‘The Cancer of Betrayal,’ Coup in Guinea Bissau and Remembering Amilcar Cabral

For my father now in his protracted sleep

I sometimes try to make connections between seemingly disparate things. I’ve been thinking about what is significant to me about January and ended up with a list of birthdays that might have relevance to one another. My father’s – 14th; father in law’s 9th, both best friends’ father’s 8th and 7th, sister’s 4th and today my sister in law’s. There was nothing remarkable about this. So I pressed for something else and recalled that Ahmed Sékou Touré who was President of Guinea between 1958 and 1984 was also born on January 9th. But it was January 20th that made me pause – the date Amilcar Cabral (Abel Djassi)was killed in Guinea (Conakry) where his Revolutionary Party the African Party for the Independence of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC) had their headquarters. This was 1973. Later that year Guinea Bissau was declared independent following decisive armed struggle against the Portuguese. Until the coup on 12 April 2012 the PAIGC had legitimately held power since then. Guinea Bissau – with a relatively small landmass compared to many African countries - represents something massive – a revolutionary state that came to power following armed struggle against the military might of a European (Portuguese) colonial power. For this Cabral is internationally respected as one of Africa’s great revolutionaries.

January now became about Cabral, and his legacy. After the Coup questions have been asked about what happened in Guinea Bissau, how has it been possible for the revolution there to be betrayed? Or put another way “what is the underlying cause for the situation in Guinea?” Briefly, days before the run-off elections (supposed to take place on 29 April 2012) an armed group of soldiers brandishing AK47s captured a number of PAIGC party members, including its President and leading candidate Carlos Gomes Junior; violently beating them and ultimately impeding the democratic process. It was a contemptible act because it was not conducted in the interests of the people – as is the way of revolutions - but converges with other reactionary and terrorist tactics to destabilise African countries. Coups and proxy wars are tactics used repeatedly by imperialism preceding their planned ‘interventions’ – let’s just call it ‘invasions’ as we’re now plainly witnessing in Mali.

In attempting to answer the question about what happened to the revolution in Guinea Bissau, it has been remarked that the situation there is no different from elsewhere in Africa. Something is rotting its progress. We must be clear what that “something” is. And when we speak about Africa and revolution we must accept that there is no simple answer to questions about what went wrong. This brings me to the disease of “cancer” for which there has been surmountable research but only few kinds have found cure. In my tenuous effort to make some links between those birthdays above I found myself thinking about my father – who they said died of prostate cancer. I was about eight and it was the first time I had heard both words. Though I didn’t know what they meant I knew this was the reason my father was dead. Cancer invades the body, debilitates its host, sapping vital energy until so weakened it dies. Cancer is a virile enemy, loyal unto itself, extending its life by feeding on the body. So how can the body defend itself against it?

Some point to healthy living, eating the right kinds of food, even having the right mental frame of mind since a healthy psychological disposition should transmit through the body, radiating the cells with positive energy. A nice thought – but it’s surely not that simple. Often we plaster one area of the body only to find another needing equal attention. Cancer betrays the entire body – though it may only attack one part – at any one time. True it’s vital to have all the cells of the body in the best working order – they must feel part of one solid unit – one body, one concentrated mass. Any part that’s contaminated, or attempts to heal itself in isolation will impact the whole.

Thus we find in Guinea Bissau and other “mini-states” the kind of isolation that makes probable what Cabral referred to as the “cancer of betrayal.” This was from his speech “Homage to Kwame Nkrumah” delivered in May 1971: "let no one come and tell us that Nkrumah died from cancer of the throat or any other sickness…Nkrumah was killed by the cancer of betrayal, which we must tear out by the roots in Africa, if we really want to liquidate imperialist domination definitively on this continent" (in Unity and Struggle, 117).

It’s startling then that Cabral was shot nearly two years later by a member of his own party, Innocencio Kani. The association with the Portuguese secret police (PIDE, like the USA’s Central Intelligence Agency) as an instrument of the colonial enemy is indisputable. For me it doesn’t matter that the intention, as the evidence tells us, was not for Kani to kill Cabral but rather to destabilise progress so far made by the PAIGC and ultimately seize power. That power would have been controlled – as is the case now – by reactionaries, virile cancerous elements. Portugal would have been spared the shame of defeat having neutralised (apparently the real intention) the PAIGC leadership. What matters is how it was possible for him to do it.

There is, therefore, a troubling question about his assassination: how was Cabral as the leader of a revolution in this vulnerable position? This despite the forewarning in his “Homage to Nkrumah” when he called for “reinforced vigilance” against infiltration – and not merely from imperialist forces: for he uses an African proverb to remind us that “rice only cooks inside the pot.” Revolutions are never free of forces determined to interrupt their progress. Just as a coin has two faces, Cabral tells us “all of life’s realities have two aspects: positive and negative.” A progressive revolutionary party is positive; uses the “positive action” (a term/strategy he credits to Nkrumah) to realise its objectives. Any such action – like Africans working together to eradicate imperialism “opposes and is opposed by negative action and vice versa” (Unity and Struggle, 116). Further, the progress of revolutions are impacted by “class struggle, social structure, the role of the party and other institutions including the armed forces.” Cabral relates this to the betrayal of Ghana in its efforts under Nkrumah to establish a “newly independent state.” This is pertinent for our reading of the situation in Guinea Bissau albeit so many years following the revolution. To this must be added the development of a contingent of Cadres/leaders who aren't simply taking up but actively and creatively weaving the revolutionary mantle in the event that either of them should fall.

Thus I return to the question of Cabral’s vulnerability – which is shared by all revolutionaries. When I read the account of his killing, I accept that since he was not armed when Kani confronted him, he had no choice but to reason with him – to try to “change his mind” – to re-mind his compatriot that he is a valued grain in that pot of boiling rice. Or put another way – the revolution, in truth Africa – needed him. In our space of distance and hindsight we might think the attempt was futile, but persuasion was Cabral's strength, it was how he had gained on the ground support of ordinary people. I wonder though whether Cabral relaxed, forgot the vigour of his earlier warning about “vigilance” and was thus taken by surprise when he was so close to gaining independence for his beloved people. Was he truly mindful of how readily cancers spread? One of its worst species - the kind one might call “aggressive” stood before him pointing a gun against which he had no defence. This species has something to do with what Cabral saw as the “choice of men in the revolution.”

It is only possible to betray something we have a strong feeling for or belief in. If one loves Africa, believes in unity and solidarity, has an unwavering commitment to the struggle for total liberation what would it take to betray it? Coups are the cancer of imperialism, an aggressive force that has never removed itself from any part of Africa; only entrenched its historical heels, ready to kick at and desecrate peoples and their places. It has instigated every type of economic, social and political destabilisation in order to sustain itself, signing their own concocted self-serving agreements with their trained props. It has rooted itself in every cell of the body we might here call Africa. Imperialism has spawned itself in the form of ECOWAS, African Union, Africom, MOSSAD, NATO, CIA and MI6 – (take some of your own time to look up the abbreviations) - all of them part of one noxious system feeding the peoples in every corner of the world with lies about “interventions.” This calls to my mind the medical intervention that advanced my father’s death. His cancer had been there, couched in his body, causing him severe pain and discomfort but it would not kill him – the doctors in Guyana warned– unless he attempted to have an operation to remove it. Having travelled to America some years later, he ventured to have the operation that cost him his life. It was not, after all, the land of opportunity.

We‘re not duped. Obama’s second term, like his first is marked by deeper aggression of US forces into Africa. It was Hollywood stuff – the mania that saw Africans (black people – if you prefer) jumping up in frenzied celebration of his inauguration on January 21st. He is a mega symbol of distraction – a Jesus come swiftly.On this same day the Guardian reported that Afganistan, Pakistan and the Middle East would no longer be the sole focus on terrorism. Cameron instead is pushing for the focus to be in North Africa. Of course he is. This he says, in a kind of Kipling parlance, is a response to “generational struggle” against “al-Qaida-inspired militants in North Africa.” A few days later the Wall Street Journal (29 January) reported that the US had signed an agreement to establish a military base in Niger, strategically placing itself in a position to launch drones in Algeria to counter terrorist threats to its "national security". Cancers spread. Where next will it attack, what country's leader execute and parade before the world as a macabre spectacle of its anti-humanism? African leaders – unless progressive and for the people are wolves in sheep’s clothing, foolishly “spitting at the sky.” My seemingly random links in January means that I didn't overlook the brutal execution of Patrice Lumumba on 17 January 1961 by the Belgians. For this cancer eliminated many of our revolutionaries, Pan-Africanists and freedom fighters wherever they found themselves in struggle for Africa's liberation and unity. Though tempted to lament, we must hold back the tears because they are not as decisive as bullets and unity in struggle; girded too by culturally specific ideology.

In remembering Cabral something we who regard Africa as primary must also remember is that “so long as imperialism is in existence, an independent African State must be a liberation movement in power or it will not be independent.” We must try like Cabral succeeded in doing to combine theory with practice (Nkrumah’s “thought and action”) toward the building of a unified Africa. One liberated and independent state in Africa is vulnerable to the invading parasitic cancer of betrayal. Coups have their captains like revolutions have their leaders. A single (and iconised)leader adored by the people but unprotected at any time is no adequate strategy of defence and for the enormous task/enemy that continues to face Africans everywhere. Despite the tendency to feel that he was an overwhelming leader Cabral saw himself as a “simple African man, doing [his] duty in [his] own country in the context of [his]time.” Is our time not the last, desperate stage of imperialism when we must carefully watch which way and how fiercely the wind is blowing and yet dare to face forward ever.

Shout Out

Some books of interest:
'Homage to Nkrumah' in Unity and Struggle, Amilcar Cabral
Neo Colonialism The last Stage of Imperialism, Kwame Nkrumah
Strategy and Tactics of the Revolution, Ahmed Sekou Toure
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney
The Political and Social Thought of Kwame Nkrumah, Ama Biney

A Quiet place

Where a single translucent
lotus
drifting along
a glassy lake
doesn’t seem
lonely

where time is contemplation
not the dash of numbers
speed marching round
wall and wrist

where meditating
and morning
have the same rhythm
and meaning

where bathing is ritual
honouring rivers, seas
and Oschun

Where every room
is sanctuary
furniture free
TVs and screens
not necessary
and the only stair ascended is
from Geb to Ausar

where love is no kind of pain
nor the impetuous gushing of words
but Divine communion
and atonement for nurturing soul

where every birdsong
is the lullaby of a private revolution
in stillness

where breathing is not simply
mechanic, nor convulsed
but the delicate crafting of aliveness

where peace is not an overindulged aspiration
impelled by concocted tyranny
where no one designs hysteria
to veil my will and imagination

A quiet place
where embrace is the shared
heartbeat of a thousand
elevated souls

A quiet place
where I can simply be
and delight in being alone
in the serenity of silence.

By M. Yaa. Asantewa
(January 2013)

Graceful departure: when it’s time to cross the bridge

For Betty, safe crossing...

A Guyanese proverb reads “never cuss alligator till you done cross bridge.” It warns against condemning something until you’re certain it is no longer useful, or that it no longer has need of you. Year end is perfect for self-reflection and contemplating new ventures and opportunities. Sometimes reflections are suddenly forced on us because we failed to read the signs sooner. Perhaps we read them but were reluctant to take new steps; to turn off the current road where the tarmac had long needed resurfacing. I share the following consideration about the current state of academia as part of my year end reflections.

Pursuing my degrees was meant to expand the relatively poor education I received at school and provide better employment opportunities. I didn’t plan it but multiple degrees usually imply a natural career in teaching at university. However, I’ve been feeling disillusioned with academia for some time. As I wander through the corridors of London Met, I can’t help feeling unhinged and thus tempted to “cuss the alligator.” The Caribbean Studies no longer exists – neither do History, Philosophy and Performing Arts. How can this be? In a university with the largest number of black and minority ethnic students across the UK, the Caribbean Studies Department made sense. On the History pathway, students had the chance to study Black British History – but only a privilege (probably white) will now have the chance to study any form of History at University level. The “bridge” has curved over my path, I must now earnestly face the question – do I still have need of alligator?

As a teacher, even if your position is marginal, you convince yourself that you’re at least “giving back,” and hoping to inspire generations who like you come from non-traditional backgrounds and are the first and maybe the last members of their families to go to university. Such students need extra support, sensitive teaching and consistent guidance. You pride yourself in the ability (earned from experience) to deliver lessons that would not merely benefit basic educational needs but also encourage students to consider how they might contribute to their society when they leave. Some wont make it – not because they are incapable but they need serious, consistent support and they will invariably take longer to “self-actualise.” You hope too that you’re part of an environment committed to producing “critical thinkers” who will challenge the destructive or outmoded practices and then find creative ways of transforming their society.

These well meaning efforts now seem sentimentalised. Stripped of the funding necessary to run courses in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, institutions like London Met are forced to churn out training courses. Quality of the student experience and “higher learning” are compromised. Vocational training is necessary and for some, as it was for me, it can be the pathway to Higher Education. However an educational system exposed to market forces, as the government has now condemned it to be will only produce “drones” and breed the corruption evident in any business (or “for-profit”) environment. How will students respond? As Andrew Mcghettigan and others argue “students will be misled to put a price tag on everything they read and write. The intellectual freedom and critical autonomy of the individual, which democratic nations have sought to develop for centuries will be irreparably damaged.” (See paper 'Putting Vision Back into Higher Education: A Response to the Government White Paper'). I would add to this that students will also put a “price tag” on their teachers; they will expect more spoon-feeding, whilst doing and thinking less. But this is not the future, this is current reality.

It must be time to “cuss the alligator.” The government has been clear about its position on education - a legacy of previous conservative governments -: privatisation of Higher Education. An elite will receive the best educational experience and will largely not feel inclined to give back anything. The majority will scramble for scraps and pay extortionately for the “privilege,” as privilege it will be. In the market place of education the government doesn’t care about “weak institutions” like London Met. Indeed its policies are intentionally designed to weaken them further.

London Met’s reputation, perhaps since the merger in 2002 (which saw the start of redundancies and departmental trimmings), has been under agonising pressure. Its weakness lay in its diverse student body – though this was once its strength and the herald of “widening participation.” In August this year, the government’s vicious move to reduce immigration targeted this particular university because of its “weakness.” The signs are not veiled.

The Tower building is the stamp of the Holloway Road Campus. The “Tower” is also the 16th card in the Tarot divination system. The image on the card is of a building cataclysmically torn down, with fire spiralling from the top and two figures plunging to earth. Whether they have chosen to jump or were evicted by the intensity of the flames is not clear. Horrifically, in August just before the UKBA’s decision to remove London Met’s “Highly Trusted Status” a member of staff plunged to his death from the Tower Building. Like many who remain despite the gloominess and “flames” he had been at the University for 20 years. Why he did it is not clear but one might regard this as symbolic of imminent demise for the University. Interpretation of the symbols when the 16th Tarot card is drawn would naturally be personal. However, if we’re all in the burning Tower do we perform a collective weeping in the hope our tears will amass enough water to out the flames?

Crossroads are inevitable in every life. They force us to make choices. Spiritual aspirants are not daunted by this, but accept that these choices help to align us with our Divine purpose. We can’t always see over the bridge, which would give us certainty of what new experiences lay there. But our lives are more than a hamster wheel existence. And if we must take a lonely leap from the Tower at least this is an act of self-determination where it might yet be possible to find new alligators.

Shout Out
December 2012

Affirming Thanks

To the Creative Life Force
Which directs my Divine Path, I give thanks:

Thanks for my light and life
My health and my peace of mind
Thanks for love, beauty and abundance.

I give thanks for guidance, wisdom and understanding
This trinity of spiritual elevation

I give thanks for present and absent family
My beautiful friends with whom I have shared this journey
Who have been patient with me, who have loved me and been true to me.
I give thanks for new friends who bless me with renewed wisdoms and understanding.

I give thanks for the many challenges that enable me to be more disciplined and purposeful in my life.

Thank you for the heart that courageously embraces every experience good and bad. I give thanks for the ability to turn misery to laughter and dismantle the mountain of negativity.

I am blessed by my interaction with the forces of nature. Through this I struggle to read the signs that direct me along the path of liberation. I am in tune with the rhythm of the seasons.
The moon does not make me mad. She is my great mother and I honor her. The sun guides me. Through him I am successful. I overcome my negative impulses and shine.

I give thanks for my open-heartedness and willingness to receive new ideas. I am not afraid to open the door of my subconscious where hidden truths abide.

In my dreams I run and win races.
I climb stairs and do not tire. I will one day master flight.
In my dreams I pick and eat the sweetest fruits. Some fall at my feet from overbearing trees.
I eat freshly baked bread. I waltz through great halls, attending sumptuous banquets where a seat is secured for me. My place there has been earned.

I am not watcher but maker and participant too. I share my wisdoms with anyone who searches like me.
I accept that there is a Divine Plan, moulded by Divine Law.
I AM not afraid that I AM part of it. I do not fear who I AM.
I recognise that here the Power is. And it is mine – now and always.

Through my Will I express this Power.
I champion the Wisdom of Tehuti, without which I have no meaning.
I am completely blessed and suffused with perfect Understanding. Through this I am guided.

My steps are ever certain and climbing towards liberation
From doubt, fear, ill-feelings and indiscipline.

Justice is my visible shield for I do not sacrifice the collective good will for individual grandeur and fortune.
Beauty is engraved on my heart. For beauty has a soul that extends its force to my life.

I uphold her Truth and know that I am Victorious. The expression of beauty is my desire for temperance, equality and freedom for all. All receive and freely give. All are rich; all share in the great, unlimited supply.

I chant to the eternal light. This prevailing splendour that channels me and restores my confidence, borning me new from the shadows that aim at my Soul.

I give thanks for the grace and love of Oshun, my muse. My heart is glad it found you. Het-Heru resides there too, driving me to that destiny with Ausar.

My ancestors keep me rooted to my purpose. In every experience they reveal themselves to me; their brooms sweep my path. They are the pillars of assurances and I never forget their perfecting rhythm. I drink wine and eat wholesome food in honour of them.For my body is the chamber of spirit and I respect it.
I nurture it with good thinking and being. I adorn it with the spirit of humility, compassion, joy and love. I nourish it with beauty and grace. I charge it with courage and confidence to champion the rise of Heru and the Power of Ausar.
Without wisdom for which my spirit ever yearns my divinity is vanity alone.

My path has long been designed. I ask only to remember, to give thanks and be guided by the exacting melody of Wisdom.

Shout Out

Top image - credited to D'bi Young (from her facebook)

Linden: "Touch One Touch All"

“Dear land of Guyana
Of Rivers and Plains
Made rich by the sunshine
And lush by the rains
Set gem-like and fair
Between mountains and sea
Your children salute
Dear land of the free...”

From Guyanese National Anthem

As a young girl I loved singing these words from our Guyanese anthem. I didn’t at the time understand their meaning. I simply thought them beautiful. I can’t remember at what age I came to know that the indigenous name “Guiana” means “land of many waters.” And there is a lot of rain and a number of rivers, chiefly Demerara, Berbice and Essequibo. In 2010 I realised my dream of visiting Kaieteur, one of Guyana’s many waterfalls – and yet unrealised source of hydro electricity.

“Mountains and plains” – were pretty words for imagined spaces. Its “gems?” The reality of Guyana’s vast resources would not be properly understood by me until my return some fifteen years after I left. It was at this time also that I saw for the first time the impressive landscape of Guyana. I travelled to the interior - to Aishalton on an army truck; to Bartica on a speedboat sailing along the Mazuruni; to the North West (Matthews Ridge) on a trawler. I bathed in the coffee black waters; I listened to a Wapishana family sing about their love of the Rupunnuni (area in the South) and of the Kanaku Mountain. I slept in a hammock underneath the brightest moon and stars, feeling a kind of oneness with nature. Mosquitoes didn’t terrorise nor scar me, though they are plentiful in the countryside at night, particularly during the rainy season. I did not see anyone being swallowed whole by anacondas as the stories I’d listened to before travelling had suggested would happen, given the “jungle” Guyana is.

This freedom and privilege to appreciate the landscape of the country where I was born provided me with something I had been missing and which had caused me to feel depressed and unsure of my place in Britain. I felt rooted to this place. Here lay my foundation, the beginning of the self I would live my life trying to actualise. It is from this place I expressed into “being.” This sense of being rooted, of knowing my foundation gave me some confidence when I returned to London (actually Scotland where I was living/studying at the time). I say “privilege” because I was able to save money to explore some of Guyana when I went back. My cousins who had remained almost in a kind of time capsule had never travelled into the interior, let alone “outside” of Guyana. For this reason some of them challenged me when I asserted that Guyana was the size of Britain. They didn’t have a thorough sense of Guyana’s size, beauty and resources. This formed part of the reason for their desire to go “outside” – London, Barbados, Canada, US - anywhere “outside”. This desire was otherwise based on the association of Guyana with poverty, the conception of “outside” with opportunity and prosperity.

So beside the beauty and immenseness of the landscape, the richness of the soil at one time earning Guyana the title of “foodbasket” of the Caribbean; the vastness of its natural resources –gold, diamonds and significantly bauxite, I was left with an intense impression of poverty. It is this contradiction that manifested in the slaughter by police of three men, Shemroy Bouyea, Ron Somerset and Allan Lewis on 18th July this year. I was born into this poverty. The poverty I experienced as a child when my aunt and uncle were parenting us (my siblings and I) as well as their own children. My uncle worked for the bauxite company in Linden. Whether or not he was part of a union I can’t say but when he died there was no pension to meet the needs of his family. By this time I had been shipped to London to “join” my mother. Our migration was bitterly resented by my cousins who saw this as our privileged route out of poverty. For there was no other way to conceptualise Linden – its bauxite deposits, considered one of the world’s largest still, did not amount to economic freedom for its people. Instead it remained a “small mining” town. “Small” confers the status of permanent underdevelopment despite the vast amount of bauxite extracted by the hands of changing companies.

Imagine living in a town which came into being for the purpose of enriching foreign investors? The miners and their families cannot realise any kind of economic advancement because this is not the objective for this community. I didn’t connect my bronchitis and other respiratory problems with the fact that I started my life in Linden, where the oppressive bauxite dust spewing out from the mines was part and parcel of living in the “mining town.” If I suffer with these complaints, how more severe would it be for the workers, daily risking their health/lives so that their families can eat and have a home? These are not luxuries. They are basic human needs. Any society that cannot ensure that such basic needs are met is anti-human. Any state that does not protect its citizens from exploitation by corporations has misunderstood their function as representative of the people. Thus it is that in Guyana our bauxite has been controlled by foreign companies who have never acted in the best interest of the miners/workers and the people of Guyana.

This blatant violation of the people’s civil liberties goes unchallenged by the present regime. Our eyes are focussed on Linden, where bauxite is extracted by Chinese owned company BOSAI. However, the High Court is still investigating an ongoing dispute since May 2011 between BCGI (Bauxite Company of Guyana Incorporated) a subsidiary of Russian-owned RUSAL and the GB GWI (Guyana Bauxite and General Workers’ Union). An arbitration meeting was scheduled for March this year, but the company manager and lawyer failed to show up. The original dispute was not merely about low wages but also air conditioning in trucks as well as a request for an emergency vehicle to transport injured workers to the nearest hospital in Kwakwani, 16 miles outside of the mining area. The company agreed the concessions at first, but reneged claiming that the Union had induced the strike, had caused it to lose US$290,000 and had trespassed onto their property during the two day strike. Notice that the company’s first preoccupation is with its losses.

Similarly, President Ramotar in his insensitive, callous letter to the people of Linden following the massacre by the police of the three men and the injuring of several others, including elderly, women and children is mainly concerned with damages to property. He is so concerned by the “great hardships”, the “pain”, “difficulties” and “grief” the people experienced following the killings it took him nearly one month to visit and speak with the community. He claims that it is the “organisers of the blockades that are hurting Linden and causing deep suffering” but shamelessly fails to notice that their suffering is the result of his Government’s hike in electricity rates – of 800% in a community with high unemployment. There is no sincerity in his letter for the people – for in it he also writes that “BOSAI is also being hurt.” How so? What is BOSAI really doing for the people of Linden? How is their presence really improving the economic independence of the country? How are BOSAI and BCGI improving the quality of life for the people of the communities from which they extract exorbitant wealth to develop their respective economies and their individual interests? RUSAL is considered the world’s largest producers of aluminium and alumina (comes from bauxite). Yet they quibble over giving workers a fair wage for their labour and protection whilst they conduct their work in the hostile mining environment. This is the sickening realities of profit driven motive. It must always violate the basic needs of human beings. Without this it cannot maintain its leadership in global financial indices.

When I lived in Guyana we were poor. My aunt recycled breadfruit in a number of our meals because we had several trees. I find the fruit unpalatable now. When I returned fifteen years later, my family were still poor. The house I grew up in, situated on a hill in Silvertown had deteriorated; its roof made of zinc sheets was full of holes, my family still used a latrine as they couldn’t afford a flushing toilet. The roads – well these were always tracks with potholes sometimes too large for cars to drive through. 10 years later my family are poorer still – though there is now a flushing toilet, thanks to remissions from myself and other family abroad; the roads are not improved. Everyone has to hustle. What they make from their creative ways to survive is supplemented by the remissions they receive from family “outside.” This was the case over thirty years ago and nothing has changed.

Of course this poverty is restricted to the general population. Everyone knows Ramotor’s government is corrupt, fuelling drugs through the country – which explains his concerns about the protesters “blockading of roads.” When I was there two years ago there were curiously a number of large hotels, some with swimming pools which I was told are built from drug money. Lots of hotels but no tourists to fill them, but the money must be pumped into something to give the illusion of economic advances. We know too that the government is responsible for the deaths of nearly 500 Africans during its 20 years in office. But race politics, though the PPP would like us to focus on it is not the most pressing issue. It is capitalist exploitation that ensures Ramotar and his predecessor Jagdeo can live opulently, signing contracts with foreign companies that perpetuate Guyana’s underdevelopment – despite its being “gem-like and fair.”

And herein is the brilliance of Walter Rodney’s analysis in his book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Underdevelopment in Africa is consequent to development in Europe – that the phenomenon of underdevelopment is “comparative.” One of its features is “exploitation” of one country by another. Rodney is clear when he identifies underdevelopment as a “product of capitalist, imperialist and colonialist exploitation” (p.22). This is the legacy of countries/economies like Guyana and those of Africa where so called “Western Democracy” is the order. Countries controlled by “capitalist powers” deprive “societies of the benefit of their natural resources and labour” (p.22). That is the nature of underdevelopment being perpetuated in Guyana by the PPP Civic regime under the guise of good governance.

That too is the nature of the transgression and betrayal by the ANC government of Azania (South Africa) where 44 miners were brutally massacred by the police in Marikana earlier this month. President Zuma has not condemned this cold blooded action by the police against the workers legitimately striking for increased pay. The only “clarity” he needs to see is that he has betrayed his people; that he is paying the price of selfish, individualistic leadership motivated by profit over people. The state apparatus has illogically charged 270 workers involved in the strike with murder, not only of their fellow workers but of two policemen – Zuma’s response? Silence. The spectre of Apartheid looms but worse than this is that big companies like the British owned Lonmin hold countries to ransom, are given licence by governments not only to treat workers inhumanely but to perpetuate underdevelopment within African countries and elsewhere in the so called “developing world.”

I repeat Lonmin is a British owned company, like RUSAL commanding trillions whilst paying pittance to workers daily risking their lives in the mines. The company’s response to the workers demand for a fair wage to feed, clothe and shelter their family (basic needs) is to shoot them down like hunted animals. For they know that ANC has no power over Lonmin – it is Lonmin and other multi-national corporations that own the country. They know that they can manipulate the country’s laws to get away with murder – for whose laws are they? Lonmin knows that despite these murders and inhumane treatment of workers there will be no intervention by the UK to ensure justice is served to the workers because their actions/motivations are underpinned by those other veritable forces – imperialism, capitalism and neo-colonialism. The company and its home country are upheld by these systems.

Comparisons can be made between what’s happening in Linden and Marikana with other countries in Africa. In Sierra Leone a woman was killed during a protest at the Tonkolili mines. Again in another area in Sierra-Leone, the people of Lunsar Town do not benefit from the extractions of iron ore by the London Mining Company. What are these sought after benefits? “jobs, good schools, roads, hospitals and a youth training centre, among others so they and generations after them would benefit from their minerals” (1). Whilst the people struggle to meet these basic needs with hundreds abysmally suffering from cholera in 2012, the President Ernest Koroma siphons billions of their currency (Leonnes) on erecting multiple Hollywood Boulevard style mansions.

Words and phrases like “plagued”, “beleaguered”, “tortured history”, “conflict minerals”, “atrocities”, “violence” are enshrined in the distressing reality of the Democratic Republic of the Congo whose immense natural resources continue to be a curse rather than advancing the economic conditions of its people. The lust for Africa’s natural wealth persists in the “finding” of two large diamonds by the Australian diamond company Lonrho Mining. This company, not the people of Northeasern Angola will benefit from this “dazzling” discovery. The impression is that this will “brighten” the future of Angola. But for me warning bells resound when we know that the Lulo project which enabled the discovery “operates as a joint venture between Lonrho and the Angolan government-owned Endiama”(2,my italics).

The killings in Linden by the police have forced me to make these connections of its underdevelopment with countries throughout Africa. The oppression, poverty, exploitation and slaughtering of workers in the world is underpinned by greed and shameless profiteering. The “freedom” hailed in the national anthem is an illusion because the country and its people are blighted by deliberate impoverishment. I have not forgotten this poverty out of which I emerged into the world. It is this that has shaped who I am; forged my connectivity with the struggles of Africans and other dispossessed people and inspired my commitment to Pan-Africanism. Our struggle in Guyana is not simply against racism as some would have us exert our energies fighting, it is for an economic system that will benefit all, not just a few of our people. Until such time that this system is achieved murder by any state officials must not deter the people from their natural right to protest.

(1) (http://politicosl.com/2012/07/lunsar-blasts-london-mining-company-in- sierra-leone/)
(2) http://www.mining.com/two-massive-diamonds-in-angola-dazzle-investors-and-brighten-up-local-industry-34461/
(3) http://www.awoko.org/2012/08/23/gangsters-paradise/

Opening and closing Pandora’s Box

Its run at the Arcola Tent ended on May 26th but the success of Ade Solanke’s Pandora’s Box no doubt means there’ll be further opportunities to see it. Positive reviews ensured the nomination for the Best New Play for the ‘Off West End Play Awards.’ Powerful performances by the cast, each confidently and superbly owning their part also credited the play’s success. Smooth scene shifts and timings ensured the audience experienced complementary doses of humour and seriousness without need of intermission. The character (Baba) played by Olatunji Sotimirin commanded our attention with his at once comedic and critical commentary about contemporary Lagos as an alternative to London to where many Nigerians (and other diasporans) still aspire for prosperity.

Reviews of the play have focussed on the tough decisions mothers/parents have to make about their children’s education and supporting them to realise their potential. The Play’s backcover features Dianne Abott describing the added complexity of race and culture that impact the educational choices made by black parents. And it’s true – the play is ‘poignant’ but I don’t think for only the reasons these reviews highlight. My latterday consideration is not intended as a further review. But despite the reconciliatory embrace by mother (Mama Ronke, susan Aderin) and aggrieved daughter (Sis Ronke, Yetunde Oduwole) at the end I left with a nagging sensation that there was a further layer of complexity that wasn’t the play’s focus but I feel need to be addressed. Overstretching myself meant that I didn’t have time to do it earnestly after seeing the play and thought the feeling might go away. Though it has been over a month the sensation hasn’t left me so I’ll use this Shout to see if I can release it.

Deep down we want the happy ending, to believe that we can embrace away emotional trauma. Opening Pandora’s box – evoking untold histories, hurt, trauma – in this case the misery and memory of a mother’s decision to leave her eldest daughter behind when she journeys to London. The mother’s reason for so doing? Economic freedom – to study in London which she hoped would ensure a better life for her family. The fact that Mama Ronke felt it necessary to leave Nigeria and go to England subtly reminds us of the manacles of colonialism and imperialism at the heart of the search by many Africans for economic opportunities elsewhere. Many of us in the Diaspora know this story. Let me rephrase– many of us can relate to the trauma of this story – hence the poignancy spoken about earlier. While many of us can relate to the trauma, very few have experienced reconciliatory release from it.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that the audience were urging the second generation mother, Toyin (Anna-Maria Nabirye) to repeat the history in reverse. The play centred on her making the decision to leave her son (Timi, Bradley John) in Nigeria where she too hoped for a better life for him, away from the perils of London’s streets - a particular reality for African boys. Before the discovery that Timi has posted images of him posing with a gun on Facebook, I sense that the audience had already concluded that a better chance - not simply of life - but of staying alive might be experienced in Nigeria albeit with the militant Principal Osun (Ben Onwukwe) at a prestigious boarding school where discipline and learning are strictly enforced. It could be said that my surprise at the audience wasn’t warranted – for a boy’s life was in question. We had been given the context of friends who had been killed in London. There was another youth experiencing the rigours of the boarding school (Tope, Damson Idris) and though missing the materialisms of London street life and the closeness with his mother, he was advancing his studies, mastering a new language and embracing his ancestral traditions. So if Timi’s life could be spared and he could advance himself culturally, educationally and socially with a few accommodating lashings – then what’s the issue.

Yes – his life might be spared and he could emulate the success of his aunt (Sis Ronke) but the nagging sensation, which I think highlights the play’s poignancy is that Timi might never experience the mother/son reconciliation that the play projects between Mama Ronke and her daughter. The play serves therefore to challenge many of us who are burdened with this traumatic consequence of our mother/parents’ decision to leave us behind.

Sis Ronke is bitter. She’s jealous too of her younger sister Toyin (born in England) who had the opportunity to grow up and bond with her mother in a way clocks cannot rewind to make possible for Ronke. Nor can Mama-Ronke’s box of stored-up dresses and dolls she hoped to send for her daughter. At least for a time that’s how the play engaged us – that there was no imminent reconciliation between mother and daughter. But the play was not pitched as a tragedy – it was placing experiences and perhaps in satisfying the quest for catharsis and healing it provided a vision of reconciliation.

But I wondered about those hushed up sensitive experiences that many of us endured when we were left behind – or in some cases were the reasons why we might have been sent back or sent away – anywhere where the ‘problem’ might also go away. Very few families in the Diaspora have been spared this familial disruption which has caused and continues to be the cause of major rifts between its members. Siblings permanently vexed with one another because one or two thought the other/s had it (everything) better because they had mummy and daddy or mostly mummy; mummy sticking hard-heartedly to her reasons for leaving without credible consideration about the consequential trauma experienced by sons and daughters. In my experience fathers often escape the emotional tussling in this family drama. When I speak here it’s directly about my mother’s decision to leave me behind, which is not to absolve my father of his share in that responsibility. That I’ve elsewhere addressed.

But what is this ‘problem’ I’ve alluded to. When some of us are walking with the misery of our mother’s leaving us behind it’s because we are trying to come to terms with the reality that we were unprotected from the so called uncles and aunties who preyed on us sexually and levelled all kinds physical abuses against us. There was no one to talk to about it – brother or sister was enduring their own tortures (if they were left behind with us) and too scared and too young to protect you. I know this isn’t everyone’s experience – at least not the abuse – but the feeling of being ‘abandoned,’ left to the possible wiles of relatives or ‘family friends’, developing the sense that your mother/father never loved you or that they preferred the London born sibling/s is source of the pain those children left behind have stored up.

At some critical moment in our lives we might feel urged to speak to our mother (after being granted our indefinite leave to join them and remain in England) about these abuses but what might be their response. Do their eyes meet ours and say “sorry” or express some understanding of what we’re trying to explain to them? Do they - like Mama Ronke express that they left us for the best possible reasons? Do their eyes mostly shift in disbelief and some kind of measurable portion of shame? Shame that their trusted relative, brother, sister, sometimes mother took this unspeakable advantage of their child. Unfortunately that mother’s memory might evermore deny them the critical objectivity to say they left because it was opportune – not necessarily for betterment but wickedly for fashion. In other words the Joneses were doing it so like them I wanted to touch down in London, become graceful and look down my nose at the unfortunates left behind. And in that vainglorious scurry to clean up London’s streets I didn’t contemplate what possible harm I was subjecting my baby girl/boy to. Again – this will not be everyone’s experience. My point is that sometimes the reasons our mothers/parents made the decision to migrate to London have nothing to do with the search for economic freedom – not seriously – but it was at the time ‘en vogue.’

When faced with the reality that you suffered abuse as a consequence they might force some kind of rational explanation for making the decision. Sis Ronke’s life is successful but who does she thank for it - her mother? Nigeria? Her grandmother whom she remained with? Herself? And if her life was not measurably successful who would she blame for this? Her mother? Her sibling/s? Her abusers? For how long will she adulterate this trauma? For ever? Or will she find a way to take charge of her life and recognise that she is alive; she has survived; she is the maker of her own opportunities, that she is in command of the directions she wishes her life to take - that ultimately clocks wind forward.

Whatever way we imagine or interpret our mother/parent’s decision to leave us behind we need to reach a conclusion (the closing of “Pandora’s box”) that will release the long-held trauma. It’s likely to be the cause of many unfathomable disputes between us and other members of our family. We might hope for our mother/parents to say it was a mistake, but I’m not sure that would give us satisfaction. We might dream they would believe us that we suffered abuse and then perhaps confront our abusers but their shame and sense that they failed us might remain unexpressed; except for those rare moments when it leaps from their eyes or juts from their mouths in some sudden attack on us because they do not understand that secret pain at the back of our eyes.

One thing we must avoid is conscientiously and steadfastly holding that decision against our mother/parents. We must try, however difficult, to position ourselves in their place. If self righteously we feel we would never leave our children behind perhaps we should contemplate Toyin’s dilemma. We cannot be too confident about what will force us to make certain choices but when questioned by our conscience and our children we will need to say that at the time we made the decision it was in the best interest of our family. We need to be able to embrace our child and say softly “darling if I’ve wronged you it was not my intention.” We need to simply say sorry when we see that hurt in our child’s eye because they may never find a way to speak of the reasons why your leaving them was so painful. The decision may have been sound for you, but the consequences unbearable for your child. Reconciliation works in multiple ways. If entered into with the desire to be free of festering experiences there is no lonely winner; all are relieved and perhaps then the lid of our Pandora’s box will be slowly and gently closed.

Shout Out

As Bright as the Morning Rising

She is waiting
as all ancients do
till time turns
her borning
and vibrating
from flame
from fire
a nascent beat returning
and unbounded


Struggle is the
Particular shade of
Black and earth brown
Bolding her eyes
Chains the grooves
Weaving her skin
Revolution sounds
Her heart


She is coming
Earth Rendered and
Unwombed
Hurt healing so
deep scarred but
unembittered


Embleming beauty
Her poised lips
Withholding herstories
And ours
An untrained sensuality
Lain long and alone
In the silent memory
of womb


She is rising
Like potent prayers
Bellowed from belly
From soul
To the hearts
Of Goddesses


Oh but she comes
With that graceful gift
of sweetly sown
Love
and brings not simple hope
But Truth
Spirited from the
bosom of eternity
mothering fathering
life not wars


She is rising
Spirit catching
Spirit
She is rising
With the
tenderest light
beaming her face


she is dawning
scenting rain
sounding something
a long time lost
but now made new
blazoning heart
stirring spirits
sunning fresh
blades and resplendent
blooms
perfecting paths
of unencountered journeys


She is rising
yielding
Sacred power
And I chant
In the hidden secrecies
Of her eyes
And I cry
for unity
And I call
For unfolding mysteries
That will take us there
To the perfecting of peace
she is coming
sounding from her heart
the subtle untangling of keys.

Top Artwork by Fowokan "As Bright as the Morning Rising"
Poem - Michelle Yaa Asantewa

Second Art Work - a portrait of my mum by my niece Leah.
Photo - Yaa in nubiance.

Take a tour of Fowokan's website where the poem is featured. http://www.fowokan.com/odds-and-sods/as-bright-as-the-morning-rising/