You both raise good points. But I can't help but wonder if the opposition is any better? And I would say that any American president causes much more damage geopolitically than any African president could do in 100 years. "Our" oligarchy is no better than Kagame's "dictatorship."--in fact "we"helped create Kagame (which is not to deny that President Kagame is a brilliant strategist playing the US for his own interest--POWER.)
Two questions I raised were subsequently highlighted in recent news from Rwanda:
#1. If Kagame is bad, and I think he his, is the opposition any better? We might have an answer. A grenade exploded not long after Kagame was declared the winner. 7-20 civilians, including children were reported injured. One woman reportedly lost an eye. If it is proven that the attack was carried out by dissidents, then its pretty clear that some members of the opposition are willing to kill civilians in their pursuit of power.
I pinched this essay from Congolese activist Kambale Musavuli. Kambale was kind enough to allow me to include his commentary with the post. Kambale thinks that Kagame's iron-clad grip on Rwanda is slipping:
Yoweri Museveni chats with Paul Kagame
I'm telling you... this is how they get rid of African leaders... I have learned the west for a while... I saw this with Mobutu, former president of the Congo before 1996 who was a brutal dictator supported by the west.
First they get you to betray your country... then they take resources they need and stockpile it... w...hen lots of voices of dissent start making too much noise and getting to the citizens in the West, they go back to the basics. They get their intellectuals to start writing to justify their actions... then they will take "preemptive actions" to save the Africans.
I'm telling you... Kagame's time are numbered. When you see folks such as NY Times, Financial Times, Bloomberg, BBC, and now Foreign Policy start writing about something that has been going on for 16 years and they were silent... I have to take a step back and urge the Rwandan youth to be wise and work on reconciliation today.
Kagame is going down... but you should not go down with him if you stand for justice today and work for true reconciliation.
On Aug. 9, Paul Kagame's mandate as president of Rwanda will be renewed in an election in which he will probably receive, as before, about 94 percent of the vote. Rwandan journalists who criticized him are in prison; some of his earlier would-be opponents are dead, in prison, or in exile. Rwandan elections have no more uncertainty than those in the Soviet Politburo of Brezhnev's day.
Some American church leaders will be pleased that Kagame, whom they see as a God-fearing man, will continue to lead a nation that suffered the planet's worst genocide in the last 20 years. Many corporate leaders and economists will be pleased that the government of a Central African country claiming the fastest economic growth in its region has won again. Only justice, democracy, and the silent and terrified majority of the Rwandan population will have lost.
I first met Kagame in September 1994, just two months after the Tutsi forces of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) had defeated the Hutugenocidaires and captured the capital city of Kigali. As U.S. ambassador to neighboring Burundi, I had been invited to join U.S. Undersecretary of State Tim Wirth and U.S. Ambassador to Rwanda David Rawson for a two-hour meeting with Kagame, then the leader of the RPF. On the drive to his headquarters in downtown Kigali from the airport, half the buildings in the capital still lacked windows; shattered glass littered the streets.
We entered a large, shadowy office with cement floors and walls. The most striking thing in the room was Kagame himself, a man with a sorcerer's air about him, dressed in a dark suit too large for his rail-thin body. (Fine tailoring is often a victim of civil war, especially for guerrilla leaders.)
My perceptions of Kagame undoubtedly had been shaped by my earlier interviews with some of the 100,000 Rwandan Hutu refugees who had arrived in Burundi over the previous two months. They had been coming at a rate of more than 1,000 a day since Kagame's victory, and were living on bare ground under blue plastic sheeting provided by the United Nations, stretched over branches torn from surrounding trees. When I asked them when they would return home, they invariably replied, "Whenever the RPF stops killing us." A counter-genocide by Kagame's all-Tutsi force, they said, was mercilessly slaughtering the Hutu population.
Kagame surely knew all that, but of course refused to admit it when I questioned him. I found him to be shrewd, well spoken, and careful. He never directly denied my statements, but always refused to take responsibility for the RPF's campaign of revenge. And the United States and the U.N. preferred to believe that the Tutsi victors were better than the defeated Hutu forces. Emerging from the meeting into the darkened streets of Kigali, I knew there would be no equal justice or real democracy as long as Kagame held power.
There appears to be an orchestrated effort to eliminate or intimidate members of the Rwandan opposition. I also recall that a Tanzanian lawyer was killed not long ago in Dar es Salaam. He was representing a prominent Rwandan being tried @ ICTR. I don't know that the govt was involved in the Dar murder, but a pattern is emerging. Its especially worrisome that perceived enemies can be targeted beyond Rwanda's borders. Transnational political hits have historically been a tactic of the United States (think Lumumba and Nkrumah). I hope it doesn't become a problem in Africa.GI
South Africa has recalled its ambassador to Kigali following a diplomatic row over the shooting of an exiled Rwandan army general in Johannesburg, the foreign ministry has confirmed.
"We have recalled our ambassador to Rwanda for consultations. Let me be categorical. We have not broken diplomatic relations with Rwanda," foreign ministry director General Ayanda Ntsaluba told a news conference.
The move is traditionally the strongest demonstration of official disapproval short of severing diplomatic relations, but Gen Ntsaluba said Pretoria was in discussions with the Rwandan government.
"All of us are just trying to understand how we can work on our relations," he said.
Former Rwandan general Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa was shot and wounded on June 19. His wife has called the shooting an assassination attempt sparked by Gen Nyamwasa's criticisms of President Paul Kagame.
Below is some of my Facebook chatter on Kagame that some readers might find of interest. Dan was responding to a NYTimes article I posted on Facebook.
Dan Kashagama The thing that Gettleman [author of the article] and other Western media and activists do is alarmism... and they refuse - absolutely refuse - to acknowledge that Africans already have a solution to the crisis of mass violence and repression... African unity. For 50 years now, Africans have been telling the world that the violence and repression are the effects of neocolonialism.
After the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, the OAU produced reports examining the causes and in response to pressure for pan Africanists, scrapped the non-intervention clause and got African parliaments to ratify the Union Act in which the new clause authorizes the AU's peacekeeping forces to forcibly enter a state in which war crimes, mass murder or govt'al collapse is imminent or taking place.
What Western reporters are doing is sensationalism... and the activists refuse to do anything to promote the capacity of the AU conflict resolution mechanisms. I have asked every activists who is crying over Africa to explain why it is they won't demand support for African solutions... instead of only calling for foreign intervention from the west [either cutting of aid, or military occupation via NATO or UN]... the answers I get range form utter ignorance of the pan Africanism, to cryptic remarks that display racism - the latent belief that Africans are congenitally chaotic and violent.
Has Jeffrie Gettleman, Annie Garrison, Bono, Stephen Lewis or any such people once stood up to said anything positive about the AU's peacekeeping operations or offered to help the Pan African Parliament [Africa's most important conflict management mechanism]. There is nothing happening in Rwanda or Somalia, or sudan that is new to Africans... the OAU/AU were set up precisely to address these failures... but the activist groups in the West have not helped that process. I find a lot of reasoning on their part rather weak and ineffective. Until they address Pan African institutions, they will continue to be worse than ineffective. May 1 at 11:35pm ·
Kwame Zulu Shabazz☥☥☥ Asante Brotha Dan,
I share your view that the AU is the proper institution for working Africa's problems on African terms.
Yes, most western reporting on Africa is racist or biased or patronizing--frequently dreadful. This particular article, however, is an exception to that general rule. Its not at all sensationalist. It is specifically about Rwanda's efforts to solve its own problems.
Moreover, the NYT coverage of Kagame is generally favorable. The author goes out of his way to cite several accomplishments of the Kagame regime. The point of the essay is the delicate balance between stability and repression. Gettleman has opted to focus on Rwandans who feel repressed, but I think he does it in a way that is reasonable.
The "alarmist" is i and i.
I have been in the audience twice when Kagame has traveled to the US. I also had an impromptu one-on-one discussion with the Rwandan ambassador to the United States a few years back. My sense of things is that what Kagame is really after is maintaining the status quo of Tutsi-domination.
I just don't think it can work. kzs May 2 at 9:42am ·
Dan Kashagama We can all agree that a lot of what appears as favorable reporting on Africa is in fact misidentifying where the progress is being made... and omits important bits, in order to create a picture that fits traditional colonial views. Rwanda now is just the latest case in a long line of so-called "African miracles": Zimbabwe, Ivory coast, Kenya, Uganda, Botswana... and now Rwanda - they get talked up until the careless and uninformed media and activist backlash starts... the victims are invariably Africans who get pitted against each other in a death spiral. Rwanda will hit the cusp of the wave soon enough, and the bad news won't stop until its back in the madhouse.
Kagame is looking out for Kagame... many of his victims and opponents are Tutsi. The tutsi line is being promoted by his opponents, but I don't think Kagame will protect anyone on the basis of their ethnicity unless it keeps him in charge. The capricious nature of his relations with people around him is evidence enough that he has no lasting loyalties, and frankly neither do most African leaders who's legitimacy is in doubt.
But now I worry about the media and activists who are unwittingly banging war-drums and fanning the flames of conflict on the basis of ethnic and political vagaries. They forget Rwanda's these ethnic groupings and political alignments happen to transcend Rwanda's borders... and without proper political reforms backed by the AU, a chaotic collapse in Rwanda will sink the entire region in even more violence. This time could be worse than the last... and its urgent, absolutely urgent, that the AU have the capacity to engage and do its work. Activists interested in peace and rights should be looking at the real causes of success and failure in Africa, and stop repeating the old cliches. May 2 at 4:37pm ·
Kwame Zulu Shabazz ☥☥☥ I hear you well my brotha. I certainly appreciate that this is much bigger than Rwanda. Thats why I mentioned Great Lakes in my previous post. Actually even the Eurocentric reporters have recognized that this is not a challenge that stops at Rwandas borders.
We can agree to disagree on what Kagame's agenda is. In America we had a brutal civil war in the 1860s. The war literally split up white families. Some favoring the Union and the others favoring secession. It was the bloodiest war of that era. But at the end of the day both sides favored white supremacy. Likewise Kagame and his Tutsi enemies favor Tutsi supremacy. You believe its a cliche. I would ask when did it become cliched? Who made that determination? And why did the ambassador to Rwanda devote so much time to the topic of how the Belgians invented ethnic animosity? And why did he refuse to acknowledge that the current regime is dominated by Tutsis? Why did Kagame himself feel compelled to initiate a we are all Rwandans policy?
I have talked to ordinary Rwandans who believe that Tutsi supremacy is a major obstacle to stability in Rwanda. They don't strike me as confused or brainwashed or biased on the matter. I certainly agree that the conflict in Rwanda, Burundi and elsewhere should not be reduced to a single factor. But it is equally problematic to downplay the reality of ethnic strife whatever its source. kzs May 2 at 5:42pm ·
Dan Kashagama The "tutsi supremacy" argument is one of those western constructs... a product of the colonial identity system and it defies the logic and realities on the ground in Africa... Many of the people alleging a Tutsi conspiracy are either confused western commentators or activists who support the fallen Habyarimana regime or don't understand what has happened in Africa. If there are Rwandans saying this, they are doing so not because they believe its true, but because it panders to Western minds who reduce everything in Africa to terms of ethnic supremacy. The politics just don't have the latitude for that kind of dynamic. The vagaries and tendencies operative in African politics make a mess of supremacy in the conventional meaning of the term.
Today, the leading tutsi scholars and military officers are all in exile or have been killed... and they number in the thousands, including the entire cadre of the founders of the RPF. In other words, they despise kagame's methods... they invariably are against the wars - or their conduct - that kagame has fought in the Congo. If there was a Tutsi agenda for supremacy ...it would have to been dependent on the founding leaders of the RPF... otherwise it doesn't make sense. But the leading RPF ideologues are famously pushing other ideas that defy any possibility of Tutsi dominance. Two of the most important ones were Wilson Rutayisire and Alphonse Furuma [these two were the ones responsible for designing the RPF's mechanisms and whom Kagame had to defeat in order to continue his rampage].
Colonel Wislon Rutaisire [who also happened to be an important pan Africanist, founder of the RPF's newspaper and news agency, and author of Rwanda's new flag and anthem] - he led the revolt by RPF officers against the Kagame's invasion of the Congo with at least 24 of his colleagues [all ranking tutsi military commanders signing a petition denouncing the invasion - they are all dead or missing - so much for supremacy]. Wilson was killed in the Congo in what the Kagame regime claims is suicide... no ranking govt official attended his funeral, except for one, the Hutu ex-president Bizimungu who helped carry the coffin], along with a group of out-of-favor RPF officers who subsequently left Rwanda. Wilson's family was evicted from their home days afterward and they left Rwanda. Is this how supremacy works?
The most important leader of the RPF/A besides Wilson and other dead founders of the RPF/A, is Alphonse Furuma the author of the original politicization programs [still in use] of both the RPF and the NRA in Uganda [The Iwawa project is an offshoot of this politicization program, although I am quite sure he is horrified by what kagame and Museveni have done to his original idea]. Furuma is in exile in the US for opposing Kagame...and for defending hutu officers and leaders in the RPA/F.
Seth Sendashonga, the most prominent among the Hutu in the RPF leadership, was opposed to Kagame's dictatorial tendencies and the handling of the massacres and repressions committed in the name of the RPF. Seth in his writings was the most prominent Rwandan [he was minister of interior] to articulate the claim approximating the Tutsi Supremacy...he said that Uganda's rwanda exiles [most were Tutsi but many were Hutu] were displacing other Rwandans in govt and had become dominant in the administration of Rwanda. However, Seth also claimed that Tutsi were not the enemy but rather it was Kagame and the broken RPF. Seth had even harsher words for the Hutu groups who were anti-Tutsi and who were remnants of the genocidal Habyarimanas support network. Seth claimed there was no Tutsi conspiracy... just a party that had been hijacked by kagame and was being used to prop up a dictatorship that was polarizing.
And, there's Alexander Kimenyi... who is now one of Africa;s leading intellectuals. He is an expert at Rwanda's history, culture and languages. He is Rwandan Tutsi and a former leader in anti-Habyarimana opposition and in the RPF. Kimenyi retains the widest support base of any Rwandan in exile. Kimenyi has openly broken with Kagame over the interpretation of the 1994 Genocide, and the Congo.
Kimenyi, like almost every reputable African intellectual and dissident regardless of what state or ethnicity they hail from in Africa, has been promoting Pan Africanism [and perhaps he could do more in that regard because I personally don't think he's done enough]. All of the leading Tutsis, including the last king of Rwanda, Kigeri, is saying Pan Africanism provides the framework for comprehending the dynamics of the genocidal wars in Africa, and also for future stability. Even Kagame, on days when he is not issuing threats acknowledges the fact that only a pan Africa approach can guarantee peace and stability in Rwanda [incidentally so do his Hutu opponents...but not the western activists who have never heard of the Pan African parliament and think the AU is a diversion from the "real" issues that afflict Africans].
To cut the long story short, if there was a Tutsi supremacist agenda, its surely got to be the most bizarre kind that has as its method the killing and exiling of its would-be leaders. Kagame's regime now includes such people as Rwarakabije, one of the leaders of the anti-Tutsi genocide, and organizer of the FDLR in the Congo that Kagame has been using as an excuse to despoil Congo. If anyone still thinks that Tutsi supremacy is a coherent idea being nursed by Kagame or other Tutsi elites, its seems to have become dependent on its former enemies and angered the very tutsi community whom some now claim it aims to promote. The contradictions here are just too great to brush aside. It seems to me that Kagame's own supremacy is the big concern, not the Tutsi community. May 2 at 7:23pm ·
Kwame Zulu Shabazz ☥☥☥ Brotha Dan,
Asante sana for this very informative post. I have looked up Prof. Kimenyi and liked what I read. When I get a moment I will send him an email. With your permission I would like to repost this to my blog so that other folks can have a look at it.
Kagame-ism and Tutsi dominance, however, need not be mutually exclusive. I have talked to enough Rwandans over the past 12 years to know that not all Rwandans would agree with your effort to minimize the role of Tutsi dominance in the Kagame administration. Several Rwandans (mostly Hutu but at least one Tutsi, I think) have indicated to me that besides a few strategic Hutu appointments the political structure is dominated by Tutsis. And obviously you are underestimating the level of Hutu ethnic-based resentment to Kagame's regime because you deny that there is any such thing as Tutsi dominance in the first instance.
That said, whilst I might not be wholly convinced of your bottom line, your post certainly has educated me on more of the nuances as Rwanda and its neighbors move forward. kzs May 3 at 1:51am ·
Dan Kashagama Thanks Kwame,
You are welcome to repost my comments if they are helpful. I worry greatly about criminalizing an entire community...
Surely to describe the actions and tendency of a single man in packing his administration with certain people as constituting proof of a supremacist movement seems like overkill. Whatever Kagame has done or failed to do, the campaign to impugn the Tutsi in general is a continuation of a dangerous campaign that makes no effort to address facts or put kagame's actions in perspective by dealing in gross exaggerations and incitement of hatred against all Tutsis, not just the RPF or Kagame. Imagine if people were to describe Obama's administration as Black supremacy... the analogy is perfect.
The Tutsi in Rwanda suffer the same restrictions or access as Hutu, and are subjected to the same stresses... I think that the standard for supremacy has to show that being Tutsi confers advantages that Hutus do not have, and that Hutus are subject to tutsis. But the reality is that Rwanda is 90% peasants, Hutu and Tutsi, who don't know which way is up or down, and for the most part get along as equals. In fact Rwanda is unique in the exceptional reality that former killers, largely Hutu, live among Tutsi victims [however uncomfortably, its still something remarkable].
Tutsi are as much victims of Kagame's failures and heavy handed manipulations as are Hutus and Congolese. At what point does one cease to be described as part of a supremacy project, if one has no say in the policy of a regime. Many Tutsi are just as resentful of Kagame's regime as are Hutu. Many opposition leaders in Rwanda and journalists who are in trouble are Tutsi, and they have been subjected to the same abuses as Hutus opposition leaders [sometimes even suffered worse]. The Tutsi in Kagame's regime are also strategically tokens placed to give him some legitimacy, but have no more say than the Hutus in the regime. So what is the case to be made for Tutsi dominance if Tutsis are as oppressed as Hutus?
Somewhat similar circumstances hold true in Sudan where they say Nubians dominate, and forget the Bashir brutally executed several dozens of the leading northern officers of the Sudanese army when he took over, and that the northern Sudanese are just as marginalized and oppressed as every other Sudanese. Many islamic elites are rotting in prison [Turabi the arch islamic cleric was also imprisoned and marginalised by Bashir]. When do we stop characterizing the Bashir government as a "northern sudanese regime", or as "Islamic", and recognize it for what its is... simply as the Bashir dictatorship that does what it does opportunistically. Is Zimbabwe a Shona supremacy? Is Uganda a Hima supremacy? Is Kenya a Kikuyu supremacy? Is Congo a Luba supremacy? Is South Africa a Zulu supremacy?
Ask your informants if Kagame were to fire every Tutsi who is in his govt and replace them with Hutus, would that make the supremacy claim go away? What is the correct number of Tutsi that should serve under Kagame's autocracy? I don't think this indictment of an entire community is proper at all. Its claims are made as part of a twisted and continuing colonial campaign whose origins are not African. The vast majority of Hutus and Tutsi have nothing to with any supremacists groups. Its not fair to accuse Hutus or Tutsis in general of being ethnic supremacist just because some nuts may be out there who happen to share their ethnic identity.
We have to give thought to these problems and play a constructive role in these conflicts as responsible intellectuals and organizers and activists. Lets not get manipulated by misguided or genocidal factions. It is clear to me that some people are using the claim of Tutsi supremacy as a means of getting support from the West where the idea of supremacy evokes a strong negative reaction. But lets not also forget that many of people making the claim of Tutsi supremacy are beneficiaries of the Habyarimana regime, and that attacking the Tutsi community en mass was their usual political and economic modus operandi.
By priming people to think of the entire tutsi community as villains... the very same strategy used to desensitize Rwadans to violence against their neighbors - the end point of this globalized anti-Tutsi campaign is genocide. Why can't they qualify their statements, to show proof that Kagame's regime is not synonymous with the Tutsi community or interests? Why persist on claiming Tutsi supremacy if confronted by evidence of substantive and significant Tutsi resistance to Kagame?
The reasons and roots for the claim of Tutsi supremacy are to be found in colonial propaganda. The claim of supremacy was external to Rwandans and was a contention introduced by European administrators in the 1890s who attributed superiority on the basis of genetic descent from whites. Prior to the colonial occupation, distinctions between pre-colonial Africans were not based on genetic claims about being a master race, but rather on age and certain other ritual obligations, character traits, and occupational arrangements. The colonists advocated class war and race war... and infected Rwanda's subsequent regimes with a twisted discourse that deals in mass exterminations.
It seems to me that repeating colonial fallacies of supremacy or inferiority between African communities reinforces the racist claims that continue to divide and manipulate Africans. The supremacist claims were in fact at attempt to prove white supremacy, by claiming that some groups of Africans were genetically or congenitally superior to others on the basis of their having somehow been descended form whites... this is the same false claim they make about ancient Egyptians, or Wolofs or Amharas. The fact that white supremacist discourse is still being applied to describe Africans shows that the legacy of colonialism dies hard. May 3 at 3:33am ·
Following the logic laid out by Kagame, Agathe Habyarimana shot down the plane of her husband, Juvenal Habyarimana, in order to incite a massacre??? GI
AFP/Pool/File – Rwandan President Paul Kagame (right) shakes hands with French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the presidential …
by Mathieu Rabechault – 2 hrs 37 mins ago
PARIS (AFP) – French police on Tuesday arrested Agathe Habyarimana, the widow of Rwanda's assassinated ex-president, who is wanted in her homeland as one of the alleged masterminds of the 1994 genocide.
The arrest came just five days after President Nicolas Sarkozy made the first trip by a French leader to Rwanda since the genocide.
Agathe Habyarimana has lived in a Paris suburb for 12 years, having fled Rwanda after her husband Juvenal Habyarimana's plane was shot down in April 1994 and his supporters launched a massacre of 800,000 civilians.
French police acting on an international arrest warrant issued by Rwanda arrested Habyarimana at her home in Courcouronnes, south of Paris on Tuesday morning, officials told AFP.
She was later freed on bail, the state prosecutor's office said.
The Tutsi-led government in Kigali has accused the 68-year-old of being a member of the Hutu inner circle that planned the mass killings. She has steadfastly denied the charge.
Officials in Kigali welcomed Habyarimana's arrest.
"It's a very good sign. The French justice system is starting to handle these cases in a serious way," Rwanda's Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama told AFP, referring to various Rwandan genocide suspects living in France.
He urged France to extradite Habyarimana to Rwanda, despite the absence of an extradition treaty.
Theodore Simburudali, the head of the survivors' association Ibuka, said the arrest was "good news," but added: "Why did France wait for so long?"
"Just arresting her is not enough; she needs to be tried: at the ICTR, in France or in Rwanda," he said, referring to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania.
Habyarimana's lawyer said the arrest of the widow dubbed "Lady Genocide" by some rights groups was directly linked to Sarkozy's Kigali visit last week, despite Paris' insistence that its judicial system is independent.
"You can't not draw a link," said Philippe Meilhac. "The extradition request from Kigali dates back to November and was obviously re-activated" after Sarkozy returned from Rwanda.
Habyarimana had been seeking political asylum in France but her request was repeatedly turned down.
In October, she lost a final appeal before the State Council, France's highest administrative body, which ruled there were "serious reasons to suspect" she was involved "either as an instigator or accomplice" in genocide.
It remained uncertain however whether France would extradite Habyarimana to Rwanda for trial.
France has transferred three Rwandan suspects to Tanzania to face prosecution before the international tribunal, but judges have so far refused to extradite genocide suspects to Kigali.
In recent cases, French courts have ruled that the suspects cannot hope for a fair trial in their homeland.
Habyarimana's lawyer said she will fight extradition and that "if she must be heard, she asks that it be in a French or international court."
"She considers that Rwandan criminal courts are not sufficiently independent or impartial," said Meilhac.
Juvenal Habyarimana's assassination was seen as the signal for Hutu militias to launch the massacre of minority Tutsis.
French troops evacuated the president's widow as the bloodshed began and she made France her home in 1998 after staying in Gabon, Zaire and Kenya.
Kigali broke off relations with Paris in late 2006 after a French anti-terrorist judge implicated President Paul Kagame's entourage in Habyarimana's assassination.
In Kigali last Thursday Sarkozy stopped short of offering an apology but admitted France had made "mistakes" by failing to recognise the scale of the killings.
He said France would do everything possible to ensure that "all those responsible for the genocide are found and are punished."
President John Atta Mills has followed up on his previous promise of support for the Ayiti (Haiti) Relief Effort. Ghanaian officials have announced that Ghana will donate $3 million. They have also promised a future donation of "relief items." Ayitians in Ghana are sponsoring a concert, Helping Hands for Haiti. The proceeds will go to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund(NB: I DO NOT endorse the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund. There are better options). The Caribbean Association of Ghana has pledged $500 dollars to the relief effort. I have seen numerous additional efforts in Ghana to support Ayiti.
Stepping up (this list is not exhaustive)
Currently, there is no coordinated response from the African Union, but more African nations are stepping up. Blogger Emeka Chiakwelu reports that Rwanda and Liberia have pledged $100,000 and $50, 000 respectively. President Ernest Koroma, has pledged $100,000 on behalf of Sierra Leone. South Africa reportedly has 5,000 health professionals on the ground in Ayiti. Nigeria has a peace keeping contingent in Ayiti and Nigerian leaders have deliberated on sending 7.2 million naira (roughly $50,000 US, I think). Senegal's parliament has committed 500 million CFA ($1 million) to the relief effort. Even Somalian so-called pirates have offered to donate ransom money.
President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal has offered free land Haitians who want to emigrate to the home of their Ancestors. Some of my Senegalese and Gambian friends dismiss Wade's plan as the delusional ideas of a man who is either "old and senile" or "reactionary" or both.
My virtual friend, Kelechi, doesn't like Wade's land scheme either, but he offers this intriguing counter-proposal:
Senegal, as a 'senior' member of the African Union, could organize/encourage a continental, measurable effort on the part of the member nations toward the rebuilding of Haiti's Ouest Department. If each government contributed an average of $5 million, we would be talking about almost $300 million (roughly 5% of Haiti's GDP). An international body such as the UN could be called in as a consultant or independent observer to oversee the administration of funds for relief in the most pressing areas. It would be the hope that this would be matched by the European Union and the United States. (to date, the US has pledged $10million, while only a handful of European countries have pledged an average of $2 million).
I would also advocate for the relieving of duty of American 'peace keeping' forces by African Union troops, to provide security. American military can only operated in the mindset of war, and such is not the case in Haiti. African health professionals, who usually leave home seeking international experience, could also be deployed to Port-au-Prince to aid in the human recovery.
Repatriation?
I believe that repatriation is a moral right possessed by all descendants of the Middle Passage. Wade's offer should be commended. I don't imagine that many Ayitians would take up the offer. But Ayitians who do want to settle in Senegal should be provided with whatever support is necessary to do so. We must also be careful that the rights of the citizens of Senegal are equally protected. (Update: the African Union has announced that it will deliberate on Wade's proposal.)
***
Some of My Ghanaian friends and I have a running joke
kzs: "I am looking forward to the day that I can live in Ghana permanently!"
Ghanaian friend: "Eeiii! Kwame. You Black Americans are constantly trying to return to Africa whilst we Africans are trying to get out of Africa!
This is always said in jest, yet one can't deny the irony.
(But the story is complicated. Even as people are now debating who the "real" American Americans are, Ghanaians who grew up abroad are returning to Ghana...)
Should Africa Help? Under what circumstances?
But back to the criticisms. Should cash strapped African nations who get a significant part of the budget from so-called donor nations donate to Ayiti? What about nations like the Congo (DRC) who are ensconced in a civil war? Congo has pledged 2.5 million to the relief effort. Is this action irresponsible? Some of my colleagues say yes, but I wonder if they are grasping the urgency of Haiti's plight?
Kwame Nkrumah, faced a similar barrage of naysayers when he loaned Guinea-Conakry 20 million and, later, when he sent troops to DRC to aide Patrice Lumumba. History has proven Nkrumah right and the naysayers wrong. Judging from some of the criticism leveled at Joseph Kabila, one would think that Kabila had ceded their entire budget to Haiti.
There are folks in Ayiti who need help urgently. At this very moment a doctor is contemplating amputating a limb of a Haitian woman, man or child with no anesthesia. Sending a few million to Ayitians--many of whom are direct descendants of the Kongo Kingdom--who urgently need it is pan-African gesture that we should support. Indeed every African nation should donate something.
So what are your thoughts on the matter? Should African nations help Haiti? If so, should there be a criteria? If, for example, Omar al-Bashir of Sudan offered a financial contribution should it be accepted?
Centuries of global white supremacy has left many white people in denial and most white and non-white people psychically damaged. As if we needed more evidence on the non-white side Channel 4 in London has been running a weekly series on race. I called a friend in London via Skype and was able to view the last 10 minutes of the most recent installment titled Bleach, Nip, Tuck: The White Beauty Myth.
The segment featured and attractive but confused Afro-British girl who went through extraordinary lengths to get a "Caucasian" nose. As she explained it, "My nose made me look poor." The segment concluded with the Afro-British sister confidently moving about an upper class part of the city with her new nose. This was painful for me to watch...
Speaking of noses, I am reminded of the "Tutsi nose myth" invented by the Belgians who declared that the Tutsi's had "Hamitic features" and were of Caucasian stock.
"The scientists brought scales and measuring tapes and callipers, and they went about weighing Rwandans, measuring Rwandan cranial capacities, and conducting comparative analyses of the relative protuberance of Rwandan noses. Sure enough, the scientists found what they had believed all along. Tutsis had a ‘nobler’, more ‘naturally’ aristocratic dimensions than the ‘coarse’ and ‘bestial’ Hutus. On the ‘nasal index’ for instance, the median Tutsi nose was found to be about two and a half millimetres longer and nearly five millimetres narrower than the median Hutu nose."— Philip Gourevitch (We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda)
Overtime this myth, created and promoted by Europeans, became a reality for the Tutsi overlords and their Hutu subordinates. I recall the story of a Tutsi woman who got caught up in one of the countless massacres during the Rwandan genocide. She worried that the assailants would notice her "tutsi nose":
Murekatete and her grandmother slept in that office for days, with hundreds of their neighbors. Every night, a gang assembled outside with torches and machetes, shouting threats and taunts. An uncle paid a Hutu to sneak the girl and her grandmother out in an ambulance one night. Soon after, Hutus stormed the office and killed everyone there.
The ambulance driver took them to a safe house in Nyabisindu, further south, farther from her family, where they stayed for a week. The host's neighbors found out he was hiding the pair. "Seven or eight of them came to the house," Murekatete recalled. "There was blood on their clubs and machetes." This is the moment she remembers most vividly. "I was wearing a scarf, which I used to cover my face. I was shaking. I kept pleading to God. I kept trying to flatten my nose, my Tutsi nose." She is not sure whether it was God who saved her, but her patron convinced the men to go away. [Source]
Image via Wikipedia
