In 1985, the South African government banned Stevie Wonder’s song “It’s Wrong (Apartheid)” because it explicitly condemned the government: “the wretchedness of Satan’s wrath / will come to seize you at last / because even he frowns upon the deeds you are doing / and you know deep in your heart / you’ve no covenant with God / because he would never countenance people abusing.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbG3zIs4Q4E
In 1985, the South African government banned Stevie Wonder’s song “It’s Wrong (Apartheid)” because it explicitly condemned the government: “the wretchedness of Satan’s wrath / will come to seize you at last / because even he frowns upon the deeds you are doing / and you know deep in your heart / you’ve no covenant with God / because he would never countenance people abusing.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbG3zIs4Q4E
It opens at my end.
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On May 24, 2020, at 1:37 PM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
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On May 24, 2020, at 12:58 PM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
On May 24, 2020, at 6:37 PM, 'O O' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
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On May 24, 2020, at 6:37 PM, 'O O' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
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Julius Eto,
There you go again.
Thus far, not a word from you about China or some of the multinationals that own the mines and more or less everything else, the economies of whole nations including puppet governments
When you begin with,” Pan-Africanism is more about our collective military security as a united people…” I can see where you’re coming from. Therefore AFRICOM ?
Think a little further into the future. Don’t you want to include North Africa as part of your “United People”?
Check this out: The Military strength of African countries
I can see that you are being groomed for the job, for the time being as a little agent for the views that you are presently expressing, and who knows, in time to come, maybe, as the First President of Africa South of the Sahara?
If not, then please, kindly take note that there is no room for tribalism and racism in the Africa that optimists envision. Remember (to keep it in your mind and don’t forget) that the Prophet Moses was born and bred in Egypt and that Egypt was and is still part of the African Continent, as are the other Counties of North Africa.
We despise the anti-Arab racism and xenophobia that’s implicit in what you say here:
“North Africa (probably except Gamal Abdel-Nasser's Egypt) was unremarkable. NAfrica was seized from the original black owners who were largely exterminated and the rest enslaved by invaders and slave traders from the Arabian peninsula. So, it's not a surprise that the Arab racists who see themselves as whites only paid lip-service to the anti-apartheid struggle. How did the Afrikaner-run apartheid enclave get oil supplies? There were (and, it's believed, still are) secret black slave/trafficking markets in NAfrica (Mauritania, Libya etc)… Nasser, the high priest of Pan-Arabism, helped the anti-apartheid struggle to undermine the then Israeli-SAfrican romance and get the black continent's political support on the global stage for his Mideast (especially Palestinian) and world politics. Gaddafi, also a pan-Arabist, was an expansionist who eyed the continent for Arab domination, hoodwinking its leaders to believe that he was one of them. Like Nasser, he saw himself as the authentic leader/voice of the Arab world, leading the charge against Israel over Palestine and, of course, SAfrica over the apartheid regime's closeness to the Jewish state…However, Gaddafi supported the murderous Arab minority Khartoum authorities in their plunder, rape and genocide against the majority black Sudanese population.”
Just as you advocate improving South Africa – West Africa business relations, so too better integration of the North-South partnerships should be most welcome, for the prosperity of the continent – the whole continent – and you should do your best to avoid playing into the enemy’s hands by inadvertently or as you seems to be doing, by deliberately promoting their “ divide and rule “ policies as if you don’t know any better, possibly thinking that there’s nothing to learn from history. If anything, you should be promoting mutual understanding between all people, and not only in Nigeria but also in the rest of Africa where of course, North Africa is predominantly Muslim, just as Northern Nigeria is predominantly Muslim!
We can discuss South Africa as much as you want – but seriously. And what do you have to say about Alegria for example. My friends tell me that during the Liberation struggle the Algerian Jews opted to become French citizens instead of Algerians.
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Brother Julius Eto,
The way things are in the United States today, we cannot say of Trump, what was said at the funeral oration of General Washington, “A citizen, first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen”
Since Black People in America are catching hell and being decimated on a daily basis by “Racist Terror” with the latest documented evidence of savage racist police brutality - the cold-blooded murder of Brother George Floyd without even a squeak from Trump, not even the bogus house negroes will pray for their forgiveness because, I’m sure that this is the kind of mood that all of us are in. Right now.
Merely labelling ARICOM “imperialist” and your prophecy that “under a united African military command” the aforementioned “ imperialist AFRICOM will die naturally” is only day-dreaming, even if what you assume is that “The imperialist AFRICOM” will soon submit to your “united African military command”, sort of “naturally”.
When you eventually address the presence of China in Africa - and the Caribbean ( Jamaica has been taken over completely) you should reconsider/ examine/ re-examine Mao’s most famous idea about what he called the “Paper Tiger”. And so, we see the US under Trump in complete disarray, Trump already brought to his knees, his touted economic gains in ruins, unemployment on the astronomical rise, his popularity down the drain, his chances of re-election annihilated by what he refers to as “the invisible enemy”
Your rejection of all of North Africa, and the grounds of your rejection is unacceptable and is incompatible with the truth because Islam in Africa – as both religion and ideology is indeed a unifying factor and there is strong support for this thesis from Edward Wilmot Blyden through El-hajj Malik el-Shabazz to the latest African Union Summits. We cannot afford to neglect or underestimate the influence of Islam as a factor in Pan-Africanism, African unity, Islam and Islamic identities as an important factor in international relations, the financial well-being of the continent, you can’t even afford to leave out the contributions of the Arab Development Bank in any kind of calculation you want to make about the present and the future.
A conscious person does not turn a blind eye to where we are now because of ancient slavery, the more recent history of slavery – The Jesus of Lubeck, the Middle Passage, Professor Tony Martin on slavery, racism, post-colonialism, Louis Farrakhan, islamophobia, the reality of Israel and the Arabs which you can see immediately in these maps, the land, and religion issue of Israel and the Palestinians, and so on and so forth.
About you or anyone else “being groomed for the job”, I didn’t mean to insult you – I know and have known honourable people who have been “groomed for the job”, some as professors, others as journalists, opinion-makers, some as sitting presidents...
Is this meant to be a funny question, “Please who are the "We" in your assertion, "We despise the anti-Arab racism and xenophobia that’s implicit in what you say here"?
Please, who do you think we are?
Dear Julius, please permit me to stop here for now with the promise that I’ll get back to you to tell you who “we” are and to address all the matters that you have raised in this your post.
Sincerely,
Cornelius
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Brother Julius Eto,
Let’s travel from your very latest to your earliest in this thread.
From Sunday onwards I’ll be taking a serious look at all your other submissions in this thread , but right now it’s still Shavout in heart and mind
(There’s the Quranic paradigm in which the Angel Gabriel communicates via the Prophet of Islam, salallahu alaihi wa salaam, the objections that the kuffar, the sceptics, and the other interlocutors made from time to time, so that throughout the Quran we have this ongoing dialogue, punctuated and interspersed with “Qul” – say - answer them with the following…)
Now we are reduced to a similar dialogue in this thread, except that I am not directly in communication with Allah Subhan wa ta ’ala’s emissary, the Angel Gabriel , but the kinds of questions you ask about the current or future role of Islam in the United States of Africa that you envision, have already been presupposed and answered in the Holy Quran - but I’ll refrain from quoting directly from it, for the moment, since you are not a Muslim and therefore the Quran is not any Divine Authority for you.
You say, “we do not want to emphasize Christianity, Islam or any other religion in Pan-Africanism to avoid further division/fissions.”
That’s a non-starter because among the over 3,000 different ethnicities of Africa, and as many languages, Christianity, Islam and other religions/ways of life are at the core identities of the people living in the content of Africa. So religion, the ideals of Islam and Christianity and other religions, cultures, ways of life are very important unifying factors that cannot be ignored or overlooked when drawing up any grand schemes of continental African unity, whether political, social or economic - Nigeria is a microcosm of the complexity that the planners and visionaries face. ( Interestingly enough, a few decades ago, Wole Soyinka said that he would nominate Swahili as the continent’s language, if Africa were to have a ( one continental language – he may have changed his mind since he made that suggestion since there’s the sobering reality of the United States where Spanish is a very second contender not only in California and maybe in Florida and Texas too, Texas after all, used to belong to Mexico, remember ?)
So, let us agree that when it comes to language and religion, North Africa is more formidably united than your Africa South of the Sahara. I should also like to point out that Berbers come in many different colours, from white to blue-black - and that many centuries ago, many Berbers converted to Judaism, just as ages ago – well, we still have the legends about the Khazars, as famously highlighted in Arthur Koestler’s “The Thirteenth Tribe” – that the King of Khazars converted to Judaism together with all the subjects in his kingdom , so that the reading of Yehuda Halevi ‘s Kuzari is recommended reading for some potential converts to Judaism. I only mention this because in the spiritual and ideological fight that’s going on between Christian missionary zeal and Islam for the souls of Africans, there’s no telling what the near future might bring.
It’s all about Survival
“How good and how pleasant it would be before God and man,
To see the unification of all Africans “ ( Bob Marley: Africa Unite
Now, Sir Julius, think,
“How good and how pleasant it would be before God and man,
To see the unification of all Africans”
Wouldn’t it be nice and easy if instead of the unending “divide and rule” the whole continent of Africa was to bite the bullet, to unite and to convert to Islam?
I wonder how Mwalimu Julius Nyerere would have answered that question.
Julius Eto, hold your fire I understand that from your point of view, it is an outrageous question.
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Correction: should read “where Spanish is a very strong second contender…
Something to chew on the 27 African States that are currently members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation ( OIC)
About your namesake Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, taking into consideration the status of Islam in Tanzania, that Dar es Salaam was the capital of Tanzania, that Swahili is the main language spoken in Tanzania it’s difficult to understand the Mwalimu’s attitude here: Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and Islam
In Nigeria, neither Gowon, nor Obasanjo nor Goodluck Jonathan ever expressed any such reservations, so, Tanzania under Mwalimu Nyerere cannot be the litmus test
By the way during the Nyerere years which mostly coincided with the Swedish Social Democrats in power, Tanzania was Sweden’s favourite country in Africa. ( Traditionally Ethiopia was Sweden’s favourite country in Africa, going back to the days when the Emperor of Ethiopia and the King of Sweden were very good friends - I also have a few Swedish friends who were actually born in Ethiopia, ( mostly the children of missionaries) - but of course, during the Apartheid years, the fight against Apartheid in South Africa was always at the forefront of Swedish Foreign Policy in Africa
Food for thought: International relations: A United Africa and the world….
Brother Julius,
Brother George Floyd is an American Brother whose ancestors were kidnapped from Africa and brought to America. If Brother George Floyd had been a Nigerian citizen then we should expect that the Nigerian Government and some other African governments would have been putting it straight to Trump and in no uncertain terms. As we all know, “It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion”. If Brother George Floyd was a Citizen of the United States of Africa then our president would be demanding the extradition of Police Officer Derek Chauvin to be tried like Eichmann somewhere in Harare, Pretoria, or Mogadishu and then summarily executed, his ashes deposited in a watery grave…
Whoopi Goldberg said in the Irish Times 25th April 1998, “Quote of the Week”,
“I dislike this idea that if you’re a black person in America then you must be called an African-American. I’m not an African. I’m an American. Just call me black, if you want to call me anything.”
When we consider the vicissitudes of history, we know that Brother George Floyd, Brother George Jackson, Brother George Forman and all the other Soul Brothers and Soul Sisters are our own flesh and blood.
Ironically, “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees. “, said Emiliano Zapata
Dear Malcolm wasn’t mincing words or shooting some crap and big grammar from the side of his mouth when he said,
“We are Africans, and we happen to be in America. We are not Americans. We are a people who formerly were Africans who were kidnaped and brought to America. Our forefathers weren't the Pilgrims. We didn't land on Plymouth Rock; the rock was landed on us. We were brought here against our will; we were not brought here to be made citizens. We were not brought here to enjoy the constitutional gifts that they speak so beautifully about today. Because we weren't brought here to be made citizens--today, now that we've become awakened to some degree, and we begin to ask for those things which they say are supposedly for all Americans, they look upon us with hostility and unfriendliness.” ( Malcolm X : The ballot or the bullet)
God don’t like ugly!
So, just for the record, and with full understanding, there’s no reason to expect any apology from me for wholeheartedly endorsing what Joe Biden said the other day: “If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you aren’t black”.
I’m sure that he meant to say, “then you’re not really black”. As we can all see it’s Supremacist colossus Trump’s cold attitude towards racism that’s the reason why Babylon is now falling all over him during his tenure as President. It’s now confirmed that he’s quick when it comes to saying to his underlings, “You’re-fired”, but slow, very slow to react, e.g. when it concerns the spread of the coronavirus with now over 100, 000 Americans dead because he is so slow, much slower than the man he loves to taunt as “ Sleepy Joe”. Between now and the New Year events are going to overtake him, fast. He's already losing his grip. It’s now only a matter of time before he will totally lose it and have to say goodbye to the White House, albeit unwillingly, probably sobbing and even refusing to go. He will be leaving the Oval Office before he can "make America Great Again". He will be leaving, and when it happens, in shock and utter disbelief - he won’t believe it and even then he’ll probably be thinking that it’s “fake news” when the fat lady sings, “Bye-bye Donald, you’re the worst president that America has ever had, but it’s all over now and it’s time for you to go – and good riddance!”
Brother Julius, there’s the definition that you asked me for, down below:
“Now I know we have great respect
For the sister, and mother it's even better yet
But there's the joker in the street
Loving one brother and killing the other
When the time comes and we are really free
There'll be no brothers left you see”
Curtis Mayfield: We people who are darker than blue
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Sir Julius,
Christianity says that salvation is exclusively through Jesus (Acts 4:10 – 12)
Islam says that the only religion acceptable to God is Islam
These two religions will never agree, or see eye to eye unless, according to Islamic eschatology, Jesus returns as a Muslim and leads the zuhr Salat at the Mosque in Damascus. Etc.
In the meantime, both religions preach love of fellow human beings, humility, kindness, compassion, heaven…
My proposal that you all unite, unify, bite the bullet and embrace Islam was only a logical proposition but altogether “robotic” - as Lord Agbetuyi has already said. At the very least, all the African colours, ethnicities, tribes would then be united under one religion and you (Julius) would be feeling a little closer to the believers in Sokoto, Ramallah and Cairo. The oath of allegiance could then be about “one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Africa might then even have one currency…
Those of you who would be most resistant to the idea of conversion to Islam i.e. the Jews, the Christians, the idolaters, and the polytheists would have to act uniformly as Zombies. It wouldn’t matter at all to the atheists to declare the Shahada with their tongues and at best only pay lip service to the deity; they might even willingly pay zakat and give in sadaqah - if these were state laws, but I suppose they would have a problem with praying five times a day. Fasting during the month of Ramadan, rejecting palm wine and all alcohol, especially when thirsty could also be easily done, for health reasons. If for example it was announced from the White House, that the only cure for the coronavirus is conversion to Islam, you never know who among those who want to go to Heaven would not be amongst the infected ones, who would be the first to convert. Let’s say that about 2% refuse to convert even on pain of going to the fire, these would become the dhimmi
Re – your question: “…despite being largely Islamic/Muslims, why have Arabs not actualized the final goal of Pan-Arabism, that is, the unification of the Arab world?”
You know the story: the Arabs revolted against the big boss man Turks the and that brought the Ottoman Empire to an end - displaced by the creation of many mini Arab States. To a great extent, the Arabs are more united through language, culture, and religion, and despite the sectarian Sunni-Shia divide - the rest of the in-fighting, civil wars, etc are due to outside interference implementing their very effective divide and rule strategies.
The Pan-Arab dream, Arab Nationalism is being effectively channelled through a very powerful organ known as the Arab League through which cooperation and strong partnerships unite the Arab World
At some levels, the rest of the Muslim world - are brought together through the OIC of which twenty- seven African nations are already members…
You talk about “Arabs' ambivalence and racism towards Africa”
Arabs' ambivalence and racism towards Africa? That’s a gross exaggeration and over-generalisation. I am not aware of anything like that. Read this and reconsider. The Arabs are among the most generous people in this world. I think that Africa and Africans have a much bigger problem with eth tribalism that bedevils many aspects of life in Africa, from politics to justice, equity in governance. So, what about putting your own house in order?
You are unhappy about what you refer to as “the equally odious anti-African racism in Israel, USA, Europe, Asia or SAmerica to make the point that I am not targeting only Arabs as the culprits.”
When it comes to the immigration problems being experienced in today’s Israel which including the so called Palestinian territories in only twice the size of Africa’s little Gambia, you must agree that considering the myriad problems that Israel has with the Palestinians, terrorism etc, - SECURITY problems, the suspicion with which the Israeli authorities are prone to regard non-Jewish refugees as potential “infiltrators” it should not be as easy or as convenient for Israel to accommodate great influxes of refugees from the Sudan or Muslims and Christians running away from Boko Haram, when they could and maybe should seek accommodation elsewhere, nearby, in e.g. Saudi Arabia, Italy, Cameroon, Abia State, Edo State, Lagos…
Olu Dara: Rain Shower ( My friend Kwatie on guitar there)
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