Rethinking Africa is a forward looking blog dedicated to the exchange of innovative thinking on issues affecting the advancement of African peoples wherever they are. We provide rigorous and insightful analyses on the issues affecting Africans and their vision of the world.
Wednesday, 31 December 2014
Africa 2015 – Freedom and restoration(s)
Freedom is human right. This right is inalienable. Freedom could, conceivably, mean different things to different people. In this epoch of febrile quest for freedom from the collapsing and collapsed “Berlin-states” of subjugation implanted in Africa, any African peoples who, for instance, wishes to chart a future based on the precepts of their forebears in the 12th century Contemporary Era (CE) or even way back, to, say, 8th century Before Contemporary Era (BCE), has the right to pursue this goal. Equally, any African peoples who believes that their aspirations lie in working through the immense challenges of the 21st century CE and projecting targets of creativity and transformations subsequently, must exercise this right. As everyone knows, the “Berlin-states”
that Europe created in Africa, in the aftermath of that infamous Berlin conference on
conquest (November 1884-February 1885), cannot
lead Africans to the reconstructive changes they deeply yearn for after the
tragic history of centuries of occupation. Such change was and never is the
mission of these states but instruments to expropriate
and despoilAfrica by the conquest.As in Berlin, thankfully, states are not a gift from the gods but relationships painstakingly formulated
and constructed by groups of human beings here on earth to pursue aspirations and
interests envisioned by these same human beings. Civilisation
To achieve the goal(s) of any of these stipulated paths does not therefore require anyone to embark on murdering someone else or have themselves murdered in the process. Since Nigeria’s launch of the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, fifteen million Africans have been murdered in genocides and other wars in Africa.
For the future survival of the African humanity, let no more die for the path to their envisaged civilisation or, in other words, howsoever this civilisation a people chooses is construed. It, surely, can be attained and sustained without committing a crime, particularly genocide – heinous crime against humanity.
(Sonny Rollins Trio, “The freedom suite” [personnel: Rollins, tenor saxophone; Oscar Pettiford, bass; Max Roach, drums; recorded: Riverside Records, New York, US, 7 March 1958])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is specialist on the state and on genocide & wars in Africa in the post-1966 epoch – beginning with the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-present day, the foundational and most gruesome genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population were murdered by Nigeria and its allies, principally Britain. Africa and the rest of the world largely stood by and watched as the perpetrators enacted this horror most ruthlessly. The world could have stopped this genocide; the world should have stopped this genocide. This genocide inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence. During the period, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocide in Rwanda (1994), Zaïre/DRCongo (variously, since the late 1990s) and Darfur – west of the Sudan – (since 2004) and in other wars in Africa. African peoples have, presently, no other choice but exit/dismantle the extant genocide-state (the bane of their existence & progress) & construct own nation-centred states that serve their interests. He is author of several books & papers on the subject and his new book is entitled The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019).
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