Healing Pan-Afrika

[Mekeda7]

This is a continuance of Saturday, June 17th Family Chat. Please share your opinions about this topic whether you were present on Saturday or not. Let's build!

Topic:
Healing Pan-Afrika

*How do we begin to heal the relationship between Blacks in America
and Blacks in Afrika?

*Should Blacks in Amerikkka relocate to Afrika or stay in Amerikkka and help the struggle here?

*How can we ease Afrika's pain?

Some Comments:

1)We need to let go of an "us/them" perspective and see ourselves as one Afrikan people.

2) Many of the misconceptions are derived from yt manipulated mis-information about each other.

3) Afrikans in the diaspora are desperately needed on the Continent. Unification starts with embracing/investing in/re-educating ourselves and others about the land from which we come.


Other related Comments/Info:

"Africa and its Diaspora: Partnership Issues"
"Brain Drain and Capacity Building in Africa"
"PanAfrica: Different Shades of the African Diaspora"

[Mekeda7]

http://blackstarnews.com/?c=135&a=2158

June 22nd, 2006

Betraying Africa’s Potential

The disconnect of Black America’s human and economic
resources from Africa’s human and natural resources,
contributes to the poverty and powerlessness of us
both. Meanwhile, Europeans (and now Asians) entrench
themselves deeper and cling to Africa for dear life
because their economic and military might cannot
otherwise be sustained without Africa’s strategic
resources. Instead of being spectators as foreign
governments and multinationals heist daily tons of
resources from our homeland, we should be integral to
the production, management, processing, and
international distribution of African resources.

By Ezrah Aharone

There’s an upsurge of high-level Asian activities in
Africa that Africans in America should note.

Most recently President Hu Jintao of China visited
Nigeria in late April to sign a $4 billion deal to
develop oilfields and infrastructure. Japanese Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi brought an astonishing
121-member delegation of political and business
leaders to Ghana on a 3-day visit in early May. A
South Korean delegation then arrived in Ghana shortly
afterwards to solidify a multimillion dollar
infrastructure contract.

Why is this relevant? Well, as so-called “African
Americans,� why aren’t we heavily involved in African
affairs? What do Asian leaders know about Africa that
Black leaders don’t know? These questions resonate
being that Africa is nowhere incorporated within the
Covenant with Black America blueprint.

Yes, being besieged with poverty and destabilization,
on the surface Africa certainly seems more like a
calamity than a remedy. But such thinking overlooks
Africa’s strategic importance to Western expansion and
the fact that we are native to the resource-richest
continent on earth, of which all industrialized
nations are partially dependant.

There is no other historical instance of a formerly
enslaved people who valued integration with their
former captors to the point where they completely
abandon the superior wealth of their own homeland. If
Euro-Americans were native to Africa instead of
Europe, you can bet that Africa would be “fully
developed� today. And there’s no way they’d neglect
Africa and all its richness just to integrate with us.
It’s therefore altogether backwards to prioritize our
attachment to Euro-Americans above rapprochement with
Africa.

The disconnect of Black America’s human and economic
resources from Africa’s human and natural resources,
contributes to the poverty and powerlessness of us
both. Meanwhile, Europeans (and now Asians) entrench
themselves deeper and cling to Africa for dear life
because their economic and military might cannot
otherwise be sustained without Africa’s strategic
resources. Instead of being spectators as foreign
governments and multinationals heist daily tons of
resources from our homeland, we should be integral to
the production, management, processing, and
international distribution of African resources.

This is easier said than done since Western “brands of
democracy� operate in concert to forestall such
arrangements—Colonialism was the graduated
continuation of slavery.

Colonialism thrived by virtue of slavery’s success.
Together they comprised a singular force to fuel the
dual process of European development and African
demise. The interrelation and long-term impact of
these “bookend institutions� explain why Europeans
reign spaciously atop the present world order, while
Africans are scrunched down at the bottom fighting for
survival.

It’s urgent and imperative therefore that all leaders
of African descent understand the “geo-strategic
economics� of how the world was fashioned into this
current state. Otherwise they are, by default,
perpetuating a world system rooted in irresolvable
inequities.

To maintain the current “balance of power,� the U.S.
government has historically sought to minimize Black
America’s interactions and impact in Africa. To make
sense of this, you must understand that the Civil
Rights and Black Power Movements ran concurrent with
African Independence Movements. Since resistance to
Western injustices was the common denominator to these
movements, the U.S. government regarded Black activism
in America and the revolutions in Africa as fractional
particles of the same struggle – differing only in
location and expression.

America guarded against the fractions from operating
in parallel, so that no rubbed-off African influences
would possibly (God forbid) augment the “Civil Rights
Movement� into a “Sovereign Rights Movement.�

America did experience uncertain moments in 1957 when
both Dr. King and Malcolm X attended Dr. Kwame
Nkrumah’s inauguration in Ghana. It was a frightening
omen to see two of the most visionary Black men in
America interfacing ideals with the president of the
first African nation to seize independence. This
unprecedented meeting-of-the-minds between the
“formerly enslaved� and “formerly colonized� should
have opened a new advent in “world history.�

But here we are nearly 50 years later, still
(psychologically and economically) detached from
Africa and still preoccupied with notions of equality,
while Asians now prosper from our homeland’s wealth.

With or without the Covenant, we must fast awaken to
the “geo-strategic economics� of this world, or we
risk self-induced political extinction. Regardless of
how many non-Africans invest in Africa or how far
Black America assimilates into Americanization, we’ll
still face joint-related issues with Africa that
require joint-related solutions.

The Government of Ghana realizes this fact, and as
part of its 50th independence anniversary in 2007,
Ghana is subsequently launching the “Joseph Project�
(recognizing the Biblical Joseph who triumphed after
being enslaved and reunited with his brothers). Among
other things, this historic and multifaceted
initiative aims to reconcile Diaspora relations and
generate wealth for ourselves.

Although the unknown and uncharted course of African
relations is not a cure-all, the known and well
charted course of Americanization is not a cure-all
either. Certainly our collective long-term interests
as African people would be advanced if we mended both
history and relations.

Based on the singularity and common origin of our
struggles, our interdependency for parallel movements
will not vanish with time. Undoubtedly, a nucleus of
us will reestablish a significant presence in Africa
and ensure that unlike 20th century-Africa, 21st
century-Africa will not be an “Africa without
so-called African Americans.�

Copyright © 2006


Ezrah Aharone is a Scholar of Sovereign Studies and
the author of “Pawned Sovereignty: Sharpened Black
Perspectives on Americanization, Africa, War and
Reparations� http://www.1stbooks.com/bookview/18126.
He can be reached at EzrahAharone@juno.com


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[Mekeda7]

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