Oh, here we go again! “Barack Obama: I am ‘confident’ I could have won a third term as president”, The Guardian, London, Monday 26 December 2016

(Barack Obama... : “I’m confident that if I had run again...”)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

The extended/indefinite-stay-syndrome? 

HEREWITH is the dreadful roll call of a history in Africa, 1956-2016:  Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria), Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir (the Sudan), Sani Abacha (Nigeria),Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (Equatorial Guinea),  Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe), Abdoulaye Wade (Sénégal), Ahmadou Ahidjo (Cameroon), Isaias Afwerki (Eritrea),  Dawda Jawara (the Gambia), Idriss Deby (Chad), Idi Amin Dada (Uganda), Mengistu Haile Mariam (Ethiopia),  Jean-Bédel Bokassa (Central African Republic/Central African Empire/Central African Republic), Hourai Boumedienne (Algeria), Hissène Habré (Chad),  Abdelaziz Bouteflika (Algeria), Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (Tunisia), Yoweri Museveni (Uganda), Mobutu Sese Seko (Congo Leopoldville/Congo Kinshasa/Zaïre/Democratic Republic of the Congo), Paul Biya (Cameroon), Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak (Egypt), Mohamed Siad Barre (Somalia), Yahya Jammeh (the Gambia)…

(extended-stay-syndrome pursued so ritualistically, so ruthlessly… Obusonjo)

 

(syndrome legacy… Mobutu)

(syndrome legacy… Mubarak)

(syndrome legacy… Mengistu)

(syndrome legacy… Mbasogo)

(syndrome legacy… Jawara)

(syndrome legacy… Mugabe)

(syndrome legacy… Boumedienne)

(syndrome legacy… Idi Amin)

(syndrome legacy… Deby)

(syndrome legacy… Barre)

(syndrome legacy… Ahidjo)

(syndrome legacy… Wade)

(syndrome legacy… Abacha)

(syndrome legacy… Museveni)

(syndrome legacy… Bouteflika)

(syndrome legacy… Bokassa)

(syndrome legacy… Biya)

(syndrome legacy… al-Bashir)

(syndrome legacy… Habré)

(syndrome legacy… Ben Ali)

(syndrome legacy… Afwerki)

(syndrome legacy… Jammeh)

(John Coltrane Duo, “Jupiter” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, bells; Rashied Ali, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood, Cliff, NJ, US, 22 February 1967])

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

93rd birthday of Cheikh Anta Diop

(Born 29 December 1923, Caytou, Sénégal)

Mathematician, physicist, linguist, anthropologist, philosopher, historian and Egyptologist, demonstrates, most copiously in his near-40 years of research (beginning in the 1940s) and publication of papers and books, especially Nations Nègres et Culture, 1955 (English translation: African Origin of Civilization, 1974), L’unité culturelle de l’Afrique noire, 1959 (English: The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: The Domains of Matriarchy & Patriarchy in Classical Antiquity, 1989)  and Civilisation ou barbarie, 1981 (English: Civilization or Barbarism, 1991), that Kemet, “ancient Egypt”, is an African civilisation and that African peoples are the indisputable heirs to its heritage

Cheikh Anta Diop,  African Origin of Civilization (Chicago: Chicago Review, 1989), 336 pp, US$11.30/£10.73 pbk

Cheikh Anta Diop, Civilization or Barbarism (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1991), 464 pp, US$15.64/£15.49 pbk

For an assessment of Cheikh Anta Diop’s  salient contribution to the scholarship of the African World, see, for instant, Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature (Dakar & Reading: African Renaissance, 2011), pp.7-11. 

(Alice Coltrane Quintet, “Blue Nile” [personnel: Coltrane, harp; Joe Henderson, alto flute, Pharoah Sanders, alto flute; Ron Carter, bass; Ben Riley, drums; recorded: Coltrane home studios, Dix Hills, New York, US, 26 January 1970])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

56th anniversary of French nuclear bomb “test” in Sahara Desert

(27 December 1960, explodes bomb at Regganne, west Algeria)

IN FLAGRANT disregard for the lives of African peoples and their environment and those of future generations, France carries out an atomic bomb “test” over the Sahara Desert, the third in the year (earlier explosions had been conducted in February and April) – exploded bomb has plutonium with yield of 10,000-14,000 TNT, equivalent to one-half power of atomic bomb the United States air force dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, 6 August 1945; instructively, at no occasion during this entire grim epoch does the presidency of Charles de Gaulle, which has authorised these bomb blasts, consider carrying out the “tests” in any provinces or regions of France or indeed Europe

(Charles de Gaulle: ... his presidency couldn’t consider carrying out these bomb “tests” anywhere in France...)

(Andrew Hill Septet, “Premonition” [personnel: Hill, piano; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; John Gilmore, bass clarinet; Richard Davis, bass; Joe Chambers, drums; Renaud Simmons, conga, percussion; Nadi Qamar, percussion, African drums, thumb piano; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 8 October 1965])

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

74th birthday of Stanley Macebuh

(Born 28 December 1942, Aba, Biafra)

Celebrated cultural and literary critic and executive editor of The Guardian, Lagos, Nigeria, beginning February 1983, when he embarks on the  radical transformation of the focus and scope and qualitative threshold of journalism practice not seen in Africa’s southwestcentral region in 50 years

(Miles Davis Quintet plays Wayne Shorter’s composition, “Footprints” [personnel: Davis, trumpet; Shorter, tenor saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Columbia 30th Street Studio, New York, US, 24/25 October 1966])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

85th birthday of Uzo Egonu

(Born 25 December 1931, Onicha, Biafra)

One of the African World’s multifaceted and most distinguished painters, his evocative landmark Exodus (1970) captures the devastating aftermath of phase-I of the Igbo genocide, perpetrated by Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain, 29 May 1966-4 January 1967, as nearly 2 million Igbo who survive this initial slaughter in the north region and elsewhere in Nigeria stream home before the subsequent phases (II & III: 5 January 1967-5 July 1967, 6 July 1967-12 January 1970, respectively) when the genocidists effect a comprehensive range of land, aerial and naval blockade of Biafra, unprecedented in Africa, and murdering a total of 3 million people therein by 12 January 1970

(For Biafra: ... Uzo Egonu, Exodus [1970])

(Don Cherry Quartet, “Art deco” [personnel: Cherry, pocket trumpet; James Clay, tenor saxophone; Charlie Haden, bass; Billy Higgins, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 27/28/30 August 1988])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

96th birthday of Michael Okpara

(Born 25 December 1920, Umuahia, Biafra)

Physician and irrepressible advocate of harnessing Africa’s vast agricultural resource potential as launch base to embark on far-reaching societal transformation, head of pre-military junta 15 January 1966 east region Nigeria government, then home to Africa’s most resourceful and dynamic economy en route to emerging as a major manufacturing and industrial power, in its own right, but for the catastrophe of the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January, when Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain murdered 3.1 million Igbo people in this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa; 50 years on, the Biafra freedom movement, on the cusp of the restoration of Biafra sovereignty, can’t wait to resume the construction of the state and societal transformative project of the Michael Okpara legacy and its consequential impact on the African World and the rest of the globe

(Booker Little Sextet, “We speak” [personnel: Little, trumpet; Julian Priester, trombone; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; Don Friedman, piano; Art Davis, bass; Max Roach, drums; recorded: Nola’s Penthouse Studios, New York, 17 March 1961])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

72nd birthday of Woody Shaw

(Born 24 December 1944, Laurinburg, North Carolina, US)

Astoundingly innovative trumpeter, fluguelhornist, clarinettist and composer, collaborates expansively in groundbreaking recordings with fellow leading innovative musicians of the age including multiinstrumentalist Eric Dolphy, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, vibists Bobby Hutcherfield and Lionel Hampton, alto saxophonist Jackie McLean, tenor saxophonists Joe Henderson, Dexter Gordon, Hank Mobley, Charlie Rouse and Pharoah Sanders, pianists Andrew Hill, Mal Waldron and Horace Silver and drummers Max Roach, Art Blakey  and Louis Hayes

(Mal Waldron Quintet, “The seagulls of  Kristiansund” [personnel: Waldron, piano; Woody Shaw, trumpet;  Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone;  Reggie Workman, bass; Ed Blackwell, drums; recorded: live, Village Vanguard, New York,  US, 16 September 1986])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe