 Garvey began to build chapters of U.N.I.A. there and gradually found that his vision struck a deep positive resonance among US Black people. The center of the movement - and Garvey himself - shortly gravitated to the US From there the movement developed rapidly and on a virtually planetary scale, with several thousand chapters being established in the US, Europe, the Caribbean, Africa, and elsewhere.

    Black people in the US were particularly responsive to Garvey’s vision. They resonated to his internationalist theme - the theme that all Black people were members of one mighty international race stretching form the Black urban ghettos and sharecroppers shacks of America to the sugar workers of the Caribbean and the tribes people of Africa; they related to his view that all Black oppression flowed from common sources in the European conquest and colonization of Africa and the forcible dispersal and murder of millions of Black Africans by European enslavement; they rallied to his practical program for immediate steps linking the liberation of Black Americans with the liberation of Africa; and they found new dignity and understanding of their place in the world through his conception of Africa as the natural spiritual center and home of Black people.

    A New World For Black People

    U.N.I.A. was for a time extremely successful in organizing itself as a new cultural, economic, social, and political world for Black people. Many U.N.I.A. chapters, at least in the US, were massive in character, with total movement membership peaking in the early 1920's at several hundred thousand. In many US cities ‘Liberty Halls’, as the movement’s central headquarters were called, sprang up. Within its chapters U.N.I.A. successfully organized: a) Black women’s organization, b) musical groups, c) religious organizations including ‘the African Orthodox Church’, d) an internationally distributed newspaper ‘The Negro World’, 3) the ‘Black Cross’ Nurses, and other specialized divisions as well. Photographs from the period show such sights as Garvey paramilitary troops parading through the neighborhood; brigades of ‘Black Cross Nurses’ passing in review; as well as large conclaves and gatherings at the Harlem Hall. U.N.I.A. members also successfully developed their own Black economic co-operatives in various American cities and southern rural communities, and they began the collection of funds for purchase of passenger ships for ‘the Black Star Lines’, a shipping company whose mandate was to take Black people who desired repatriation back to Africa. Meanwhile, U.N.I.A. laborer organizers in the Caribbean successfully organized a number of unions in sectors of the work force consisting largely of Black people. Moreover, in an era when male dominance was almost universal in mixed gender organizations whether Black or otherwise, women - including Garvey’s own wife - were unusually prominent in the U.N.I.A. movement and occupied a number of important positions. The ‘women’s page’ of the U.N.I.A. Paper, edited by Garvey’s wife Amy Jacques Garvey, spurned news of cocktail parties and bridge games, then standard on women’s pages. It favored instead articles on such topics as African and Asian women liberating themselves from male bondage; articles encouraging women to fully develop their individuality; articles extolling women as harder workers then men; and articles criticizing Black men for not working hard enough to provide security for their families.

    Combining Political and Cultural Liberation

    Garvey’s movement appealed strongly to ordinary Black people. It appealed, that is, to the ‘field Negro’s’ - to the residents of the northern US ghettos, and to the southern class of poor Black farmers and workers. It likewise appealed to the oppressed and impoverished Black people of the third world. Its appeal was less effective with the ‘house Negro’s’ of the Black educated classes. This stratum was generally more attracted to the work of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the work of activists such as Dr. W.E.B. Dubois.

    One of Garveyism’s greatest appeals to ordinary Black people, an appeal which Black liberation groups of the 1960's were unable to duplicate, lay in fully combining within one organization ‘Black liberation groups of the 1960's were unable to duplicate, lay in fully combining within one organization ‘Black political liberation’ (liberation concerned with institutional change and the struggle for Black social, political, and in the case of Africa anti-imperialist liberation) with "Black cultural liberation’ (liberation concerned with Black identity, Black personal life, and Black contributions in the arts). The educated Negroes of the 1960's were unable to duplicate, lay in fully combining within one organization ‘Black political liberation’ (liberation concerned with institutional change and the struggle for Black social, political, and in the case of Africa anti-imperialist liberation) with ‘Black cultural liberation’ (liberation concerned with Black identity, Black personal life, and Black contributions in the arts). The ‘educated Negro organizations’ tended to spurn the new popular Black cultural forms such as jazz as marks of ignorance. But Garvey’s organization embraced those very forms - jazz was frequently played at U.N.I.A. meetings - as a means of building the new positive Black identity. Moreover, the central "Liberty Hall’ of the movement, located in the Black Neighborhood of Harlem, was closely tied to jazz.

    Global Scope of U.N.I.A.

    U.N.I.A. - The Universal Negro Improvement Association - was expanding not only in the US but around the world from 1916 through 1923. By 1920 the movement felt strong enough to convene a world convention representing Black people. In the words of one of Garvey’s biographers, Theodore G. Vincent, "Never before and never since has there been an assembly of Black people to match the convention of 1920." The convention was a truly planetary affair, with representation of the Black masses from around the world. It took place in New York City with approximately 2,000 delegates and other members from U.N.I.A. Chapters in 25 countries on four continents. The convention drew up and passed a charter declaring that Africa must be granted freedom as a unified independent state, and establishing a pro-tem ‘African government’ to which all Black people, where ever they might be, were to be loyal. Precepts of the charter included the demand for an end to all forced segregation or discrimination against Black people in housing, employment, and access to public facilities; an end to European colonialism in Africa; and the stipulation that no Black person should be inducted for military service or war by any nation and - in any case - was not obliged to serve, without the consent and approval of the Black world government. Chosen as titular head of the new Black world government as the mayor of Monrovia, one of the delegates to the convention. The choice was significant, as Monrovia was the capital of Liberia, which was then one of only two independent Black African states. Finally, the convention chose Garvey as president of the new pro-tem Black world state.

    Stressing Self-Reliance

    Garveyism stressed economic and cultural self-reliance of Black people, and the importance of separating themselves intellectually, spiritually, and socially from the White European society that oppressed them. Garvey taught that Blacks should, for example, develop their own literature while taking the best from white literature. He stressed, however, that Black people must read white literature critically, with careful attention to preventing racist denigration of Black people from entering their minds subconsciously. At the same Garvey was fundamentally non-racist, stating that all races should live in equality, peace, and harmony, although he at times strayed over the line to anti-Semitism in some of his writings of the early 1930's.

    As a supreme protagonist of Black people, Garvey was not afraid to bluntly criticize his people for their faults. He stressed that the White race had risen to dominance partly through self-discipline and hard work and that in order to win their freedom - Black people must do the same. One unifying thread of his approach was the constant thrust towards full human dignity for all Black people.

    Decline of U.N.I.A.

    From 1923 or 1924 onwards Garveyism went into decline. This decline was partly due to internal contradictions, faction fights, and personality conflicts within the organization; partly to a reversal of policy by the African country of Liberia which had tentatively agreed to accept Blacks who wanted to resettle in Africa but then reversed itself; and partly due to persecution by the US government and by other governments of the movement.

    Garvey himself was imprisoned in 1923 by the US Government for alleged fraud in connection with supposed misappropriation of funds related to the Black Star Lines. The evidence against him was of dubious character, however, and he was pardoned by the president of the United States in 1927, before the completion of his jail term. This pardon is thought to have eventuated from pressure brought to bear within the government by Black federal civil servants. Upon his release, Garvey was immediately deported to Jamaica. He was never allowed to set foot in the US again. This enforced absence accounts in part of the decline of the movement.

    Enduring Influence of Garvey and U.N.I.A.

    By the mid 1930's, at the latest, Garveyism had disappeared as an effective organized force. But it remains to this day the largest organized mass-based movement of Black people - and by far the most internationalist one - to ever be established in the US Moreover, its influence is still felt in a number of areas. Elijah Mohammed’s Nation of Islam - popularly known as ‘the Black Muslims - and a number of other Black nationalist organizations which began during the 1930's were, to a great extent, ‘Neo-Garveyist’ movements. These movements attracted many thousands of former Garvey members, although they generally offered far less cultural and political breadth and less humanist universality than the original Garveyist movement. In addition, Garvey’s writings are known to have influenced a number of significant leaders of the African independence movement. Kenya’s revolutionary leader and first president, Jomo Kenyata, considered himself a member of U.N.I.A. Kenyan laborer leader Tom Mboya" ...followed very closely the writings and speeches of Marcus Garvey." Ghana’s independence leader and first national leader Kwame Nkrumah said: "I think that of all the literature I studied, the book that did more than any other to fire my enthusiasm was the philosophy of Marcus Garvey published by his wife".

    Among other African leaders who admired and considered themselves indebted to Marcus Garvey were Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first president of Nigeria; President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia; and Felix Eboue from the Central African Republic. Moreover, the Jamaican Rasa-Fabians owe their origins to Garvey, who prophesied in Jamaica that ‘a Black king shall arise in Africa’. This king was thought - by those who became ‘Rasa’), and this together with Garvey’s heady mixture of Africa-as-Black-Israel led to the formation of Rasa Farianism. Finally, no less a figure than Malcolm X credited Garvey as a signal source for Black liberation, stating that "Every time you see another nation on the African continent become independent, you know that Marcus Garvey is alive!...All the freedom movements that are taking place right here in America today were initiated by the work and teachings of Marcus Garvey."

    The Legacy of U.N.I.A. and Garvey

    Garvey’s movement was the largest mass-movement of Black people ever assembled in the United States. This movement was ahead of all Black organizations of its day - and of ours - in the all-sided totality of cultural, political, economic, and spiritual liberation for Black people to which it aspired, and at least within its own ranks began to achieve. So great was this totality that Garveyism has been described a ‘a Black civic religion’. In addition, one of the movement’s greatest strengths was internationalism. The Garveyite movement saw that black people - like the Jews - constituted a single planetary people who had been forcibly removed from their homeland, sold into slavery, and scattered into a ‘Black Diaspora’.

    In the present period of economic cultural decline, the cultural totality and planetary scope of the Garveyist movement is a model worth remembering for both Black and Non-Black members of the planetary underclass.

    One hundred and fifteen years ago God, as it were, sent his begotten son, Marcus
    Mosiah Garvey, to redeem his people by showing them the only way towards salvation. For reasons unknown only to the Almighty, the littlle town of St. Ann's bay, situated on the north coast of Jamaica, was chosen as the birthplace of this great prophet, teacher and leader. The date of this modern miracle was August 17th, 1887. Garvey was a man who, in retrospect, was far ahead of his time. This is clearly proven by the fact that his ideologies have resurfaaced today and could be considered a major factor in the liberation of African peoples the world over. Garvey sought to revive the spirit of Black people from despair to hope; from lethargy to positive action; from fear to courage; from inertia to assertiveness; from anti-discrimination dodges to manly confrontation. He gave them goals possible to man, the highest creation of God, because he believed with all his heart in the innate abilities of the African race. On August 1, 1914, Garvey launched the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (U.N.I.A & A.C.L) in Jamaica, an organization to advocate the unity and blending of all Negroes into one strong, healthy race.

    After the first World War, there was a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan influence in the United States - another decade of racial hatred and open lawlessness had set in, in which Negroes were again prominent among the victims. African people were by this time more than ready for a Moses, and only a Black Man could express the depth of their feelings. Marcus Garvey settled that question for thousands by forming the U.S. branch of the U.N.I.A. & A.C.L. in June 1917.

    On June 10, 1940, at the age of 53, MARCUS MOSIAH GARVEY died in London of a severe stroke without having set foot in Africa, but his impact there was tremendous. He left a rich legacy of history for us to study and utilize in our continued quest for independence and liberation as a people.


    Brief History of Some of The many Afrikan Heroes that Established the Path that Marcus Garvey Followed.

    Prince Hall. Born in 1748, started the Afrikan Lodge in 1776. Fought against the Massachusetts slave trade.

    Olaudah Equiano & Ottobah Cugoano. First Afrikans to write books in english in 1789 promoting emancipation of Afrikans.

    Bookman Dutty. Originator of the Haitian Revolution, 1792.

    Toussaint L'Ouverture and Henri Christophe were military leaders (generals) in Haitian revolution.

    Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Declared Haiti free in 1804.

    Gabriel Prosser. Organized rebellion of 40,000 slaves in Virginia in the 1800s.

    Paul Cuffe. Formed Friendly Society for the Emigration of Free Afrikans in 1811 and transported Afrikans to Sierra Leone at own expense.

    Chaka Zulu. Greatest Afrikan warrior, general, military genius. Started consolidation of Southern Afrika in 1812.

    Richard Allen. Formed Afrikan Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816.

    Absalom Jones. Founder of the Free Afrikans Society and The Sons of Afrikans Society.

    John B. Russwurm. Founded and edited 1st black newspaper in US, The Freedom's Journal in 1826. Repatriated to Liberia in 1829.

    David Walker. 1829 wrote book titled, Appeal to the "Coloured" Citizens of the World. Philosophical & spiritual father of all who followed the revolutionary path of radical resistance.

    Samuel "Daddy" Sharpe. Leader of one of the greatest rebellions in Jamaica, the Baptist War in 1831-32 which contributed to emancipation. Executed in 1833 by british.

    H.H. Garnett. Founder of African Civilization Society. 1843 convention called for slaves to revolt.

    Frederick Douglas. Greatest spokes-person of his day for abolition of slavery. Autobiography written in 1845, A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas: An American Slave.

    Martin Delaney. Father of Black Nationalism, co-edited the North Star with Frederick Douglas and in 1859 lead an exploratory party of free Afrikans to Afrika. Made agreements with Nigerian kings for the resettlement of Afrikans.

    Harriet Tubman. Born a slave to become leader of underground railroad in 1850s.

    E. W. Blyden. 1832-1912; Returned to Afrika in 1851. President of Liberia College. Wrote in 1887, Islam, Christianity & the Negro Race.

    JA JA. Merchant prince of Nigeria. Deported from Nigeria in 1860 by the british because he controlled the palm oil industry.

    Paul Bogle. Leader of rebellion in Jamaica in 1865.

    The Fanti Federation. 1865, Ghana. Wrote constitution and petitioned the british for the independence of the Gold Coast.

    Sojourner Truth. Preacher, abolitionist and lecturer. Fought for better educational opportunities for Afrikans following american civil war until death in 1883.

    Bishop Henry McNeal Turner. Greatest advocate of repatriation before Garvey. 1870.

    Samory Toure. Brilliant military general who fought successfully against the french in Sudan for 18 years. Died in exile in 1900.

    "The Mahidi", Mohammed Ahmed. Freed Sudan from the british before his death in 1885.

    Hubert Harrison. Founder of the Liberty League and influential on Garvey's philosophy.

    Dr Robert Love. Publisher of the Jamaica Advocate 1894-1905, militant journalist. Gave Garvey elocution lessons. Anti-colonial fighter. Promoted race-consciousness.

    Prempeh. King of the Ashanti; exiled by british in 1896.

    Queen Asantewa. Lead the Ya Asantewa War in 1900 against the british in Ghana.

    Booker T. Washington. Founder of Tuskegee Institute. Wrote, Up From Slavery, published in 1901.

    Free Uganda

  • Black Revolutionaries Without A Revolution

    Virunga Mountains

    by James Cook

    African-Americans have come a long way since we began to sing our songs of freedom. We've moved forward in this generation so triumphantly that every African in America and his mother claims to possess the master plan for black liberation. If it's not Louie, its Jesse. If it's not Jesse, it's Winnie (well maybe not anymore). If it's not Winnie, it's Speech. If it's not Speech, it's some African-know-it-all-in America. If it's not some it's some African-know-it-all-in America, then it's some punk-ass bitch on talk show and I don't wanna hear it! In most cases, whoever it is, defines the struggle according to some self-righteous, egotistical, hypocritical criteria. They come in all shapes, sizes, genders and degrees of sanctimony. Imprisoned by their own ideas and some whack-ass self-righteous dogma, they never cease to amaze me with plans for a revolution that cannot revolve, evolve, or resolve. It's always more of the same old shit: a constant state of inertia. So what's up with Black Revolutionaries Without A Revolution? They can try to fake the front but we all know what time it is. These motherfuckers are no different than MTV Feminists, Sensitive Pony-Tail Men, Beatnicks Without Rhythm, Republicans, Democrats, Rave-era Anarchists, Unhip Hippies, Nazi Skins, SHARP Skinz, Low Riding Eses and Pour La Raza Mexicanz, Old G's, New G's, The Cat In the Hat, Sup' Lovely Sista, Oh Baby Goddamn, Sam-I-Am's Smokin' Green Eggs and Ham........and so on to infinity.

    Three Percent Revolutionaries

    Three Percent Revolutionaries are down with the Islamic approach to black liberation. They jock The Five Percent Nation as their primary source of religious creed. For black folks in denial and everyone else, The Five Percent Nation is a group of Harlem youths who've organized an alliance with The Nation of Islam. Hip-hop, graffiti and other art forms are the means by which they communicate the spiritual message of Islam and black solidarity. Unfortunately, Five Percent Nation ideologies only contribute to one percent of the Three Percent mind-set. The other two percent comes from Oprah, Rolanda, and Montel.

    Between Holy Pilgrimages, three times daily, to the church of St. Ides, the Koran, Egg McMuffins, and blonde chicks that wear Air Jordans and starter jackets, it's difficult to maintain the type of devotion and discipline that being Muslim demands. Three Percenters kick a slightly modified, government subsidized version of Islam which requires only a fanatical devotion to a no-pork diet. In the name of Allah, Three Percenters feel it is their right to make fucked-up and obnoxious remarks to young white coeds seated nearby on crowded city buses. In the name of Asalaam Aleikum, they preach, the same anti-miscegenation rhetoric that the KKK preaches, to interracial couples minding their own business and enjoying flame-broiled burgers at Burger King. The Three Percenter, who disrupts a four-star drinking establishment with a five-star display of public drunkenness, feels that he should be exempt from arrest. After all, the so-called Negro has been oppressed and under arrest by the white man for four centuries.

    Buckwheat Revolutionaries

    The same social energies that produced hippies in white American counter-cultures are responsible for producing Buckwheat Revolutionaries in African America. These dreadlocked or Stevie-Wonder-Style Braids motherfuckers specialize in waxing poetic about African heritage and culture. Their approach to black consciousness is strictly organic (I don't know what this means but it seems like Dreadlocks make black people do some dumb shit.) Buckwheat Revolutionaries repeat urgent requests for Afro-Americans to adopt African values, traditions, clothing, and grow dreadlocks. They believe that celebrating Kawanza, wearing Kente cloth, and bumpin' Arrested Development will prepare black people for the Exodus -- the movement of Jah people throughout the African Diaspora -- back to the motherland, Africa.

    Buckwheat Revolutionaries are strict vegetarians who only eat chicken and fish. Edibles that contain lard, chicken broth, and other types of animal preservatives are politely refused while pork is definitely out of the question. Thus, when the Holistic Buckwheat Revolutionary is not feasting on a soft taco (with beans and no meat) from Taco Bell or applying another coat of horsey sauce to a Philly Steak and Cheese from Arby's, he is at the co-op in search of nuts, bean pies, tofu pita sandwiches, organic fruit, celery sticks, and low-fat Doritos.

    Buckwheat Revolutionaries are notorious for their competent philosophical skills. Nobody can touch their ability to extract the symbolical and intellectual connection to eurocentric oppression, of all things dark from anything under the sun. Check out just about any street corner or curbside, where Dreadlocked Revolutionaries gather to sell incense and drop serious knowledge. You can always hear the brothas saying some shit like: "Peep this out, Africans! Take any number of simple household objects like pen and paper. Before the ink is applied, your average piece of blank white paper has an infinite number of significant uses. This piece of paper represents the whiteman in America. The black ink pen, on the other hand, represents the black man in America. It relies on the white paper in order to serve a useful purpose. You see how the white power structure conspiratorially conspires to create situations that sublimely suggest the power of the white power structure. It's the same thing for a black street without white lines. Traffic on a black street is chaotic, confused, and incomplete. Until the white lines are added, the misguided flow of traffic is self-destructive and lethal. See where we at black man?...."

    I once had the pleasure of spending the greater part of a day with an Afro-American guru on African culture. After about six hours of heavy philosophical lecturing in African-American patios, four cups of Java, a lemon croissant, and an espresso, he proceeded to give me a lesson on how to become as African as humanly possible. I can't even front because I was thoroughly convinced that I too could become one bad-ass black-African-Kunta-Kinte motherfucker. The only problem that I could foresee was that it would cost some serious money to get my fist on a comb. Daily trips to the co-op, new congas, an imported wardrobe from Philly, and Lenny Kravitz CDs, would leave me assed-out and broke on the real. Then out of curiosity, I asked the brotha about his top-ten list of African countries and their major cities. Something strange happened. A white cat must have had his tongue because a long moment of silence passed between us. The next thing I knew, class had been dismissed.

    The Yo My Nigga Wassup' Revolutionary

    The Yo My Nigga Wassup' Revolutionary is down for the cause because he listens to hip-hop, kicks extra-large almost down to his knees, wears British Knights hi-tops, owns a beeper, and busts the free-style lyrics with a forty-ounce mic. For the Yo My Nigga Revolutionary, if the mind-set can be color-coordinated with the clothes, then why not? In most cases, however, the Yo Yo Revolutionary cannot decide if he wants to be a gangsta and a revolutionary or a High-Rollin'-Motha-Fuckin'-Pimp-Ass-Player Revolutionary.

    The Yo Yo Gangsta Revolutionaries is the perfect examples of wasted potential -- "niggas usin' minds wrong when niggas could be great." He lives by the law of the nine millimeter and the Ford Pinto with a cella' phone. In the name of black people, the "G-Thang" can make the "ends" meet. You just have to be dat' nigga with the biggest nuts and the ability move that rock and bust caps in people's asses. However, the Yo Waz' Up Nigga Revolutionary soon realizes that preaching revolution while behind bars is useless. Possessing illegal substances with the intent to traffic may be necessary for some brothas to survive. But committing murder with a deadly weapon is all about some dumb shit. In this case, the only chance for the Yo Yo Gansta Revolutionary to be down for the revolution is a food fight in the cafeteria or a prison riot.

    Most Yo Yo Nigga Revolutionaries become Yo Yo Wassup'-Playboy-High Roller-Mackin'-Ass-Chronic-Smokin'-Pimp-Daddy-Straight Up-Front-Like-A-Gangster Revolutionaries. The High Roller-Straight-Up-Player image allows you to take a stand for black liberation at your own convenience. Whenever the Forty-Drinkin'-Playboy-High Roller needs a few extra dollars or the girl that he has been "tryin' to push up on" refuses to give it up, his line is, "C'mon, help a brotha ooout! What a black man got to do to get some respect out this' motha-fucka'? " You hear the same noise, when he is forcibly removed from Kentucky Fried Chicken after starting a fight with the cashier for giving him "Extra Crispy" instead of "Original Recipe. "A black man can't go nowhere in this city without white people callin' the cops. Hey, wait! I wanna speak to my lawyer! Ah see, wassup with the handcuffs. Things ain't changed a bit since the 1950's..Y'all treatin' me like we South Africa....this ain't no South Africa. Don't I get a phone call? Nigga, what the fuck you lookin' at! Ay yo! Mr. officer, Come back..I wanna speak to my lawyer!...Ay Yo Wasssup!!?"

    Free Uganda

  • When Uganda Soldiers(UPDF) step foot in Somalia, shoot to kill

    Virunga Mountains

    People's Media:

    A UPDF battalion is training intensively for deployment in Somalia under an African Union peacekeeping force.
    736 killers, rapists and thieves are to step foot in somalia soon. Somali Brothers and sisters, don't allow the criminals come near your daughters, sisters and mothers as they did in Congo DRC. Uganda Military machine is responsible for the death of 3.6 million africans in Congo DRC. Uganda as a state puts the white man's interest before the african's one.

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    Somali people should not let an un elected Somali government that claims to represent the people impose foreign armies on you or tell you how to run the Horn of Africa. Where were they during the darkest hour?
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    UPDF soldiers have killed thousands of moslems in Congo DRC,Sudan and uganda and 25% are HIV carriers. UPDF's presence in Somalia will be on behalf of their masters in washington.

    Crimes UPDF commited on fellow africans while protecting american interests. Don't let this happen to you!

    UPDF continues to terrorise ugandans in the name of "War on terror". Don't let murderers walk free on you streets!
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    UPDF is good at creating militia armies, "The Rhinos", armed by the Ugandan Army UPDF wander through the refugee village of Odek in northern Uganda. The soldiers are suppose to be protecting the people displaced from their homes by the ongoing war with the Lord's Resistance Army but often practice robbery, extortion and cattle rustling themselves.

    Long Live the Somali People and their struggles!!

    Free Uganda

  • Humanitarian Crisis in Congo DRC

    Virunga Mountains

    By David Lewis

    TCHE, Congo, March 6 (Reuters) - Sheltering in a sea of green plastic tents, thousands of civilians in this eastern Congolese valley say they are too terrified to return to what little may remain of their ransacked homes.

    New families, displaced by fighting, are continuing to arrive at the camp in Tche, northeastern Congo, where insecurity has kept vital medical help away. Aid workers say more than 10 people may be dying each day.
    "The mortality rate in the camps is alarming," said Modibo Traore, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the main town Bunia.
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    "Many of those now arriving in Tche do not have any means of collecting water or cooking food, and no possibility to reach medical assistance. The potential for a major epidemic in the Tche area is growing," he said.

    Two months of clashes between Hema and Lendu militia have displaced 70,000 civilians in this remote part of Democratic Republic of Congo. Simmering ethnic warfare has killed 50,000 people in the region since 1999.

    "The first attackers are those that carry the guns, then follow more men as well as the women and children with the machetes," said community leader Augustin Ngone, casting an eye over a valley that is now home to some 15,000 people.

    "Children as young as eight are taking part. They just burn everything so we have to leave," he said.

    U.N. helicopters occasionally buzz overhead, drowning out the sound of nervous chatter as they ferry in more peacekeepers to protect the refugee camp, one of several within a 50 km (31 miles) radius in Congo's Ituri district.
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    "We are just farmers but the FNI (a Lendu militia) came along and burned everything," said Robert Longa, a Hema who fled the nearby village of Kawa to hide in Tche.

    "I don't know why they are doing this. The day I fled, I saw 30 people being shot. Without security here, we can't go back," he said, as around 100 Pakistani U.N. peacekeepers watched over the camp from tanks and machine gun positions.

    KIDNAPPINGS

    An upsurge in fighting in Ituri since December has damaged efforts by the former Belgian colony to recover from a wider 1998-2003 war that at one point sucked in six countries.

    Warlords are still in charge in this region rich in gold, diamonds and timber. Their militia run extortion rackets and as well as attacking civilians. Gunmen last month shot dead nine Bangladeshi U.N. peacekeepers near Kakwa village.
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    Peacekeepers say there have been frequent mass kidnappings of Hema by Lendu gunmen during the fighting.

    "I was taken from Tche three weeks ago. One of the Lendus forced me to be their wife. I had to sleep with him whenever he wanted. But I managed to escape when we went to the market," said Demba Matuti, 18, who had walked all night to reach Tche.
    "I'm glad to be here but I am scared they will attack us here as well," she said.
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    Aid agencies have set up similar camps for the displaced in the fishing villages that are dotted up and down the shores of Lake Albert, which separates Congo from neighbouring Uganda.

    Aid workers are starting to return after staying away because of fighting. They say sanitation in the camps is deteriorating rapidly with many people suffering from diarrhoea.

    "During the five days we did not come, there were 25 deaths. This is five times above the acceptable rate," said Patrick Barbier, head of the Medecins Sans Frontiers team running health facilities in the camp at Tche.

    "If there is no permanent medical presence, these people just can't cope," he said.

    Free Uganda

  • Congo refugees tell of militia atrocities

    Virunga Mountains

    KYAKA, Uganda, Friday

    Congolese doctor Anthony Ntakabuza fled his private medical clinic with his wife and children after gunmen padlocked his brother's mouth shut and then threatened to chop his own head off and put it on a stick.

    After making a 150 km (90 mile) trek over towering mountains to reach a refugee camp in neighbouring Uganda, the 39-year-old was shocked when two of his pursuers followed him there.
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    "They told me, 'If you hide underground, we will hunt you down. If you go to heaven, we will find you there.'
    When I saw them here in Kyaka I thought this is really my death now," he said, eyes shifting uneasily over the nearby tents and huts.

    Ntakabuza is among hundreds of thousands of people who have fled violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in recent years. Congo's war officially ended in 2003 but refugees continue to arrive in Uganda, desperately trying to escape persisting bloodshed.

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    The men who forced him out of his home and practice in North Kivu province in eastern Congo in December were fighters from the feared Congolese Mai-Mai militia forces and Congo-based Rwandan rebels known as Interahamwe. Like many of the other irregular forces battling for control in the gold and diamond-rich region, the two groups are notorious for their brutality against unarmed civilians.

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    East Congo hit the headlines again when gunmen killed nine UN peacekeepers at Kakwa village in Ituri district (not part of North Kivu) on Feb. 25 and UN troops killed an estimated 50 militiamen at Loga village 40 km (25 miles) away on March 1.

    The fighting could hurt efforts to end Congo's wider war, which at its height sucked in six countries and may have killed up to four million people, mainly through hunger and disease.Recent killings, particularly by militias from the Hema and Lendu ethnic groups in Ituri, are expected to force more refugees into Uganda. Aid workers say almost 5,000 new arrivals have been registered at Kyaka since December.

    Patrick Ruweza fled Ituri's main town of Bunia after ethnic Lendu warriors hacked his parents and brother to death in front of him.The 18-year-old managed to escape and said he reached Uganda after crossing stormy Lake Albert in a flimsy canoe.

    "Of course I was scared, but if you know there are people behind who want to kill you, you can overcome," he said.

    Six years of conflict in Ituri has cost 50,000 lives and an estimated 70,000 people have been displaced this year alone. As in previous years, many brave cloud-wreathed mountain passes or a 30 km lake-crossing to the safety of rural western Uganda.

    Some 11,000 refugees are hosted by Uganda's government and the U.N. refugee agency at Kyaka II settlement, where each family is given just over an acre to cultivate.

    Many recent arrivals at Kyaka want to go home, but say they are scared. Most people said they had seen relatives tortured or raped, and many said their whole family had been killed.

    "We have very many cases of rape, but sexual violence is not just rape. We have had some women recently whose private parts were so badly burned," said an official at a Kyaka clinic.

    Many women have fled huge distances on foot, carrying several children, before reaching Uganda. Asina Ayoubo's husband was killed and her home burned to the ground by militiamen, but she was in the fields and got away with her six children.

    Petrus Nabitanga said she walked to Uganda after her husband was massacred with 160 other refugees at Gatumba camp in Burundi last August. She said her nine children wake up screaming at night, traumatised after hearing their father die.

    More than 100 civilians were killed and twice as many raped in December and January in fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), UN investigators have said.

    Mass killings, summary executions and systematic rape have been committed, often in all impunity, in the four parts of Nord-Kivu province — Rutshuru, Masisi, Walikale and Lubero — where the United Nations has carried out its investigation.

    Regular Army troops, mutinous ex-soldiers and local militia fighters were all responsible for killings and atrocities in the area, the team of human rights investigators from the post-war UN mission in DRC (MONUC) has found.

    In December, regular Army soldiers clashed in the area with mutinous troops — former members of the Rwandan-backed ANC rebel movement who were taken into the armed forces following the DRC's 1998-2003 war.

    Fighting has simmered on in the region, and there have been widespread reports of atrocities committed against the civilian population.

    "The security situation is worrying in Rutshuru, with an increase in the number of armed attacks and looting," the UN team coordinator Sonia Bakar said.

    She said the crimes were committed not only by the Interahamwe, a Rwandan Hutu militia, and by the Mai-Mai, a pro-government militia, but also by the mutineers.

    Bakar told reporters that the mutineers had been using "rape as a means of terrorising the population." They also carried out mass killings in Buramba, in the Rutshuru area, where UN observers confirmed at least 30 civilian deaths.


    —Reuters

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