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Letter to Sister Cynthia
McKinney
From Tilani Lybon Mabasa
Socialist Party of Azania
To Sister Cynthia
McKinney:
We were
particularly and greatly thrilled by your
nomination as the presidential candidate of the
Power to the People Committee and also
that of your vice presidential candidate, Sister
Rosa Clemente. These are indeed critical times
for the United States but much so for the world
and most particularly Africa and its people. We
are excited and also support the endorsement of
this nomination because of how we have come to
know you, Sister Cynthia McKinney, and what you
stand for.
The people
of Africa and Azania, better known as South
Africa, are greatly heartened by the fact that
it is not in your character and style to keep
quiet or turn a blind eye to the challenges that
face you. You have consciously taken sides a
long time ago and have been outspoken about
countries such as Zimbabwe long before other
people discovered where they were on the world
map.
Sister McKinney, your message has been
unequivocal on the question of the place and
state of Black people in the United States and
elsewhere in the Diaspora, but you have been
much stronger on Africa and the plans that have
always been afoot to destroy the continent and
its people. It could have been much easier for
you, like so many others, to fall into the trap
of mistaking the evil consequences of the
policies of imperialism, most particularly
western imperialism led by the UK and the US as
causes like in the case of Zimbabwe.
You have
painstakingly pointed out in the US Congress and
for all who cared to know how the policies of
the IMF and World Bank structural adjustment
programs imploded the Zimbabwean economy in the
late eighties and also how the Bush
administration went out to finish their
dastardly job by introducing into Congress "the
Zimbabwe democracy and economic recovery Act"
(signed into law on the 21st December 2002)
which you referred to as "nothing more than a
formal declaration of US complicity in a program
to maintain white skin privilege." You also
referred to it as racist and against the
interests of Zimbabweans, which was nothing else
but "the recolonisation of Zimbabwe." It is now
an open secret that they set out to making the
Zimbabwean economy totally unworkable. These
acts under the guise of rescuing Zimbabwe and
restoring democracy as early as 2001 were not
meant to assist the people of Zimbabwe and their
elected government in any way, but to destroy
everything and to block the path of
self-determination for the people of Zimbabwe.
We contend
that the crises in Zimbabwe was at the very
beginning orchestrated and organized by western
imperialism, most particularly Britain and the
US when Mugabe justly implemented an agrarian
reform program that was long overdue. Indeed it
should have happened in the very period of
liberation, that is, taking land from white
people who in the first place acquired it
through the dishonorable means of colonization,
giving it to Black people who rightly owned it.
Mugabe had stirred a hornet's nest and for this
he could not be forgiven by the west, who
considered him an arrogant and unthankful
African leader whom they have failed to put in
his rightful place like others. What we today
call the "crisis in Zimbabwe" is the direct
consequence of what imperialism has done and
continues to do in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in
Africa.
In large
measure, the crisis is due to the failure of
Britain to honour their financial obligations
made as part of the Lancaster Agreements. Since
that period imperialism has progressively
charted a course designed to promote instability
in Zimbabwe and the region, which has ranged
from threats of economic and military sanctions,
sanctions of all forms and finally a threat and
possibility of military invasion. George Bush
referred to Zimbabwe as a component part of his
"Axis of Evil."
We thank
for your great insight into these matters lest
we be informed by our enemies who our friends
are. Malcolm X once remarked: "If you are not
careful, the newspapers [media, be it electronic
or print] will have you hating the people who
are being oppressed [Africans], and loving the
people who are doing the oppressing [the West]."
Indeed we had said for some time now that Africa
is looking and hoping for someone who will stand
in the forums and platforms of one of the
world's leading nations and declare that people
of Africa deserve to live and that the continent
and its people must survive. Africa should not
be pushed to the back of beyond where it will be
left to die from crippling poverty, disease,
wars, dislocation and destabilization.
The
countries of Africa are wealthy, they produce
rich minerals, oil, gold, diamonds and a host of
other things which the world can ill afford to
live without but yet they are the poorest in the
world. Africa is being destroyed for its wealth.
We believe we have found in you that person and
that voice. We needed a voice that will be
politically independent and will break in a
definite sense from the two American parties of
capital and big business, the Republicans and
the Democrats that have authored so much
hardship for Africa and its people.
We do not for one moment think it is going to be
easy for you nor will the forces that be, allow
things to run smoothly for you because your
heart and mind is with the people, be that as it
may be, that has been the real essence of our
struggle to break the stranglehold of the status
quo that has brought nothing but great suffering
and pain to our people. This has been the trend
across the continents.
Your
Power to the People Committee platform does
not divide the people nor does it seek to
undermine anyone but it is an invitation to all
those who accept and realize that the present
framework of the two parties of capital has not
worked for those who needed change the most, the
poor and the hopeless. Every year they have sunk
more and more into desperate and destitute
situations and conditions. Their children fill
the jails, they are ravaged by illiteracy and
disease such the HIV and AIDS pandemic, their
children die early from poverty related social
ills such as prostitution, drug abuse and gang
wars, the list is endless but to be sure, all of
them need "POWER TO THE PEOPLE".
We are
writing this piece when freedom fighters like
Mumia Abu-Jamal have spent more than a quarter
of a century in death row. Black youth remain
the largest population group in American prisons
though their people are just 12% of the entire
population. America needs a Black leader who
will not shun away from these things. The world
needs a leader, a Black American leader, who
will bravely confront the horrors facing Black
people in the US but who will be brave enough to
raise the issues of Africa.
The current
elections cannot be contested without a focus on
the devastation of Hurricane Katrina which
brought back the memories of Slavery and how
Black lives were still regarded as valueless. We
believe that the "Power to the People" campaign
seeks to bring power back to American people
that power which presently reside with the
murderous bureaucrats of the two parties who are
waging unending wars in many fronts of the
world. People have to fight and wrest this power
for their own salvation. It is much clearer than
ever before that we are our own liberators and
our destiny lies in our own hands.
Steve Biko,
the Azanian martyr, icon and liberation hero,
captured it even more succinctly when he said,
"Black people should not be spectators of the
game they should be playing." This is true
everywhere in the world where social conditions
are being used to exclude millions of people
from actively deciding about their own fate and
destiny. Your campaign and platform seeks to
give all these people a chance, POWER TO THE
PEOPLE!
You cannot
turn a blind eye to what is today happening to
Black people in the US. Their lot is not in any
way different from that of Black people in the
African continent. The 2008 report by the Black
AIDS Institute in US says, "More black Americans
are living with the AIDS virus than the infected
populations in Botswana (once number one in the
world), Ethiopia, Guyana, Haiti, Namibia, Rwanda
or Vietnam". It further says, "If Black America
were a country, it would rank 16th in the world
in the number of people living with the AIDS
virus." "Power to the people" should also mean
the power to break with the conditions that have
made our people victims everywhere in the world.
The present
rulers have not shown any interest in dealing
with this pandemic in the US. The same report
observes despite the fact that the US
administration spends billions of US dollars
anti AIDS programs in other countries but
"America itself has no strategic plan to combat
its own epidemic" also that "American policy
makers behave as if AIDS exists 'elsewhere' --
as if the AIDS problem has been effectively
solved in this country." How can we turn a blind
eye when our people are dying in their
millions?
The
political accounts that were first opened by
slavery, colonisation and today the debilitating
foreign debt remain not close. So whether you
are in Johannesburg, New York or Abidjan you
face the same problems, Africa needs the total
and unconditional cancellation of the debt
including the Apartheid Debt, Black people in
the US are calling for Reparations but more the
destruction of the carnivorous system that is
underpinned by private ownership of the means of
production.
Sister Cynthia, you have long chosen sides and
we are comfortable to say with confidence as
people of Africa, the forgotten continent, a
continent and a people marked for destruction
that, "You want what we want and feel what we
feel" and that creates a whole lot of difference
between you and the many people whose program is
to make "America great again." When was America
great and at what expense and sacrifices did she
become that great? We do not deny that she has a
potential of greatness but that will only be so,
when she learns to fight on the side of justice
and defend the weak nations who have suffered
under rampant Americanism.
In
conclusion, we cannot complete this without
mentioning the work that lies ahead in building
the Reconstruction Party that will take forward
the struggles of Black people. It is important
to build a party that will provide for Black
people a reflective chance, to see indeed how
far they have gone in the country that has been
built through their back-breaking labour in the
cotton fields, a country they gave blood for in
the many wars but most particularly the war for
independence. Black people should not allow any
programs that seek to expel them from the work
and product of their labour. Anything, including
freedom, paid for by blood is very important.
Black people deserve better than what is the
offing for them because they have given so much
blood.
Sister
McKinney, and your running partner Sister Rosa
Clemente, we wish you well in these difficult
times of struggle, we who believe it is possible
to fight on the side of the workers and the poor
need to join hands and assure one another of our
unflinching support and undying love. The
Reconstruction Party, an independent Black party
based on the will and collective experiences of
Black people in the US will indeed and in time
link up with the struggle to build the labour
party that should unite all the poor and working
people of the US. For our part let us not kill
hope!
Yours in struggle
Tiyani Lybon Mabasa
President,
Socialist Party of Azania
28th July 2008
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posted 6 August
2008 |
