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.
Showing posts with label Mangbetu-Azande. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mangbetu-Azande. Show all posts
NO PEOPLESwho survive genocide are ever “losers”: Kongo, Mongo, Luba, Boulangui, Mangbetu-Azande, Berg Damara, Nama, Herero, Armenians, Jews, Igbo, Cambodians, Tutsi, Darfuri... Someone or a people that survives genocide is at once a survivor and victor, hence that stunning incantation of the triumph of life itself on the morrow of overcoming the slaughter, the dehumanisation, the immiseration: “Happy Survival”!
(Clifford Brown & Max Roach Quintet, “Sandu” [personnel: Brown, trumpet, Roach, drums; Harold Land, tenor saxophone, Richie Brown, piano, George Morrow, bass; recorded: EmArchy label, New York, US, 23-25 February 1954)
No peoples who survive genocide are “losers”: Kongo, Mongo, Luba, Boulangui, Mangbetu-Azande, Berg Damara, Nama, Herero, Armenians, Jews, Igbo, Tutsi, Darfuri... Someone or a people that survives genocide is at once a survivor and victor, hence that stunning incantation of the triumph of life itself on the morrow of overcoming the slaughter, the dehumanisation, the immiseration: “Happy Survival”!
(Clifford Brown & Max Roach Quintet, “Sandu” [personnel: Brown, trumpet, Roach, drums; Harold Land, tenor saxophone, Richie Brown, piano, George Morrow, bass; recorded: EmArchy label, New York, US, 23-25 February 1954)
No people who survives genocide is a “loser”: Kongo, Mongo, Luba, Boulangui, Mangbetu-Azande, Berg Damara, Nama, Herero, Armenians, Jews, Igbo, Tutsi, Darfuri... Someone or a people that survives genocide is at once a survivor and victor, hence that stunning incantation of the triumph of life itself on the morrow of overcoming the slaughter: “Happy Survival”! (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/on-christopher-okigbo-africas-leading.html, accessed 12 December 2015) Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe
No people who
survives genocide is a “loser”: Kongo, Mongo, Luba, Boulangui, Mangbetu-Azande,
Berg Damara, Nama, Herero, Armenians, Jews, Igbo, Tutsi, Darfuri... Someone or
a people that survives genocide is at
once a survivor and victor, hence that stunning incantation of the triumph
of life itself on the morrow of overcoming the slaughter: “Happy
Survival”! (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/on-christopher-okigbo-africas-leading.html, accessed 2 September 2015)
Foundation
In the case of the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, the foundational
genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa in which Nigeria murders 3.1 million
Igbo (one-quarter of this nation’s population), the agency that has
consistently acknowledged this fact of thesurvivor-victor, throughout this dreadful epoch, is, pointedly, if not ironically, none
other than Nigeria – the key perpetrator of this crime itself. Whatever else
explains why Nigeria segues almost effortlessly to a new phase of its campaign,
as early as 13 January 1970, to coincide with that Igbo celebratory
life-invocation-of- “Happy Survival” that they proclaimed to the whole world:
(a) new
vistas of charging murder trails since (i.e., 13 January 1970-10 September 2015),
targeting and slaughtering tens of thousands of Igbo domiciled particularly in
the geographies of north Nigeria but also elsewhere in the country with the
murder-machine now morphed into Boko Haram and the Buhari regime, arguably
the most terror-retrograde fraction of the Nigeria genocidist power-bloc
(b) enhanced
disarticulation/degradation/dismantling of Igboland economy and programmed
“marginalisation” of the well-known contending assets of Igbo
intellectual/politico-economic-cultural establishment – a crucial plank of the
overarching goal of theNigeriaoccupation which the Buhari regime has expanded with relish since May 2015
(c)
unrelentingly fiendish valorisation of the genocide by genocidist “theorists”/
commanders/commandants/heads-of-regime/regime enthusiasts-propagandists
including that notorious 6 April 2015 royal edict by Rilwan Akiolu, the king or oba of Lagos (west Nigeria) and fulsome supporter
of the Buhari regime, calling publicly for the mass murder of Igbo people (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/c.html, accessed 6 September 2015).
(d) not one
official of the Buhari regime, either in the regions or the centre in Abuja, has
denounced this Akiolu-death decree
(e) not therefore
fortuitous that, since the Akiolu-death decree, regime troopers have murdered
scores of Igbo in Igboland itself –
at the Ariara International Market, Aba (eastcentral region), on 31 July 2015, and at the Oshimili River bridgehead of the Oshimili delta, Onicha (northwest
region), on 31 August 2015
(John Coltrane Quartet, “Living space” [personnel: Coltrane, soprano saxophone, McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, NJ, US, 16 June 1965])
Biafra
Yet despite the
desperation and savagery of genocidistNigeria,
particularly heightened currently, the Igbo refuse
to go under. Igbo will never go under, thanks to the resilience of the
survivor-victor. In dazzling contrast, the world presently watches,
unmistakeably, asNigeriatrots along
to an ignominious collapse, having run the course of its bloody trail in
history, begun on Sunday 29 May 1966.
Consequently, for
the Igbo, they have their work cut out as they embark on constructing a new civilisation
in Biafra in the aftermath ofNigeria. This is the news the world awaits most eagerly. In Biafra, the Igbo don’t
only have to negate, in its entirety, that which wasNigeria but subvert the very ideational crucible which inaugurated this
pulverising nightmare unleashed by the epoch of the British conquest of the peoples and occupation of the states of this
southwestcentral region of Africa in 1885 – 130 years ago. Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe
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).
