₦airaland Forum

boolet: In my opinion, I think it will be erroneous to place Kwame and Nelson side by side. What Kwame did wasn't in any way greater than what Awo and Zik did. At best, we could regard the trio of Kwame, Awo and Zik as contemporaries. We must not forget that the end of the colonial era in most parts of Africa came to be due to the desire of the elites to 'continue' from where the colonialists stopped. However the anti-apartheid campaign by Nelson as well as other S/Africans was a more genuine undertaking. I cannot remember if Kwame was victimized to the extent of spending the core part of his youth in jail. If you ask me, Nelson was an activist, while Kwame and his Nigerian brothers only wanted the dividends of their exposure to the Western education by being champions over the "illiterate" masses of their people.

Go and read Nkrumah's history and read about his involvement in the Akosombo dam project, then you will begin to underfstand the challenges this man faced in trying to develop Ghana and make her self sufficient.

MajeMedia: Mandela's victory was the last page in a book of self determination started by Nkrumah.
Nkrumah's mismanagement of Ghana stains his legacy where as Mandela's is spotless.

Nkrumah did not mismanage Ghana's economy - his effort to make Ghana economically independent of the west was sabotaged by the covert activities of the CIA, who eventually toppled him by way of a coup d'état.

Also Nkrumah sought economic self determination for Africa and Africans whilst Mandela was out manoeuvred by the machinations of the western corporations and the banking cartels which ensured that the wealth of South Africa remained firmly under white control.

osystein: Anyway, you're a typical mugabe lover, too emotional and with little sense. You only love Mugabe because you feel he stood up to the west, you don't care much if at all about his many crimes. Western leaders don't give a damn that he "stood up" to them, the only people who suffered and continue to are africans. The rodesians were given free land in many African countries including Nigeria.

According to you, any African leader can kill as many of his people as he likes because of the many injustices committed by europeans? Africa will forever remain the dark continent, because of primitive minded people like cap28.

And you are the one with plenty of sense? A person who can not analyse or reason properly, a person who doesn't look at root causes of problems and can not think for himself?

The only reason why Zimbabweans are suffering now is because of the economic sanctions imposed on the country by the United States and the EU - go and read up about ZIDERA a law passed by the US congress which effectively destroyed Zimbabwe's economy by denying them access to credit facilities. Credit facilities are what countries rely on in order to be able to conduct trade, the US's economy would tank overnight if they did not ha\ve access to credit facilities and yet the same US thinks its okay to deny a sovereign nation access to credit facilities simply because Mugabe decided to return stolen land back to its rightful owners. Mugabe's return of stolen farmland has absolutely nothing to do with the problems that Zimbabwe is experiencing with its economy and everything to do with the sanctions imposed on it by the US/EU.

Unlike you, I base my arguments on facts not ignorance - your whole argument is based on what the western media tell you but you haven't asked yourself whether they have a vested interest in telling you that Mugabe is a brutal dictator. These are the same people who have backed brutal dictators all over the world and still do till today eg Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Chile (under Pinochet) they also backed the murderous regimes of Pol Pot of Cambodia, Suharto of Indonesia, Mobutu of Zaire and are still backing the apartheid regime of Israel therefore their track record should tell you that they couldn't give a damn whether a country is run by a dictator or not, their number one concern is - will we be allowed to take their resources for next to nothing? if the answer is yes we don't give a damn about how he runs the country but if the answer is no then he's a brutal dictator who we need to get rid of.

You are so eager to jump to the defence of a people who historically have done nothing but oppress and destroy africans, that tells me a lot about the sort of person you are. Keep jumping on to the bandwagon of condemn Mugabe, these people that you defend are leaving no stone unturned to make your life a living hell.

Seun: I know that gorillas are only "gentle" relative to other wild animals, but you know, the guy in that video was not actually killed or harmed. That tells you a lot right there. The gorilla must have felt her baby was in some kind of danger, but once she got the baby back she left the guy alone. I can't imagine anyone playing with a leopard's cub in its presence and living to tell the story.

You're right - looks like they only attack when you go near their young or threaten them in some way, the guy in this video just sat quietly:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2H7zcqjplc

osystein: So all these atrocities by Europeans nullify the genocide against the matebele people? you people are really funny, why not equally condemn all atrocities against africans and stop worshiping mass murderers like mugabe? As I stated before, you hate white people more than you love your fellow Africans. With people like you, Africa will surely remain the dark continent.

That figure you have quoted is grossly exaggerated and even if Mugabe did indeed kill all those people how come Britain and America said nothing at the time? How come the only time they started jumping up and down was when he started returning stolen land back to its rightful owners. By the way Mugabe's alleged crimes pale into insignificance when placed alongside the atrocities committed by the US and Europe not just in Africa but all over the world. Did you know that the Herero and Namaqua people of Namibia were wiped out in the 1920s by the germans because they refused to give up their land? I wonder why you are not up in arms about that

Scramble for Africa



The Herero and Namaqua Genocide is considered to have been the first genocide of the 20th century.[1][2][3][4][5] It took place between 1904 and 1907 in German South-West Africa (modern day Namibia), during the Herero Wars.

On 12 January 1904, the Herero people, led by Samuel Maharero, rebelled against German colonial rule. In August, German general Lothar von Trotha defeated the Herero in the Battle of Waterberg and drove them into the desert of Omaheke, where most of them died of thirst. In October, the Nama people also rebelled against the Germans only to suffer a similar fate.

In total, from 24,000 up to 100,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama died.[6][7][8][9][10] The genocide was characterised by widespread death from starvation and thirst because the Herero who fled the violence were prevented from leaving the Namib Desert. Some sources also claim that the German colonial army systematically poisoned desert wells.[11][12]

In 1985, the United Nations' Whitaker Report classified the aftermath as an attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples of South-West Africa, and therefore one of the earliest attempts at genocide in the 20th century. The German government recognised and apologised for the events in 2004, but has ruled out financial compensation for the victims' descendants

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_Genocide

osystein: So 20 000 matebele citizens mass murdered by mugabe doesn't concern you? All of you mugabe lovers are generaly sadists and would probably commit the same atrocities if given power. Your hate and desire for revenge has clouded your vision, you hate the white man more than you love your own Africans. smh

And you're an even bigger sadist for refusing to acknowledge that the Europeans have killed much more than 20,000 Africans throughout the time they have been on the African continent. How many Africans were killed in ivory coast when the French invaded that country recently ? How many have been killed in DRC in the last ten years, all as a result of either direct intervention from the west or through their funding and training of militias in various parts of the continent.

Well, he seems to be begging for forgiveness here :

http://www.judiciaryreport.com/

vislabraye: Animals can show compassion. Should I say it's mother instincts? The leopard may be a female, probably. I can imagine it say, "I'm also a mother, U should not end up an orphan"

but it killed the baboon's mother.

Seun: Gorillas are not carnivorous animals. They are gentle herbivores. They won't kill unless they are threatened. Leopards are ... different.

They can become extremely aggressive and violent even when not threatened, see:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Umokxn3Vc38

by the way that guy has got balls of steel.

Since Obama has refused to act like a grown man Michelle had to treat him like a child by sitting in between the two of them.

Kalvan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajPJ9OD7OfQ


If you still Support Mugabe after watching this, Then you're an INHUMAN BAST@RD!!!

Mugabe is filth.

I can't wait for him to Die. We'll dance till the Sun comes up!

and you are filth for supporting the very people who enslaved your ancestors and continue to perpetrate mass genocide against africans.

The hijacking of Mandela's legacy

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia

Beware of strangers bearing gifts. The “gift” is the ongoing, frantic canonization of Nelson Mandela. The “strangers” are the 0.0001 percent, that fraction of the global elite that’s really in control (media naturally included).

It’s a Tower of Babel of tributes piled up in layer upon layer of hypocrisy – from the US to Israel and from France to Britain.

What must absolutely be buried under the tower is that the apartheid regime in South Africa was sponsored and avidly defended by the West until, literally, it was about to crumble under the weight of its own contradictions. The only thing that had really mattered was South Africa’s capitalist economy and immense resources, and the role of Pretoria in fighting “communism.” Apartheid was, at best, a nuisance.

Mandela is being allowed sainthood by the 0.0001% because he extended a hand to the white oppressor who kept him in jail for 27 years. And because he accepted – in the name of “national reconciliation” – that no apartheid killers would be tried, unlike the Nazis.

Among the cataracts of emotional tributes and the crass marketization of the icon, there’s barely a peep in Western corporate media about Mandela’s firm refusal to ditch armed struggle against apartheid (if he had done so, he would not have been jailed for 27 years); his gratitude towards Fidel Castro’s Cuba – which always supported the people of Angola, Namibia and South Africa fighting apartheid; and his perennial support for the liberation struggle in Palestine.

Young generations, especially, must be made aware that during the Cold War, any organization fighting for the freedom of the oppressed in the developing world was dubbed “terrorist”; that was the Cold War version of the “war on terror”. Only at the end of the 20th century was the fight against apartheid accepted as a supreme moral cause; and Mandela, of course, rightfully became the universal face of the cause.

It’s easy to forget that conservative messiah Ronald Reagan – who enthusiastically hailed the precursors of al-Qaeda as “freedom fighters” – fiercely opposed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act because, what else, the African National Congress (ANC) was considered a “terrorist organization” (on top of Washington branding the ANC as “communists”).


The same applied to a then-Republican Congressman from Wyoming who later would turn into a Darth Vader replicant, Dick Cheney. As for Israel, it even offered one of its nuclear weapons to the Afrikaners in Pretoria – presumably to wipe assorted African commies off the map.

In his notorious 1990 visit to the US, now as a free man, Mandela duly praised Fidel, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and Col. Gaddafi as his “comrades in arms”: “There is no reason whatsoever why we should have any hesitation about hailing their commitment to human rights.” Washington/Wall Street was livid.

And this was Mandela’s take, in early 2003, on the by then inevitable invasion of Iraq and the wider war on terror; “If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.” No wonder he was kept on the US government terrorist list until as late as 2008.

From terrorism to sainthood

In the early 1960s – when, by the way, the US itself was practicing apartheid in the South - it would be hard to predict to what extent “Madiba” (his clan name), the dandy lawyer and lover of boxing with an authoritarian character streak, would adopt Gandhi’s non-violence strategy to end up forging an exceptional destiny graphically embodying the political will to transform society. Yet the seeds of “Invictus” were already there.

The fascinating complexity of Mandela is that he was essentially a democratic socialist. Certainly not a capitalist. And not a pacifist either; on the contrary, he would accept violence as a means to an end. In his books and countless speeches, he always admitted his flaws. His soul must be smirking now at all the adulation.

Arguably, without Mandela, Barack Obama would never have reached the White House; he admitted on the record that his first political act was at an anti-apartheid demonstration. But let’s make it clear: Mr. Obama, you’re no Nelson Mandela.

To summarize an extremely complex process, in the “death throes” of apartheid, the regime was mired in massive corruption, hardcore military spending and with the townships about to explode. Mix Fidel’s Cuban fighters kicking the butt of South Africans (supported by the US) in Angola and Namibia with the inability to even repay Western loans, and you have a recipe for bankruptcy.

The best and the brightest in the revolutionary struggle – like Mandela – were either in jail, in exile, assassinated (like Steve Biko) or “disappeared”, Latin American death squad-style. The actual freedom struggle was mostly outside South Africa – in Angola, Namibia and the newly liberated Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

Once again, make no mistake; without Cuba – as Mandela amply stressed writing from jail in March 1988 – there would be “no liberation of our continent, and my people, from the scourge of apartheid”. Now get one of those 0.0001% to admit it.

In spite of the debacle the regime – supported by the West – sensed an opening. Why not negotiate with a man who had been isolated from the outside world since 1962? No more waves and waves of Third World liberation struggles; Africa was now mired in war, and all sorts of socialist revolutions had been smashed, from Che Guevara killed in Bolivia in 1967 to Allende killed in the 1973 coup in Chile.

Mandela had to catch up with all this and also come to grips with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of what European intellectuals called “real socialism.” And then he would need to try to prevent a civil war and the total economic collapse of South Africa.

The apartheid regime was wily enough to secure control of the Central Bank – with crucial IMF help – and South Africa’s trade policy. Mandela secured only a (very significant) political victory. The ANC only found out it had been conned when it took power. Forget about its socialist idea of nationalizing the mining and banking industries – owned by Western capital, and distribute the benefits to the indigenous population. The West would never allow it. And to make matters worse, the ANC was literally hijacked by a sorry, greedy bunch.

Follow the roadmap

John Pilger is spot on pointing to economic apartheid in South Africa now with a new face.

Patrick Bond has written arguably the best expose anywhere of the Mandela years – and their legacy.

And Ronnie Kasrils does a courageous mea culpa dissecting how Mandela and the ANC accepted a devil’s pact with the usual suspects.

The bottom line: Mandela defeated apartheid but was defeated by neoliberalism. And that’s the dirty secret of him being allowed sainthood.

Now for the future. Cameroonian Achille Mbembe, historian and political science professor, is one of Africa’s foremost intellectuals. In his book Critique of Black Reason, recently published in France (not yet in English), Mbembe praises Mandela and stresses that Africans must imperatively invent new forms of leadership, the essential precondition to lift themselves in the world. All-too-human “Madiba” has provided the roadmap. May Africa unleash one, two, a thousand Mandelas

http://rt.com/op-edge/mandela-legacy-hijacked-death-903/

Obama and Mandela

11 December 2013

The speech delivered Tuesday by Barack Obama at the memorial to former African National Congress leader and South African President Nelson Mandela has been widely billed as the high point in proceedings that were noteworthy for their empty rhetoric and restive audience.

The US president was the first of six foreign heads of state to address the crowd assembled in Johannesburg’s FNB Stadium. Filled with demagogic phrases about “struggle,” “liberation,” “freedom” and “revolution,” the speech’s attempt to cloak Obama in the legacy of Mandela’s years of sacrifice, imprisonment and persecution was an obscene exercise in hypocrisy.

One would never guess from Obama’s remarks that he is the head of a government that for decades counted the South African apartheid regime as a critical ally on the African continent, and that the CIA, which he now utilizes as a refurbished Murder, Inc., assassinating perceived opponents of US policy with Predator drones, played an instrumental role in Mandela’s 1962 arrest, which led to 27 years of imprisonment. It was not until 2008—nine years after Mandela had stepped down as South Africa’s president—that Washington removed him from its list of foreign terrorists.

Obama by no means had a monopoly on cynicism and hypocrisy. Joining him in paeans to the memory of Mandela was Washington’s closest ally, British Prime Minister David Cameron, who in 1989, as the apartheid regime was on its last legs, took an all-expenses-paid trip to South Africa sponsored by a firm lobbying against international sanctions. In those days, his fellow young Tories took pride in sporting “Hang Mandela” buttons.

In Obama’s case there was an attempt to weave together the mythology that has been created about his own record and the biography of Mandela. This was made explicit toward the end of his remarks. “Over 30 years ago, while still a student, I learned of Mandela and the struggles in this land,” he declared. “It stirred something in me. It woke me up to my responsibilities—to others, and to myself—and set me on an improbable journey that finds me here today.”

Improbable journey indeed! After graduating from college, Obama—supposedly propelled by Mandela’s example—took his first job as an “analyst” for Business International Corporation, which provided intelligence dossiers for US corporations while serving as a front for covert CIA agents.

Associated with no social struggles in the course of his meteoric rise to the US presidency, he was groomed at Harvard Law School and then by wealthy interests in Chicago to become a right-wing militarist and defender of Wall Street, making himself millions in the bargain.

Obama invoked the civil rights movement in the US—with which he had no association—and compared it to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. “As was true here, it took the sacrifice of countless people—known and unknown—to see the dawn of a new day,” he said. “Michelle and I are the beneficiaries of that struggle.”

Here, at least, there is a note of truth. The mass struggles of African-American workers to achieve fundamental rights in the battle against the system of Jim Crow apartheid in the American South led to a conscious policy by the American ruling class to expand the use of affirmative action policies and cultivate a privileged layer of the black upper-middle class, elements of which were brought into the political and economic establishment.

This policy reached its peak with the decision of big money interests to promote Obama’s presidential ambitions. The aim was to exploit his status as America’s first black president to mask the reactionary policies being pursued by the US government at home and abroad.

Again, drawing the parallel between the US and South Africa, Obama declared that, “our work is not done” with the “victory of formal equality and universal franchise.”

“There are too many of us who happily embrace Madiba’s legacy of racial reconciliation,” he continued, “but passionately resist even modest reforms that would challenge chronic poverty and growing inequality. There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Madiba’s struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own people.”

Whom does he think he is kidding? This is a president who has presided over the steepest growth of social inequality in the history of the United States. His policies, from the financial bailouts of 2008, to the rescue of General Motors and Chrysler and his government’s backing for the bankruptcy of Detroit, have constituted a deliberate and massive transfer of wealth from America’s working people to a financial and corporate oligarchy. In his five years in the White House, 95 percent of all income gains have gone to the richest 1 percent, and, while the working class has seen its living standards decline, the country’s billionaires have doubled their wealth.

As for not tolerating dissent, this goes hand-in-hand with levels of social inequality that render the forms of democracy unworkable. Obama has overseen a massive growth of domestic spying by the National Security Agency and other parts of Washington’s gargantuan intelligence apparatus. He has sought the extradition and prosecution of Edward Snowden for exposing these illegal and unconstitutional operations, while pursuing WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange and condemning Private Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison as punishment for exposing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. His administration has invoked the World War I era Espionage Act to suppress whistleblowers more times than all other previous presidents combined.

Amid the lies and hypocrisy that dominated the platform at Tuesday’s memorial, an element of political reality intruded from the stadium bleachers. The crowd repeatedly booed South African President Jacob Zuma—the subject of endless corruption scandals—upon his arrival, when his face appeared on the giant screens, and upon his introduction as keynote speaker.

Cyril Ramaphosa, Zuma’s deputy and former mine workers’ union head-turned multimillionaire capitalist, was forced to intervene repeatedly. According to the South African Daily Maverick, he appealed at one point to the crowd in Zulu: “Don’t embarrass us, we have overseas visitors here. We can deal with present day stuff once the visitors have gone.”

The episode provided a pale reflection of the explosive anger building up in the South African working class against the ANC and the monied interests—black and white—that it defends. This confrontation found its sharpest expression in August of last year, when the successors of Mandela sent riot police to gun down 34 striking miners at Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine, reprising the bloody repression of the apartheid regime.

While the ANC—and for that matter Obama—had hoped to bask in the reflected glory of Mandela’s funeral, social tensions in this, the world’s most unequal country, are too sharp to grant the ruling party any respite.

Nearly two decades after Mandela brokered an end to apartheid that kept the capitalist interests of the white ruling establishment and the foreign banks and corporations intact, the fundamental reality that the basic division in society is class, not race, is reasserting itself with a vengeance in South Africa. The ANC, representing a layer of corrupt officials and predatory black capitalists, while defending the profit interests of domestic and international capital, has emerged as a bitter enemy of the working class.

All of the platitudes mouthed by Obama and others Tuesday cannot conceal this fact, nor can they hold back a resurgence of class struggle and social revolution from South Africa to the United States itself.

Bill Van Auken

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/12/11/pers-d11.html

Kalvan: Mugabe's Thugs attacked and hurt the innocent Farmers. The Man in the Video had to take a Loan to buy his Farm. A Loan that took him 20 years to pay!!! At the end, Mugabe's ZANU PF Thugs burnt down his Farm and also beat him, his Wife and his Son. Who beats up an elderly Man?! Savages! Savages! Savages! Savages!

who steals land from its rightful owners,murders and rap.es them when they protest and perpetuates themselves in power to rule over these same people in their own land - savages! savages! savages!

I think her anger was more to do with the fact that her husband was acting disrespectfully during the funeral of a great man.

Israhell were planning on selling nuclear warheads to the racist apartheid govt of south Africa in order to ensure that black Africa remained subservient and under their total control and domination , no wonder Netanyahu isn't coming for Mandela's funeral at least he is not hiding his hatred unlike two faced Cameron and wall street puppet Obama.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAs7dI1AN0M

Madiba rest in perfect peace:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGHq17MsnjM

moderator you are the biggest waste of space of all time

I love this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGHq17MsnjM

paniki: Eish, let me provide a little bit of clarity. There is the funeral on Sunday to be held in rural Qunu and then there is the memorial service tomorrow to be held in Johannesburg. There is no way that all these world leaders will make their way to Qunu, it will be a logistical nightmare. All the presidents of the countries of the world have been arriving since this afternoon, they will all fill up the Soccer City stadium tomorrow for the memorial severice. They will then leave and go back to their country after the service. It's a in-and-out type of thing.

Eg: The Americans have planned it such that Obama lands tomorrow morning, flies by helicopter to the stadium and flies back to the airport after the service.

I don't think that the funeral on Sunday will be as big as the memorial service tomorrow.

Paniki read this article and learn something:

Mandela legacy betrayed by hypocrisy

09/12/2013 00:00:00
by Bernard Bwoni



FIRST and foremost I would want to express my sincere condolences to the Mandela family, the people of South Africa for their loss and may his kind and selfless soul rest in peace. The man was a revolutionary first and global statesman second no doubt about that. It is quite endearing to see how the man was loved by so many, a hero to South Africans he helped liberate, a celebrity to those who once referred to him as a terrorist and detained indefinitely and a global statesman to those who heard about him.

Some have called him a “sell-out” who pandered to the whims of the racist apartheid system, some have labelled him a global icon and some Africans have remained neutral. Mandela brought political independence and peace to South Africa and at that contentious and crucial time political power was more than enough. Black South Africa had to learn to crawl before they could walk. The man deserves our respect as Africans. Let this African hero rest in peace after 27 years of torture, privation, humiliation and being broken by a racist and unforgiving system.

Let us respect and honour what Mandela stood for and not what he achieved or did not achieve and could not achieve. He was absent for 27 years and to be fair there was not enough time to achieve it all. The man has left a legacy for politically independent South Africa and for those who he forgave and indirectly or directly re-empowered. Africa has its heroes and legends and they are not worldwide political celebrities.

The Mandela legacy was hijacked by the same system that incarcerated and broke him. I sympathise with Mandela, a selfless man under siege from his own legacy due to the hypocrisy of a permanently irreversible racist system that continually manifests itself in duplicitous and disingenuous forms. One moment Mandela is a terrorist because of his pro-people policies, the next he is the world’s greatest statesman because his selflessness safeguarded the interests of white apartheid South Africa. It is quite insincere how the establishment wants the world to perceive this great son of Africa. He is portrayed as a man who forgave and forgot the evils of an unforgiving and relentless system that only serves its own interests and no one else; an unrepentant system that continues to deceive and misinform at the expense of the African continent.

Mandela was a fiery and uncompromising young black African revolutionary who challenged a racist and unjust system. A young man with the African ideology indelibly tattooed on his spirit. 27 years in penitentiary for that ideological tattoo he paid. That is the Mandela the western media circus will never celebrate. The Mandela the racist system broke down we respect for his resilience and humility. The man had a cause, a just cause for that matter. The worldwide media celebrity that got separated from the revolutionary we still respect and honour. The establishment that separated the revolutionary from the man Africa must forever guard against.

I always wonder why men of principle and uncompromising commitment to the African ideology such as Patrice Lumumba, Robert Mugabe, Kwame Nkrumah, Steve Biko, Amilcar Cabral, Thomas Sankara and Muammar Gadaffi just to name a few have been confined to the back pages of history books. The common defining feature about these Africans is their unswerving assiduity to the African cause, to upgrade and economically empower black African lives.

The selfless, humble and broken Mandela had no choice but to choose peace and political power over economic emancipation. On the other hand the forgotten and invisible visionary African leaders put emphasis on cascading real power down to the people, advocating for policies that focused on African self-sustenance and self-reliance and deconstructing that neo-colonial structure that continues to render Africans perennially indebted to those who subjugated and economically raped the African continent for centuries.

Who really defines our heroes as Africans? How come it is African leaders who focused on ameliorating black African people’s lives who are portrayed as demons and devils worldwide? Patrice Lumumba was mercilessly slaughtered for his people-orientated policies and his resistance to Belgian neo-colonial advances in the Katanga region. Thomas Sankara, a morally upright and pragmatic African legend who at the time of his brutal assassination owned a Renault 5 car, a handful bikes and received a $450 a month salary has never and most likely will never feature on the celebrity-crazy establishment media.

Robert Mugabe has endured unimaginable western media onslaught and demonization for his unwavering committal to economically empower the people of Zimbabwe through his people-focused land reform and indigenisation policies. Colonel Gadaffi was callously and cowardly murdered for it. Lumumba suffered the same fate, so did Cabral. The African ideology will never be allowed to take root because it goes against the 500 year plan to continually exploit the continent of its abundant natural resources until fully exhausted. Any ideology that seeks to economically empower black Africa will forever be suffocated and ridiculed.

It is quite disheartening that our heroes are being defined by those who have historically relegated Africans to perpetual serfdom and servitude. Mandela is an African icon, a legend and revolutionary, a young man who got up one day and said enough is enough of this injustice and racism and the price he paid for his dedication to the African cause was 27 years in prison. An Africa which decides and defines its own heroes is a truly liberated Africa. Let us respect and honour our heroes and never forsake them because the establishment said so. Let us honour our heroes and respect them for putting their lives on hold to liberate us all.

Bernard Bwoni (the African ideology will not die)

responses to above article:



Jukwa
• 7 hours ago

If the white man, the spawn of demons and HISTORICAL ENEMY of Africans, is suddenly praising an African, does this mean that the pale leopard has suddenly changes his sick spots?

Or is this laughable lauding of Mandela, just another tool from the wicked white man 'bag of tricks', a bag of tricks that have REPEATEDLY employed against those Africans who are in a state of mental slumber?

Lobengula was deceived by said devils.

Let the descendants of the Lobengulas of South Africa not forget that significant bit of the white invaders' history in Africa.

When the African is revolutionary for the liberties and empowerment of his people and preservation of his Ancestral properties, the white TRICK is to label said African a terrorist (YOUNGER Mandela) and imprison him; or murder him (Lobengula, Lumumba).

When the African is PERCEIVED (wrongly or rightly) as serving the interests of whites and at the expense of fellow Africans, said African is lauded with DISINGENUOUS praises!

As long as Africans remain alert to the fact that the Europeans ARE HISTORICAL ENEMIES of Africans, no tool in the boer 'bag of tricks' are going to divert African focus their righteous goal -- Uhuru for Africans in their Ancestral lands.

see more

Jukwa
• 7 hours ago

Mandela's history is a 'mixed bag'.

1. Those who like and benefit most from status quo in South Africa, are eager to present the aspect of Mandela's history that is perceived as being LESS ABOUT the liberty and empowerment of Africans in their own Ancestral lands. Living the splendor of STOLEN AFRICAN WEALTH, while Africans live the squalor in THEIR Ancestral lands, is the status quo the white THIEVES would like to preserve and promote in the FAKE lauding of the later Mandela.
The earlier version of Mandela, the real Mandela, was a so-called "terrorist", whom the USA CIA helped to imprison.

2. Awake Africans care more about the young, robust and revolutionary, which defines the earlier Madiba.
That is the content of the 'bag' that should be of most interest to Africans.

All this comical hoopla over Mandela by the deceptive, disingenuous, racist & THIEVING white invaders, is meant to lull Africans into a state of accepting status quo in South Africa. Africans should accept their pathetic state of squalor in THEIR OWN Ancestral lands. lol

Everyone with even a bit of intellectual candlepower, knows that it was the ACTION of the YOUNG African Lions and Lionesses of South Africa that ACTUALLY toppled the nazi apartheid of the invading and beastly boers?

So let the invading white THIEVES and their 'kith and kin' around the world, continue to focus on Mandela and the DELUSION that Mandela represented the toppling of apartheid and the future of South Africa. lol

Very soon the Mandela MYTH that the whites are trying desperately to promote, will be no more. lol

And 'REALITY ON THE GROUND' in South Africa will AGAIN rouse the Young African Lions and Lionesses to 'finish the job', which was suspended out of respect for the 'Old Man', the less revolutionary Mandela.

After all, no matter how much the FAKE outpouring FOR ONE MAN by the white tricksters, the bulk of the Africans of South Africa KNOW that they are STILL "Not Yet Uhuru"? lol



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The Fuhrer > Jukwa
• 3 hours ago


A bit of intellectual candlepower" that's killing me!!


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truth0001
• 12 hours ago

well said

finally someone with the talent and interllect to articulate whats at stake here....someone with diplomacy too...me, i dont have the diplomacy so here i go..

i was watching the news today and heard many western leaders talk about Mandela been the only human who sacrified so much for his people because steve biko was brutally murdered and quickly got ridden off, he therefore is less a hero than mandela?? how many hundreds of black leaders in africa languished in jail in thier fight against racism. Is the fact he was in jail for 27 not evedence of the fact he was not an effective a leader? zanu/zapu leadership strategised from jail and toppled the racist faster..and CLEARLY mandela failed to do the same this man has, if you look at it objectively, has been ineffective and inefficient as leader. He owes his popularity more to symbathy than by been an effective revolutionary


ZackieBwerawa > truth0001
• 5 hours ago



Though I hate to say it, " Why didn't he accept the conditions set out for his release, get released, lie low and when the prying apartheid eyes got tired hit the road to Lusaka and continue with the struggle?"

http://www.newzimbabwe.com/opinion-13418-Mandela+legacy+betrayed+by+hypocrisy/opinion.aspx

mukwerekwere > ZackieBwerawa
• 2 hours ago

What did you do for your countrymen? Gentlemen, let's not try to be too clever here. All you people having your subtle gos at him...you will never be half the man he was. The man admitted himself that he did not want to be a seen as a Saint, he wanted to be seen as a normal human being with flaws.... so you calling him out is not exactly news but shows you bear enmity to the man. The man is dead for God's sake, let him be. I'm pretty sure we have great leaders in our country hence Zimbabweans living the greatest standard of life ever on the planet.


http://www.newzimbabwe.com/opinion-13418-Mandela+legacy+betrayed+by+hypocrisy/opinion.aspx

These scumbags are not fit to breathe the same air that Mandela breathed and as someone pointed out holding a memorial service for him doese not change the fact that they are and will remain forever traitors, criminals and betrayers of their own people. they think that holding this service for Mandela will blind the nigerian masses to their treachery and failures as supposed leaders. Who are they fooling, even if you dress a pig up in the most expensive attire and place it in the company of kings and queens it will still revert to its filthy behaviour. These pigs are fooling no-one but themselves, carrying Mandela's picture around and holding memorial services for him does not change the fact that they are failures, even the white men that they worship laugh at them and look down on them with contempt. Mandela at least fought to make a difference for his people, do these cowardly pigs understand the meaning of the word sacrifice?

As long as western multinationals are making profits out of your blood and sweat they will claim taht your economy is doing well, how come your economy is doign well but the majority of the people in the country are living in penury? I thought the mark of prosperity of a country is measured by the standard of living of its people.

Until Nigerians wake up and understand that the IMF are a predatory gang of international economists/bankers whose only objective is to reduce africans to a state of destitution and starvation this situation will continue. There is no african nation that haas gone down the IMF route that has come out economically stronger, not one, and yet many delusional nigerians continue to pin their hopes on this agent of neo colonial economic exploitation.

Okonjo Iweala is an enemy of nigeria along with other so called foreign trained technocrats who have been positioned within the govt to facilitate the transfer of nigeria's wealth into the hands of european and american banking cartels. I am really tired of hearing the same old BS about how well nigeria is doing when all i see in nigeria is mass poverty and suffering of the people.

I wish these two faced hypocritical western leaders would leave this man's family to mourn him in peace.

The only head of state that should be given the honour of attending Madiba's funeral should be Castro who helped fund and train the armed wing of the ANC, the likes of Obama, Cameron and Netanyahu should be banned from attending this ceremony as their countries were staunch supporters of aparthied. they also still beleive in white supremacy and still practice racism in their own countries with Israel openly practising its own aparthied system.

fijiano202: Many of our Fellow nigerians are pure hypocrites.Most of the youths of nowadays dont have anything positive they witness or benefitted from Mandela during his lifetime,we only read and were aware of his exploit thru books and for most of us born in the 80's we had little knowledge abt his struggles,so why all this threads,regrets and sympathy for someone u hardly know,am not trying to Mock his death in anyway but i can proudly say Mandela didnt influence my life in anyway.To the nairalanders who created thread for his condolence,u all are naive and Nabal,none of u saw it fit to create a thread for the condolence of Festus Iyayi,a man who lost his life while on a positve agenda which would have highly influence the dialogue between ASUU and the Fed Govt,which may have resulted in the ending of the ongoing strike.Sometimes we dont appreciate our own unsong heroes but we try to create awareness for people the world admires.Mugabe was right abt Nigeria,we are too dumb to deliver ourselves

You are a complete waste.

So you have to have been born on the day that Mandela went to prison before you understand and appreciate what he stood for.

I hope you are not in university because your level of reasoning is still at kindergarten stage - please grow up.

PocketEconomist: This ROSSIKE and Cap28 are two jokers. So you see Mugabe as a hero? Because he forcefully took land from the white farmers to his cronies? Whdre are the farms today? That only shows the depth of his foolishness. Even if you wanted to take the land from them, at least those who were to take over would at least gained experience or learnt how to manage the farms. Or he would have initiated a policy of 50 percent black at first in management and ownership of land and after maybe a decade, ease the whites off. But he decided to act like a fool, and people are supporting him?

When the land was being stolen from its rightful owners was it taken away from them gradually or taken quickly and forcefully?
And are you telling me that the black Zimbabwean farmers did not know how to farm their own land until the whites came along to show them how to do it?
so taking back land from thiefs and giving it back to the rightful owners is acting the fool ? this your logic is something else.

sokarsenal: @cap28......i understand you and i wasn't judging Fela....at least not in the case of the women....i meant the marijuana and all

No worries bros, like I said Fela was an eccentric, he openly smoked marijuana because I believe it enhanced his creativity and overall performance on stage. Many musicians use drugs to enhance their performance , Bob Marley openly smoked weed and was a great performer but above all he was a great humanitarian. Many of our politicians take class A drugs with nothing to show for it.

sokarsenal: @cap28......nice opinion though and objective.....but dont you think if Fela had a 'decent' lifestyle a lot of nigerians would have followed him more than they did

Thanks Sokarsenal but answer this question - Does Obasanjo have a decent lifestyle?Did MKO Abiola have a decent lifestyle?

What is your definition of decency?

The Nigerian senator who defiles pre pubescent girls in the name of marriage how decent is his own lifestyle?

I think we need to be careful when judging people.

Fela was an eccentric, he did not believe in one man one woman just like 99.9&% of Nigerian men but unlike them he was not a hypocrite and practised what he preached openly.

besides he married all of his concubines thereby making his relationship with them respectable by Nigerian standards.

Ojukwu is not in the same league as Mandela, even a blind, deaf and dumb person would arrive at that conclusion.

Why? Because a true leader does not desert his people when the going gets tough, a true leader leads from the front and either commits suicide or stays to face the consequences, check all great leaders and you will find that none have ever deserted their people when the going got tough, even Hitler had the decency to comitt suicide when he realised that Berlin was surrounded on all sides by the Russians.

Tojo of Japan committed suicide when he realised that Japan was about to be defeated by the allied forces so Im sorry I can not put Ojukwu in the same category as Mandela.