132nd anniversary of the start of the pan-European World conference on Africa subjugation in Berlin – 15 November 1884-26 February 1885

(1. infamous gathering in session)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Today marks  the 132nd anniversary of the beginning of the infamous 15 November 1884 – 26 February 1885 European leaders’ Berlin conference on Africa. 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 catastrophic 30-year trail (1878-1908) of genocide against Africans in the Congo basin in which they annihilated 13 million constituent peoples.

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 Belgian Leopold II, Herero genocide, Nama genocide, Berg Damara genocide, Igbo genocide, Rwanda genocide, Darfur genocide, genocide elsewhere in the Sudan, genocide in the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...) is the bane of contemporary Africa which the peoples, themselves, not anyone else, must dispense with to survive.

(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”)

(George Russell Sextet here plays “Nardis”, a composition by Miles Davis [personnel: Russell, piano; Don Ellis, trumpet; Dave Baker, trombone; Eric Dolphy, bass clarinet; Steve Swallow, bass; Joe Hunt, drums; recorded: Riverside Records, New York, US, 8 May 1961])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Professor Kalu Ogbaa, who attended the April 1980 Gainesville (Florida) conference of the African Literature Association that featured the conversation between Chinua Achebe and James Baldwin (posted on rethinkingafrica, Sunday 13 November 2016), reflects on the historic occasion…

(Kalu Ogbaa: ... fond memories of the great literary Africana Renaissance in me...)

Kalu Ogbaa, professor of English, Southern Connecticut State University, writes:

Thank you so much for publishing this 
(http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/james-baldwin-and-chinua-achebe-african.html). It conjures up fond memories of the great literary Africana Renaissance in me. I took active part in that conference and presented a provocative paper titled “The Critics of Chinua Achebe”. The late Professor John Povey of UCLA [University of California, Los Angeles] took issues with me for describing African unwritten literature (oral performance or orature) as legitimate literature; whereupon I challenged him for daring to call Homer’s and (to an extent) Milton’s works literature for they chanted their poems orally but were later on transcribed and published by their daughters as written literature. From the reactions of the audience, I thought I won the debate.

Also, during that conference, I had the opportunity to interview Achebe. The content of that interview was so seminal that Bernth Lindfors published it as a lead article in the special volume of Research in African Literature, Vol. 12, #1 (1981), 1-13, devoted entirely to the criticism of Achebe’s works, and thereafter reissued as a chapter in Conversations with Chinua Achebe, edited by Bernth Lindfors (Jackson, Miss: University Press of Mississippi, 1997: 64-75). “The Critics of Chinua Achebe” article was also published in Commonwealth Quarterly, Vol. 14, #39, 1989, 19-31). I think both works laid the foundation upon which I built my reputation as an Achebephile.

I read all the things you have been publishing in your notable rethinkingafrica. They are music to my ears and a balm to my sometimes troubled soul. Remain ever blessed!

Kalu Ogbaa

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

62nd birthday of Condoleezza Rice

(Born 14 November 1954, Birmingham, Alabama, US)

Brilliant political scientist, academic, author, university administrator, pianist, corporate boards’ member, influential statesperson: US presidential advisor on national security (2001-2005), US secretary of state, 2005-2009

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

In this week of the 86th birthday of the Father of African Literature, we recall that enduring conversation at the African Literature Association conference in Gainesville, Florida, United States (9 April 1980) between two of the foremost intellectuals of the African Atlantic: Chinua Achebe and James Baldwin (Maria Popova, “James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe”, brainpickings, 24 September 2014)

(James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe: … African Atlantic discourses, Gainesville, Florida, US, 9 April 1980…)

...Reflections on history, art, politics, brainpickings, 22 September 2014,

(https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/09/21/james-baldwin-chinua-achebe-art/), accessed 28 September 2014

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

88th birthday of Hampton Hawes

(Born 13 November 1928, Los Angeles, US)

Influential pianist with distinctly recognisable swing and stretch of feeling and author of Raise Up Off Me (1974), his critically-acclaimed memoirs

(Hampton Hawes Quartet, “For real!” [personnel: Hawes, piano; Harold Land, tenor saxophone; Scott La Faro, bass; Frank Butler, drums; recorded: Contemporary Records, Los Angeles, 17 March 1958])

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Biafra freedom and our times

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Biafrans must be eternally focussed on their quest to restore their independence and end the ongoing Igbo genocide. I can’t see how this can be achieved otherwise. Their responses to the challenges ahead, even if any of these appears innocuous, will be dictated, primarily, by the strategic architecture of the goal – the restoration of sovereignty. The restoration of Biafra will be one of the defining breakthroughs in human freedom of our age.

(Alice Coltrane Quartet, “Lord, help me to be” [personnel: Coltrane, piano; Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone;  Jimmy Garrison, bass; Ben Riley, drums; recorded: Coltrane home studio, Dix Hills, New York, US, 29 January 1968]) 

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Year 50 – Igbo genocide and its comeuppance?

(Tony Williams Quintet, “From before” [personnel: Williams, drums; Sam Rivers, tenor saxophone; Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Gary Peacock, bass; recorded Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 12 August 1965])

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

BESIDES ALL the lead-countries involved in the Igbo genocide which have apparently had or still appear to have their comeuppance as a result, as perceptive sociologist and criminologist Biko Agozino aptly reminds us (“Why Obasanjo may be heading to hell”, http://massliteracy.blogspot.com.br/2013/08/why-obasanjo-may-be-heading-to-hell.html  – accessed 18 December 2014), each lead-personage involved in perpetuating this heinous crime against humanity has had their life/life’s vital interests spectacularly collapse around them: 

1. Olusegun Obasanjo (genocidist commander, south Biafra, who ordered the shooting down of an international Red Cross DC-7 relief-carrying aircraft to the blockaded and bombarded Biafrans near Eket, south Biafra, on 5 June 1969; for an update on this fellow, see, for instance, daughter Iyabo Obasanjo’s December 2013 open letter to her father, http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/12/iyabo-obasanjo-writes-father-says-dear-daddy-dont-nigeria/ – accessed 18 December 2013)

(Olusegun Obasanjo: ... obusonjo genocidist commander, south Biafra)

2. Murtala Muhammed (genocidist commander, northwestcentral Biafra and commander of brigade that carried out the 7 October 1967 mass execution of 700 Igbo boys and men at Asaba, west Oshimili River, Oshimili Delta, Biafra)

3. Harold Wilson

(Harold Wilson: “would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took...”)

4. Ibrahim Taiwo (parallel commander of genocidist brigade that carried out the 7 October 1967 mass execution of 700 Igbo boys and men at Asaba, west Oshimili River, Oshimili Delta, Biafra)

5. Leonid Brezhnev

6. Abdel Gamal Nasser

7. Benjamin Adekunle (genocidist commander, south Biafra)

(Benjamin Adekunle: unleashes sheer savagery in south Biafra)

8. Yakubu Gowon (head of genocidist-prosecuting  regime, Lagos, Nigeria)

9. Hosni Mubarak (former commander, Egyptian air force [and later head of regime until swept away by the mass Egypt’s uprising, February 2011] whose squadrons of pilots, loaned to the genocidists, flew Soviet-built MiGs from the then East Germany [GDR] and engaged in the cowardly carpet bombings of Biafran markets, hospitals, city centres, churches, shrines, children’s playgrounds, villages, farms throughout the duration of the genocide)

(Hosni Mubarak: ... carpet bombing ... swept away)

10. Tony Enaharo (genocidist roving envoy)

11. U Thant (former secretary-general, UN, from Burma, contemporary Myanmar)

12. Ahmadou Ahidjo (head of regime, Cameroon)

13. Mashood Abiola (expansive weapons-contractor during the genocide who was on the verge of becoming head of regime, Nigeria, 1998)

14. Obafemi Awolowo (chief genocidist “theorist”, head of finance ministry, and deputy head of genocidist prosecuting junta who desperately craved to be post-genocide head of regime, Nigeria)

(Obafemi Awolowo: ... génocidaires’ “theorist”, accounts’ sequestrator, £20.00-enforcer)

15. Gbadamosi King (genocidist air force pilot who shot down the international Red Cross DC-7 relief-bearing aircraft over the skies of south Biafra, 5 June 1969)

16. Muhammadu Shuwa (genocidist commander, north and northcentral Biafra)

17. Hafez al-Assad (head of regime, Syria, father of Bashar al-Assad)

18. Illiya Bisalla (genocidist commander, northcentral Biafra)

19. Sekou Toure (head of regime, Guinea-Conakry)

20. Houari Boumedienne (head of regime, Algeria)

21. Ismail al-Azhari (head of regime, the Sudan)

22. Diallo Telli (OAU first secretary-general)

23. Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (king of Saudi Arabia, 1964-1975)

24. Allison Ayida (Rise and fall of Nigeria, 1990, co-principal secretary, genocidist-prosecuting regime)

25. David Cameron (former British prime minister who, with US President Obama, imposed Muhammadu Buhari, one of the vilest Nigerian genocidist operatives throughout these 50 years of the Igbo genocide, as head of Nigeria regime, March 2015 [since taking power, the Buhari regime’s military and other genocidist assets, true to type, have murdered hundreds of Igbo across occupied Biafra without any condemnation by the Cameron government]; Cameron resigned his prime minister’s position precipitously on 13 July 2016 after losing the “Brexit” referendum on British membership of the European Union)

(David Cameron: ... imposes genocidist operative Buhari ... precipitous resignation)

26. Hillary Clinton (former US secretary of state, Obama administration, January 2009-January 2013 – remained unrelentingly adamant, throughout her tenure, of not designating the islamist, northcentral/northeast-based insurgent organisation, Boko Haram, a terrorist organisation despite the latter’s murder of thousands of African peoples, overwhelmingly Igbo, during the period [it wouldn’t be until November 2013 that the US declared Boko Haram “terrorist” because Washington judged the group was “{now} develop{ing} links with other {islamists} such as al-Qaeda … to wage a global jihad”]; on 8 November 2016, contrary to overwhelming opinion poll indicators and leading pundits’ analyses and predictions, Clinton received a crushing defeat in the US presidential election by anti-establishment rival candidate Donald Trump – Clinton had run her campaign on a political platform billed largely on the continuation of the cardinal policies of the Obama presidency which includes its unflinching support for the Nigeria genocidist regime)

(Hillary Clinton:... unrelenting adamance ... crushing defeat)

27. Barack Obama (US President who, with David Cameron, former British prime minister, imposed Muhammadu Buhari, one of the vilest Nigerian genocidist operatives during these 50 years of the Igbo genocide, as head of Nigeria regime, March 2015 [since taking power, the Buhari regime’s military and other genocidist assets, true to type, have murdered hundreds of Igbo people across occupied Biafra without any condemnation by the Obama administration]; Obama is the first African-descent president of the US republic in 233 years of existence and his unflinching support for an African-led genocidist regime in Africa waging a genocide against an African people is surely an unconscionable tragedy of his presidential legacy)
(http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-this-piece-is.html)

(Barack Obama:... imposes genocidist operative Buhari ... unconscionable tragedy of a legacy)

...

Free fall vs freedom and justice

Boko Haram and close cousin Fulani militia’s insurgency incrementally ravage north Nigeria, the epicentre of the planning and execution of the Igbo genocide and the preceding “dual dress rehearsals”-Igbo pogroms (1945, 1953) without letup...  But, most pointedly, the clearly discernible contours of all-Nigeria as Boko Haram becomes the most ruthless global terrorist organisation presently (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-17/global-terrorism-index-increase/6947200, accessed 17 November 2015) and the vile Buhari is emplaced congenitally as regime hemlsperson: for the alu this Nigeria genocide state has unleashed on Igbo people these past 50 years (29 May 1966-11 November 2016), it is indeed spiralling in free fall as the rest of the world reflects cogently...

If ever there was any doubt, the evidence, so far, demonstrates the contrary – namely, that no one, no agency, murders 3.1 million Igbo children, women and men in this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa and walks away free...  Apart from the now 50 million Igbo survivors, the 3.1 million are individually and collectively involved in the current historic Biafran quest for freedom and justice...  

And Biafra will get this freedom and justice. Undoubtedly.

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe