PRESS RELEASE BY CONCERNED NIGERIAN GROUPS (ATTEMPTED TERRORIST ATTACK ON DELTA-NORTHWEST FLIGHT 253)
chido onumah
PRESS RELEASE BY CONCERNED NIGERIAN GROUPS
RE: attempted terrorist attack on Delta-Northwest Flight 253
We, Nigerians in the Diaspora, under the auspices of the undersigned civil organizations, are appalled by the news of the attempted terrorist attack on Delta-Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit on Friday, December 25, 2009.
News reports indicate the suspect is a Nigerian with ties to terrorist organisations. While information on the suspect is still sketchy, we feel compelled to condemn without reservation this alleged act of terrorism.
While we expect an official statement on this matter by the Nigerian government, we hope there will be a thorough investigation to determine how this security breach occurred and to ensure the safety of air travelers.
Signed:
Attorney Charlie Lion Agwumezie
For: United Nigerian Citizens Initiatives (UNCI)
Chido Onumah
For: Youth Media and Communication Initiative (YMCI)
TomBari McFini
For: Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People - US (MOSOP- US).
For more information please contact Attorney Charlie Lion Agwumezie at (240) 464-8485; (240) 464-8485 E-mail: cagwu...@yahoo.com
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Biko Agozino
When I first met Dennis Brutus on the campus of the University of Calabar in the 1980s during the African Literature Conference Series that Earnest Emenyonu organized, he looked so tall and so larger than life that when I met him again in Pittsburgh in 2002, I could not believe that it was the same person. We shared an Azania Heritage Foundation platform discussing reparations for slavery and for apartheid crimes. He briefed us on the litigation against companies that benefited from apartheid gold and I expressed the view that litigation might benefit lawyers who corner 40% of the payout more than the litigants and recommended that pressure for legislation, negotiation and arbitration might produce more substantial 'reparative justice' in the long run for the victimized.
Later, Dennis agreed to grant me a videotaped interview in his office at the University of Pittsburgh during which he taught me a few lessons. I had read the dolphin poem in the Stubborn Hope collection during high school and believed that the reference to a father was metaphorical, not knowing that it was a poem to his own children about freedom in the open seas with all the risks being preferable to the security of the swimming pool from the point of view of the dolphin; his children had asked him for a dolphin poem, he explained. But when I interviewed him in Pittsburgh,
feeling like one of the children for whom he wrote it, he did not pretend, just an honest reality check.
I interviewed him about his anti-apartheid activities and he explained something that had been bothering me for a long time, given my own name: why did Steve Biko not join the ANC? The explanation of Brutus was that the ANC would not admit white people and colored people back then, Brutus himself had to join the colored people's congress, for instance, and progressive whites had no choice but to join the CP. Biko was of the view that anyone who was for the struggle should be allowed full membership. This explanation reminded me of that scene from Cry Freedom where Denzel Washington as Biko responded to those who queried what a white man, Donald Woods, was doing in the Township and Biko asked them to witness the education of a white liberal, an education that probably helped to save the life of Woods when the regime went after him. It took a long
time before the ANC came round to the correct position of Biko in terms of inclusiveness but it may have been a sign of the times with apartheid decreeing separateness in organizations. I am yet to check this fact with ANC activists.
Brutus will never die! I told him as much at the end of my interview with him. What was he still doing in Pittsburgh when he could be exercising greater moral and intellectual leadership in South Africa? He expressed concern about the violence in the country but I reassured him that no one would dare touch him if they knew what he represented. He must have been planning the relocation and surely enough, he achieved a lot more in those final years than he could have achieved in exile, at least judging by all those honourary doctorates that our Baba Dolphin gathered in the wild compared to the sterile chlorinated pool that he resisted being deported from when the wild sea was still ruled by apartheid sharks!
Biko Agozino is Professor of Sociology and Director of Africana Studies Program, Virginia Tech, ago...@vt.edu
prof alfred zack-williams
Many thanks for the briefing. The reason given by Dennis Brutus is an
interesting one, which as you pointed out needs to be corroborated by ANC
activists. I always thought that people like Joe Slovo were members of the
ANC at the time- or where they simply in the Communist Party?
Zack
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Biko Agozino
Nice to hear from you. It was a revelation for me because i had doubts about Biko's choices until I heard the explanation. Slovo may have straddled both organizations when it became possible for whites and coloured to join the ANC. Maybe someday, the archives would throw some lights on that era.
Biko
--- On Tue, 12/29/09, prof alfred zack-williams <ab...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
okello oculi
I am surprised that the late Denis Brutus could at any point in his life be regarded as "tall and so large". I was at the same Conference at Calabar and do not recall that Brutus was not a participant. He would almost certainly have carried celebrity visibility.
I first met him in 1967 when we shared a panel as literary figures at Cambrige University and I saw a slim, frail and delicate man whose lush beard and strong voice made his smallish size almost a rebuke.
If your report of why Biko did not join the ANC was so crudely racist, it is a wonder that the propagandists of the apartheid regime, and their allies in Europe and the Americas, did not loudly broadcast it to discredit the liberation movement. The more sensible explanation would be Biko's impatience with the low ebb of radical "Black consciousness' .
Okello Oculi
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Dennis Brutus, 1924-2009
Biko Agozino
Maybe the conference you attended was not the one that Dennis attended. There were many in the series at Unical. Of course, I must have seen him with awe and so he appeared larger than life to my undergraduate eyes. We joked about it later when I saw him in Pittsburgh and that was understandable.
The explanation offered by Dennis for Biko not joining the ANC did not come across to me as crudely racist, it was tactical due to conditions on the ground and that tactic was obviously changed with time.
Maybe you know more about that era and should throw more light on what you mean by the 'low ebb of radical black consciousness', was that a part of ANC or more a part of the PAC which Biko did not join either?
I think that Dennis may have touched on a little known aspect of history here with the clarity characteristic of his poetry and so activist-historians among us should enlighten us some more with detailed analysis of the era.
Best compliments of the Season.
Biko
--- On Tue, 12/29/09, okello oculi <okell...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> From: okello oculi <okell...@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Dennis Brutus, 1924-2009
> To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
> Date: Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 10:21 AM
> Professor Agozino,
>
> I am surprised that the late Denis Brutus could at any
> point in his life be regarded as "tall and so
> large". I was at the same Conference at Calabar
> and do not recall that Brutus was not a participant.
> He would almost certainly have carried celebrity
> visibility.
>
> I first met him in 1967 when we shared a panel as
> literary figures at Cambrige University and I saw a
> slim, frail and delicate man whose lush beard and
> strong voice made his smallish size almost a rebuke.
>
> If your report of why Biko did not join the ANC was so
> crudely racist, it is a wonder that the propagandists of the
> apartheid regime, and their allies in Europe and the
> Americas, did not loudly broadcast it to discredit the
> liberation movement. The more sensible
> explanation would be Biko's impatience with the low
> ebb of radical "Black consciousness' .
> Okello Oculi
>
>
> To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups..com
kenneth harrow
so in contrast to the white minority parties of the time. the cp was
also multiracial; but the black consciousness movement gave rise to
the pac which was not open to non-blacks
ken harrow
Kenneth W. Harrow
Professor of English
Michigan State University
har...@msu.edu
517 803-8839
fax 353 3755
Biko Agozino
It looks like Brutus was right that only black Africans were allowed as full members of ANC from the beginning (contrary to your assertion of multi-racial membership from 1912) according to information on the official history of the party available on the ANC website. However, this was not a racist policy but a matter of strategy as the party was always in alliance with other parties, congresses and groups that supported the goal of national democracy and social justice.
According to the ANC website, it was only after the 1969 meeting in Morogoro, Tanzania, that membership of the party was made fully open on a non-racial basis in line with the Freedom Charter, the non-racial declaration that led to the break with the group that formed the PAC in 1959.
You said that the BCM led to the formation of the PAC but the BCM was formed later in the mid 60s by Biko following the banning of the black parties and the jailing of the leaders. To quote from the ANC website on the official history concerning the problem of non-racialism:
'The ANC consultative conference at Morogoro, Tanzania in 1969 looked for solutions to this problem. The Morogoro Conference called for an all-round struggle. Both armed struggle and mass political struggle had to be used to defeat the enemy. But the armed struggle and the revival of mass struggle depended on building ANC underground structures within the country. A fourth aspect of the all-round struggle was the campaign for international support and assistance from the rest of the world. These four aspects were often called the four pillars of struggle. The non-racial character of the ANC was further consolidated by the opening up of the ANC membership to non-Africans.'
Biko
--- On Tue, 12/29/09, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu> wrote:
> >http://www.utexas..edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
kenneth harrow
i was surprised to learn of this, and so followed your lead back to the anc site and read its history.
you are right.
but maybe there are nuances concerning this technical question worth noting:
the anc was formed initially not of a multi-racial membership, but of a multi-ethnic membership, so to speak. it was open, according to the site, to all Africans. it doesn't say "black Africans" anywhere, as far as i can see, but maybe it is implied by the term "Africans." what is clear is that it was intended an a party to bring together all African peoples of South Africa, not just one group or ethnicity or another.
however, it seems to me that it became effectively "multi-racial" with the freedom charter of 1955. is there anything to indicate that this wasn't the case? wasn't the morogoro declaration a confirmation of the already existing practice that was generated by the freedom charter that sought to bring indians and ultimately whites into collaboration with the congress?
the anc site you point to states:
The struggles of the 1950s brought blacks and whites together on a much greater scale in the fight for justice and democracy. The Congress Alliance was an expression of the ANC's policy of non- racialism. This was expressed in the Freedom Charter which declared that South Africa belongs to all who live in it.
But not everyone in the ANC agreed with the policy of non- racialism. A small minority of members who called themselves Africanists, opposed the Freedom Charter. They objected to the ANC's growing co-operation with whites and Indians, who they described as foreigners. They were also suspicious of communists who, they felt, brought a foreign ideology into the struggle.
The differences between the Africanists and those in the ANC who supported non-racialism, could not be overcome. In 1959 the Africanists broke away and formed the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC).
in that light, it is also interesting to read two other things: first, that the first multiracial party was the s.a.communist party that was founded in 1921, and secondly that by the 30s there was collaboration between the communist party and the anc. in that regard, there is something of a multi-racial movement generated on the left by the 1930s.
lastly, i went to look up when nadine gordimer became a member of the anc, since that is often bruited about. the date appears to be late, 1990, but she stated that she had before that been a supporter of the anc, and that formal membership was only a token of an actual collaboration that dated back much earlier. the history of that collaboration is the subject of her most significant novel (for me), July's People, which traces that collaboration between whites on the left, like helen suzman, and the anc back in the 1930s-1950s or 1960s.
lastly, for me it is also interesting to note that the initial impulse to create the anc was founded on the desire to bring all "Africans" together. :
"On January 8th 1912, chiefs, representatives of people's and church organisations, and other prominent individuals gathered in Bloemfontein and formed the African National Congress. The ANC declared its aim to bring all Africans together as one people to defend their rights and freedoms."
originally the term "Africans" meant black people, not coloured or indian or white. now it is all of them, in south africa, who presumably would accept the denomination "African."
ken
kenneth harrow
out of curiosity i put the question to peter limb, an historian who
has published much about s african history; he mostly confirms what you said
here is what he says:
its a fasinating question Ken, as I know of at least two
whites allowed to be members before then (incl. Mary Loiuse Hooper,
whose Papers are in my office--she was Lutului's secretary before
being deported back to US in late 1950s, after which she was made
an ANC member (honorary?) and attended conferences on their behalf.
formally whites were allowed from 1969
authoritative source: Formal ANC Constitutions (1919, 1943,
1950s), I think, which I have a (scanned) copy of, refer to
'aboriginal races of Africa'
ken
At 09:34 AM 12/30/2009, you wrote:
Biko Agozino
Thanks for adding to the excavation. You are right, 'African' was always the official term for 'Black' in the SA census during apartheid. I read somewhere that the original name of the ANC was South African Native Congress and so the call for Africans to unite was just that, a call for black Africans to come together in spite of ethnic differences and in the face of the common tactic of divide and conquer.
Interestingly, the reluctance on the part of some people to identify themselves as Africans is also found in the Diaspora where that term had negative connotations until recently. For instance, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania was set up initially as the Institute for the Training of African Youth in 1837 but that term was not popular and so it was changed to the Institute for the Training of Colored Youth. Similarly, the American Negro Academy that was founded in 1897 by Cromwell, Du Bois, Locke and Woodson was to be called the African Academy in the beginning to show their Pan African aims.
Of course, one reason why the African name was dropped could be to avoid the trap of those who saw the solution to the negro question only in terms of repatriation, the equivalence of Bantustanization, and so avoiding the African term at that time could have been a way to resist apartheid in the diaspora by insisting that our people helped to build this land and so we are here to stay, come what may.
Today, of all people of African descent, only Trinidad and Tobago officially calls black citizens Africans as a direct legacy of the disproportionate number of great Pan Africanists that emerged from that small country. In Africa itself, we remain Nigerians, Ghanaians, Egyptians, Libyans, Tanzanians, South Africans, Congolese, anything but Africans. Fanon explained it all in Black Skin White Masks, an echo of the double consciousness of Du Bois.
The African Union Commission is now addressing this issue by recognizing the Diaspora as the sixth region in the proposed Peoples Republic of Africa that would be non-racial.
Biko
> > >Program, Virginia Tech, agozino@vt..edu
kenneth harrow
wonderful information!
a side note. some years ago--many--i began to study maghrebian
literature. i learned the maghreb entailed morocco, tunisia, and
algeria. some 4-5 years ago i returned to tunisia, and in the course
of a week's stay and conference, asked my hosts, mostly young women
teaching english at the university in tunis, whether they still used
maghrebian in reference to themselves and tunisia. in effect, i
asked, are you "maghrebian" and they said no (for your interest
maghreb means western in arabic, and literally means morocco, but
broadly it has been used to describe the three n african countries).
i asked if they were "african." they laughed and said no. firmly.
i asked, then, in some confusion, what they would say in answer to
the question, who are you. they said arab.
ken
kenneth harrow
i have had sent to me a copy of the original constitution of the anc.
it might seem clear enough that the membership being targeted are the
african peoples of south africa., but if anyone cares to consult
paragraphs 6 and 7, it is intended to included all "races." it
positions itself against all forms of "racialism and tribal feuds." i
am not sure what "race" meant to the authors of the document;
probably what we now call ethnicities? but the very notion of
bringing together all people, across difference, is clear.
here is the link for anyone interested in this fascinating bit of history:
http://staff.lib.msu.edu/limb/ConstitutionSANNC1919.pdf
look on page 6
ken