134th anniversary of the conclusion of the pan-European World conference on Africa subjugation and plunder in Berlin, Germany – 15 November 1884-26 February 1885

(1. infamous gathering in session)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

TODAY MARKS the 134th anniversary of the conclusion of the infamous 15 November 1884 – 26 February 1885 European leaders’ Berlin conference on Africa. 

Cake and genocides and plunder

The gathering was chaired by German Chancellor von Bismarck to formalise the pan-European seizure, planned occupation, and irrepressible exploitation of the gargantuan riches of the African World which Leopold II, the génocidaire king of the Belgians, described predatorily as “this magnificent African cake”. 

It was indeed to “secure for ourselves [Belgians] a slice of this magnificent African cake”, Leopold II’s own haunting words, that this monarch and his private forces and those of the Belgian state and others elsewhere in Europe carried out a devastatingly reprehensible 30-year trail (1878-1908) of genocide against Africans in the Congo basin in which they annihilated 13 million constituent peoples (Isidore Ndaywel  è Nziem, Histoire générale du Congo: De l'héritage ancien à la République Démocratique, Paris: Duculot, 1998: 344).

The following countries attended the Berlin meeting: Belgium, Holland, Britain, France, Portugal, Ottoman “empire”, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria-Hungary, Denmark, Czarist Russia, Sweden-Norway, United States. 

The catastrophic aftermath of this Berlin-assembly, essentially its state’s genocidist architecture (genocide in the Congo basin by King Leopold II [BELGIUM], Herero genocide [GERMANY], Nama genocide [GERMANY], Berg Damara genocide [GERMANY], Igbo genocide [BRITAIN-FULANI-led NIGERIA], Rwanda genocide [FRANCE-RWANDA STATE] Darfur genocide [THE SUDAN STATE], genocide elsewhere in the Sudan [THE SUDAN STATE] genocide in the Democratic Republic of the Congo [DRC STATE/LEAGUE OF STATES IN REGION & ELSEWHERE... ]) is the bane of contemporary Africa which the peoples, themselves, not anyone else, must dispense with to survive. 

Breakthrough
THIS  “dispense with to survive” precisely encapsulates the historic goal of the Biafra freedom movement in southwestcentral Africa, the continent’s most peaceful restoration-of-independence movement and one of the preeminent of its kind in the world, whose imminent victory constitutes a strategic breakthrough for African freedom since the Berlin cataclysm.

(2. infamous gathering in session: to formalise the pan-European seizure, planned occupation, and irrepressible exploitation of the gargantuan riches of the African World – “this magnificent African cake”)

(Oliver Nelson Septet, “Stolen moments” [Nelson, tenor saxophone, Freddie Hubbard, trumpet, Eric Dolphy, flute; George Barrow, baritone saxophone; Bill Evans, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Roy Hayes, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 23 February 1961]) 

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019)  (https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/01/published-longest-genocide-since-29-may.html)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

86th birthday of Oliver Nelson

(Born 4 June 1932, St Louis, Missouri, US)

BANDLEADER, prolific arranger and producer, composer, especially the classic The Blues and the Abstract Truth (February 1961), featuring multiinstrumentalist Eric Dolphy, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, pianist Bill Evans, baritone saxophonist George Barrow, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Roy Haynes

(Oliver Nelson Septet, “Yearnin’” [personnel: Nelson, reeds; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; George Barrow, baritone saxophone; Bill Evans, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Roy Haynes, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 23 February 1961])

(Oliver Nelson Septet, “Cascades” [personnel and recording details as above])

(Oliver Nelson Septet, “Stolen moments” – [personnel and recording details as above except Nelson, tenor saxophone; Dolphy, flute]) 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

85th birthday of Oliver Nelson

(Born 4 June 1932, St Louis, Missouri, US)

Bandleader, prolific arranger and producer, composer, especially the classic The Blues and the Abstract Truth (February 1961), featuring multiinstrumentalist Eric Dolphy, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, pianist Bill Evans, baritone saxophonist George Barrow, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Roy Haynes

(Oliver Nelson Quintet, “Six and four” [personnel: Nelson, alto saxophone {first solo take}; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone {second solo following Nelson and before Wyands}; Richard Wyands, piano; George Duvivier, bass; Roy Haynes, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 1 March 1961]) 

(Oliver Nelson Septet, “Stolen moments” – personnel: Nelson, tenor saxophone; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, flute; George Barrow, baritone saxophone; Bill Evans, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Roy Haynes, drums [recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 23 February 1961])

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Peoples in Africa insist: The state is transient; the people endures

The right to self-determination is for every people. It is inalienable and is guaranteed by the United Nations. No people, any peoples, is exempt from exercising this right. This is why the slogan that proclaims such gibberish or ahistoricism as “indivisibility”/”indissolubility”/“indestructibility” of a state, any state, sometimes expressed in some retrograde circles in Africa, is not really worth the paper it is written on except of course it is an embedded code by a slaughtering-horde for the plot of the next pogrom or the reinforcement of the terror of an ongoing genocide as a Nigeria, for instance, objectifies. 

As everyone knows, the states that Europe created in Africa, in the aftermath of its November 1884-February 1885 Berlin conqueror-conference, cannot provide the fundamental needs of Africans.  This “Berlin-state”, with its “cursed” name (Nigeria, Niger, the Sudan, Central African Republic, Chad, whatever!), 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 this state but instruments to expropriate and despoil Africa by the conquest (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/net-capital-exporters-exiting-africa.html, accessed 19 October 2015). Essentially, the “Berlin-state” still serves the interests of its creators and those of the ruthless cabal of African-overseers which polices the dire straits of existence that is the lot of Africans currently.

(Oliver Nelson Septet, “Stolen moments” – personnel: Nelson, tenor saxophone; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, flute; George Barrow, baritone saxophone; Bill Evans, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Roy Haynes, drums [recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 23 February 1961])

Not-gods’ gift(s)

As in Berlin, the state is not a gift from the gods. On the contrary, the state is a relationship painstakingly formulated and constructed by groups of human beings on our planet earth to pursue aspirations and interests envisioned by these same human beings within a shared historical and geographical articulation. 

The African humanity is presently gripped in a grave crisis for survival. It is now time that it abandoned the contrived “Berlin-state” in order to survive. This state is a bane of African existence. It is not fit for purpose but a neo-EuroWorld-run enslavement estate but now located east of the Atlantic. It freezes African re-development and transformation. It is, instead, an agglomeration that exists primarily to enrich its West World creator in perpetuity (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/net-capital-exporters-exiting-africa.html).

African nations, namely the Igbo, Ijo, Wolof, Ibibio, Asante, Baganda, Bakongo, Gĩkũyũ, Bambara, Luo, etc., etc, are the the basis for the regeneration of Africa’s redevelopment. These nations are the sites of the continent’s intellectual and other cultural creativity and must hence free themselves from the extant “Berlin-state” .

Path to civilisation – even 1001 states

What is being stressed here is that African peoples, themselves, must decide on the issue of sovereignty in the post-“Berlin-state” epoch even if the outcome were to lead to the creation of 1001 states in Africa – or more. In this epoch of freedom, any of 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 people who believes that their aspirations lie in working through challenges of the 21st century CE and projecting targets of creativity and transformations subsequently, must exercise this right: “Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too. If one says no to other, let their wing break”.

To achieve the goal(s) of any of the stipulated paths does not therefore require anyone to embark on murdering someone else or have themselves murdered, as typified, again as an example, a contemporary Nigeria.  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 – a crime against humanity.

(Andrew Hill Sextet, “Refuge” [personnel: Hill, piano; Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; John Henderson, tenor saxophone; Richard Davis, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 21 March 1964]

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe