At long last… Nana Akufo-Addo, president of Ghana, sets the pace for the African peoples’ position in relation to the pan-European World during this joint press conference in Accra, Ghana (Tuesday 5 December 2017), with Emmanuel Marcon, the visiting French president – 61 years after the beginning of the so-called African restoration of independence in the Sudan … Marcon appears disconcerted as Akufo-Addo makes his speech…

 (Nana Akufo-Addo)

(President Nana Akufo-Addo delivers his historic speech in Accra at joint news conference with visiting French President Emmanuel Marcon, Tuesday 5 December 2017)

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Samuel Totten’s letter from the Nuba Mountains

Dear All

Happy New Year! I hope all is well with you and your loved ones as 2013 gets under way.

I am extremely pleased to report that I just returned home from what was the toughest trip I've ever undertaken in my life. The heat, dust, body-breaking (in part, motor-cross like-) dirt “roads”, along with the irritant of daily flyovers by Antonov bombers and “the mail” (as the locals put it) they delivered, quickly took their toll on my poor body. That said, the information I gleaned in interviews and informal conversations  with civilians, rebel soldiers, rebel commanders, journalists from various areas around the world, the only surgeon (an American educated at Duke University Law School) at the only hospital in the Nuba Mountains, among many others, was in many cases nothing short of revelatory. 

A huge, huge thank you to all of you who took the time to write me with your kind words and sentiments. Believe me, they meant the world to me. The reason you did not hear back from me is that I only had email a single evening throughout the entire three weeks in the Yida Refugee Camp (where I was five days) and the Nuba Mountains (where I was for two weeks) and that was for a very short period of time during which I was trying to reach my wife, Kathleen, on Christmas Eve. As I unwind, get some badly needed rest and get focused, I will drop many of you individual emails. 

I am intent on getting the word out about what I experienced, witnessed, and gleaned in regard to the ongoing onslaught by the Government of Sudan against the Nuba Mountains people as well as the projection that they may end up facing widespread and abject starvation (not JUST widespread malnutrition and worse as they do now) once the rainy season hits IF the world does not truly begin serious efforts to address this matter in an efficacious manner  -- and not three or four or five months from now but ASAP. I should note that many, many people have already suffered terribly from the bombings  (not only those who have been killed but who have been terribly maimed, having arms and legs sheared off and worse) and the ongoing lack of food (including, in certain cases outright starvation but mostly malnutrition and severe malnutrition).

I am personally contacting radio and tv networks, university programs (particularly those dealing with human rights and/or crimes against humanity and genocide), and other organizations about  my availability. I am willing to speak at any time of the day or night to media across the globe and am willing to fly anywhere to give talks, take part in panel discussions, etc. 

Ideally, university programs would cover the cost of my flight and room and board. I’d also greatly appreciate it if the latter would contribute a donation (which is tax free) either to an ongoing effort by a small team of remarkable humanitarians with whom I am currently working to insert tons of food into the Nuba Mountains (notably, just this past month we inserted close to six tons of food into the Nuba Mountains, with an aim of getting it to those individuals in most critical need at this time) or the nonprofit foundation, The Post Genocide Education Fund (which I co-founded in 2008 with Rafiki Ubaldo, a close friend who is a journalist and survivor of the Rwandan Genocide, whose express purpose is to provide full scholarships for young survivors of genocide to gain a university education).  Generally, my fee for a speech is $3,000.00 but in order to get the word out about the Nuba Mountains situation I am willing to accept donations a third of that. 

This is all to say: if you have any solid contacts in the media, human rights/genocide-related organizations, or at one or more universities who you think might be interested in conducting an interview or having me present a talk, I would greatly appreciate (1) your contacting them on my behalf, and ccing me when you do so and/or (2) providing me with their key contact information (name, position, affiliation, email address and direct phone number). A personal introduction (via email) would also be extremely  helpful. I thank you in advance for your kind assistance. 

For the most part, the world is blind to the fact of the crisis in the Nuba Mountains and that must change. Those in the know (including the UN, U.S., EU, among others) need to be pressured to get serious about halting the daily bombings and killings and a food crisis  that could easily result in widespread starvation and mass death if greater attention and help is not undertaken immediately to ameliorate the situation. 

I’ve been up cranking away, wide awake, for several hours now but am beginning to fade so I shall close. 

With all best wishes,

sam 

Dr. Samuel Totten

Professor Emeritus

University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Author of Genocide by Attrition: Nuba Mountains, Sudan (Transaction Publishers, 2012)

PS. If several universities in an area (i.e., UCLA, UC Irvine, Long Beach State, Fullerton State Uni or Harvard, Boston U, Boston C., MIT, et al) wish to have me speak at a general location or host me on each of their campuses then they may wish to share the costs of the flight/accommodations and honorarium and have me speak at each in one fell swoop. 

A stretch of choices or another form of contestation in northcentral Africa*

Despite the increasingly grave level in the rise of tension between the Sudan and the South Sudan over a mutually acceptable borderline demarcation between the two states, it should be stressed that it is not inevitable that another war is the way forward to settle this dispute. The South Sudan has signed the November 2011 “border roadmap”, drawn through African Union mediation, but the Sudan still refuses to endorse this document, arguing that “to do this (sic) could prejudice final settlement negotiations on the subject”.

But the Sudan must now know that it cannot destroy the independence and sovereign rights of the South Sudan despite several decades of war and the resultant catastrophic death tally of 2.5 million people, mostly South Sudanese. The eventual, most painful success of the South Sudan resistance, since 1955, has been an historic boon to African determination to halt the agelong expansionism of the Arabo-imperium in this pivotal strategic region of the continent. Furthermore, with its 98 per cent “yes” vote in last year’s referendum to free itself from the Sudan, the South Sudan has decisively shaken the foundation of that seemingly ossified architecture of the “Berlin state” in post-(European)conquest Africa of which the Sudan, pointedly and ironically, is the “first to be run” by “African” management. Few now doubt that, thanks to the landmark decision in this referendum, the “Berlin state” in Africa is, at long last, in free fall. Current frenetic developments on this score in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa underline the deep yearnings of the peoples to now begin to construct and transform their own states and societies, themselves, based on the precepts of their respective aspirations and worldviews. We are invariably on the eve of a dazzling age of African social transmutation. As I have argued severally,[1] the “Berlin state” in Africa is the bane of African existence and progress. This state is at once genocidal and immanently anti-African. Since the cataclysmic 1966-1970 Igbo genocide, it has murdered 12 million additional Africans in further genocide in Rwanda, Darfur (west of the Sudan – continuing), Nuba Mountains (south of the Sudan – continuing), South Kordofan (south of the Sudan – continuing) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (ongoing), and in other wars across the continent.

The Sudan has been at varying shades of devastating war and crippling immiseration since 1955. It is from this background of staggering brutalisation that the Republic of the South Sudan emerged! Surely, the peoples of the Sudan and the South Sudan deserve life’s immense choices for freedom, peace, and productive possibilities. Or don’t they?

For the regime in Khartoum, particularly, there are indeed other arenas of contestation with its southern neighbour, which it had probably never thought of, instead of planning for yet more campaigns of certain death and deprivation. The Juba administration, for its own part, must no longer allow itself to be boxed in a quagmire of indefinite conflict with the Sudan that only further impoverishes its people. Instead, both states can embark on the following track of competition which will mark a charging break from the past. The timeframe for this contest is five years – 2012-2017. It will be monitored by a team of African-centred scholars which starts work right away and the results will be published in October 2017.

The rule for the contest, with the content and scope many would probably adjudge as too modest,[2] is simple and straightforward: which of these two states – the South Sudan or the Sudan will achieve the following set of goals by 15 September 2017:

1. 100 quality primary and secondary schools with excellent world-standard curriculum content, equipment, staff and study environment

2. One university of worldwide standard, attracting staff and students from across the region and world

3. 1000 apprenticeship opportunities to study at excellent technical schools, producing a skilled workforce of electricians, builders, plumbers and mechanics

4. Pave 1000 kilometres of well-constructed road linking towns and cities

5. Engage 1000 new farmers in agricultural work, providing technical and financial support 

6. 100 quality primary health care centres with excellent facilities, equipment and medicine 

7. Fifty per cent of the population have access to clean pipe-borne water

8. Fifty per cent of population have access to power 24 hours a day, seven days a week

9. Fifty per cent of young people, 18-25, have access to small-scale loans to start business ventures

10. Fifty per cent of women have access to small-scale loans to start business ventures

Now, Both – Get Set! Ready: Go!

*I wish to thank Dr Okwuonicha Nzegwu for her contribution to this commentary

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

---

[1]See, for instance, Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature (Dakar and Reading: African Renaissance, 2011).

[2]It is well to reflect that if every African “leadership” which has been in power since the so-called restoration of independence on 1 January 1956 (in the Sudan!) has envisioned and achieved this track of objectives enumerated here during just five years in office, African post-conquest recovery and transformation, presently, would be second to none.  

Slogans for the future?

Less than 90 days to the Sunday 9 January 2011 historic south Sudan referendum for independence from the Sudan, the people have been organising mass rallies to campaign for the great day – and future. In a recent rally in Juba, the capital, two prominently displayed slogans read: “Unity by force is slavery” and “Separation means peace”. Are these contradictory expressions? Do these slogans represent the future for/of Africa? What do you think?