Nile Valley Rush Productions

Our modern understanding of African world spirituality needs to be revisited. It is untrue to pretend that we reside in the same mystical space as our ancestors did. They inhabited a place of deep spirituality and of connectedness with the natural and supernatural worlds. Every day's challenges were attributed to the wrath or lack of satisfaction of a god, and appeasement alone was the remedy, often at a high cost of life or liquor. Many Diasporans today find shame in remembering those practices which bear the authenticity seal of our traditions past.

The modern agony over the so-called uncivilised and primitive world view that gives rise to obscure and malevolent practices of retribution and vengeance, in truth a truly bloody scene, reveals a psychological disposition to reject self as other and undeserving of respect and regard for its differential attributes and qualities. In fact the Supreme God Olodumare of the Yoruba Pantheon is but one example of a diligent and sensual god who brings misery on his creation purely out of absent-mindedness and negligence, not malevolence per se, unless to conquer a mortal maiden, or at least so goes the oral tradition. And that in itself is the attack made on the authenticity of practices not registered or written anywhere and claimed to be part of folklore. How are countries like South Africa, Namibia, Australia (and the aborigines) determine what authentic religious practices need to be protected or exempted from the fist of the law when they are integral to cultural integrity and sacred practice?

The cosmogony of the Akan people of West Africa's Gold Coast, today's Ghana, demonstrates the generosity of a world order where gods and goddesses are genuinely interested in the lives, pains and challenges of humans. They coexist, co-habit and share the same fate as mortals in those stories, becoming vulnerable through love, jealousy, envy and ambition. These are gods made in the measure of humans, they truly are our partners in the destiny of time. Is our modern understanding of god and deity to be informed by the post-colonial emergence of African religiosity in the Black world, both on the continent of Africa and the diaspora?

The legacy of slavery has initiated some very novel philosophical insight into human existence. Afrikans, bearing the tremendous burden of systematic oppression, have been privy to certain revelations of spirituality. This has been facilitated by the persistence of an Afrikan cosmogonical insight even as Afrika's unfortunate children crossed the abyss of the Middle Passage.

For example, the Haitian Revolution was preluded by a Vodun ceremony (led by Boukman) which aided their handy defeat of the French Empire. This would have been altered form but not distinct from the ancestral African ritualism. Perhaps the most recent significant development in resistance theology in the Black diaspora is that of RAstafari, a world view that celebrates the often unmentioned Ancient Christian traditions in Ethiopia and resists the racist precepts of Eurocentric ideals. From these instances, it is easy to see that the Afrikan's resilience in the face of overwhelming obstacles has been founded on indigenous Afrikan spirituality and philosophy that we thought we had lost. Therefore, since Afrikan religiosity has in many ways enabled our liberation from the chains of oppression, it is clear that we must further understand and appreciate this indelibly etched aspect of our collective psychology.

For no people is distinct from its origin.

....(to be continued)....

One Love

Dread Team

There was a time, not too long ago, when Africa and Africans had great hope for their future. Ghana, led by Kwame Nkrumah, had become independent by 1957, and it appeared that the bonds of colonialism, brief but tortuous, had at last been broken. The great visionary Nkrumah saw three fundamental tasks to be carried out that would ensure a successful AFrican future: the freedom of all Africa, the unity of all Africa, and the technological advancement of all Africa. Indeed, 50 years later, though we have seen Africa freed from her colonial bonds, and we see the process in place to bring about political and economic unity, Africa still requires the re-development of a culture of science and technology. Anecdotal evidence from around the world and from our illustrious past informs us that an emphasis on innovation is an integral aspect of development and of dignity.

Indeed, recognising this, the African Union has recently formed a New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), and a part of this body is the African Ministerial Council on Science and Technology (AMCOST), whose mission is to provide a "high-level platform for developing policies and setting priorities on science, technology and innovation for African development. AMCOST provides political and policy leadership for the implementation of Africa’s Science and Technology Consolidated Plan of Action (CPA)." So it appears that the visions of Nkrumah may just become reality.

Perhaps the most important philosophical foundation for use of resources to facilitate African science, even in the face of burgeoning poverty, is that without the power of science we will always be in a position of prostration at the heel of the West. In other words, innovation is a necessary sacrifice and a potentially invaluable resource in an increasingly complex global economy. Moreover, and more to the point, pre-colonial African history indicates a natural cultural inclination towards innovation. The pyramids, mathematics and medicine are just a few examples. Colonialism has stolen our memory of this dignified culture of inquiry, and then sold it back to us as their own! This is why, paradoxically, Afrikans tend to be under-represented in science and technology despite being a great part of its origin. Reclamation and more emphatically improvement of the scientific and innovative tradition is not a choice but an imperative if we are ever to achieve justice.

Forward

Dread Team

The Dread Team is delighted to welcome you to the Dread Iditations Blog! As we celebrate our first month of publication online, we would like to have your suggestions on the types of contributions you would like to see on this blog as a regular user. All suggestions are appreciated.

The Dread Team

Zimbabwe: Putting Zim First - If Not Now, When?
by Bishop Trevor Manhanga
Published in The Herald (Harare)

TWO incidents took place this year, a couple of months and two
continents apart, yet interrelated in that they revealed the battle
we Africans, and indeed Zimbabweans encounter in the face of the
stereotypical, and downright racist attitudes and opinions some in
the white west have about us, as we strive for economic empowerment
and emancipation.

The first incident took place in Dakar Senegal on July 20 2007 and
relates to the speech given by the President of France Nicolas
Sarkozy at the Cheikh Anta Diop University.

In what can only be described as a most unfortunate revelation of the
inner feelings of a very high standing public figure, Sarkozy had
this to say of Africa and Africans, in part: "The tragedy of Africa
is that the African man has never really entered history.

"The African peasant who for centuries has lived according to the
seasons, whose ideal is to be in harmony with nature, has only known
the eternal renewal of time via the endless repetition of the same
actions and the same words.

"In this mentality, where everything always starts over again, there
is no place for human adventure nor for any idea of progress...this
man never projects himself into the future, it never occurs to him to
break free from the repetition and invent a destiny for himself.

"This, if you will allow a friend of Africa to say it, is Africa's
problem.

"Africa's challenge is to enter history more fully.... Africa's
challenge is to stop forever repeating and going over things, and to
free itself from the myth of the eternal renewal. It is to realise
that the golden age that it always harks back to will never return,
for the simple reason that it never existed.... Africa's problem is
that its present is permeated with nostalgia for the paradise lost of
its childhood.

"Africa's problem is that it judges its present according to a wholly
imaginary notion of original purity that no one could ever hope to
revive.

"Africa's challenge should not be to invent a past, however mythical;
to make the present more bearable, but to invent a future with the
means it has at its disposal.... For Africa has a right to be happy
just like all the other continents of the world."

The deafening silence from the African continent and its leadership
in allowing Sarkozy to make such a derogatory speech not only on
African soil, but also at an institution of higher learning, and get
away with it has been most disturbing.

How can the collective leadership of the African continent, have
remained silent in the face of this very provocative and insulting
opinion of Africans? Sarkozy's synopsis of Africa and its people is
without empirical validation, downright condescendingly racist, and
must be dismissed with the contempt it deserves.

One would have expected at the very least a rebuttal of Sarkozy's
racist remarks from none other than the AU, or other regional African
bodies such as Sadc or Ecowas. I have been surprised at the lack of a
groundswell of rebuke from continental and Diaspora Africans.

If there has been a response, then perhaps I have not seen it. Voices
of indignation against Sarkozy's racist diatribe have been few and
far between, and among the few I have encountered is one in the
October issue of New African magazine, where the editor Baffour
Ankomah in response to Sarkozy's speech said:

"I don't know about you just now, but I am doing my utmost to calm
down! For we are dealing here with a confused man with a confused
speech. Africa has no glorious past? What were our ancestors doing in
Egypt then? And Nubia? And all those glorious empires of yore right
across the continent? When our ancestors had built the great pyramids
in Egypt and Nubia (today's northern Sudan), Sarkozy's European
ancestors were still living in caves. They didn't know what a window
was! And he has the temerity to insult us and our ancestors?"

There is doubt that Ankomah is livid and rightfully so, because such
outright disdain for Africa and its people cannot be left
unchallenged.

What Sarkozy needs to ask himself is how many of the descendants of
these "African peasants who live by the seasons" were part of
France's World Cup winning team, when France hosted the soccer
showcase? If my memory serves me right, the team looked like a
typical African Cup of Nations team, with a couple of Caucasian
faces. So much for people who are supposedly locked in a time warp
and prisoners to the "seasons" according to the gospel espoused by
Sarkozy.

The second incident took place in the USA, and relates to an article
written by an eminent scholar and Nobel laureate James D. Watson.
Watson, who up until his retirement on October 25 2007, was the
chancellor of Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory on Long Island New York,
USA, resigned after controversy erupted over comments he made
suggesting black people are less intelligent than whites.

Watson (79) who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for discovering the
structure of DNA, joined Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory as director
in 1968 and helped build it into one of the world's leading genetics
research institutes. His problems, which led to his retirement, arose
from comments he was quoted as having said on October 14 in the
Sunday Times of London, that he is "inherently gloomy about the
prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the
fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- where-as all the
testing says, not really."

To their credit, Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory through their
president, said Watson's comments have no connection with research
activity at the lab, whose faculty members "vehemently disagree" with
Watson's statements.

The lab moved swiftly to suspend Watson's administrative
responsibilities as chancellor leading to his subsequent resignation.

Why do I make reference to these two incidents that have taken place
on two continents by two different people, under two different
conditions?

Reference must be made to them, because they reveal the underlying
hostile and racist attitudes we face as Africans in dealing with the
global village of the 21st century. Sarkozy and Watson are not
ordinary run of the mill, intellectually challenged people. On the
contrary, one is the president of a key industrialised Western
European nation, the other an eminent Nobel laureate and respected
scientist.

The question must be asked then, if people of such high standing and
respectability in western society have such a deprecating opinion of
Africa and Africans, then the problem we face is much greater than we
ever imagined.

Theses were not off the cuff, slip of the tongue comments. On the
contrary, the comments were well thought out and delivered, and even
if there is ever an attempt to withdraw them, the intended damage has
been done, and cannot be retracted, no matter how vigorous an attempt
to do so.

I mention these two incidents in relation to Zimbabwe because it is
imperative that there is an understanding by all of us, that we
should work to prove that the two gentleman, and others who may share
their sentiments are wrong. We must not conduct ourselves in a manner
that provides them with ammunition, to buttress their racist
stereotypical opinions.

There are three things I believe we need to do as Zimbabweans that
will serve to counter Sarkozy and Watson's bigoted opinions.

The first is to ensure that the agricultural season currently upon us
yields the fruits we anticipate and desperately need.

It is not too late to make the clarion call to all those on
agricultural land whether they be beneficiaries of the land reform
programme, or have always been on the land, A1 or A2 farmers, to
fully use every inch of available arable land, and make this
the, "mother of all agricultural seasons." We must prove people
wherever they may be, who harbour the same thoughts as Sarkozy and
Watson wrong.

We must show that we can use the land we have. We can make use of the
farming implements that have just been delivered to some of our
farmers. We owe it to ourselves and indeed our African compatriots,
to show that we are not lesser mortals, that we are industrious,
responsible people.

We must be constantly aware that there are many more Sarkozy's and
Watson's who firmly believe that we are incapable producing the kinds
of crops, (both qualitatively and quantitatively), that the white
former farmers used to. It is for this reason that we must turn to
the rallying cry of the war of liberation, when those who fought for
the emancipation of the nation reminded each other in the face of a
well armed and intransigent enemy: "Iwe neni tine basa (we are duty-
bound)."

That is the reality we face today and every one of us must not flinch
from the task ahead.

The second is to ensure that the up coming national elections are
conducted in an atmosphere free of violence, and in an open and
transparent manner.

Those who cannot bring themselves to face the reality that
Zimbabweans can solve their own problems, (and we are well on our way
to doing that), will leave no stone unturned to find reasons to try
to isolate us.

For this reason every political party and candidate that will contest
next year's election must realise that the elections are more than
just electing a President, a Member of Parliament, a Senator, a
Councillor, it is about Zimbabwe.

It is about putting Zimbabwe first, and that means ensuring that we
conduct the elections in a manner that will unify the nation, give us
all the opportunity discover what unites us (and there is much more
that unites us than divides us), rather than add fuel to the fires of
division.

Not only must the elections be conducted in an atmosphere free of
violence, but there will also be a great responsibility on the
electorate to elect those who unite not those who divide, doers not
sitters, people who have a vision for a great and prosperous
Zimbabwe, not people who cannot see beyond tomorrow.

It is important therefore for all political parties that will present
candidates to the electorate, to assist the process by putting
forward credible candidates, who will be a credit to both their
party, and their nation if elected.

Zimbabwe has a plethora of intellectually astute, morally upright
people who have a well-documented track record.

These are the people who should be put forward before the electorate,
and that will give the electorate a group of topnotch candidates from
which to choose those who will spearhead the turnaround and take off
of our nation.

Finally, we need to unite, from all sectors in the nation, in a call
for the lifting of sanctions. We need to collectively begin the
campaign now for the lifting of sanctions, of whatever form,
currently imposed on the nation and some of our leaders.

Those who have imposed sanctions of whatever form on us need to be
told, we are of one mind on this issue -- they must be lifted.

The sanctions are neither smart nor targeted and have run their
course. We need not wait for the completion of the electoral process
next year, to begin the rebuilding of the nation and its economy, and
part of the rebuilding process starts with the lifting of the embargo
that has been placed on the nation.

Regardless of one's political affiliation, or of ones previous
position on the issue of sanctions, we must all agree that sanctions
have no use right now, other than to perpetuate the suffering of the
people of Zimbabwe.

The church community must speak for the lifting of sanctions, the
business community must do the same, those in civic society must join
the call, and finally the political parties must unite and pass a
resolution in both houses of the legislature for the lifting of
sanctions, so that the entire world knows that the people of Zimbabwe
are speaking with one voice, and that voice declares that sanctions
must be lifted.

If these three things can be done I have no doubt that we will be
well on the way for the take off we so desperately need.

The beauty of what needs to be done, is that it is all well within
our powers to do so. We can work the land and ensure a bountiful
harvest. We can prepare for, and conduct elections in an atmosphere
free of violence and intimidation.

We can unite as a nation, and present a common front to the world on
the issue of the lifting of sanctions. We can do all of these things.

The question is, will we rise to the challenge and do them? Only the
people of Zimbabwe themselves can answer that question, but I have
great faith, that reason will triumph over unreasonableness, hope
will triumph over despair and love will triumph over hatred. We can
do it, I know we can.

lBishop Manhanga is the Presiding Bishop of the Pentecostal
Assemblies of Zimbabwe and the Chairman of the Heads of Christian
Denominations. He writes this article in his personal capacity.
===

Brought to you by the Dread Team

Recent World Bank figures indicate that Africa has been sustaining a steady rate of economic growth over the past decade, now on par with global rates. These figures are based on conventional indicators such as access to infrastructure and foreign direct investment. The chief economist for the World Bank, John Page, has attributed this to the fact that "Africa has learnt to trade more efectively with the rest of the world, [and] to rely more on the private sector..." While we are happy if this is indeed the case, the Dread team thought we'd have a closer look at what this recent projection means for Africa and for Africans.

While it is clear that the sucess is tempered by some remaining challenges, the Dread team laments that the majority of this growth occurred in developing economies that are rich in oil and natural resources, making them very vulnerable to world market price fluctuations for these commodities. Even in the sector of agriculture where most African countries continue to specialise, and which occupies most of their employed adult populations, there has not been enough stability in world market prices in period covered by the report to allow steady income for poor countries.

The behaviour silenced by this World Bank report on Africa is that of the rest of the world that introduces and maintains discriminatory practices for granting huge agricultural subsidies to their domestic farmers to exclude the products of other nations in their markets, making it unprofitable for poorer nations to compete with these heavily subsidised economies. The matter is one of plain injustice and inequity in world trading power. Rather than mask the reality of the hypocritical behaviour of the powers that be at the World Trade Organization, the IMF and the World Bank, we must denounce the agenda of underdevelopment imposed on the rest of the world for the benefit and enrichment of the priviledged few. This report is only trying to say that Africa is ready and open for business, and to the highest bidder! (This view is confirmed by a recent Economist article on banking investment in Africa at http://economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10146637 )

Indeed, one must view with vigorous scepticism any assertion by the World Bank, which has long been suspected to be little more than a profiteering racket by powerful Western enterprises. The World Bank is characterised by a long track record of disregard for indigenous interest in the context of loans to developing nations. It favours multinational businesses and is almost unabashedly an instrument of their penetration into virgin markets. These multinationals require a trade advantage in developing nations and the World Bank serves to facilitate this. This is why we are particularly suspicious of the indicators being used by the World Bank. As is often the case, a tendency towards privatisation is viewed as a positive indicator, despite the many anecdotes of failed privatisations in both developing and developed contexts. Again, the World Bank has revealed its unsympathetic vision for Africa. It is clear that they are encouraged by Africa opening her shores to the tenacious tentacles of global corporation, but should we be?

The alternative vision which we take is that the number one indicator that should matter for Africa and the world is the human development index. In truth, the level of economic performance and stability are primary and important to infer levels of safety of investment for instance, but nonetheless will be reflected in the overall human and social attributes of that nation. Increasing the proportions of children in schools, creating jobs, maintaining quality basic energy and telecommunication infrastructures, improving through local entrepreneurship and innovation; all these advances will be reflected in the overall human development performance index. It is time we abandon a myopic view of the condition of humanity. A holistic and honest approach to where our challenges lie and how to cooperate to overcome them together is a surer way. Until there continues to be European growth, and Asian growth and African growth, we will never dream big enough to reach the potentials of world growth.

Bless forward

Dread Team

Peace eludes
as long as the people cry
as long as inequality reigns
no dove for this scene
no olive leaf

The belly full of hunger
those who have not
chant the praises of those who do
sing their hymns, pay their rates and tariffs
provide them with easy jobs in the sun
freeloading to death in the midst of want
until the rest wake up

and on this day
an ebony wave builds in the heat
wiping sweat from steamy brows,
The People
finally fed up, Arise-
hungry for this Beast

The sea rises in accord
washing up tidings of good days coming
of hope and new beginning
how will those in need ever afford
a greater piece of destiny
if we make them pay so dearly

Greetings Dread people

We at the Dread team have just come, refreshed an enlightened, from watching the new documentary, '500 years later'. This film features a plethora of African intellectuals, offering potent and dignified perspectives on the transatlantic slave trade and the subsequent oppression of Afrikan peoples. With great finesse, the film directly addresses the underlying causes of the present state of African nations and peoples: European colonialism. Most importantly, it celebrates the untold civilisations out of Afrika. With stunning wit and logic, "500 years later" chants the call to a constructive Afrocentric approach to our common progress.

It is a refreshing change indeed to see our people given a voice through elegant cinematography, a presentation of the beautiful rinbow of the beauty of Afrikan peoples the world over. In addition, this documentary, '500 years later' debunks the major myths and misinformed views on slavery and the cost and implications of our current freedoms. They touch, for instance, on the faulty assumptions Western historians make about the number of Africans who perished in the transatlantic slave trade. Another figure in contention is in the area of the total numbers of Africans who were chained into slavery into the new world--they say 1o million, we say, as the documentary does, that at least that number and more have also perished in the voyage. Who's (was) counting anyway?

Perhaps the best feature of this film is its wry turning of the painful history of the African holocaust into fuel for confidence building for our people. Stand-out points included the call to seek spirituality of African origin, such as African Traditonal Religions (ATRs), African Islam or Ethiopian Christianity. With such prolific commentators as Molefi Asante, Maulana Karenga and Frances Cress Walsing, no less than a thorough Afrocentric treatment of the slave trade and of the way forward would be expected. And '500 years later' has delivered. The combination of these forceful African scholars is synthesised into an impeccable argument for the abandonment of destructive Eurocentric ideals (the continued instrument of our oppression) in favour of a contructive and innovative outlook that celebrates African history and accomplishment.

A particularly instructive aspect of this work is the deeply psychologically descriptive manner in which the condition of Blackness is described. The concept of racial sense of inferiority forced on Afrikans, the sort of 'extremism' that characterises someone who chooses to forget their own culture to adopt white civilization, and the definition of the notion of beauty are all topics touched on thoroughly even in a short and slickly packaged presentation. The celebration of Afrikan life and culture is a must see, one that reminds us that the struggle is still on!

Indeed, the struggle is given new texture and style; the panel of eminent experts all seem to unite on a common way forward, a way that gives hope in the darkness of our current situation. This philosophy, love of the African self, is so revolutionary, so bold and so simple. The negative portrayal of African people for the benefit of the former and still slave masters is clearly enunciated and reduced to emptiness, in a defiant celebration of positive African imagery. The mere fact that self-love can be so inspiring and revolutionary in this system is indicative in itself of the systematic method by which Eurocentric colonialists have sought to oppress our people. A recurring and important theme is the need to use self love to break the persisting bonds of mental slavery.

Is our ideal of destiny institutionalised in our Black constitutions? That is a question asked by a community activist in the programme in the light of the visions of James Madisson, Abrahalm Lincoln and others in their constitutions. The parallel made here may not be perfect but it suggests the concern for the future, for a desirable state of being for us and our children, and theirs. Do we as a people still go on living without a cohesive picture of our destinies? Are we still so worried about survival that we cannot look any further into the future? At any point, Star Treck showed us that the role, place and numbers of Blacks in the far-future is not exactly friendly to Black people.

All of this highlights a poignant debate that occurs within each of us Black people who have been immersed into the quagmire of Eurocentric society. Integration has overwhelmingly been the approach, with segregation or Black supremacy marking the extreme margins of Black thought. Therefore the debate is between conciliation and reproach. With so many wrongs having been committed against Afrikan people, conciliation is not an option and violent reproach is not healthy. In this light, "500 years later' gives hope for a new option, one that incorporates the affirmation of dignity into the spirit of redemption. This option, the attainment of consciousness, is unassailable by the EUrocentric forces and WILL facilitate our rise into our natural God-given glory.

Wisdom and strength for Iver
Bless up
Dread dem

We have a situation in the world in which one group of people is continuously and shamelessly condescended upon in the sphere of global politics. We speak of course of the recent events that have crystallised Western othodoxy as blatantly disrespectful to her Southern co-inhabitants of this wonderful Earth. We speak of Sarkozy, a fly by night superhero, a man who has circumvented the judicial requirements of a sovereign nation, Chad, with mere issue of his will. To consider the ludicrosity of this situation, imagine the inverse, the Chadian President running to France to demand that his detained compatriots be allowed to return to CHad, even in the face of charges of capital crimes?!!

We speak of the sad disintegration of even the hope that the West, tortured by its self-proclaimed righteousness and morality, will consider the nations of the South as equals. The matter of sovereignty is one that does not deal with arrogance. Using the media to make a point of even helping the Finnish drivers and pilots (in addition to the French caught)to come back home to Europe with him. He once more was the savior of a situation that could have gone badly wrong. But what situation has he changed other than humiliate the Chadian people which unkwowingly have been donating some of their life blood for the greater good of the French Republic; her children? Zoe's Ark has shown the world the hypocrisy of celebrating the abolition of the African slave trade and the irony of stealing children, undocumented and unknown to authorities. They simply have no shame.

Were this an isolated instance of the wanton bigotry and bias portrayed by the West towards the rest in the global political arena, it would not be so worrisome. In the Dread utopia, all the world's nations would condemn Sarkozy and arrogant France for the infringement on the right of a nation to carry out its written laws. But thats not the reality we live in today. Sarkozy's own ex-wife audaciously picked up the Bulgarian nurses who had been charged with intentionally infecting Libyan children with HIV. And we have a global climate in which Blair and Bush can follow a philosophy that advocates the natural right of the West to interevene even violently in the affairs of other countries. We have a systematic denial of non-Western social, philosophical and political values. Worse, we have a denigration of the concept of equivalency in humanity.

So today it is Afrika's children, tomorrow our professionals and intellectuals. A process of silent blood-letting of the precious few resources of their birth nations, their rightful possession and heritage. The West has always believed in their responsibility for the rest of the world, that is 'the white man's burden'. But now that their irresponsible sense of morality allows their arrogant intransigence to prevail, they have become a burden on the rest of the powerless world. The divisions of the Cold War are no more, but what persists is the imperialist and colonial-loving attitudes of Old Europe. It is true that they help educate Afrikans through higher learning and work opportunities offered in the West, but for whose benefit? Their underdeveloped birth nation or the imperialist world order of their host and benefactors?

Indeed, there is little room for altruism in a capitalist system that seeks out the world's best, many of whom are from developing nations, consumes the hopes and dreams of a proud African future. We also view with tremendous scepticism the claims by Zoe's Ark that they acquired the children in Chad in the name of Christian samaritanism. By making his obnoxious journey to Chad to recover these kidnappers, Sarkozy has compounded their overwhelming arrogance. He has validated a most heinous act of criminality. Why? Because 103 African children don't mean as much as one Madeleine McCann. Because, the tendency to condescension towards Black people is thoroughly etched into the Eurocentric mindset. In this perspective, we are to be 'redeemed' on the one hand because of their pity, and not to be trusted on the other hand to carry out orderly and just processes because of their hatred and fear. The time has come to rise with word and sword if necessary, with a defiance that will shock the current world order.

Selah

Dread team

After dying off for over a decade, the argument about the origin of the HIV/AIDS virus that specifically identifies Haiti as an important link in the global pandemic has now been revived, this time by scientists in the US. This has resulted in a revival of the argument that Haitians are responsible for the first US outbreak, and therefore the subsequent explosive spread of the disease worldwide. Not only is the argument and the research supporting it wrong and misguided, it is also important to understand what important and influential interests are behind the continued attention given to this issue. The Haitian link to HIV/AIDS is a distasteful myth now perpetuated by some scientists for the advantages and interests of neo-imperialists.

A group of researchers lead by Michael Worobey, an evolutionary scientist from the University of Arizona in Tucson, and including co-authors from Denmark, the UK, The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and one Miami-based medical researcher wrote about the genetic and epidemiological history of the HIV/AIDS variant which dominates today's global outbreak. Haitian workers in Central Africa in the 60s would have brought the virus to the western hemisphere, starting both the Caribbean and US pandemic. They say they hope their research helps in determining and predicting how the virus will continue to change in future to influence research on HIV/AIDS. There are however other more likely explanations for the motivations behind this research.

Applying the concepts of gene mutations under selection pressures and epidemiological patterns alone do not have the fool-proof explanatory power that Worobey's team seem to confer to it. Rather, some important elements of the history of the AIDS virus need revisiting and comparing with current scientific knowledge. First, given that the virus emerged from Central Africa in the 1930s, and surfaced in the US in the 70s, any number of factors of mass human contact and migration such as the Second World War, and the intervening years of a military charged and bureacratically secretive Cold War period could explain the various movements of the virus (or earlier variants), even prior to the date Worobey's study begins to look at data from the 60s. Why restrict your lens to looking at data when Haitians began to move to the US; how about Americans moving between all three regions for war, work or pleasure?

Cultural history does not only point to possibilities of biological warfare gone wrong between nations waging war in far places like Vietnam and Korea for instance, but also indicates that the 60s were a time of asserting sexual freedoms and liberation in the US. Convenient contraception allowed much that that generation would rather not recall, but it also served as the right social lubricant for the spreading of sexually transmitted diseases. The movement for gay rights and free-spirited gay lifestyle also made a number of until-then sexually repressed gay men feel free in engaging sexually with various partners both at home and abroad. Haiti and the Caribbean were obviously not spared the attention of the sex tourists, who continue today to enrich the epidemiological pool of Thailand, Cambodia and other unfortunate places of convenient leisure (and illegal sexual practices such paedophilia) that also might become targets for evolutionary biology work in future. So will scientists one day also say that Thailand did 'X' to itself and infected the rest of the world with it?

When the Belgians reluctantly left a newly independent Congo in June 1960, Africa and Afrikans responded with enthusiasm to support its nation-building project. Patrice Lumumba, the first Congolese Prime Minister and a vibrant Pan-Africanist, was courageous in the face of personal danger and was an inspiration to many. The new Africa could begin its nation-building drive with the hard labour and minds of free Congolese, but also of workers, teachers, professionals and intellectuals coming from the Black World at large, including small numbers from the Caribbean. We are told that Haitians working in the Congo contracted the virus then and there, which began as a simian virus in the Central African jungles (or perhaps from the labs of foreign researchers based there!) which transfected to humans in a new form. In reality, these were the days of Francois 'Papa Doc' Duvalier in Haiti, and only those with official ambassadorial and regime contacts and influence got to leave the country. They were part of the privileged class or the 'elite'. Their numbers were very small, and are still relatively small to this day. In 1963 Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck was a 8-year old boy when he moved with his agronomist father and mother to Kinshasa (then Leopoldville) for reconstruction work, but they were evacuated almost immediately due to instability and conflict during the first years of independence in the Congo. Peck has recently produced the film "Lumumba" to present the life story of the leader, the man and the ideological struggles of his time.

According to the Worobey study, when these privileged Haitians returned home to Haiti from the Congo a few years passed and the virus mutated into the form that would be recognised in the first Haitian immigrants to the US. Haitians are also supposed to have started the heterosexual outbreak of the disease in Trinidad and Tobago at the time as well, but how is this possible when Professor Courtney Bartholomew from the Medical Research Centre in Trinidad states that:

"There were no Haitian migrants to Trinidad and Tobago we have no cultural, social or economic ties with Haiti so that is out of the question,

Professor Bartholomew adds that their studies of Trinidadian homosexual and bi-sexual show that this group of people were interacting with Americans.

Professor Bartholomew said it was possible they had brought HIV back to Trinidad."

If the lines between who brought what where can be blurred to the point where the Trinidad and Tobago outbreak was actually interpreted in reverse or simply wrongly, can certainty be attached to the version that finds the virus reaching the US via Haiti and not vice-versa?

The political history of the Caribbean region is rife with American imperialism and interventionism even to this day. We must recall that more than 100 years after Napoleon's French army of over 20,000 troops was beaten fair and square by the indigenous army of Haiti--establishing the first independent Black Republic of the world--Haiti was occupied by the US between 1915-1934 to 'stabilise' the country and look after its own interests in the region. That was political calculation and imperialism at its finest. Recent events include the unlawful removal of elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 by the American military, and the UN peacekeeping stabilizing mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) that has effectively occupied Haitian soil since then under the pretext of maintaining internal security while raping, oppressing and exploiting the people they are supposed to help. Even UN work is judged by many to be in the interest of American capital and investments, preserving the status quo or preventing a change of regime that would benefit the people, not local business interests. Curiously, in precarious human conditions there is still lots of money to be made in Haiti, and some are getting paid big time while the people suffer.

This time through, though, the oppression of scientific bigotry is not only placed on the entire race (Aids from Africa) or even on our abilities as thinking beings (see Watson's completely baseless recent comments on African intelligence), but points the finger more precisely at a Black nation on its knees fighting to get up, stand up, and live up to its founding dream of producing 'Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite' for its people. Haitians have rights too, and it is time we give them their rightful place in the history of humankind: freedom fighters and liberators, enemies of oppression the world over. Not infectious undesirable paupers; that is a sordid myth!

A case in point is needed here. Scientists are happy to state that it has been extremely difficult to eradicate the polio virus from India despite the existence for years of a trivalent polio vaccine (not effective in India), repeated aggressive national campaigns, and that is due these scientists say to poverty and inadequate sanitary conditions there. Polio was eradicated everywhere in the world in the 1950s, but India is one of the last places on earth where the disease still exists (the others are Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria). No one has dared suggest that Indians are responsible for polio although the year-2000 target for complete eradication of polio in that country was missed. But that is what is being done with Haitians and HIV/AIDS, and strangely based on the curious conjecture of being victims too. Erroneously determining that one single person or nation is responsible for the disease won't cure anyone, let alone everyone. We do not accept that oppressing Haitians will bring freedom and health to the rest of the world; no amount of science can convince freedom-lovers of that. Western prejudice against Africans will continue to grad newspaper headlines with sensationalist claims of racial exceptionalism. We must learn to find our way to truth in this mess.

This is what social and political history is about, pointing out the customary habits, personal choices, prejudices and preferences of people, no matter how idiosyncratic and unusual they might seem to our modern sentiments. This in turn must serve to enrich and inform scientific research concerned with evolutionary history, which also is important for the pursuit of truth. In understanding how humans interact with Nature, the facts must be checked with human experience and history. No one is safe in the vacuum of scientific bigotry and half-baked truths. Proportionality would suggest these researchers weigh carefully the implications of their scientific studies asking themselves why they are asking specific types of questions (and why not others, say about a systematic study of at-risk blood samples of the 'flower power' generation and their travel patterns) about certain types of people, and whether that results in more freedom for all. Assembling viruses into large families of variants and following the probability of these changes do not have the sort of explanatory power that would destroy the hopes and efforts of Haitians in their determined march to a brighter more prosperous future.

Could contemporary American (and perhaps other global forces such as multinational firms') interests once more pave the way for justifying using Haiti, this time as a laboratory for HIV/AIDS research as was previously done with much injustice and outcry in South Africa's unjust clinical trials a number of years ago? Is big pharma business in search of a new pool of geographically-accessible politically weak subjects, officials susceptible to bribes and corruption, closer to the fattened belly of US interests and capital,and more controllable by it(less controversial) than more politically visible African countries? The infection rate for HIV/AIDS has declined from 6% to 2% in the last decade in Haiti, one of the most populous nations of the Caribbean. This is hard to do in impoverished and politically unstable conditions. The thing that is hard to do is to fight back for social, political and now also 'scientific information' justice in these conditions. Haitians have been at the forefront of this struggle for at least the past 200 years and counting. They will not stop now! The efforts and successes of Haitians in their response to HIV/AIDS so far should be recognised and studied in order to remove this scourge from the face of the earth forever.

South Florida Haitians decry HIV report: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami_dade/story/292874.html

Forward ever

The Dread Team

Night of sweet sounds
draped with light
Carnival fete has come with that
Nothing to do with Halloween
We beat and dance
rising into a trance

Colours everywhere,
decorating the scenes of
Elation, libation
celebration and giration
and the spirits rise
with blood red eyes
swimming in the shaking sea

Seas full of chant
waves of follies of love
of new births and giggles
A chain of force
of spirit of a mystic folk

And the drum beat
charms the Night,
and She gives light with her Moon
and writes our song
we shine beneath her shawl

We come to seek peace
and solace at the river
of forgetfulness.
Bathe in the thorough
bossom of mama Africa

Here in the rhythm of Her heart
we collect souls
in the palm of an outstretched hand
that hearkens to the distant land
from whence we came-
we quench empty parts
with festivity
We convalesce with Carnival.

ars longa vita brevis
find knowledge while there is time
consciousness is borrowed
from Ancient Egyptians
but not given credit
then we are taught how to reference
correctly, appropriate, fair

Attribution opens the road
to admission, of what was done
of what was taken, freely, violently.
Names, memories, lineages, gods and godesses
all erased, jettissoned like so many
in the cold bowels of the ocean

Once they formed armies to steal
knowledge and civilization
from Alexandria,Thebes.
Then they captured us
and erased name and attribution
altogether with an attempt at our dignity.
No, they are not confused on what to do
steal or erase, it is still a crime;
one against humanity and decency
what will it be then in future
will we pay to have a story of
middle passage and African ancestors
served on the absolute bedrock of DNA?

Name is Name, Origin is Origin
stealing, erasing or conniving
won't change our minds.
We shall still seek whence
we come from, for the times are ripe
to discover where we ought to be going

We greet through this prism
Splitting light
into hues of wisdom
See you through your third eye
Mine too
Minds fused
Burning bright into colleective dreams...
We link still
in the backdrop of the beats
of Ancestral hearts...
We compare tribal marks
and stinging scars-
and we heal in the space
between pain
and laughter
we are the champions of ever after
flickering forces
building elastic potential
in the unknown shadows of Babylon
sculpting victory from unlikely dust
and light slips in
we see each other,
another, and another-
armies assembled
and Consciousness revealed.

Today we mourn the unfortunate souls who lost their lives in Nature's course, in the belly of Noel in the tumultuous Caribbean sea. Every year, the Caribbean basin and her eminent inhabitants must cope with the inevitability of hurricanes. This is the lot of Caribbean peoples, and they can only hope to minimise their loss of life in the face of something much more powerful than us all. But Noel, a category 1 storm which might have been considered relatively minor on the scale of possibilities, has devastated the Caribbean with all too much loss of life. It has exposed in its giant upheaval the fact that many Caribbean nations are still ill-prepared for disaster. Indeed, this is a feat that appears from the persisting images of hurricane Katrina to be too difficult even for the magnanimous USA. But in New Orleans, as in the Caribbean, the nagging issue of poverty remains the prominent underlying cause of unnecessary loss of life in the face of uncontrolable natural disaster. How can our people ever develop, faced with the obstacles of Nature and oppressive man-made class system alike?

It seems that the scourge of water and wind will never cease to threaten the very lives of those in the winward islands and above. Getting back on our feet every time is like having to give birth every nignt months, non-stop, sometimes of twin or triplet mighty storms. This time through we are told that less than 200 have so far lost their lives to Noel, in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, The Bahamas and Jamaica. The others have been spared this time, but until when? Can we organise our preparedness to Nature's wrath? Are our governments in a position to shelter their citizens from the cold wet breath of Nature? Should it be a free-market in protection measures offered to citizens in one country, meaning that if you are rich, you are more likely to survive than if poor in the same conditions? That, surely would appear seriously unfair!

However, this is today's unfortunate sociopolitical reality. Perhaps the boldest demonstration of the wealth disparity in disaster relief is in the recent fires in California. Watch carefully the rapid response time by both state and federal agencies to the hazes in the affluent California hills, and compare that to the slow and entirely inadequate responses to hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. In this light, the recent onslaught of aberrant weather behaviour has arguably had the effect of unsheathing the stark realities of life: that the poor are treated with disregard by the system while the rich oligarchs who feed off of and corrupt the system are given first class service. Capitalism is unique as a philosophy in its cynical propensity to reward cannibalism and amoralism. War and natural disaster have therefore disclosed the badly kept secret that the hypocritical Eurocentric so-called Enlightened ones didn't want us to know: that this system is not designed to serve us in or out of disastrous times.

As Afrikans, we have faced the fires of the treachery of men for centuries, we have fallen to the weaponry and tactics of so many repressive armies of oppressors, yet cannot save our own children from the regular purge of the hurricane. Is this beyond our capacity for self-perpetuation to rise against factions and politrics and feed the people, clothe the people, shield the people? Aid will once more pour down on us like a great river of hope; already Canada has offered $500,000 for the immediate damages caused in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. There, in Nova Scotia they are quietly and securely waiting in their cottages the strong winds that will come to them from a spent Noel. Do they care more about our children then we do ourselves? Do they have an interest in seeing us on our knees every time wind come? Be it as it may, liberty is seldom found in the curious and searching eye of the hurricane.

The battle goes on

The Dread Team