Nile Valley Rush Productions

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

World statistics today place independent African and Black states at the bottom of rankings for a great majority of human development indices known to humankind. Year after year, again and again we expect the verdict that states in the developing world (and therefore led by non-white or dark-skinned people) cannot self-govern or even at a minimum take care of their own countryfolk. These leaders are powerless and corrupt, fixated on personal gains and self-gratification. Almost like guests at a massive party thrown on behalf of, and at the expense and credibility of the same people to whom great disservice is rendered. It is a massive orgy or misorganisation and short-lived reactionary policies headed for destruction and unsustainability.

Here the Dread Team dares to ask in the face of so much evidence and failed political experiments: if conceivable or achievable, what is the shape of the ideal Black state?

Although there are many examples from the previous centuries which lend much credit to the myth that there is no such thing as the ideal Black state, we have a wealth of pre-colonial instances of Black hegemony and statehood. The historical transition from a notion of an empowered Black state vis-a-vis Egypt and Ethiopia to the present condition of the Black state is one of desperation and corruption. We are therefore of the view that a Black state in its ideal format, that is one in which its people are well-fed, well-educated and employed, can never exist or survive within the present colonial framework.

The ideal Black nation would be free. This means ideally not only from the shackles of slavery and its legacy, but also from internationally imposed restrictions on trade, aid and the means through which their people can accumulate wealth and prosperity. The stark realities existing in countries where debt payments amount to a significant portion of GDP remind us that we are enriching the few while the many are starving to death. So therefore, in an ideal Black state, people will eat to their heart's content, at least we hope not beyond the point where they become a chronic burden on the nationally-based and run health system of that ideal Black state. There would be basic infrastructures and energy resources would be wisely administered, there would be well-performing school to form the minds of the young for the development of freedom-loving, inquisitive, critical and creative minds.

The ideal Black state is created in the image of the natural Black identity and can never be a superimposition of a foreign
ideology. This is where our present-day dilemma of Black nations has come from. The pressures of globalisation have forced us into a box that time has told can only be shattered by revolution. However, those who have dared this feat have suffered dire consequences from their former colonial masters. These examples have paved the way for a docile, diminished and diminutive Black state. This of course simply won't do for the generations of Afrikans to come the world over. In the face of a suppressive system and given the retaliatory and reactionary tactics of the global imperialist, it seems that the first step on our journey to realise the ideal Black state which we have just described, is to do what Black people have always done, which is to beat them at their own game. A shining but somewhat still flawed model of this type of tactic is that of communist China. The implication is not to mimic China's tactic per se, but the point is that it shows what is possible for non-Western countries in an increasingly global environment. Black culture and ideology provide the opportunity for a as-yet-unseen perspective on global and economic trade. We have only to articulate this and apply it in the sense that will enable the enrichment of Black states, thereby providing the required capital for us to eventually thrive.

Our duty is for one of responsibility TODAY in our nations, each man and woman, every breathing voting citizen to stand up and be counted on the way to building the democratic Black states that will be ground breakers, beacons of light for others to emulate and seek inspiration from. We have the great joy today of a free South Africa for example, but much remains to be done for its people to be really free from inequality and violence. We need more and better South Africas on the way to realising the ideal Black state. We must reacquaint ourselves with the idea of self ownership and be active seekers of our rightful destiny toward the higher and mightier goals of humanity. This earth is also ours and the power of innovation is not new to us.

One Love

The Dread Team