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.
ONE of the leading Shakespearean actors of the 19th century, active on the London stage and principal theatres across Europe between the mid-1820s and 1867
(Mal Waldron Quintet, “Warm canto” [personnel: Waldron, piano; Eric Dolphy, clarinet; Ron Carter, cello; Joe Benjamin, bass; Charlie Persip, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 27 June 1961])
ONE OF THE preeminent luminaries of French letters, prolific across genres – novels, drama, travel books, history, journalism – with classics which include The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, Twenty Years Later, The Last Cavalier, Georges
(Miles Davis Quintet featuring Sonny Stitt, “Autumn leaves” [personnel: Davis, trumpet; Stitt, tenor saxophone; Wynton Kelly, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Jimmy Cobb, drums; recorded: live, L’Olympia, Paris, France, 11 October 1960])
(Born 20 July 1925, Fort-de-France, Martinique, Caribbean)
PSYCHIATRIST, student of poet, playwright and essayist Aimé Césaire, philosopher and one of the preeminent revolutionary theorists of the 20th century whose landmark publications are: The Wreathed of the Earth (1963), A Dying Colonialism (1965), Black Skin, White Masks (1967), Toward the African Revolution (1969)
(Jackie McLean Quintet, “Esoteric” [personnel: McLean, alto saxophone; Grachan Moncur III, trombone; Bobby Hutcherson, vipraphone; Larry Ridley, bass; Roy Haynes, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 20 September 1963])
TWO “youths” in the southwestcentral region of
Africa with such contrasting worldview
– for one, it is to threaten and
threaten to, and murder and murder and murder as their parents and grandparents have
done during the course of the Igbo genocide these past 51 years and the dreadful legacy of foreparents’ trail of murders and subjugations of
indigenous African populations across the northern stretches of the region
since they left their Futa Djallon homeland in Guinea-Conakry just
over 200 years ago to the day; the other “youth”, in the south of the
geography, is engaged in an assured quest for freedom that views life, African
life, as sacrosanct and is eager to employ its incredible talent to transform
the lives of its people, an outcome with epochal consequences for the region
and the rest of the African World.
(Jackie McLean Quintet, “Love and hate” [personnel: McLean, alto saxophone; Grachan Moncur III, trombone; Bobby Hutcherson, vipraphone; Larry Ridley, bass; Roy Haynes, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 20 September 1963])
AWARD-WINNING playwright, novelist, journalist, poet, librettist, outstanding works include My Confederate Kinfolk (2006) on family history with immense national and wider resonance, The Souls of Black Folk (2003), a play on adaptation of WEB Du Bois’s classic of the same title, All the Renegade Ghosts Rise (poems: 1978), Playing the Changes (poems: 1985) and writes the libretti to two operas she collaborates with cousin and composer/pianist Anthony Davis: X (1986) on the life of Malcolm X and Amistad (1997) on the 1839 enslaved African maritime freedom uprising
(Tina Brooks Sextet, “Back to the tracks” [personnel: Brooks, tenor saxophone; Blue Mitchell, trumpet; Jackie McLean, alto saxophone; Kenny Drew, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Taylor, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, US, 1 September 1960])
CATHOLIC priest of Salesian Order, liberation theologian and three times African peoples-centred president of Haiti (7 February 1991-29 September
1991, 12 October 1994-7 February 1996, 7 February 2001-29 February 2004) during which he carries out
expansive general population-focused reforms and provisions in health care, education and agriculture and
tackling/curbing/dismantling a range of murderous military/quasimilitary brigades employed by regimes
in the past to terrorise the people
(Sonny Rollins at the Village Gate, 1962, “Dance of the reed pipes” [personnel: Rollins, tenor saxophone; Don Cherry, pocket trumpet; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Billy Higgins, drums; recorded: live, Village Gate, New York, US, 27-30 July 1962])
AS I OBSERVED recently (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-biafra-freedom.html), the
preemptive return of the Biafra freedom movement (to Biafra) has not only confronted
and overridden the “conventional wisdom” that underscores the key trajectory of
comparable liberation projects, the movement’s return is indeed its
historic stamp of the imprimatur of the Biafra restoration-of-independence in
Biafra for the first time since 13 January 1970 – genocidist Nigeria’s launch
date of phase-IV of the Igbo genocide and the accompanying occupation of
Biafra. Appropriately to confront the
pressing emergency of the times, the movement has at once planned a referendum
throughout Biafra to democratically reestablish five decades of the loss of sovereign
rights of the people and withdrawn from participating in any future “elections”
organised in Biafra by the occupation. The latter exercises have in the past
been distinctively fraudulent and immensely contradictory as the feudal
Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led genocidist and occupying regime with no democratic
heritage in its culture or history, not to mention genocidist Nigeria itself
which has had no credible election throughout its history, would bizarrely posit
to organise elections in (occupied) Igboland that has enjoyed an advanced
republican democratic tradition for over a thousand years. For the occupation,
regimes in the Biafra administrative regions (Abia, Anambra, Delta, Enuugwu,
Rivers, etc., etc) that emerge from these “elections” exist solely to
contribute to police the occupation.
Nothing more. The operationalisation of this envisaged role was demonstrated
most tragically, just recently, when not one head of regime in any of these
administrative regions condemned the slaughter of their very own citizens by
the genocidist military/Fulani militia in the already mentioned pogroms across
Biafra since October 2015 in which a total of 2000 Igbo were murdered.
In July 2010, a high profile grouping
of Igbo human rights intellectuals met in a conference in Enuugwu to discuss
the state of this occupation of Biafra which the Biafra freedom movement,
seven years later, must now terminate. In its concluding communiqué, the conference captures most profoundly what it aptly
categorises as the “siege and occupation” of Igboland (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/nigeria-perpetuates-violence-and.html):
[Igboland] has become militarized with a vast deployment of expeditionary and predatory police and army personnel who are from outside the region. For instance, there are 61 Police check-points between Abakal[e]k[e] … to Nsukka … (a distance of about 130km). In [contrast] between Obolo-Afo [Igboland] and Lokoja [Nigeria] (a distance of nearly 400 km) no checkpoints exist. This state of siege is exemplified by the current [situation] of … [Igbo] cities [including] Aba, [Enuugwu, Abakaleke, Onicha, Owere] and Nnewi – hitherto the fastest growing and thriving industrial cum commercial cities in the African continent now being turned into refuse dumps and ghettos. Businesses that would have provided jobs to engage our youths have been strangulated by incompetent and criminal leadership.
THERE CAN BE no other solution to this longest genocide of the
contemporary era but the freedom of the Igbo people from Nigerian subjugation
and occupation. The return of the Biafra freedom movement, shattering all known
“conventions”, is the most strategic development in 47 years of the course of this
journey. Freedom is inalienable. One does not ask for it; one takes it! The 50
million Igbo know they have to take their freedom as they head to the
referendum to pronounce this liberatory choice as the world awaits so eagerly.
(George Russell Sextet, “Honesty” [personnel: Russell. Piano; Don Ellis, trumpet; Dave Baker, trombone; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; Steve Swallow, bass; Joe Hunt, drums; recorded: Riverside Records, New York, US, 8 May 1961])
ICONIC tenor saxophonist and composer whose July 1964 album, Spiritual Unity (Ayler, tenor saxophone; GaryPeacock, bass; Sunny Murray, percussion) and subsequent landmark recordings celebrate the concept of rhythmic freedom that captures the saliency of the ongoing age of freedom drive in the United States and elsewhere in the world
(Albert Ayler Trio, Spiritual Unity [“Ghosts: First variation”, “The wizard”, “Spirits”, “Ghosts: Second variation” {personnel: Ayler, tenor saxophone; Gary Peacock, bass; Sunny Murray, drums; recorded: Variety Arts Recording Studio, New York, US, 10 July 1964}])
(Albert Ayler & Don Cherry, Vibrations [“Ghosts: short version”, “Children”, “Holy Spirit”, “Ghosts: extended version”, “Vibrations”, “Mothers” {personnel: Ayler, tenor saxophone, alto saxophone; Don Cherry, pocket trumpet, Gary Peacock, bass; Sunny Murray, drums; recorded: Copenhagen, Denmark, 14 September 1964}])
VERY BRIGHT trumpeter and composer who records prolifically both on his bands (usually quintets and sextets) and on a stretch of others including those led by Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Joe Henderson, Jackie McLean, Wayne Shorter, Art Farmer and Andrew Hill
(Lee Morgan Sextet, “Tom cat” [personnel: Morgan, trumpet; Curtis Fuller, trombone; Jackie McLean, alto saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Art Blakey, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 11 August 1964])
(George Russell Sextet, “Ezz-thetic” – personnel: Russell, piano; Don Ellis, trumpet; Dave Baker, trombone; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; Steve Swallow, bass; Joe Hunt, drums [recorded Riverside Records, New York, US, 8 May 1961])
(Born 10 July 1807/1808, Minerva, Essex county, New York, US)
African American violinist, farmer and landowner, kidnapped and
enslaved in 1841 whilst visiting Washington, DC, for a music performance
mission; regains his freedom in 1853 and becomes an influential campaign
speaker for the African American freedom movement in the US’s northeast,
publishes 12 Years a Slave (1853), the classic
of his experience – basis of the feature, award-winning 2013 film directed
by Steve McQueen in which Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup
(Charles Mingus Sextet – with Eric Dolphy, Cornell University 1964, “Meditations” [personnel: Mingus, bass; Johnny Coles, trumpet; Dolphy, flute, bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano; Dannie Richmond, drums; recorded: live, Cornell University, 18 March 1964])
Poet, graphic artist, organiser and leader of artists’ guilds, cultural magazine editor and contributor, academic, one of the leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s-1930s Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe
One of the outstanding poets of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s-1930s, later develops the discipline to write a poem each day for a period stretching almost five decades
(George Russell Sextet, “Ezz-thetic” – personnel: Russell, piano; Don Ellis, trumpet; Dave Baker, trombone; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; Steve Swallow, bass; Joe Hunt, drums [recorded Riverside Records, New York, US, 8 May 1961])
Poet, novelist, academic, immensely influential figure in the development of African American letters, author of the 1942 classic For My People, a volume of poetry that focuses on African American history, Jubilee (1966), a family historical novel, and an array of other published studies
(Alice Coltrane Trio, “Lovely sky boat”[personnel: Coltrane, harp; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Rashied Ali, drums; recorded: Coltrane home studio, Dix Hills, New York, US, 6 June 1968])
ON 6 JULY 1967, Nigeriaexpands the territorial range of its execution of the Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, which it launched 14 months earlier, 29 May 1966, in different parts of Nigeria but especially in the north region, murdering 100,000 Igbo people (phases I&II). Now, it embarks on a land, air and sea-borne invasion of Biafra, the Igbo homeland, with the British government, under the leadership of Harold Wilson, playing the central role in the campaign (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-conquerors-concord-in.html). Indeed without British support, pointedly if not ironically 51 years before Brexit, the Igbo genocide, this crime against humanity, would probably not have occurred. This phase-III of the genocide stretches for 30 months during which 3 million Igbo are murdered. Harold Wilson coordinates the campaign from his offices and home at 10 Downing Street London, 3150 miles away from Biafra, facilitated on the ground in client-state Nigeria by Francis Cumming-Bruce, the British chief representative and proconsul. Cumming-Bruce liases expansively with key Nigerian genocidists in charge of the crime, right from the outset in May 1966, as well as the coterie of Hausa-Fulani/islamist north region emirs, politicians and other leading public figures who Britain had arbitrarily handed over supreme overseeing political authority in October 1960 to “manage” Nigeria on London’s behalf ad infinitum as part of a bogus independence settlement. These north region political forces had rigorously opposed the restoration of African independence which the Igbo had led for 30 years, beginning in the 1930s (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-conquerors-concord-in.html). For the British, the Igbo genocide is “punishment” for the Igbo for daring to spearhead the campaign to terminate the control of its Nigeria “rich-prized land”. At the apogee of the Igbo slaughtering in 1968, Wilson, himself, insists that he “would accept half a million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” the Nigerian génocidairesto destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide (Roger Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, London and New York: Quartet Books, 1977: 122). In his memoirs published in 1971, Wilson reveals that the Nigerian military, equipped zealously by
Britain, expended more small arms ammunition in its campaign to
achieve its annihilative goal in Biafra than the amount used by
the British armed forces “during the whole” of the
Second World War (Harold Wilson, Labour Government, 1964-1970: A Personal Record,
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971: 630,
added emphasis). Britain’s Lagos (Nigeria) diplomatic mission military advisor Robert
Scott’s acknowledgement (at the height of the genocide, mid 1968- January
1970) that as the Nigerian genocidists unleashed their campaigns across
Igbo cities, towns and villages, they were the “best defoliant agent known” (Sunday
Telegraph, London, 11 January 1970) is equally gravely harrowing.
TO COMPLEMENT this stupendous British military investment in the mass murder of Igbo people, the BBC world service, that state broadcaster funded by the British foreign office, assumes the chief publicity role to “rationalise” the genocide to the world’s public. The BBC effectively becomes the external broadcasting corporation of the on-the-ground Nigerian prosecuting genocidists, displacing the rambling and ramshackle Voice of Nigeria, spewing out hate, racist and fraudulent features and analyses to discredit the Biafra freedom movement decades before the world’s attention is drawn to the realisation that fake news programming and broadcasts are an embodiment in the practices of quite a few news organisations (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/bbc-nationalists-or-secessionists.html). Definitive goal
Right from the outset as its invasion of Biafra is launched, genocidist Nigeria establishes on the ground and employs rape and abduction of Igbo girls and women and the public execution of Igbo boys and men as pivotal instruments in waging the campaign. Its ghoulish anthem of the genocide, broadcast uninterruptedly on state-owned Kaduna radio (shortwave transmission) and television and with editorial comments on the theme, regularly published in both state-ownedNew Nigerian(daily) newspaper and (Hausa) weeklyGaskiya Ta fi Kwaboduring the period, has these lyrics in Hausa:
Mu je mu kashe nyamiri Mu kashe maza su da yan maza su Mu chi mata su da yan mata su Mu kwashe kaya su (English translation: Let’s go murder the damned Igbo/Murder their men and boys/Rape their wives and daughters/Cart off their property)
This genocidist intent, particularly its empirically earmarked specifics, is unequivocally explicit and its overarching method sets the precedent of the savagery and barbarity that are the hallmarks of the genocide and subsequent genocides in Africa as Rwanda (1994), Darfur/Nuba Mountains/Blue Nile/South Kordofan (the Sudan, variously since 2004), and Democratic Republic of the Congo (since the late 1990s) attest.
AT THE HEIGHT of the Igbo genocide, beginning from the second-half of 1968 when thousands of Igbo children and older citizens die daily from starvation, one of the genocidist’s publicly-stated “weapons” in the prosecution of the crime as articulated by chief “theorist” Obafemi Awolowo himself, British Prime Minister Wilson as already stated, informs Clyde Ferguson (United States state department special coordinator for relief to Biafra) that he, Harold Wilson, “would accept half a million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” the Nigerian génocidairesto destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide. Nigeria in fact ends up murdering 3 million Igbo – 2 and one-half million more than Wilson’s grim 500,000 Igbo-death wish.
(Harold Wilson:“would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took...”)
Furthermore, it is indeed a telling irony, given British support for Nigeria and the génocidaires’ strategy of rape and abduction of Igbo womanhood in Biafra, that it is in London, in June 2014, forty-seven years later, that the first international conference on “rape and sexual violence” in war, with emphasis on Africa (and particular focus on the Democratic Republic of the Congo), is hosted by none other than the British government in which foreign secretary of state William Hague describes rape as “‘one of the great mass crimes’ of modern times” (BBC News, 10 June 2014).
(William Hague ... 47 years later: rape is “‘one of the great mass crimes’ of modern times”)
IN BIAFRA, beginning 6 July 1967, every Igbo town or village overrun by the Nigerian génocidaires becomes a gruesome milestone in an inexorable march of rape, death, and destruction: Obollo Afo ... Obollo Eke ... Enuugwu-Ezike ... Opi ... Ukehe … Nkalagu ... Owgwu ... Abakaleke … Eha Amuufu ... Nsukka ... Enuugwu ... Agbaani ... Asaba ... Ogwashi-Ukwu ... Isele-Ukwu ... Onicha-Ugbo …Agbo …Umunede ... Onicha ... Nkpo …Oka ... Aba ... Udi ... Ehuugbo ... Ehuugbo Road ... Okigwe ... Umuahia ... Owere ...Abagana ... Igwe Ocha ... Ahaoda ... Obiigbo ... Azumini ... Umu Ubani/Bonny ... Igwe Nga/Opobo ... Ugwuta ... Amasiri ... Akaeze ... Uzuakoli ... Clearly invokingNazi-style “search through population-round off-isolate-and-destroy”-tactics in overrun non-Igbo towns and cities such as Calabar, Oron, Ikot Ekpene, Uyo, Ogoja, Obubara, Obudu, Nkarasi and Eket, the genocidists meticulously profile Igbo nationals. Thousands of such profiled Igbo are shot at sight or marched off and later executed at city limits, forest firing-range sites, river banks, or at specifically dedicated genocidist-occupied barrack venues…
Incubation & manifestation
As contemporary Nigeria demonstrates, most graphically, as these lines are written, grounded genocidist advocates/“theorists”/operatives especially Obafemi Awolowo, Tony Enaharo, Hassan Katsina, Alison Ayida, Olusegun Obasanjo, Gbadomosi King, Umaru Dikko, Maitama Sule, Benjamin Adekunle, Muhammadu Buhari, Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Muhammed, Yakubu Danjuma, Ibrahim Haruna and Ibrahim Taiwo are perhaps just coming to terms with the realisation that their thoughts and deeds have incubated within their very own and become hauntingly cyclical across generations – DNA signature. This is precisely why survivors from these purveyors of state-directed mass slaughter, such as the Igbo, for example, must keep well away from the latter’s tent. Boko Haram insurgents now ravaging swathes of territory across the north, northeast and northcentral and elsewhere in Nigeria are remarching along the paths first trodden by their parents/grandparents/greatgrandparents/Nigériãna-génocidaires, beginning 29 May 1966, 51 years ago to the day.
As for Nigeria’s genocide-prosecuting ally Britain, again 51 years to the day, it has, alas, caught up with Biafra, via Brexit, to engage, critically, with exercising its own right to self-determination – in this instance, to determine whether or not it wishes to be part of the supranational state called the European Union. Unlike the Biafrans, who, 51 years ago, exercised this same right but in staggeringly existential circumstances, Britain hasn’t sought Brexit from the European Union because it has been threatened or subjected to the crime of genocide by the latter nor indeed by any individual member state of the union such as Germany, Italy or France. On the contrary. Similarly, the 5 million constituent Scottish people in Britain do not, 51 years after Biafra, currently seek to exercise their right to self-determination from Britain because they have been threatened or subjected to the crime of genocide by Britain. Not at all. Just as the Biafrans, 51 years ago, the underlying awareness by the British, as a whole, collectively, or the Scots, separately, is that this right to self-determination is inalienable and its exercise by any people across the world is not dependent on prevailing circumstance(s). Biafra flag on the ascent So, despite the the unflinching 51 years of British support for the prosecution of the Igbo genocide, despite the sheer savagery of the Nigeria genocidist regime’s military murder of 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of the Igbo population during phases I-III of the genocide (29 May 1966-12 January 1970) and tens of thousands of additional Igbo during phase-IV (since 13 January 1970 and continuing) including the military/Boko Haram/Fulani militia
murders of 2000 Igbo people carried out across Biafra since October 2015 under the Muhammadu Buhari regime, despite the unconscionable support of the Igbo genocide by Barack Hussein Obama, the first African American president in 233 years of the US republic (https://www.pambazuka.org/human-security/obama-must-tell-world-why-he-supported-igbo-genocide), the Igbo have emerged even more focused, steadfast, resilient. They have converted their
strategic mission of Biafra independence restoration to a tactical tool which they employ
almost effortlessly here and there with exponential impact locally and
internationally. This is extraordinary. The Biafra Sun is on the ascent.
Any referendum conducted in Biafra presently on the restoration-of-independence
for this population of 50 million will result in a high 90 per cent score.
Biafrans now dictate the terms of this long drawn-out journey. Biafrans
are redefining the tenor of the march for freedom in Africa. They are reshaping African history in this great epoch of our time.
And the freedom movement has done it, in these past 20 months, it must be stressed, without firing a single shot – either in defence or offence.
(Andrew Hill Sextet, “Dedication” [personnel: Hill, piano; Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, bass clarinet; Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone; Richard Davis, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 21 March 1964])
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).
