Folks,
My earlier posting claiming black Americans constitute a formidable obstacle to our progress in Africa needs clarification.

1. By "black Americans," I mean African Americans or Negro Americans, the descendants of slaves born here in the U.S. This does not include black from other countries that have settled in the U.S. and have become naturalized.
2. I was not looking at the whole gamut of relationships between black Americans and black Africans. Only that which relates to POLITICAL CHANGE, not cultural.
3. By "progress" I mean the progress in our struggle for FREEDOM in Africa.

1. Black American leaders have coddled and consorted with black African leaders to the detriment of their black people in Africa.
2. Black Americans have defended and lobbied for black African tyrants,
3. Black American schools have showered by African despot with honors and degrees.

In North America, black Americans constitute the only group of blacks in Diaspora with sufficient clout, credibility and experience to help their black brothers and sisters in Africa in their struggle for freedom. The experience gained in the civil rights struggle in the 1960s could have been helpful to black Africans but, in practice, turned out to be more of a hindrance.

Black Americans HELPED with the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. They tended to see the campaign against apartheid as an extension of their own civil rights struggle. This was understandable since the oppressors and exploiters in both cases were white, the oppressed and exploited, black. But many Africans saw apartheid as merely a special case of the oppression that was rampant across the continent. Further, the analysis of African problems in a rigid "civil rights" or black-white paradigm was not appropriate.

In black Africa color was not the issue. Blacks ruled themselves. Although in the past their oppressors and exploiters were white colonialists, today they are black. Perhaps, the innocent oversight of this fundamental difference rendered many black Americans extremely hostile to the notion that some black African leaders head more ruthlessly oppressive regimes than the apartheid system in South Africa, notwithstanding the fact that apartheid is institutionalized.

It is also true that in the 1950s black Americans provided vital support to Africans in the liberation struggle against colonialism. In recent times, black Americans have been indefatigable in the campaign for one-man, one-vote for blacks in South Africa.

But to the blacks in independent Africa fighting for the same political rights, black Americans have offered little or no support. Unbelievably, black Americans rather helped black dictators to oppress black people in black Africa. Said Keith Richburg, the Nairobi Bureau chief for The Washington.

Post (May 30, 1993):

African-American leaders often seem to go through a strange metamorphosis when they come to their ancestral homeland. Dictators are hailed as statesmen and given the benefit of the doubt. Repressive regimes are praised for having fought off the colonialists and steered their countries on the path of development.

While black American leaders were at the forefront of calls for immediate democratic reform in South Africa, when it comes to black Africa those same black Americans say it is not America's business to interfere -- even when the victims are Africa's black masses (p. C2).

This was eloquently demonstrated at an African/African-American Conference in Yamassoukrou (in the Ivory Coast) in April 1991. The delegates were effusive in expressions of solidarity to combat the rising tide of racism in America. "We are a community of resistance united in a fight against racism, apartheid and forced indebtedness," intoned Capt. Blaise Compaore, the military despot from Burkina Faso. But no one in that congregation of civil rights leaders, which included Coretta Scott King and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, talked about the rising slaughter of blacks in West Africa and the senseless civil wars which had produced mounting refugees and grisly spectacles of emaciated bodies of famine victims.

Not one single black American civil rights leader condemned Arab apartheid in Mauritania and Sudan and the present-day enslavement of blacks by Arab masters. Only two, Rep. William H. Gray III (D-Pa) and Vivien Lowery Derryck, president of the African-American Institute, distinguished themselves with muted references to civil rights. Said Gray: "We keenly are interested in human rights and democratic institutions. Human rights must be in the forefront of our relationship, and this principle must apply to all of Africa" (Washington Post, April 20, 1991; p. A18).

Unfortunately, black Americans are not well informed about events in Africa and myths and misconceptions about the continent still persist in the black, as well as the white, American community.

Says E.R. Shipp,
"Most black Americans have no firsthand knowledge of the going-ons in Africa, nor do they necessarily trust what limited news they may get from the media. Often they rely on public figures like Rev. Jesse Jackson and Randall Robinson of TransAfrica or on black-owned newspapers such as the 200 or so that constitute the National Newspapers Publishers Association (NNPA).

Unfortunately, those who help shape those opinions often weasel out of exerting moral authority by saying it's a tribal thing and we cannot possibly understand. Or they compromise their moral authority by questionable financial dealings with those whose causes they advance . . .

Many NNPA members have been bought off: Last fall, Nigeria paid for a 19-member delegation to visit for a `fact-finding' tour. When she returned, NNPA President Dorothy Leavell said: `We traveled throughout the country, but we found no evidence of a dictatorship or a so-called thug-ocracy that others who've never been there have charged" (The Houston Chronicle, May 17, 1996).

Kakuna Kerina, program coordinator for Africa at the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York, terms it "a pathetic example of how people can be co-opted or bought off" (The Nation, May 20, 1996; p.19). "All this has done is to further undermine the credibility of the black press," offered Randall Echols, acting in Washington as executive assistant for U.S. affairs for Abiola. According to Echols, the military regime of Gen. Sani Abacha of Nigeria showered nearly $5 million in 1995 on various groups, lobbyists and organizations to shore up its flagging image in the U.S.

Another such group is CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, whose chairman, Roy Innis, defended Nigeria against its critics, saying "they are doing a disservice to an important African nation that is moving deliberately from military to civilian rule. We talked to people in many parts of the country (Nigeria, after a visit) and received a generally favorable response to the process that was under way" (The Washington Times, May 15, 1996; p. A13).

In 1991, the late Leon Sullivan, organized the first African/African American Summit in Ivory Coast. While black Americans were being wined, dined and suckered in the Ivory Coast, black Africans was being butchered in Cameroon, Congo, Liberia, Togoland, and other countries.

In particular, at about the same time that black Americans were feasting on imported French delicacies and expensive wines, 26 bodies of pro-democracy demonstrators were being dredged from the Lome Lagoon (Togoland). One of the corpses was that of a woman with a baby strapped to her back.

Asked about political turmoil and carnage in these black African countries, Benjamin Hooks, director of the NAACP--the world's largest civil rights organization, replied that "there is little black Americans could or should do directly to help foster or affect political change in Sub-Saharan Africa . . .

I don't think it is our business to meddle in their affairs." Said one incredulous Ivorian student: "I wish some of these (black) Americans would take to the streets with us instead of supporting the old order" (Washington Post, April 18, 1991; p. A41). A more searing query came from a Liberian exile in the Ivory Coast: "Why have you black Americans let us down?" (Washington Post, April 20, 1991; p. A18).

Life has been tough for Ivorians. President Houphouet-Boigny blamed their hardships on "Western commodity speculators." But Ivorians pointed to the rampant corruption ($456 million is illegally removed from the country every year) and the basilica at Yamassoukrou--a magnificent "black elephant."

The Rev. Leon H. Sullivan, the black American civil rights leader known for his "Sullivan Principles" for South Africa, hailed the basilica as the "world's greatest expression of religious faith and praised Houphouet Boigny for his 30 years of impeccable leadership" (Washington Post, April 18, 1991; p. A41).

To opposition critic Professor Laurent Gbagbo, Houphouet-Boigny is "a reckless rogue, criminal and a big thief." Funding for that useless monument to vanity (cost $360 million) came from his own pocket, according to Houphouet-Boigny. Some pocket.

Two years later, the theatrics, duplicity and fraud moved to Gabon, where President Omar Bongo staged the Second African-African American Summit to garner the international goodwill and recognition he desperately needed to shore up his flailing 26 year presidency. An oil-rich country the size of Connecticut, Gabon has seen its economic potential steadily squandered by mismanagement and naked corruption. The country is essentially bankrupt and has defaulted on its $500 million foreign debt.

The oil boom of the 1970s fuelled a profligate spending spree that culminated in an extravagant OAU Summit in 1977. Among the wasteful projects acquired were a colossal $139 million Presidential palace, Air Gabon and Trans-Gabon Highway. The highway, in particular, suffered from such huge cost overruns that only 535 km of the planned had been completed after 12 years that the remaining section was shelved indefinitely in 1986.

After assuming power in Nov 1967, President Bongo ran the country as his own personal fiefdom. Opposition parties were banned in 1970 and the country declared a "one-party state." Bongo won successive 7-year president terms in 1973, 1979 and 1986 in elections -- each with 99.98 percent of the vote. His personal fortune, estimated in the billions, include real estate and bank accounts in France, Switzerland and the U.S. as well as a multitude of companies and hotels in Gabon.

Living standards in Gabon have deteriorated absymally under Bongo. The number of women living below the poverty line in rural Gabon has increased by over 250 percent in the past 20 years, according to a study recently published by the International Fund for Agricultural Development, a UN agency.

Roads are scoured by gaping potholes for want of repairs. So severe has been the economic deterioration that even the provision of basic public services has fallen into neglect. Dead bodies were left in city streets. On April 15, fed up and angry, Gabonese erected roadblocks to denounce the lack of water and electricity.

Gabon's human rights record and political freedom has been appalling. According to State's 1993 Human Rights Report, "Gabonese law and security enforcement officials use beatings as part of the interrogation process of detainees to obtain confessions.

Prisoners are reportedly forced to march on their knees over stones. Opposition leaders are routinely harassed. The leader of the Gabonese Progress Party, Joseph Rendjambe, was found dead in a Bongo-owned Hotel Doweon the seafront of Libreville on May 23, 1990. His corpse bore the marks of hypodermic needle wounds, which caused his family to suspect poisoning.

Within hours of the news of his death, demonstrators packed the streets of the capital and Gentil, denouncing President Bongo as the murderer and demanding his overthrow. During the siege of Gentil, angry Gabonese held a French consul and 10 expatriates hostage, demanding that France withdraw its support for Bongo. The Bongo government responded with such ferocity that its patron, France, was even embarrassed.

Deploying tanks, armored cars, multiple grenades launchers and automatic weapons, the government gained control of Gentil and Libreville but with at least 5 civilians dead. In June 1990, Auguste Ambourouet and Guy Nang Bekale, both members of the opposition Gabonese Progress Party were detained without charge.

During a peaceful demonstration by opposition groups in March 1992, police opened fire with rubber bullets, killing a teacher named Martine Oulagou Mbadinga.

To burnish his image abroad and seek a fifth 7-year term in presidential elections slated for December 1993, Bongo held the Second African African American Summit (May 24-29, 1993). The African American delegation included Virginia's Governor Doug Wilder, Hon. William Gray III, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Mrs. Coretta Scott-King, Joseph Lowery, Lou Farrakhan, and many others.

How on earth could black American leaders, who waged a historic struggle for civil/human rights and vigorously campaigned for disinvestments and sanctions against South Africa's abominable system of apartheid, allow themselves to be used by black African despots with palpable contempt for human rights and democracy?

George Ayittey, Washington, DC

>>> Part 1

© June 2005 by Afromerica