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The Black Bird: A Parable for Black Children [Broadside]
Fresno: Al Kitab Sudan Publication, 1968. First Edition.Broadside, 11" x 8-1/2". Fine - an unworn, apparently uncirculated copy. Brief parable by an influential founder of the Black Arts movement.
The king wanted parrots around him. He wants all his ministers to wear parrot masks. He said he had to do the same for the previous king. He only said what the king wanted to hear, nothing more, so he advised his ministers to do the same. In fact, they must encourage the people to become parrots.
Yes, he wanted a nation of parrots. Don't say anything the kings does not want to hear. Everything said should be music to his ears. And don't worry, he will tell you exactly what he wants to hear in his regular meetings and public addresses to the nation. Everyone will be kept informed what parrot song to sing. No one must be allowed to disagree with the king. This would be sacrilegious and punishable by death.
The king must be allowed to carry out the dreams that come to his head. No one else should dream, only the king. In this manner, according to the king, the people can make real progress. There shall always be ups and downs, but have faith in the king and everything will be all right. Now everyone sing the national anthem, the king told the people.
There must be a chorus of parrots, a choir, mass choir singing in perfect unity. Let there be parrots on every corner of the kingdom, in every branch and tree. Let all the boys sing like parrots in the beer halls. Let the preacher lead the congregation in parrot songs. Let the teachers train students to sound like parrots. Let the university professors give good grades to those who best imitate parrot sounds. Let the journalists allow no stories over the airwaves and in print if they do not have the parrot sound.
The king was happy when the entire nation put on their parrot masks. Those who refused suffered greatly until they agreed to join in. The state academics and intellectuals joined loudly in parroting the king's every wish. Thank God the masses do not hear them pontificate or read their books. After all, these intellectual and academic parrots are well paid, tenured and eat much parrot seed.
Their magic song impresses the bourgeoisie who have a vested interest in keeping the song of the parrot alive. Deep down in the hood, in the bush, the parrot song is seldom heard, only the sound of the hawk gliding through the air in stone silence looking for a parrot to eat.
Zimbabwe: was Mugabe's fall a result of China flexing its muscle?
The 21st century’s new global superpower is not just Zimbabwe’s ‘all-weather friend’ and top trade partner, close ties go back to the 1970s liberation era
The Chinese president, Xi Jinping (left), holds the hand of Robert Mugabe upon his arrival in Harare in December 2015. Photograph: Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP
Friday 17 November 2017 00.00 ESTLast modified on Friday 17 November 2017 00.04 EST
A visit to Beijing last Friday by Zimbabwe’s military chief, General Constantino Chiwenga, has fuelled suspicions that China may have given the green light to this week’s army takeover in Harare.
If so, the world may just have witnessed the first example of a covert coup d’etat of the kind once favoured by the CIA and Britain’s MI6, but conceived and executed with the tacit support of the 21st century’s new global superpower.
Timeline
Zimbabwe timeline: the week that led to Mugabe's detention
Show
China, Africa’s biggest foreign investor, has more at stake in Zimbabwe, and more political influence, than any other state. This is largely due to its extensive investments in the mining, agriculture, energy and construction sectors. China was Zimbabwe’s top trade partner in 2015, buying 28% of its exports. But the Chinese connection is about more than money.
The pre-independence guerrilla force led to victory by Robert Mugabe, the 93-year-old Zimbabwean president detained by the military on Tuesday night, was financed and armed by the Chinese in the 1970s. Close ties have continued to the present day.
When the US and EU imposed sanctions after Zimbabwe’s 2002 elections, China stepped in, investing in over 100 projects. Beijing also blocked UN security council moves to impose an arms embargo and restrictions on regime figures.
Xi Jinping, China’s president, visited Zimbabwe in December 2015 and has since promised a massive $5bn (£3.8bn) in additional direct aid and investment. He described China as Zimbabwe’s “all-weather friend”.
China’s president, Xi Jinping, shakes hands with his Zimbabwean counterpart, Robert Mugabe, in Harare in 2015. Photograph: Jekesai Njikizana/AFP/Getty Images
Xi’s personal support extended to providing $46m towards building a new parliament in Harare. The Mugabe family is reported to have savings and property assets squirrelled away in Hong Kong, a favourite shopping destination for Mugabe’s wife, Grace.
Aware of criticism from Mugabe’s opponents that Beijing is propping up a despotic regime, China has used soft power tools to win over public opinion. This included a $100m medical loan facility in 2011 and the construction of a new hospital in rural Zimbabwe. In 2015, state-owned Power Construction Corporation of China signed a $1.2bn deal to expand Zimbabwe’s largest thermal power plant. Chinese investors have also bought into farms seized from their former white owners and given to Mugabe cronies who subsequently neglected them.
China’s big bet on Zimbabwe is not all staked on Mugabe and his faction in the ruling Zanu-PF party. Military-to-military cooperation has continued since independence in 1980. China financed and built Zimbabwe’s National Defence College and the People’s Liberation Army has helped train the Zimbabwean army.
Gen Chiwenga, the armed forces chief, has had regular contacts with Chinese counterparts, most recently with a military delegation that visited in December. China’s defence minister, Chang Wanquan, who met with Chiwenga in Beijing last Friday, visited Harare in 2015. Reports suggest Chiwenga’s backing was instrumental in this week’s military intervention.
The takeover came shortly after Mugabe backers accused him of acting treasonably in warning of negative consequences arising from Mugabe’s decision to sack the vice-president, Emmerson Mnangagwa. China’s foreign ministry said Chiwenga’s meeting with Chang was a “normal military exchange”. But Beijing has not explicitly denied foreknowledge of the Harare coup. More significantly, perhaps, it has not condemned, or made any other comment, on Mugabe’s apparent removal from power.
Profile
Who is Emmerson Mnangagwa?
Mnangagwa, widely believed to be behind the plot to oust Mugabe and his most likely successor as president, is another long-time friend and collaborator with the Chinese. A former freedom-fighter, he received ideological and military training in Beijing and Nanjing in the 1960s.
According to Professor Wang Xinsong, a specialist in international development at Beijing Normal University school of social development and public policy, China has been monitoring infighting within the Mugabe regime and the country’s faltering economy for some time – and carefully weighing its options.
Beijing was particularly alarmed by an “indigenisation” law effectively seizing majority control of foreign-owned businesses and companies, many of them Chinese. “China’s political and economic stake in Zimbabwe is high enough to demand a close watch on developments,” Wang wrote in a prescient commentary in December last year.
Wang predicted Beijing would stick with Zanu-PF rather than switch support to opposition groups – but would not tolerate political and economic instability indefinitely. “Letting G40 [the faction around Grace Mugabe] and Mnangagwa fight each other in a post-Mugabe scenario would be too risky. Rather, through negotiation and economic leverage, China may try to ensure a peaceful power transition while the ageing president is still active enough to make such an important decision.”
Whether this is what is happening now, as talks about a transition continued in Harare on Thursday, remains unclear. Much depends on whether Mugabe accepts forced retirement and gives his blessing to his successor, or tries to resist instead. But one thing is certain. Whichever path Zimbabwe chooses next, it will be heavily influenced by its “all-weather” friends in Beijing.
I have heard this statement more than once from parents in the 15 months since I became Principal. This school has been saving lives for many years. To call this a "school" is really an understatement. This is a family. This is a home. This is a hope.
Since 2011 the enrollment at Berkeley Technology Academy (BTECH) has been steadily declining. When I became Principal last year it was at its lowest enrollment ever. There were 57 students enrolled on the first day of school. Did you know that we are staffed to serve 150 students?
That's right! There could be 150 students taking advantage of this small learning environment. 150 kids could be getting the love, attention, and guidance that they need when they leave your homes in the morning. 150 students could be making up credits if they are behind. 150 students could be getting the personalized instruction they need to build confidence, enhance skill sets, and become better prepared for life after the diploma.
Speaking of diplomas...did you know that Berkeley Unified School District touts itself for graduating more Latino and African-American students than the state average? Although that may be true have you ever stopped to ask how many of those students were reading below grade level? How many could not perform basic mathematical computations? How many did not have a plan or a clue as to what to do next? Could some of those students benefit from our learning environment that is loaded with teachers and staff of color administering cultural relevant pedagogy?
BTECH helps students not only build confidence in themselves, recover credits, improve grade point averages, increase attendance, and create community but we also connect students with internships, jobs, and post-graduation plans.
Some of the big questions looming right now are:
WHAT IS STOPPING FAMILIES FROM ENROLLING THEIR CHILD AT BTECH?
WHY IS THE DISTRICT PROPOSING TO CUT STAFFING (3 teachers and 1 safety officer)?
WHY IS THE DISTRICT PROPOSING TO MERGE STAFFING WITH THE INDEPENDENT STUDIES PROGRAM (1 administrator for both sites, 1 counselor for both sites, 1 clerical for both sites)?
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING ALL OF A SUDDEN (the proposal was presented on November 1 with an ask for a decision on December 6th with no community vetting)?
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY...
HAS THE DISTRICT DONE EVERYTHING IN ITS POWER TO INCREASE ENROLLMENT AND SUSTAIN THIS SCHOOL BEFORE DECIDING TO CUT STAFFING?
Are you interested in the answers to these questions? Do you have more questions? Are you ready to see Berkeley Technology Academy reduced to a school with 5 teachers, half a counselor, 1 safety officer, half a secretary, and a Principal that is also responsible for managing the Independent Studies program?
Do you think this school is important enough to FIGHT for?
This is the time of the year when the District is forced to make some very tough budgetary decisions as they are attempting to cut approximately 1.3 million for the 2018-19 school year. BTECH is not the only target. Many other positions and programs are also in the balance. Those other positions and programs are not going down without a fight. Neither will we.
Will you spread the word through your networks that this is happening? Will you come out on Thursday, November 30 at 5pmto ask questions about the current proposal to Assistant Superintendent Mr. Scuderi? Will you attend the next School Board meeting on Wednesday, December 6th at 7pm for the public comment section? Will you help the school by thinking about these questions I am providing and adding your own comments, stories, solutions? Will you let me know you are ready to fight?
Some things to consider as we mobilize our community:
Truancy
Many of you have told me that your child started coming to school a lot more since enrolling at BTECH. Many of you say that at Berkeley High your child was not going to class and was truant. Did you know that there is a truancy program called the Student Attendance and Review Team (SART) and Student Attendance Review Board (SARB) that refers students to the Alameda County District Attorney's Truancy Program without recommending to the family that the student give BTECH a try? Why is that? Did you know that the California Education Code allows for schools to involuntarily transfer (although I recommend counseling) truant students to schools like BTECH so that they have a better chance at graduating? Why isn't this happening?
Test Scores and Grade Point Averages
The most recent Smarter Balanced Assessment Test Results (2016-2017) indicates that 46% of Black juniors that took the test were below proficiency in reading and 59% were below proficiency in writing while only 11% of White juniors were below proficiency in reading and 14% of White juniors were below in writing. The achievement gap was even worse for math as test scores revealed that 73% of Black juniors had not met the math proficiency compared to only 17% of White juniors. We want all students to be able to have at least an opportunity to enter a career pathway, college classroom, apprenticeship, or job with the requisite hard and soft skills to compete.
Marketing
Does BUSD market its very own Alternative High School program? If so, when and where? Did you know that students at Berkeley High routinely claim that they are threatened to be sent here if they don't do well there? Is this the marketing campaign? Could BTECH be supported by the District in a way that it is marketed in a positive way? Do you have any suggestions on how this could happen?
LCAP (Local Control and Accountability Program)
How are current LCAP dollars being used at BTECH? Can the District leverage more LCAP resources for BTECH? Are you familiar with the School Governance Council? The School Site Plan? Would you be interested in more information as to how you can be an active parent?
What you can do before our meeting on November 30 is contact BUSD school board members and let them know how you feel about this proposal (see attached).
You can find School Board member information at this link:
African migrants who try to reach Europe are being taken back to Africa by Libyan authorities -- this deadly deal with the EU has created a bigger problem: migrants are now being sold as slaves! But if we all sign now, we could be the loudspeaker for their cry for help, and push EU countries to revise this deal before more souls are put up for sale -- click to sign now:
Right now, African migrants who try to escape to Europe are finding a horrific fate instead: they're being sold as slaves! But we can save them.
The EU is behind a terrible deal that's giving money to Libya to chase down boats with migrants, arresting them, and taking them back to African soil. Once there, many end up in detention centres, and others are kidnapped and sold into forced labour for as little as $400. The EU can stop this -- but they're turning a blind eye, and it's up to us to push them into action to reverse this dreadful deal with Libya. Let's be a loudspeaker for these migrants' cry for help!
Add your name now to end Libya's migrant slave trade -- when enough of us sign, Avaaz will bring our call to the EU countries that backed this deal and make sure they take urgent action:
Italy is only a few miles away from the Libyan shore, a known gateway for people trying to reach the "European dream". While the EU is known as a human rights champion, the grim reality is they're paying authorities in a broken country to prevent these people from ever setting foot on European territory -- freeing them from any human rights obligation.
CNN has reported on nine locations in Libya alone selling slaves -- but this could be just the tip of the iceberg. If we use this moment to get the EU to review its immoral deal with Libya and find a more humane way to deal with the crisis, we could stop this slave trade for good!
Let's do this -- join the people-backed call to get EU leaders to act now on Libya's migrants slave trade:
Avaaz members from around the globe donated millions and took action to help solve the migration crisis in Europe in a humane and ethical way. Now, the EU's efforts to sweep the problem under the carpet has caused an even more unprecedented crisis, bringing back the slave trade. Let's make sure to stop it, together.
With hope and determination,
Diego, Flora, Luca, Nana, Patricia, Alice and the whole Avaaz team
Obi Egbuna Jnr SimunyeDURING a sessional address to the people of Ghana exactly 23 days before the US-EU imperialist-led military coup that overthrew his revolutionary government, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah eloquently stated: “Let us remember in the final analysis the masses are always the final arbiter. They will always choose freedom and justice, as against oppression and corruption.”While the statement made by Zimbabwean Major-General S. B. Moyo concerning the recent political developments was short and concise, it perhaps was the first step in changing the political trajectory of Zimbabwe in particular and Mother Africa in general for decades to come. The decision to emphasise that the Zimbabwe Defence Forces was not engaging in a military take-over, could have very well in the long term ushered in the beginning of the end of military neo-colonialism on our beloved mother continent once and for all.
The reinforcement of that exact sentiment by General Constantino Chiwenga: “There is only one Commander-in-Chief His Excellency the President, Head of State and Government, and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces Comrade R.G. Mugabe” is the reason why the US-EU imperialist media apparatus has not resisted the temptation to express their pleasure surrounding the mere thought of President Mugabe no longer calling the shots in Zimbabwe. Of course, they are too racist and arrogant to acknowledge a people they consider inherently inferior have devised a political strategy beyond their comprehension.
What the Africans in the Diaspora must grapple with is understanding the immeasurable value of both patience and a level of political discipline, that keeps them settled and not indulging in opportunism and unnecessary overreaction, resulting in spreading utter confusion at breakneck speed just to give the impression they have the latest scoop on what is occurring on the ground in Zimbabwe.
At this juncture the only thing faster than the bullets in the live ammunition in the weapons of the ZDF are the trigger fingers possessed by opportunists using their laptops to spread lies, gossip and innuendo about Zimbabwe, this is being done primarily by certain elements who claim to support President Mugabe and Zanu-PF in word but practically speaking have very little anything concrete to show that demonstrates the essence of the solidarity that defines and epitomises African resistance.
This allows us to zero in on journalists in particular who are only writing about Zimbabwe primarily because it is the main African story, but for the last 18 years have stood idly by and allowed the US-EU imperialist apparatus make assassinating the character of President Mugabe their primary crusade on the African continent. What this illustrates is their obedience to the immoral values of US-EU capitalism and imperialism who are only into the business of selling newspapers as opposed to being pinpoint accurate about Zimbabwe’s current political status.
The main question on the table is who internally and externally still doubts the political sophistication of President Mugabe and Zanu-PF, whether you like it or not, there is no denying at every key phase of the Third Chimurenga US-EU imperialism has been reduced to the posture of a window shopper completely on the outside looking in. How convenient it is to forget US-EU imperialist media apparatus bottom feeders desperately running around South Africa attempting to find the exact location where President Mugabe and Zanu-PF and both factions of the MDC were negotiating the GPA/inclusive Government. During the harmonised 2013 presidential/parliamentary elections former US president Jimmy Carter was left with egg on his face when President Mugabe and Zanu-PF refused his overture to allow the liberal imperialist vehicle that carries his name the Carter Centre to given official observer status.
According to then president Obama’s former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs and former US ambassador to Zimbabwe Mr Johnnie Carson if the Carter Centre was granted the access to Zimbabwe they wanted he would have personally nudged Obama’s shoulders and asked for the US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe.
When President Mugabe and Zanu-PF along with the ZDF sit down with the Sadc envoys from South Africa and Angola who, based on the rotational political cycle, are presiding over the regional body and the regional defence forces respectively, we can guarantee not only that the details will not be leaked to diplomats representing US-EU imperialism, but equally as important our former colonisers and enslavers will not have a seat at the table. For this reason the US-EU imperialist apparatus must depend on President Mugabe and Zanu-PF’s most hateful detractors for soundbites with no substance or foundation, we recently saw the media giant Newsweek reduced to getting a quote from Doug Coltart, whose father David Coltart is a founder of the US-EU regime change agent MDC. The young Coltart, a pro-regime change baby bull, stated the city is calm but that he was concerned by what could turn out to be an “unconstitutional transition of power”.
The Voice of America published a caption entitled “Who is Emmerson Mnangagwa?“ The answer is simple: Go and ask your Zimbabwe desk who you hired to paint a picture of him as the mask of terror behind President Mugabe, if you are not satisfied with their account your next destination should either be the US State Department or the headquarters of the CIA . Unfortunately, the Rhodesian Baby Bull and Newsweek forgot to share that General Chiwenga began his public statement by highlighting Section 212 of Zimbabwe’s Constitution that highlights the obligation of the ZDF as it pertains to Zimbabwe’s national security and territorial integrity.
What also angered US-EU imperialism was the fact that the ZDF did not call for a political makeover reversing Zimbabwe’s land reclamation programme, the Indegnisation and Empowerment Act or Zim-Asset, which illustrates their commitment to the continued execution of these ground-breaking programmes without any internal sabotage from this moment on. It must be noted that when General Chiwenga chose to chronicle counter- revolutionary dynamics President Mugabe and Zanu-PF have overcome in particular the formation of Frolizi, the attempted removal of Cde Herbert Chitepo from Zanu’s chairmanship, the Nhari-Badza rebellion, Ndabaningi Sithole rebellion among others, the bar was raised on a level many cannot begin to understand.
This put US-EU Imperialism on notice that this was not the extension of General Ignatius Acheampong, who played a key role in carrying out the coup that ousted the Osagyefo from power, or Mobutu Sese Seko, who the US-Belgian-French imperialist alliance used to remove Patrice Lumumba from power. The words and reassurances of both General Chiwenga and Major-General S. B. Moyo that President Mugabe was not the target of this exercise, calls into question those who used their platform to call this a bloodless coup, which was an illustration of political gamesmanship, putting it lightly.
Both General Chiwenga and Major-General Moyo understand the importance of not giving the impression their actions are not in concert with the agenda of the US-Africa Military Command (Africom), the biggest threat to Mother Africa’s territorial integrity.
Those who chose to propagate that notion publicly must not forget the mere mention of that word is a clarion call for US-EU Iiperialism to plan a military intervention, which cannot be dismissed especially since both the President of Botswana, Ian Khama, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu included that on their neo-colonialist wishlist. For Africans in the Diaspora who have stood by President Mugabe and Zanu-PF for the last five decades, this comes down to a question of political will and capacity. We must not let US-EU imperialism use the recent developments in Zimbabwe as an excuse to maintain their illegal racist sanctions. Those who have fought that battle, there is no reason to abandon what President Mugabe and Zanu-PF consider a cause for every loyal daughter and son of Africa to wage and fight until their last breath.
Obi Egbuna Jnr is the US correspondent to The Herald and External Relations Officer of Zicufa (Zimbabwe Cuba Friendship Association). His email is obiegbuna15@gmail.com
The Global Pan African Movement condemns the military intervention in Zimbabwe in no uncertain terms. The generals of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces have been part of the repressive government. The huge problems of Zimbabwe cannot be resolved by the same soldiers who have been partners with Mugabe in the past 37 years.
On November 14, the military of Zimbabwe seized the radio and television operations of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, ZBC. By the morning of November 15 the world woke up to the news that the top officers of the Zimbabwe Defense Forces (ZDF) had intervened to place Mr. Robert Mugabe in custody. In the typical fashion of a coup d’etat, a military officer read a statement in the middle of the night that the intervention was not a coup d’ etat but meant to protect President Mugabe. The army spokesperson Major General Sibusiso Busi Moyo claimed that the military were “only targeting criminals around him who are committing crimes that are causing social and economic suffering in the country.”
“To both our people and the world beyond our borders, we wish to make it abundantly clear that this is not a military takeover of government. What the Zimbabwe Defence Forces is doing is to pacify a degenerating political, social and economic situation in our country which, if not addressed, may result in violent conflict,” Maj-Gen Moyo said.
By the end of the day it was clear that some of the former ministers were arrested, Robert Mugabe was under arrest and his wife Grace Mugabe was supposed to have fled to Namibia. Grace Mugabe had become notorious for her profligate spending in the malls of global capital and she was appropriately called “Gucci Grace”.
The Global Pan African Movement condemns the military intervention in Zimbabwe in no uncertain terms. The generals of the ZDF have been part of the repressive government and the social problems of Zimbabwe cannot be resolved by the same soldiers who were partners with Mugabe in the past 37 years. This ‘realignment’ in the politics among the security and military intervention comes after 20 years of struggles by the working peoples to get a better quality of life. Organizing themselves in trade unions, neighborhood organizations, village assemblies, progressive teachers and other forms of self-defense, the working peoples have been battling for survival for years. These peoples had supported opposition formations, only to have the electoral process enveloped in violence, intimidation and the killing of opposition supporters. Vote rigging had been in the hands of the military and the intelligence organization called the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO).
The most blatant case of election theft was in 2008 when the opposition won the elections in the first round of the presidential elections. Morgan Tsvangirai won the first round but had to drop out of the second due to massive violence against his supporters. Tsvangirai escaped two car accidents. The leaders of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) had sanctioned electoral theft and brutality because they had succumbed to the rhetoric of Robert Mugabe that the opposition were stooges of Anglo-American imperialism. In 2013 the Mugabe government again won the elections after there had been manipulations by the SADC leaders to deceive the opposition that they should wait for reforms of the electoral system.
The language on anti-imperialism had been effective when Robert Mugabe and the party of liberation, ZANU-PF, were part of a genuine liberation process in the fight against the illegal minority white racist regime of Ian Smith. However, by 1997 when the military and security bureaucrats started to enrich itself at the expense of the people, the gap between rich and poor began to widen. There were strikes and demonstrations by the oppressed, especially war veterans. It was after these manifestations of opposition that the Mugabe government seized the land of the white commercial farmers. In the process of distributing the land, the generals and security officials were the principal beneficiaries. These recipients of the land had little or no experience in agriculture and exploited the poor farm workers in the same way as the former white commercial farmers. By every index of social and economic activity, the conditions of the majority of the people have deteriorated dramatically. There is over 95 per cent unemployment in Zimbabwe and over 5 million Zimbabweans have fled the country.
The government of Robert Mugabe acknowledged the severe economic conditions in the country but blamed the situation on western sanctions against Zimbabwe, despite exposing the truth of how his cronies siphoned over $15 billion from the mining of diamonds. Outside of Zimbabwe, the pro government intellectuals had mobilized support across Africa for Robert Mugabe on the grounds that British imperialism was planning military intervention in Zimbabwe. This support of pro-government intellectuals was meant to disarm those who opposed the exploitation that was intensifying in Zimbabwe by one of the most homophobic and sexist governments in Africa.
The government of Mugabe mounted a major international campaign to represent the ruling party ZANU-PF as being at the forefront of the progressive Pan African movement. Even within the progressive anti-imperialists there was the view that Mugabe’s government was being sanctioned because of the seizure of land. The discussions about imperialist sanctions could not explain why in the midst of the crisis, the government of Robert Mugabe chose the US currency as the currency of Zimbabwe. This was the highest form of subservience to US imperialism but those who were looting the country found it easier to use the currency of empire while the people were issued with useless bonds notes. The successes of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange was another indication of the amount of wealth that was circulating among the generals and political operatives.
This situation of former freedom fighters becoming erstwhile capitalists and repressive is not unique to Zimbabwe. All across the continent of Africa, from Algeria to Mozambique and from Eritrea to South Africa, the leaders of liberation movements lost legitimacy as they gave up the search for the solutions to the problems of hunger, unemployment, poor health and grinding exploitation. The late Tajudeen Abdul Raheem noted that the longer the liberation leaders remained in power the more they became oppressors. This was the case with Mugabe. After being in power over 37 years the leaders believed that they could take other people’s life with impunity.
The working peoples had been repressed by the same military that is now claiming to come to the rescue of ordinary people. The top generals who orchestrated the intervention are the same enforcers who had looted the Democratic Republic of the Congo along with the family of Kabila. It was the same military brass who oversaw Operation Murambatsvina (Shona for Operation Drive Out Trash), also referred to as Operation Restore Order, began as a crackdown against illegal trading and illegal housing in May 2005. This operation left hundreds of thousands of urban dwellers homeless in the middle of the cold Zimbabwean winter. Later when diamonds were found in Eastern Zimbabwe, the same generals were the beneficiaries of the mining of diamonds.
In 2016 President Mugabe complained the country had lost $15 billion dollars that should have gone to the treasury. Opposition parties and student unions retorted that it was incredulous that President Robert Mugabe was unaware that the nation was losing billions of dollars worth of diamonds through looting. The opposition said that if $15 billion worth of diamonds was pillaged under Mugabe’s watch, then he should be impeached for failing to do his job.
Where there is fabulous plunder as was going on in Zimbabwe there was bound to be competition between branches of the Zimbabwean capitalist class. This competition took the form of a power struggle within the ruling ZANU-PF political party. One group around the wife of Robert Mugabe called the G40 had been gaining the upper hand against the faction of the repressors led by General Chiwenga and Emmerson Mnangagwa. Since independence in 1980 one of the ways of dealing with rivals was through car accidents or other forms of political assassination. Generals of the Zimbabwe military from the time of Josiah Tongagara to General Mujuru understood the experiences of political assassination. Thus when the former Vice President of Zimbabwe Emmerson Mnangagwa was fired in the week of November 4 2017 he quickly fled the country. He was very aware of the multiple unexplained deaths of prominent Zimbabweans.
Gen. Constantino Chiwenga
Former Vice President Mnangagwa had been associated with all phases of repression since Operation Gukurahundi soon after independence. This paramilitary operation that killed over 20,000 in Matabeleland. There is still a need for the truth about this mass killing. In the past year Mnangagwa has been locked in a life and death struggle with those elements who had surrounded Grace Mugabe. Grace Mugabe had aligned herself with a group that was associated with Dr. Jonathan Moyo. Over twelve years ago, it was the same Jonathan Moyo who had termed ZANU-PF a shelf party. Moyo, who initiated many of the repressive laws in the period of the land invasions, 2000 to 2003, had this to say of the leader of the ‘shelf party’: “Mugabe has publicly demonstrated his leadership incapacity to make way for an able and dynamic successor by succumbing to manipulative tribal pressure from a clique in his party”
It was this same Moyo who was now aligned against his former sponsor Emerson Mnangagwa. When Mnangagwa was fired in early November, all he and his allies in the military could think of was the fire that consumed General Mujuru.
In order to save themselves from the legacy of political assassinations, the generals intervened and placed Robert Mugabe under house arrest.
The Global Pan African Movement is of the view that the SADC Organ on Peace and Security must demobilize the military in Zimbabwe and establish a transitional arrangement so that all the other political forces in Zimbabwe can participate in the political process without fear of intimidation. A group of nonpartisan Zimbabweans have proposed a National Transitional Authority to take over the running of the country until “fair” elections can be held.
The African Union has stated clearly that it does not condone military interventions. Though the military has claimed that this was not a coup, it is clearly a coup. The peoples of Zimbabwe need the space for reconstruction and for the stolen wealth to be returned to the country. When the military took over they resorted to playing the songs of revolution on the radio. These songs from an era of struggle are now being mobilized to justify militarism.
On Monday, November 13 when General Chiwenga made a statement to the nation he stated that “drastic action would be taken immediately to stop counter-revolutionaries from sliding Zimbabwe back into colonisation.” This is simply manipulation of the anti-colonial sentiments of progressive Pan Africanists everywhere and decent citizens must join in the call for a genuine process of political change in Zimbabwe. The African Union has the responsibility to ensure that generals do not continue the repression in Zimbabwe. Emmerson Mnangagwa must not be allowed to continue the looting and plunder of the society in collaboration with the generals. Progressive Pan Africanists need to study the lessons of the manipulation of the ideals of Pan Africanism in this moment when there is a major push for the emancipation of Africa.
* JILIA LYNNE WALKER is the Chairperson of the North American Branch of the Global Pan African Movement.
Zimbabwe latest: Crowds outside Mugabe office to force him out
Protesters in Zimbabwe have headed towards the office of President Robert Mugabe to urge him to step down.
The march came on a day of widespread jubilation in the capital Harare and other cities following the army's takeover on Wednesday. Soldiers at State House gently pushed protesters away in scenes resembling a party, says the BBC's Andrew Harding. The army intervened after Mr Mugabe sacked his deputy, signalling that he favoured his wife Grace as a successor. Mr Mugabe, 93, has led Zimbabwe since it gained independence from Britain in 1980. The military has kept him confined to his residence and says it is "engaging" with him and will advise the public on the outcome of talks "as soon as possible".
Saturday's rally is supported by the army and members of the ruling Zanu-PF party. Veterans of Zimbabwe's war for independence - who until last year were loyal to the president, the best-known among them - are also saying Mr Mugabe should quit. The leader of the organisation urged people to head towards Mr Mugabe's private residence, too. Outside State House some people staged a sit-down protest in front of a line of troops, and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai addressed the crowd, to cheers. The BBC's Andrew Harding in Harare says this is a watershed moment and there can be no return to power for Mr Mugabe. Our correspondent says the situation may appear to be getting out of Zanu-PF's control and there could be a broad push to introduce a transitional government that includes the opposition. Image caption The army is keeping people away from State House Mr Mugabe, 93, had been under house arrest since the army takeover, but on Friday he made his first public appearance. He spoke only to open the graduation at a university of which he is chancellor. Grace Mugabe was not present. It had been thought she had left the country but it emerged on Thursday that she was at home with Mr Mugabe. Image copyrightEPAImage caption The message for the Mugabes was clear The military made its move after a power struggle over the successor for Mr Mugabe. He sacked Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa last week, apparently to pave the way for Grace Mugabe, who is four decades younger than him, to take over the presidency. Mr Mugabe's nephew, Patrick Zhuwao, told Reuters news agency the couple were "ready to die for what is correct" and would not step down.
Fear has lifted
Analysis by the BBC's Andrew Harding in Harare Euphoric crowds are surging through the centre of Harare, chanting "He must go!" and waving placards demanding President Mugabe's immediate resignation. People are sitting on their cars, horns blaring, and on top of buses, holding Zimbabwean flags. "This is a revolution," said one man emerging from a supermarket to join the protesters. "It has been a long time coming." For years such scenes have been unthinkable in Zimbabwe, but the army and governing Zanu-PF gave these rallies their blessing, and the fear that held back so many people appears to have lifted overnight. "We just want change," said a woman in a long queue outside a bank in the centre of Harare. Others spoke of the country's deep economic problems and its soaring unemployment, and hoped that a change of leadership might improve people's lives. The governing party - now ruthlessly purging itself - will be hoping to retain its iron grip on power in Zimbabwe, but the extraordinary street protests may have unlocked forces that will be hard to control. Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption The protest had the blessing of the military and the ruling party
Who is backing the protest in Harare?
The influential war veterans' association. Leader Christopher Mutsvangwa had called for a huge turnout, saying: "We want to restore our pride."
The ruling Zanu-PF. At least eight out of 10 regional branches voted on Friday for Mr Mugabe to resign as president and party secretary. Several regional leaders appeared on TV saying he should step down, Grace Mugabe should resign from the party and Mr Mnangagwa should be reinstated to the central committee.
The Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) said the rally was a "solidarity march". It said: "As long as the planned march remains orderly, peaceful... and without hate speech and incitement to cause violence, it fully supports the march."
Soldiers seized the headquarters of Zimbabwe's national broadcaster ZBC on Wednesday, and loud explosions and gunfire were heard. Maj Gen Sibusiso Moyo then read out a statement on national television, assuring the nation that President Mugabe and his family were safe.
Media captionZimbabweans react to the news that troops had taken controlThe military was only targeting what he called "criminals" around the president, he said, denying that there had been a coup. On Thursday, Mr Mugabe was pictured smiling as he took part in talks with an army general and South African government ministers at State House but sources suggested he might be resisting pressure to resign.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged a quick return to civilian rule, but also said the crisis was an opportunity for Zimbabwe to set itself on a new path
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Beijing was hoping for stability and a peaceful "appropriate" resolution
UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson warned against a transition from "one unelected tyrant" to another
Botswana's President Ian Khama said regional leaders did not support Mr Mugabe staying in power
Alpha Conde, the chairman of the African Union, a key regional bloc, said the takeover "seems like a coup" and demanded a return to constitutional order
South Africa's President Jacob Zuma said the region was committed to supporting the people of Zimbabwe, and was optimistic the situation could be resolved amicably
Militants Kill 235 at Sufi Mosque in Egypt’s Deadliest Terrorist Attack
At least 235 people were killed when militants detonated explosives and sprayed gunfire at a crowded Sufi mosque near Egypt’s Sinai coast.
By BARBARA MARCOLINI and CHRIS CIRILLO on Publish Date November 24, 2017.
CAIRO — Militants detonated a bomb inside a crowded mosque in the Sinai Peninsula on Friday and then sprayed gunfire on panicked worshipers as they fled, killing at least 235 people and wounding at least 109 others. Officials called it the deadliest terrorist attack in Egypt’s modern history.
The scale and ruthlessness of the assault, in an area racked by an Islamist insurgency, sent shock waves across the nation — not just for the number of deaths but also for the choice of target. Attacks on mosques are rare in Egypt, where the Islamic State has targeted Coptic Christian churches and pilgrims but avoided Muslim places of worship.
The attack injected a new element into Egypt’s struggle with militants because most of the victims were Sufi Muslims, who practice a mystical form of Islam that the Islamic State and other Sunni extremist groups deem heretical. And it underscored the failure of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has justified his harsh crackdown on political freedom in the name of crushing Islamic militancy, to deliver on his promises of security.
“The scene was horrific,” said Ibrahim Sheteewi, a resident of Bir al-Abed, the small north Sinai town where the attack took place. “The bodies were scattered on the ground outside the mosque. I hope God punishes them for this.”
A Sinai police officer said the dead included at least 15 children. A witness put the toll even higher, saying he had helped gather the bodies of 25 children.
Hours later the Egyptian military carried out several airstrikes near Bir al-Abed targeting militants fleeing in four-wheel-drive vehicles, an Egyptian military official said.
World leaders quickly condemned the mosque attack, with President Trump denouncing it as “horrible and cowardly.” He said later that it explained why the United States needed a border wall with Mexico and restrictions on immigration, which he referred to as “the ban.”
Mr. Sisi has struggled to impose his authority over Sinai since he came to power in a military takeover in 2013. Islamist militants who had found a safe haven in Sinai for attacks on Israel then turned their guns on the Egyptian armed forces.
MARVIN X ON SECTARIANISM
Guru Bawa would say we must transcend the one billion ten million illusions of the monkey mind! Hazrat Inayat Khan taught, what does it matter if it is not in the heart? Would the heart allow one to kill anyone, whether believers or non-believers? My heart will not allow me to do such an abomination to believers and/or non-believers! James Baldwin said, "The murder of my child will not make your child safe!"--Marvin X
Syrian poet, novelist, professor Mohja Kahf considers Marvin X the father of Muslim American literature.
Sectarianism has been known to spark religious violence throughout history. For many years we saw the ugly head of sectarianism in the struggle between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, the constant bombings and killings.
In Africa violence between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria has approached genocide. Iraq is the latest hot spot of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims. For decades the Shia had been oppressed by the Sunni minority, especially during the regime of Saddam Hussein. When he was overthrown by the US and the Shia majority took political power, naturally the Sunnis were resentful, no one likes to lose power and privilege. Because many Sunnis look upon Shia as heretics, this justifies their sectarian cleansing, even though there has been Sunni/Shia harmony, including marriages throughout the years, but presently there is migration of Shias from Sunni neighborhoods and towns and visa versa. Very little of the refugee plight has made news.
Of course the US is the cause when she installed the Shia majority, even though majority should rule, we are taught in American Democracy 101. But the resulting violence was predictable and much of it could have been prevented if the Americans had not been the "peacemakers."
Now the violence is being instigated by the insurgents who are directing their wrath against the Shia as well as the Americans. And naturally the Shia are taking revenge since they have political and military power, including their own militias integrated into the army and police but loyal to their sect leaders and imams.
We must see the Sunni violence against the Shia in the broader picture of regional politics. The Sunni regimes in Saudia Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, the Gulf States and elsewhere have no desire to see a Shia government in Iraq, however loosely allied it may be with Shia Iran. The Sunni governments have stated their opposition to a Shia expansion from the Tigris/Euphrates to the Mediterranean, uniting with the populations of Shia in Syria and Lebanon where the Hezbollah fighters are a political and military force supported by Iran.
Have no doubt that the regional Sunni regimes support the insurgency in Iraq. These regimes would rather have their young men leaving their nations to commit suicide in Iraq rather than be part of the opposition within their authoritarian regimes. Better their sons fight the infidel Americans and heretic Shia.
Of course the historical dispute between the Sunni and Shia began in 632AD upon the death of prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Thus this Sunni/Shia conflict is much more outstanding than colonialism, including the neo-colonial Americans. There is no hatred like religious hatred. We can see that violence between Sunnis and Shia has surpassed that between Sunnis and the Christian Americans, supposedly the enemy of all Muslims. For sure, Americans were the catalyst, but the roots of the present sectarian violence began over succession to the prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
The Sunnis said the successor should be selected from among the people, Abu Bakr. The Shia said it should be from the prophet's bloodline, Ali. The Sunnis won out and labeled the Shia heretics, especially when they elevated the status of Imam Ali and future Shia Imams to the level of the Caliphs or rulers after the prophet, including veneration of their tombs in various Shia holy cities such as Qum in Iran, Najaf and Karbala in Iraq. Several Shia imams were assassinated, including Ali and Hussein.
There are major Shia rituals that celebrate the martyrdom of their imams. The Shia feeling of lost is similar to the feeling of lost among Sunni Muslims in America about Malcolm X allegedly being assassinated by the Nation of Islam. This feeling of lost is shared by much of the African American community.
Malcolm's death caused a great division that has yet to heal and may never heal, despite the unifying efforts of Farakhan with his Million Man Marches and other efforts.
Perhaps we can understand the Sunni/Shia struggle from this perspective. There are some Blacks who hate other Blacks as a result of the Malcolm X affair more than they hate the white man for all his centuries of evil and wickedness against Blacks. For the US government's role in the Malcolm affair—and have no doubt about their involvement, they benefited by divide and conquer, that classic Willie Lynch slave master tricknology.
Sectarian violence in Iraq may continue unabated, for it is beyond civil war, beyond American occupation, but deeply rooted in religiosity, myth and ritual. Even Sunni fear of Shia regional expansion is rooted in Shia eschatology or end time. This is evident in pronouncements from the Shia regime in Iran, boldly determined to pursue a nuclear weapons future and calling for the destruction of Israel, motivated by their belief the time has arrived for Shia geo-political and spiritual domination, and certainly Iraq will play a role in this Shia myth-ritual drama.
This drama has implications far beyond any American notion of installing democracy in Iraq or anywhere else in the region, for people are motivated by mythology and prophecy, political aspirations being secondary. It is their spiritual aspirations that are primary. Shia Iran appears prepared to commit mass suicide challenging the Americans and Europeans over nuclear technology, even though the Iranians have every right to posses the Islamic bomb, just as we have the Jewish bomb and the Christian bomb. I say get rid of all the nuclear weapons or level the playing field as in the wild wild west: let everybody pack.
As per Iraq, it doesn't matter whether the Americans stay or go, they have opened Pandora's box and mean spirits are blowing in the desert winds. Only Allah knows how these issues will be resolved. Perhaps the Sunnis and Shias shall fight until they tire of killing, then reconcile in the manner of Isaiah, "Let us reason together."
Source: Toward Radical Spirituality, Black Bird Press, 2007 (c) 2006 by Marvin X (El Muhajir)
* * * * *
Marvin X has given permission to Harvard University to publish his poem "For El Haji Rasul Taifa" from Love and War: Poems by Marvin X (1995). The poem will appear in The Encyclopedia of Islam in America Volume II, Greenwood Press, edited by Dr. Jocelyne Cesari of Harvard's Islam in the West Program. Mr. X is co-editor of the forthcoming anthology Muslim American Literature, University of Arkansas Press, edited by Dr. Mojah Khaf. He is also in the forthcoming Muslim American Drama, Temple University.
To the question, should everyman confess sex guilt, I’d say every man and every woman, if not in the service of sexual equality at least to keep it real. Sex has broken up more happy homes than the law allows. The law now allows you to be married to one spouse, while polygamy allows you to be married to one spouse too many), not to mention its variations, polygyny and polyandry -- and now headed for what Eldridge Cleaver suggested we call “omnigamy” (where everybody would be married to everybody else). Meanwhile a fellow in Psychology Today more recently bemoaned the fact that over half of the marriages are breaking up and if half of the hamburgers were spoiling the people would be up in arms about it and the government would pass laws against it. But looks like everybody who is not in a marriage is trying to get in it, and everybody who is in a marriage is trying to get out of it.
The overwhelming majority of people will break their marital vows on some dark night. I promise you. Thus the number one problem with marriage as we know it is the fact that marriage is based on society’s wish to regulate sex in the service of family and social stability though the control and management of reproduction. For instance fixing paternity and the functions and obligations of the production and feeding of children, their care and socialization.
Tina Turner’s question was correct in so far as it goes: “What’s love got to do with it” She just failed to acknowledge it works both ways, what’s sex got to do with it, love, that is; for that is the question society miscues when it makes love dependent on the absolute control of the natural If not universal and inherent (instinctive?) sexual impulses with which love is almost never completely coterminous nor equal or congruent to.
The ultimate test of the mechanics of the continuity of a marital bond (being marriages aren’t made in Heaven (i.e., they may have been conceived there but have to be worked out down here in Hell) is the ability of the couple to compromise and forgive. That would presume or best include anything, not to mention the more or less pervasive sexuality of both men and women, though differing in some respects perhaps.
Ebony magazine had an article a year or so ago where the incomparable couple Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee had an agreement that if you want to be with somebody go ahead, it’s alright, just do it in a way as not to hurt the family.
My sociological impression is that Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee were ahead of their time, that marriage today is caught in the stranglehold of an anti-biological cultural lag. In other words, the mythology of which you speak (forgive my selective mutism, but you may not know that I am a son of a preacher). No myth.
Nathan Hare
Phone: 415-474-1707
Fax: 415-589-7983
415 672 2986 (backup)
Marvin X reply:
Well, you said a mouthful too, Dr. Hare. As per my Mythology of P and D, when interviewed at the Philly Lock's Conf by Junius Stanton (see YouTube), I told him I was not suggesting marriage for all the reasons you listed. I think my mother told me not to get married for artistic reasons, instead she said I needed a maid, secretary and mistress. In my essay on Creativity and Sexuality, I tell of a lifetime confusion regarding creative and sexual energy. I think this misreading caused partner violence on my part due to my creativity being stifled and misplacing aggression upon my partner instead of kicking myself in the ass!
Marvin X
Subject: should everyman confess sex guilt?--comments welcome
Should Everyman Confess Sex Guilt? Perhaps it will be the great leap forward so badly needed in the deconstruction of the Mythology of Patriarchal domination, aka White Supremacy, although in the present Global Village, patriarchal domination is, shall we say, colorless, odorless, yet cunning and vile because some are addicted to this mythology that is often hidden in the deep structure of tribal, national, cultural, religious and political mythology and ritual.
No matter what, the matter of sexual improprieties is symptomatic of a most pervasive toxic condition known as white supremacy, yet can appear in white face, black face, brown and yellow faces. Diop would say the Southern Cradle, African/Asian, version was not as toxic as the Northern Cradle patriarchal mythology. The Kemetic myth/ritual was grounded in the male/female balance or Maa'at, a recognition of the equality of god and goddess, man and woman.
In the Maa'at concept, inheritance was matriliniel or through the mother. We say Mama's baby, Daddy's maybe! But even matrilineal descent did not prevent struggle over what son of which mother shall assume the throne? For a current example of this myth/ritual crisis or quagmire, look at the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia: two thousands princes vying for the throne with traditional court intrigue, often violent struggle over hesitance rights/rites. The crown prince has jailed his royal opposition at the elegant Ritz Hotel. As per women, the crown prince says they can drive cars soon.
We cannot await the endgame of the crown prince.
Shall we look at the situation in Zimbabwe with the 93 year old president for life, stuck in the pre-colonial sacred king for life myth/ritual? The old snake did resign and now it is possible Zimbabwe will strive forward in harmony with the global deconstruction of the white supremacy patriarchal mythology, for the African patriarchal system must also be broken and smashed despite the dysfuctional feminine balance of Maa'at, alas, shall we call it a simple case of not listening to our women, queens,sisters, wives, partners, co-revolutionaries, thus leading to domestic and political chaos, destabilization, migration, flight, as Destruction of African Civilization taught us. Chancellor Williams added other factors such as drought, famine, struggle over grazing rights, etc that lead to migration as the central theme in Pan African culture, including and most especially North American Africans who run north, south, east and west to no avail in our freedom quest. White Supremacy has met us at every turn, every nook and cranny, again, it is cunning and vile!
Dr. Nathan Hare says,"...Richard Wright concluded that 'flight' was the theme of the black males existence, always 'on the run,' trying to get and keep a foot outside the cage.'"
But how great is the difference between Northern and Southern Cradle sexual rights/rites? No matter what color, nation, suffering patriarchal addiction, men of power and men with no power, become delusional and feel they have rights and privileges to women's bodies that they don't have.
Now there are women often willing to do any means necessary to become a Star! For sure, many women may have been consensual initially but did not like the outcome of the sexual encounter so they are claiming sexual assault; some were gold diggers from the git!
Surely some of these women simply encountered a monster who was so psychotic and delusional with power that he became demonic and satanic, no longer human in thinking that he could dominate and violate the bodies of men, women and children.
Again, this is a global phenomenon today, not local, regional, national, and it transcends race and class, and yes, gender! This toxicity is pervasive in all institutions,e.g., political, military, educational, media, religious, and most especially the daily round in the houses of husbands, wives and partners, no matter what gender configuration. See my Parable Marry A Tree and Parable of Why I talk with Cows, Wisdom of Plato Negro, parables and fables, Marvin X,Black Bird Press, Berkeley CA. 2012.
Our most esteemed historian, J.A. Rogers, in Africa's Gift to America, delineated Northern Cradle White Supremacy patriarchal domination and the resultant psycho-social pathology exhibited in the behavior of the Pilgrims, eventually accompanied by the scum of Europe, rejected, despised sociopaths that emptied the jails ad prisons just as Castro sent boatloads of criminals to the US a few years ago.
North American Africans suffer oppression by the worse human beings one can imagine! And you think they are the good guys in the white hats!
The good guys in the white hats have been exposed by their women and children, men as well, as vipers, cobras and other snakes of the jungle. We would think that men of means would have themselves and their houses, including play houses, together, yet in the patriarchal mythology a man seeks to put his penis is every hole, even a hole in the ground. He is, as we have seen, totally out of control, psychotic or experiencing a break with reality.
Let me confess my guilt! When I taught drama at a certain college, one student told me, "Marvin, I ain't giving you no pussy because you got enough pussy already!" And she was right. How much does a man need? Now we know men do have different bio-chemistry, so we cannot say there should be a limit! But we can say nothing should be taken from anyone who doesn't want to give it! This is a violation.
How many men will stand to say I am guilty of sexual, verbal and emotional assault on women, including my wives, girlfriends, mistresses and sex workers!
I, Marvin X/El Muhajir, stand as guilty. But one of my former wives told me, "You have suffered enough, you have paid your dues. I have forgiven you, so sit on your throne without feeling guilty! Osiris is he who takes the throne, so take the throne!"
In this discussion, let us move pass the holy men who have never violated women, and of course never lusted in their hearts, minds or souls,i.e., never looked at a beautiful woman walking pass and lost it; yes, in the presence of his wife who often witnessed his reckless eyeballing! Surely this is lust and total disrespect of the wife. Don't no wife want hernigguh looking at another woman because in the white supremacy patriarchal culture, and globally speaking as well, their marriage is a contract of chattel real, i.e., personal property agreement. I am your slave and you are my slave for life! If you violate our vows and betray our trust, nigguh I will kill you! Now nigguh what?
Globally, marriage is an agreement between two people. In reality, marriage is a contract of two families coming together and blood will ultimately tie them together, thus marriage transcends the couple. This unity of families can be a great force in making a cohesive society.
But the marginalized sacred king or man of power, deludes himself beyond family and blood relations, trampling on marriage and blood relations because his actions are incestuous thus psychotic. If he is dual diagnosed, i.e., suffering mental illness and drug abuse, there is no telling how far his psychosis will take him into the black hole or white hole or any hole.
If he was a sexually abused child, it is almost a simple matter for him to repeat learned behavior, for him to violate the bodies of any and everyone, man, woman and/or child. Sometimes to violate others is a kind of revenge, an attempt to get even with the world.
Love is totally lost in this equation, no matter the person's social sphere, whether art, spirituality, economics, politics, after all, the psychopathy is full blown, severe and thus out of control. The person is now a danger to himself and others and must ultimately be confined!
For those mild and moderate sexual assaulters, let us get a mental grip that we own ourselves only and a woman's body is hers to give or not depending on her feelings and it is her prerogative to change her mind. Has a woman ever told you, "Oh, I was going to give some pussy until you said that, now I ain't givin' up shit, you got to go!"
Mao said it best in his Red Book, "Do Not Take Liberties With Women!"
If a woman truly respects you and desires you as a wonderful human being, surely she will give herself to you willingly, there will be no need to force. And why would you want something that does not desire you?
Shall we ask Everyman how many women did he truly enjoy? How many does he think enjoyed him? We never bother to ask the girl/woman if she has she suffered sexual trauma? Is the trauma mild, moderate or severe? She will tell you and it may blow your mind, yet answer all those questions about the person you claim you love.
This trending issue I long ago called The Mythology of Pussy and Dick, BBP, 2009. This matter is not a headless monster but is going for the jugular vain of white supremacy capitalism and slavery.
This sexual pathology is only a symptom, the root of the problem lies in the deep structure, yes, in the DNA, of those enjoying the surplus capital and white privileges of Northern Cradle European Patriarchal Mythology. As Dr. Nathan Hare says we, North American Africans suffer addiction to white supremacy type II, the Northern Cradle Europeans suffer type I.
The Ordeal by Fire
It has been long understood that men, women and children will put themselves on the casting couch of sexual depravity to advance their careers. I call it the Ordeal by Fire in the house of the shaman, and it can be dreadful for the neophyte caught in this rite of passage. The ordeal by fire may include sexual depravity, or any other ritual to debase the supplicant to recognize he/she is entering a sacred ritual order and you either pass or fail. Yes, career advancement is the mission many have been on when facing the casting couch, not only in Hollywood but globally. Some play the game and advance to higher ground, never looking around at the debauchery until now. But have no doubt the sexual abuse of men, women and children has a lasting effect and recovery is the order of the day, although some may be constitutionally unable to recover because their trauma was severe. One brother said such trauma victims are sometimes unfixable! We pray this is not so.
Let this moment be a critical step in the liberation of human beings from the animal plane. Let us dispose our negrocities (Amiri Baraka term) to enter the Upper Room of our Father's House and Mother's House with many mansions, an abundance of good, wherein rivers flow....
--Marvin X/El Muhajir
11/21/17
Harvey is Everyman, part one "FIND ME ONE RIGHTEOUS MAN AND I WILL SAVE THE WHOLE TOWN!"--GOD We must begin this discussion in the deep structure of human myth/ritual, in the foundation of culture and socialization. We must examine the manhood and womanhood rites of passage for a clearer understanding of why men and women are caught in this global quagmire of sexual pathology now being exposed as Pandora's box has never seen. And yet we cannot put all the blame on Hollywood, even though Hollywood is one of the chief myth makers in the modern world. Thus the sexual improprieties can be seen as the rite of passage for those neophytes seeking advancement in the medium of film, to become the new high priest and priestess of the celluloid world of make believe.
And so the neophytes must appropriately endure the ordeal by fire to prove themselves worthy of advancement. Sexual debasement thus is a well known procedure in most myth-ritual based societies and institutions, whether tribal, religious, fraternal and sororal. Even the marriage rite began with having sex with the bride but has been reduced to kissing the bride. The prostitute evolved from the temple priestess who traded sexual favors for strangers who in turn gave love offerings to the temple god, the priest and herself. At some point in time immemorial the priestess's activity was deemed immoral, although we know the "church ho'" is yet alive and well today. And the priest/preacher/imam/Babalawo, et al., is yet known to take full advantage of his position as chief of the spiritual order,i.e., the ritual master.
As per sex with boys in the Catholic Church, we know it is an economic rather than sexual matter. In order to preserve property in the name of the Church, marriage had to be banned to prevent inheritance from flowing outside the church. Boys were sacrificed on the altar of economic prosperity and longevity. On the fifth century anniversary of the Protestant Reformation of Martin Luther, we know one of his objections was Papal sex with boys, along with his main objection, paying one's way into heaven
Let's be fair and balanced, Muslims have long been known for their right/rite to have sex with boys, most recently in madrassas or religious schools. The US has allowed soldiers in the Afghanistan army to have sex with boys since it is their cultural and religious rite/right! Of course the glaring contradiction is the Islamic ban against homosexuality, including beheading and/or stoning to death. This latter sentence is given to women for adultery, but not men. Such gender discrimination is obviously the product of the patriarchal society. Alas, this entire discussion is about the myth/rituals embedded in patriarchal culture and socialization.
We say Harvey is Everyman because almost every man is socialized in patriarchal culture! No matter than many of our children are raised in matrifocal households, i.e., mother in authority, she is herself a victim of patriarchal mythology and socialization and thus either consciously or unconsciously transmits this culture to her sons and daughters. When she tells her son to be a man, what is she talking about except the patriarchal definition of manhood. The problem today is that when the son is so violently hostile to his absent and abandoned father, he often emulates the feminine behavior of his mother, verbally and physically in hand gestures and gait, and yet we heard this from a young man at a recovery meeting of men, "Let me say this, some of my friends you might think are gay but they are not gay, they just sound gay because they have never heard a man's voice!"
It is not simply a matter of pathology with men of power, after all, we grew up powerless in the hood yet engaging in gang rape we called "pulling a train on a bitch." And this occurred every Sunday at the movie theatre, sometimes behind the screen while the film was showing, then afterward as we crossed the tracks going home, literally on or near the freight trains. This was a cultural phenomena that seemed absolutely normal to us, as normal as beating up Mexicans in the movie house men's restroom during intermission, not because we hated Latinos but because they were a reasonable facsimile of the white boy who would/did not attend White's Theatre that was for blacks and Latinos only. Few whites went to White's Theatre!
But the sociology of sexual pathology was pervasive in our young adult male/female relationships, after all, did we not own our mates and they owned us, thus a perfect prescription for violence upon any violation of chattel (personal, i.e., sexual) property rights/rites.
Of course this madness continued into our marriage rites, especially after sexual rites/rights were codified with death do us part! In the patriarchal social psychology, men were absolutely convinced they now owned the pussy and must have it at their beck and call. The wife had no choice in this matter since the man was paying the cost to be the boss, yes, he was paying his pussy bill, thus he owned the pussy and could go in and out as he pleased, no matter if and when the poor wife cried, "Can you let my pussy rest for 24 hours, just 24 hours, Baby, please let my pussy rest!"
His response was the Cave Man Supreme, "Bitch, you better hurry up and give me some of your good pussy! I don't want to hear bout yo pussy need a rest!"
Por favor, let us go global with this madness: we pray for the women of the world at this hour. In this entire discussion, we are tempered by the fact we have three daughters and now granddaughters, not to mention we have six sisters, and most importantly, the mothers of my children, who themselves were victims of my patriarchal madness. I bow down in praise to the wonderful mothers of my children, Patricia, Barbara and Nisa, and the other women partners in my life who endured my psycho-pathology that sometimes became physical. I know I am truly blessed to have been in relationship with some of the most beautiful, spiritual and intelligent women any man could want on this earth!. I give honor and praise to all the women in my life! They were all angelic, if anything, I was the devil!
Ok, I am known for glaring generalizations, hyperbole, but in truth, we know every man is not Harvey, that there are many men who've never contemplated the imaginings of Harvey and his ilk, but surely we know men of power throughout the world have enacted Harvey's ritual of sexual impropriety at every possible moment, whether in the arts, academia, religion, corporation, fraternity, home life or any other social situation.
--continued
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2017
The Mythology of Pussy and Dick, Expanded Version, Contents
Harvey Weinstein and the Mythology of Pussy and Dick by Marvin X
The matter of sexual improprieties transcends patriarchal culture, race and gender into pure power relationships between human beings. Yes, sexual improprieties are pervasive in the arts, academia, the corporate workplace, in all religions and every other social institution and/or environment. As per Hollywood and the casting couch, let us be honest, Hollywood is not the only villain, but all the arts: even in the Black Arts Movement, and alas, in the Black Liberation Movement, such sexual improprieties were pervasive, and I repeat, in academia as well, including Black studies, along with all other academic studies.When I taught English at a certain university and a student complained to my dean, and after I denied all charges, the dean made me agree to have sexual encounters with grad students only, leave the freshman girls alone. She noted that I had been under surveillance and was observed in a restaurant having dinner with the freshman student who complained about my sexual behavior as an instructor.
As a writer, director, producer, actor and lecturer and visiting professor in academia, I took full advantage of my position saturated in male privilege. If Harvey Weinstein is guilty, let me be hyperbolic: so is every man. As I examine global patriarchal culture, I conclude men are predators, women are prey. In war, we know men are expendable and disposable but women are booty or spoils of war.
But as I said at the outset, sexual domination transcends gender. We have known gay men in theatre who demanded sexual liberties with young gay actors or said in classical language, demanded the young brothers join them on the casting couch. And don't think for a moment lesbian women in the arts do not take full advantage of their power positions as per young females, demanding sexual improprieties for career advancement. Of course this madness goes on in the corporate workplace.
The American South has a sordid history of black women performing sexual acts to keep their jobs, alas, with full knowledge of their husbands! As they say in Houston, Texas, "You better AX somebody!" And not to put this madness on the "Dirty South," years ago Jet Magazine (the Negro Bible), revealed a great percentage of Black women confessed to having sex with the boss on the job!
This entire matter is about power and privilege, not gender, although in the majority global patriarchal culture, men are the villains, though other genders are on the rise. Again, this is a global pandemic that encompasses all religions, no matter Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Yoruba, Hindu, et al. Certainly, we must note the pedophilia in the Catholic church, Muslim madrassas, Yoruba manhood training rites, etc. It is well known America allows Afghanistan soldiers to have sexual relations with young boys as a cultural rite.
And it well known 30% of USA soldiers are victims of rape, alas, male and female! I asked a former female member of the US Army, why and how was she violated since she was armed when she was raped, she replied, "We are not trained to retaliate!"
So the Mythology of Pussy and Dick continues and no solution is in sight as long as the patriarchal culture dominates, and again, it is quite doubtful the matriarchal culture will deconstruct this abomination. Alas, did not Hillary Clinton, socalled champion of women's rights, defend her husband's sexual improprieties and try to destroy the women he debased? So much for the feminine mystique!
Without the total destruction of mythological religiosity in all spiritual institutions, along with the deconstruction of white supremacy capitalism and its newborn babe globalism that transcends racism, pathological sexual relations shall persist! There is a light at the end of the tunnel: women will soon be able to drive in Saudi Arabia!
--Marvin X/El Muhajir
10/10/17
Mythology of
Pussy and Dick
Collected prose and poetic writings on
the Mythology and Ritual of Sexuality
Marvin X
This book will be a great source by which young people can come to grips with their troubling sexuality. It will help move the internal conflicts from below the solar plexus to above the neck. For many young people, especially black men in their 20s and 30s, there is little more than hot amorphous vapor in that region. So-called urban lit is their bible in coming to grips with the violent urgings of their penis. I used to conceal my own risings with a jock strap. It took me sometime to train myself to sit still: running after a woman, any attractive woman, was an addictive impact on the soul. Your teachings in this matter is a kind of how-to book, much needed within our oppressed communities where inordinate violence is turned within, on our women, on our children, and our reckless unfulfilled manhood.
--Rudolph Lewis, Editor, Chickenbones.com
Comment
Brother and comrade Marvin,
As an artist i.e. truth teller-trail blazer you have always been cutting edge both in what you lived, experienced and the naked truth you bare in "emptying of Spirit out of itself" (as Hegel would put it) as did Trane's Offering. Very rare, and whether we all recognize it now or not we are fortunate to witness such openness and honesty, though it makes the smug uncomfortable in their fake comforts; show is the unessential masquerading as essential and therefore art as truth ripping off masks is often seen as dangerous expose.
I was reading Delores Nochi's Introduction to your new contribution, Mythology of Pussy and Dick: Toward Healthy Psychosocial Sexuality, and thinking of what she observed:
"Mythology of Pussy and Dick is a compilation of everything Marvin X has written on sexuality in America and the world. There are those who will miss this opportunity to receive wisdom from our brother because of the language he uses to describe the male and female anatomy, and his perceived objectification of women and men, and this is a tragedy because this information is crucial for men and women who are suffering from a psycho-linguistic crisis and inflicting actual violence upon lovers in their male/female and same gender loving relationships. These dysfunctional interactions are witnessed by children who are the next generation of couples...."
I agreed with her and at the same time recalled the fate of those who preceded you in this undertaking - for instance the social scientist and psychologist Wilhelm Reich e.g. The Function of the Orgasm, Sexual Revolution and Sex-Pol [he was thrown into an American federal prison and his books burned in 1956, he died in an American prison in 1957 http://en.wikipedia/wiki/Book_burning#Wilhelm_Reich.27s_publications_.28by_U.S._Food_and_Drug_Administration.29
Also I thought of Lenny Bruce: Bruce served in the navy during World War II (1942-45) and began performing stand-up comedy in 1946. As he gained popularity in New York night clubs, his brand of comedy shifted from impersonations to free-wheeling monologues satirizing religion and politics. He released several comedy albums and appeared occasionally on TV, especially as a guest of Steve Allen and Hugh Hefner. In 1961 he was arrested after a performance in San Francisco and charged with obscenity. Bruce was acquitted, but for the next few years he was frequently in trouble with the law for using raw language on stage -- a no-no back then. In 1964 he was convicted of obscenity in New York and jailed for a few months (in 2003 Governor George Pataki posthumously pardoned him). http://www.answers.com/topic/lenny-bruce .
Delores' take on the depth and honest language of your work also made me remember the radical 60s and the writings of early contemporary feminists, such as the analysis of sexual biology by Anne Koedt The Myth of Vaginal Orgasm http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/CWLUArchive/vaginalmyth.html
But more directly your artistic style and the Avante-Garde revolutionary love and rebellion poetry and music of Archie Shepp - in particular his Blase http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpE9SN81H6E
So! Your latest contribution here is evidence that the struggle continues! Thanks and stay strong!
Lil Joe
Introduction
Delores Nochi
Mythology of Pussy and Dick is a compilation of everything Marvin X has written on psychosocial sexuality in America and the world: domestic and partner violence, rape, honor killings, stoning of women, female genital circumcision, sexual anorexia, verbal and emotional abuse, manhood and womanhood rites of passage. There are those who will miss this opportunity to receive wisdom from our brother because of the language he uses to describe the male and female anatomy, his perceived objectification of women and men, and this is a tragedy because this information is crucial for men and women who are suffering a psycho-linguistic crisis and inflicting actual violence upon lovers in their male/female and same gender loving relationships. These dysfunctional interactions are witnessed by children who are the next generation of couples.They will emulate what they see elders enact.
The same people who dare judge his choice of words, his linguistic dexterity, are guilty of lingering in the comfort of their bedrooms watching shows on big screen TVs that depict graphic details of violence perpetrated against others, especially women, yet they call it entertainment. If children learn more from what they see than what we tell them, how will they process and act upon the continued sexual chaos that is manifested in our families and society?
The author has proven himself to be a leader and a teacher who has the best interest of the community at heart. Not only does he teach almost daily at his Academy of Da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland, but often on national book tours, speaking at such colleges and universities as Morehouse, Spelman, Howard, University of Arkansas, University of Virginia, Penn State, Temple University, Medgar Evers College, San Francisco State University, UC Berkeley, Laney and Merritt in Oakland. He speaks truth with language that can be understood by the least of us and the best of us. His credentials includes brief tenure at Fresno State University , 1969, University of California , Berkeley , 1972, Mills College , 1972, San Francisco State University , 1974, University of California , San Diego , 1975, University of Nevada , Reno , 1979.
He embraced the system and defied the system! Oriented in the Muslim tradition of polygamy or plural marriage (see his play In the Name of Love, Laney College Theater production 1981); he has conquered his own demons and held his own with associated intellectuals and psychopaths.See his memoir of Eldridge Cleaver: My friend the Devil, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 1979.
We all have war stories about relationships gone bad. The difference between Marvin X and the rest of us is that Marvin X has lived what he is writing about, survived it and is willing to talk about it, and holds nothing back, narrated in language that will grab your attention and cause an epileptic seizure!.Each story is rich with commentary which speaks to society’s attitudes about male/ female relationships: rape, athletes, toxic love, crack house sex, women without men, language of love, religious persecution of women (a woman stoned); gay and lesbian youth, same sex marriage, and much more…
His parables are ingenious commentary about events in real time. If you are a follower of his blogs, then you know with each daily entry he not only provides us with happenings locally and nationally, but walks us through events from a historical and global perspective.See www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com and www.parablesandfablesofmarvinx.blogspot.com.
Marvin X has chosen to sensitize our society by using words like pussy and dick. Language is fluid and if its primary use is communication, and if through words one fails to hit the target, then what is the point? It may be that the author is before his time, and in future generations, pussy and dick will become words of endearment, not relegated to the present negative connotations. Perhaps it will become a mantra chanted over and over as a pre-sex ritual. Why not? Lord knows we could use some more effective ways to get beyond reckless abandonment.
In his essay, The Maid, the Ho, the Cook, Marvin X demonstrates his tender side. Lil Joe describes this story as “One of the most beautiful pieces about real love I’ve ever read. The image of ‘crack-heads’ as scandalous and without human dignity is destroyed by Marvin’s recollection of this sister with whom he fell in love”. Because the object of MX’s affection is a whore, there are those, and you know who you are, who will lose the essence of this story which addresses real feelings and real interactions between a man and a woman. Perhaps, you have only loved when it was safe to do so. But all of us who have loved surely know that passion and feelings can at times be both spontaneous and unsolicited.
Is Marvin X the only courageous one among us who dares to “tell the truth and shame the devil”?
--Delores Nochi Cooper
Foreword
Sexuality is determined by biology and social psychology. In the socialization of humans, mythology plays a critical role in manhood and womanhood training rites. Mythology lies in the deep structure of the mental process, yet mythical notions, stories, tales, ideas, values are clearly present in the surface structure of human behavior. Ritual behavior is simply the enactment of mythology, the stories of the tribe, the values, mores, manners, morals. Myths prescribe the acceptable and the forbidden , the sacred and the profane.
Of course the Shaman often transcends tribal mythology to extend the narrative, take it to a higher level, much like a Coltrane solo, or a Miles Davis tune, connected to the past but very much into the present and future, the unknown, into the space of fear and dread, and yet it is beautiful, if we go there with Trane, Miles, Dolphy and my mentor and associate, Sun Ra. So mythology must be fluid, dynamic. There comes a time when old myths must be discarded, thrown into the dustbin of history. And so it is with the patriarchy or myth of male domination.
In the patriarchal or male dominated society, men are taught they own women, that women are their personal property or chattel real, as opposed to real estate, i.e., land, buildings. Isn't it ironic that a people who are descendants of chattel slaves would continue in the tradition upon liberation, that they would perpetuate relationship slavery, i.e., marriage, girlfriend, boyfriend.
I don't want to own nobody and surely don't want anyone to own me. Imagine, the other day a brother said, "My pussy is at home!" We tried to tell him, first of all, he doesn't have a pussy, his woman has a pussy, so his pussy ain't at home. And imagine when he arrives home and "his pussy" is gone. When he locates "his pussy" will he be happy, sad, angry, violent, for why wasn't his pussy at home, why did it leave, or does it have the right to leave? Maybe the sister was with her friends, telling them, "Damn, ya'll, I got to go home to give that nigguh some pussy." They reply, "Girl, you ain't gotta do that, that's yo pussy, girl!"
In this atmosphere, women can be verbally, emotionally and physically and sexually abused. They can be beaten and killed for violating the man's so-called ownership of their bodies, minds and souls.
Clearly, there is absolutely no difference in a woman stoned to death in a Muslim society and shot to death in a Christian society because of her supposed adultery and/or infidelity. Of course, these days women are shooting the men to death for their freedom of expression or socalled sexual transgressions.
The man is more often than not afforded hero status in Muslim and Christian society for executing "honor killings" because he was disrespected by "his" woman. These days women are exercising their right to retaliate on the man for his indiscretions since marriage myths and rites suggest ownership by both parties, though man has the ultimate authority in the patriarchal society.
Women are now attending court mandated anger management classes and receiving convictions for assault and/or homicide in the name of love. Tina asked what does love have to do with it? I ask, what kind of love is this--and if this is love I don't want it! I lost an eye in a "loving" relationship.
If we are to move toward healthy psychosocial sexuality, we must examine the myths we live by. We may discover these myths are toxic, reactionary and detrimental to our psychosocial health. We may need to transform and/or radicalize these myths/rituals.
In the present era of spiritual consciousness, we cannot behave as cave men and women. We cannot continue rearing little cave children whose behavior befits the Stone Age, bereft of compassion, willing to kill at the drop of a hat because someone dissed them, especially their girlfriend who gave up "her pussy" to a friend or stranger.
We must jump out of the box of ignorance, jealousy, envy, religiosity, narrow mindedness, insecurity and the world of make believe. We do not own other human beings. This is called slavery by any word. Partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, must dispel and discard mythical notions of ownership and domination.
Our bodies are the temple of God, not the property of another. No attachments but to God! We are slaves or servants of God, Abdullah (we are all Abdullah, the servant of God). This is the attitude of radical spiritual consciousness. No one owns us but God. Our life and death are for God. We are thus free to do as we will since we exist in God and God exists in us. We are indivisible from God, thus we are God, we are Divine. Man is divine, woman is divine. We are equal beings in the temple of God and the temple of God is the universe, and all in creation is of God, by God and for God.
If you desire to surrender yourself to your beloved, this is your rite/right. In love, it is indeed all for the beloved, love is the annihilation of self for the beloved. Yes, we lose our "self" in the beloved. In my play One Day in the Life, Karima says, "I sacrificed everything for you, but you blew it buddy, I'm through with you!"
We pray you shall do the will of God in your relationships. If you don't, no one can judge you but God, especially the God in you or the self accusing spirit! Certainly, no one has the right to beat or kill you, stone you to death, shoot you in the head. Nor does anyone have the right to verbally or emotionally abuse you because of your behavior that may, from time to time, cross the line of propriety. And as per sexual transgressions, pussy and dick ain't nothing but a muscle, so why are you tripping over flesh, a muscle?
Your pussy belongs to you, your dick belongs to you and you alone. It is attached to you, not your boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, husband, wife, lover, trick! Human beings are subject to do anything during the course of a day, and you are free to do so. Vows of fidelity must be thrown into the dustbin of history, along with Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, and the return of a dead man after two thousand years.
If you persist in your wretchedness, ignorance and world of make believe that you own someone's pussy and dick, your mental health shall suffer along with the general condition of society that is rapidly heading to the precipice as we write. The mental hospitals, prisons and jails shall remain full of those partner abusers guilty of assault and/or homicide.
We urge you to free yourself from the prison of your mind based on primitive mythological notions of ownership and domination. Indeed, love the one ya wit, but you don't own them. You can't force them to do anything.
Why can't we just get along, Rodney King asked? Why can't we love and be loved in return? Why must we be ugly to each other, especially in the name of love? Why can't we love without the negativity? Why must we hurt the one we love, and yet, as Dr. Nathan Hare says, there can be no master without one willing to be the slave. Just as I cannot love you unless you allow me to love you, I cannot hurt you unless you allow me to hurt you.
Love begins with self love. If and when you don't love yourself, you cannot love someone else. You can fake the funk for a time. But if you don't know yourself, you cannot know your partner and mate. You can be with them twenty, thirty and forty years, but you don't know them. This is why couples break up after ten, twenty, thirty years together. They never knew each other, they were faking the funk, but the funk caught up with them. Yes, there was abuse because in their ignorance they first abused themselves, then abused their mate or partner simply because they never followed their own bliss or purpose as Joseph Campbell taught us. Nancy Wilson said, "I Never Been To Me!"
Indeed, life is about getting to the real you, your mission and purpose. When you cannot achieve this, in your frustration, you are bound to oppress and dominate your mate and those you love. Sadly, you have been programmed by the American or Western mythology of Christianity and Capitalism. You are thus the man and woman in the box. You may deny you are in the box, yet your very existence , and clearly your behavior with your mate is evidence you are inside the box of Christianity and Capitalism. In short, you are a slave, albeit a free slave, but a slave none the less. In turn, you desire to enslave your mate and children--Capitalism has programmed you to desire cheap trinkets, things and more things, conspicuous consumption, materialism, the world of make believe.
Yet with your materialism, you have not followed your bliss, you are totally devoid of spiritual consciousness. You may be religious, yet your practice of religion is a desire for prosperity that would be alien to Mary's baby! You do not desire to liberate the captives, help the poor, the broken hearted, the hungry, the homeless. You are arrogant and wicked wearing your rocks, animal skins and plastic clothes. Yet you are not happy, nor is your mate. Even your children are little assholes, ungrateful bastards!
You hide the pain by medicating yourself with drugs, sex, video and internet games, religiosity and other escapism from your life of nothingness and dread.
We pray one day you shall awaken and throw off the chains on your brain, throw off the oppressive mythology of Christianity and Capitalism, or any other oppressive religion, including Islam, or any ideology that promotes pie in the sky or other worldism, escapism from facing reality with a radical agenda that is about seizing power from the blood suckers of the poor, the global bandits who promote the world of make believe.
How can you be at peace with yourself and your mate while you enjoy the benefits of a society that spends a trillion dollars per year to commit mass murder around the world to perpetuate a world of make believe, to keep people deaf, dumb and blind, consuming trinkets that send them directly to Yacoub's workers: the doctor, nurse and undertaker.
It is this mythological psychosocial order that has you drunk with thinking you must own and oppress somebody, especially those you supposedly love and cherish. Jump out of the box--free yourself, your mate and your children. Strive toward a radical spirituality that oppresses no one, but frees everyone. Love should not be slavery. Free your mind, free your mate, free humanity.
--Marvin X
9/9/10
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Foreword
Acknowledgment
Myth Defined
What is Love
Part One: Mythology of Pussy and Dick
Tiger Woods
Don’t say Pussy
Insanity of Sex
HIV/AIDS
Dick Slaves
Black Woman’s Tit KOs America
Sex
Sex and Race
The White Woman
In Search of My Soul Sister
Gender Studies at Academy of Da Corner
Part Two: Marriage and Family
You Don’t Know Me
Monogamy
Polygamy
Polyandry
The Other Woman
Men
For the Men
Women
For the Women
Parable of Value
Parable of a Real Woman
Parable of the Pit Bull
Parable of Woman at the Well
Parable of Woman in the Box
Parable of the Bitter Bitch
Children
Youth
Memorial Day (for young brothers)
Poem for Young Mothers
Parable of Family
Parable of the Baby Carriage
Parable of the Old Lovers
Part Three: Rape and Violence
Parable of Rape
VIP Nigguhs and Rape
Woman Stoned to Death
Confession of a Wife Beater
Parable of a Gangsta
Parable of the Dick and Gun
A Pan African Love Story
Toxic Love
Part Four: Prostitution
Same Sex Marriage, Straight Men and Prostitution
Negro Psychosocial Sexuality in the Post-Crack Society
Crack House Sex
The Maid, the Ho, the Cook
Pay the Ho to Go
Fillmore Slim on Pimpin
Part Five: Gay/Lesbian
Same Sex Marriage and Black Liberation
Love Letter to Gay and Lesbian Youth
Parable of Women without Men
Fable of Rooster and Hen
Part Six: Creativity and Sexuality
Poetically Gay
Poetic Sexuality
Poetics of Love
Part Seven: Reviews
Wounded in the House of a Friend, Sonia Sanchez
Political and Sexual Anorexia, Dr. Julia Hare
Mama at Twilight, Ayodele Nzingha
Bathroom Graffitti Queen, Opal Palmer Adisa
How to Find a BMW (Black Man Working), Dr. Julia Hare
Conclusion
Toward the Language of Love
Parable of the Moment
Parable of Letting Go
Reconciliation
Joy and Happiness
Order your copy from Black Bird Press, Call 510-200-4164 mxjackmon@gmail.com
Rev. Jesse Jackson, 76, reveals he has Parkinson’s disease
byDan Corey
Prominent civil rights activist the Rev. Jesse Jackson has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, he announced Friday. “My family and I began to notice changes about three years ago,” Jackson, 76, said in a statement. “After a battery of tests, my physicians identified the issue as Parkinson's disease, a disease that bested my father.” A neurological disorder with no known cure, Parkinson’s is commonly associated with tremors, stiffness and difficulty with walking and balancing.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson (L) and Rev. Michael Pfleger carry crosses as they march against gun violence on Michigan Avenue on December 31, 2016, in Chicago. Scott Olson / Getty Images
Northwestern Medicine in Chicago said in a statement that Jackson was diagnosed with the disease in 2015 and has been treated as an outpatient in the years since. Congressman Danny Davis, D-Chicago, told NBC Chicago that those who have been close to Jackson recently "have noticed some of the signs." Jackson also said that “recognition of the effects of this disease on me has been painful” and that he has “been slow to grasp the gravity of it.” Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina, and later became known for participating in civil rights demonstrations alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He later ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988. Related: Gut Bacteria May Affect Parkinson’s, Study Finds In 1999, Jackson was credited with successfully negotiating the release of three U.S. soldiers who were held in Yugoslavia, and was awarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for those efforts from President Bill Clinton in 2000. “I know Jesse Jackson will keep hope alive as he battles Parkinson’s disease and continues his tireless commitment to justice and civil rights,” Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., said on Twitter. “Praying for him and his family.” In an Instagram video, the Rev. Al Sharpton said he spent the last few days with Jackson and others in New York and reflected on his impact on American politics and civil rights movement. “As I watched him, I thought about the greatness of this man,” Sharpton, an MSNBC host, said in the video. “How he continued Martin Luther King’s movement for justice, how he cemented it in the North and made the King movement truly national … He changed the nation, he served in ways he never got credit. No one in our lifetime served longer and stronger. We pray for him, because he’s given his life for us.”
Rev. Jesse Jackson reacts after projections show that Sen. Barack Obama will be elected to serve as the next president during a gathering in Grant Park on November 4, 2008, in Chicago. Joe Raedle / Getty Images
Jackson described his Parkinson’s diagnosis as “a signal that I must make lifestyle changes and dedicate myself to physical therapy in hopes of slowing the disease's progression.” “It is an opportunity for me to use my voice to help in finding a cure for a disease that afflicts 7 to 10 million worldwide,” he said in a statement. “Some 60,000 Americans are diagnosed with Parkinson’s every year.” Although Parkinson’s is considered to be the most complex disease in medicine, it is also very treatable, Dr. Michael Okun, the national medical director for the Parkinson’s Foundation and chair of the University of Florida's neurology department, told NBC News. “It’s pretty common for 76-year-old men to have Parkinson’s disease,” Okun said. “As the population ages, we’re going to see more and more people, particularly men, diagnosed with Parkinson’s.” Related: How Patients Are Using Cycling to Slow Down Parkinson's Jackson’s plan to combat Parkinson’s is likely to help slow the progression of his symptoms, but won’t cure the disease, NBC News medical correspondent Dr. John Torres said. Jackson already has the two major risk factors for Parkinson’s disease, Torres said. “Basically he’s got an advanced age, and he’s got a family history of Parkinson’s, so that’s going to make his outlook worse,” Torres said. “What’s going to make it better is more physical activity, family and social support and appropriate medication to slow the symptoms. But eventually the disease going to catch up with him.” Parkinson’s patients typically live for six to 22 more years after their initial diagnosis. Most recently, Jackson spoke out against President Donald Trump’s proposed wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, comparing Latinos and Mexicans who would help build it to “blacks building slave ships.” He also urged Hispanics and communities of color to unite under shared values. Jackson also spoke about the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, generating a national conversation about race relations with law enforcement.
Remember the time when the Berkeley Flea Market was the chief market place of North American Africans and Africans from the Diaspora? Remember when it was the crossroads of Pan African culture in the Bay? Well, if vendors and shoppers don't rush to keep it alive, it is in serious danger of closing down. The non-profit corporation which operates the Flea Market at the ASHBY BART Station are threatening to close the market on Sundays because they cannot afford the expense of Sundays due to the low turnout of vendors and customers. A petition circulated demanded it remain open on Sundays but it is a business and no business can remain operating in the red! This is an economic reality.
Of course we know gentrification or ethnic cleansing has decimated the North American population in Berkeley, the Bay Area and throughout the US. Thus it is no surprise the ASHBY Flea Market is in dire straights. But we think it can be resuscitated with Pan African Unity, otherwise it will join the dustbin of history of other cultural/economic districts such as West Oakland and the Fillmore in San Francisco.
ASHBY Flea Market organizers called upon Oakland poet/playwright/organizer/planner Marvin X and the Black Arts Movement Cultural and Business District (BAMBD) planners to assist in a revival of the Berkeley Flea Market. The BAMBD planners have agreed to help in the resuscitation of the market so vital to Berkeley's Pan African identity, even though BAMBD planners realize the ASHBY Flea Market may suffer a fate similar to the BAMBD unless there are investment partnership agreements with Berkeley developers who eye the flea market space as ideal for expanding the long planned Berkeley corridor from downtown Berkeley through the Lorin District to downtown Oakland which will erase the traditional North American African presence in South Berkeley. Alas, this is why the cause is lost unless North American Africans and those of the Diaspora unite in Pan African unity to push back those reactionary pseudo liberal whites who have no qualms about further displacement of North American Africans in Berkeley. For a clearer perspective on how North American Africans view their situation, we suggest they check in with Berkeley NAACP president Al Mansour who has described the fight for space and place as ethnic cleansing, to the utter dismay of Berkeley's pseudo liberal whites. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, said "I'd rather deal with the KKK than pseudo white liberals.!"
The BAMB will do all we can to keep the ASHBY Flea Market alive as a symbol and reality of North American African cultural and economic identity and independence. But your help is needed as vendors, cultural workers, artists and customers. We are begging you to vend at the ASHBY Flea Market; we are begging you to shop at the market in the name of self-determination and cooperative economics. Let's bring this cultural and economic entity back to it's former glory as the cross-roads of Bay Area cultural livelihood!
At present, other ethnic groups benefit from our consumerism addiction of spending with other than our own kind, even at the ASHBY Flea Market. There are a plethora of ethnic groups who sell to us but will never buy from us. This has got to stop. I talk about this in my Parable of the Donkey. North American Africans are the donkey of the world: any ethnic group can set up shop in our community and prosper, send money back to their home countries while we go down down down.
I was elated this morning at the ASHBY Flea Market when I purchased coffee and peace cobbler from a sister and she gave me change with bills marked with red, black and green, the colors of the Pan African nation. She said her mother had told her to mark bills in this manner. I informed her I shall mark all my bills the same way.
In conversation with the Flea Market organizers, they told me to celebrate Black History Month every month. I agreed to do so in our newspaper The Movement. After all, we are not Black/African in February, but 24/7, so we shall do so in our newspaper beginning with the March issue, celebrating Herstory Month.
Quitta, Prosperity and Marvin X at his Wake Up Booth, Berkeley Flea Market
Marvin X fans at the Berkeley Flea Market
Marvin X teaches at the berkeley flea market, sells his books and newspaper The Movement
On the roadside a man was selling trinkets and gadgets of every kind, rocks, shells, skins, electronic equipment, giant screen televisions, Ipads, Ipods, blackberries, redberries, even bodies and the souls of men were for sale.
Stopping by was a fleet of Mercedes full of kings, prime ministers and presidents for life. They fought each other on the roadside for the precious rocks and metals, animal skins, even wigs and huge plastic containers of bleaching cream, a precious mineral for their wives--their body guards pointing AK47s at each other to get first choice at the items from the world of make believe and conspicuous consumption.
One king only wanted high tech gadgets, although his kingdom was in drought and famine, had no clean water, but a dungeon full of political prisoners. A prime minister wanted precious animal skins for his many wives. A president for life wanted rocks and precious metals although his country was full of people with HIV/AIDS. There were no clinics, no drugs,no clean water, no clean needles, no doctors, no nurses in his nation. The doctors and nurses all went abroad to Europe where they could earn better wages.
Another prime minister bought virgins for his harem , so he could entertain foreign guests while they plundered his land and make electronic money transfers to Europe and America, one and the same, thank you God for this precious knowledge.
Business was so brisk there was a traffic jam on the road, mainly caused by the fleet of Mercedes competing for parking space along the road. Of course some of them double parked on the single lane road.
The bodyguards pulled their weapons on each other to secure parking space. If one Mercedes accidentally hit another, the guards would shoot at each playfully. A king would wave his hand out the window and they would stop shooting into the air.
When the vendors quickly sold out trinkets and gadgets, the VIPs were on their way, the fleet of cars leaving in a cloud of dust to their respective nations or to the nearest airport. --Marvin X 5/31/10
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The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Parables/fables 195 pages
39 Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there.
2 The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master.3 When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did,4 Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned.5 From the time he put him in charge of his household and of all that he owned, the Lord blessed the household of the Egyptian because of Joseph. The blessing of the Lord was on everything Potiphar had, both in the house and in the field.6 So Potiphar left everything he had in Joseph’s care; with Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate.
Now Joseph was well-built and handsome,7 and after a while his master’s wife took notice of Joseph and said, “Come to bed with me!”
8 But he refused. “With me in charge,” he told her, “my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care.9 No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?”10 And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her.
11 One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside.12 She caught him by his cloak and said, “Come to bed with me!” But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house.
13 When she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and had run out of the house,14 she called her household servants. “Look,” she said to them, “this Hebrew has been brought to us to make sport of us! He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed.15 When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.”
16 She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home.17 Then she told him this story: “That Hebrew slave you brought us came to me to make sport of me.18 But as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.”
19 When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, “This is how your slave treated me,” he burned with anger.20 Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined.
But while Joseph was there in the prison,21 the Lord was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden.22 So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there.23 The warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph’s care, because the Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did.
Dr. Nathan Hare, Sociologist, Clinical Psychoiogist photo Adam Turner
Comment from Dr. Nathan Hare
Who hasn’t been sexually harassed by a woman, I was sexually harassed by an adolescent female when I was six or seven years old, let alone now that I have become a man. I might cover it in passing ever so briefly in my memoirs I’m working on, if I can do it without taddling and the gods give me two or three more years free of earthly foolishness to fulfill.
Nathan Hare
Marvin X photo Adam Turner Marvin X Replies
Well, I was raped by a woman. She was one of my sister's friends who demanded I leave my sister's house and go home with her to be her boy-toy for the night. I was in bed but she demanded I get up and leave with her because, according to her, I had the best dick in the Bay, so I had to give it up. I was so disgusted being treated like a piece of meat! I have suffered trauma ever since. LOL
Dr. Nathan Hare Comments
I knowed it. I knew it was something. LOL
P.S. You said you were raped. Did you go willingly or were you forced. I know it wasn’t your idea and you had mixed emotions or mixed up feelings, but did she force you into the physiological potency of the moment, even if it wasn’t expressly or initially consensual? Just trying to keep it real.
Marvin X replies
My sister told her to leave me alone but she told my sister, "Fuck you bitch, yo brother going home with me." She pulled me out of my bed. "Git yo motherfuckin' ass up nigguh. I want some dick tonight!"
"The only thing to fear is fear itself."--President Roosevelt
No human progress is possible while people are paralyzed by fear. Fear is the great monster of the mind that prevents people from standing against oppression. Once the great monster fear is cut off, we see people can stand tall in the face of any challenge, whether from the guns of state terror, the tanks, police, jails, prisons and ultimately death. Overcoming the fear of death is the ultimate challenge of man. Once a man or woman accepts that his/her life and death are all for God, transcending the self, fear is discarded into the dustbin of history.
We see this occurring in North Africa and the Middle East at this hour. The people have cast off the illusion of fear and are standing tall against oppression from regimes long supported by American Imperialism. America has been the major arms supplier, the guns, bullets, poison gas, equipment for torture chambers and dungeons that were established to allow the most wicked and repressive regimes to flourish for the last forty years.
Let us be clear that America has a history of oppressing its own citizens, of filling their bodies and minds with fear, of reducing them from Kunta Kinte to Toby en mass. We have yet to learn the true story of resistance to the American slave system by North American Africans, who mastered fear during three centuries of chattel enslavement, not recognized as humans or citizens. And yet from within the slave system, North American African resisted by any means necessary, ultimately taking up arms in the Civil War, only to be betrayed by those who won the war and those who were defeated, especially when the 200,000 African soldiers were disarmed.
It is this disarming that allowed fear to return in the from of state terror in the guise of the KKK, the lynchings, virtual slave labor and disenfranchisement during the short lived Reconstruction.
Imagine, for a time the people who were banned from learning to read and write, upon emancipation exercised a thirst for learning so great the children had to be beaten out of the classroom and made to go home. Today we have flipped the script, the children must be beaten or taken to juvenile hall for refusing to attend school. School districts have gone broke because their daily attendance was so low they could not qualify to fund their budgets.
How did the fear of knowledge become pervasive? How did it become a hip fad to be ignut? We need only examine the lives of men who read books and not only transformed their lives but the lives of their people, e.g., Fredrick Douglass, Malcolm X, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver. These men cast aside their fears, stood up and made their people stand. Imagine the eternal words of Harriet Tubman, "I could have freed more slaves if they had known they were slaves."
We see here the need for the slave system, today the neo-slave system, to keep people in ignorance and fear. The slave system rules through ignorance and fear. The Civil Rights movement was on the road to success once the people in the South cast off their fears, especially the fear of death, the fear of jail, prison and retaliation.
The 2.4 million people in US jails and prisons are special examples of the fearless. Most people who commit crimes are somewhat fearless, otherwise they would not take penitentiary chances, as they say. Those addicted to fear may be those who decide to hold down a job, to never consider economic independence, until of late when it is crystal clear the job for life is a myth.
We see a college education is no guarantee of a job. Our children will thus need to cast away their fears to configure a fair market system of economic justice. Free market capitalism is exhausted, surely America and her gang of global bandits are in their last days before being rounded up and divested of their ill gotten gains.
By what right should 400 people possess the wealth equal to 150 million? There must be a redistribution of the wealth stolen from the deaf, dumb and blind, yes, those robbed and left half dead on the roadside, those who are victims of American capital accumulation since the beginning of the slave system, i.e., the founding of this nation.
And yet the greatest robbery is not what occurred yesterday, but the robbery of the present global finance bandits who have ripped off the people with their pyramid schemes and sub prime loan scams that stole trillions from people and nations, since the blood suckers of the poor care nothing about people or nations.
The jobless and homeless of today will not rise from this condition until they cast away all fears and seize the means of production and the housing they need. Every human being needs a job and a dwelling. There is no mystery about the human right to a job and a place to stay.
Every human being should have a home with a life estate. This is the true and final solution to homelessness. The home with a life estate cannot be sold or transferred, thus a person will become free of the anxiety of homelessness. And then we consider the reality that all persons need a way to earn money to survive and thrive.
A society that cannot provide its people with economic security shall have no national security, for it is a failed society, a society in chaos, such as we see in America today. There are almost three million people in prison, mostly due to economic crimes, crimes of necessity.
And yet many of these criminals are fearless, some have the very creative minds we need to address the issues of society. And yet they are locked down, many for the most trivial offences, 80% were drug addicted at the time of their arrests and perhaps 50% have severe mental health issues, so what we have in American prisons and jails are drug addicts and the mentally ill or the dual diagnosed.
Still, we have seen that some of our greatest minds came from prison, recall Malcolm, George Jackson, Eldridge, Tookie. Even today we have millions of fearless minds locked down, e.g. Ruchell McGee, and so many other men and women, not to mention our greatest mind on death row, Mumia Abu Jamal. If a man can be productive as Mumia has been on death row, what excuse do we have out here on the big yard?
As Amiri Baraka asked, "Is it difficult for you?" And so I ask, is it difficult for you out here on the big yard? I especially ask the people of the Bay Area who have the legacy of the Black Panther Party who taught one essential lesson which was to discard our fears and stand tall in the face of oppression, is it difficult for you? I say smash your fear of the police, politicians, blood sucking merchants who refuse to hire you yet you do not protest. Challenge the oil and gasoline bandits who reap quarterly profits in the billions by manipulating the markets. But no, you won't dare confront Shell, Mobil, Exxon, Chevron, but you want to kill a brother who jumps ahead of you in the line at the gas station.
It is time to be informed and fearless. Use your cell phone to be informed, Google words you don't understand rather than spend the entire day asking your mate, "Where you at?" Ask yourself where your mind is at, where is your heart and soul at? Where is the fearlessness of your ancestors at?
When the history of Robert Mugabe is written, it will not be about a black man raised by a single mother, who defied all odds in racially segregated Southern Rhodesia to pursue an education at the highest levels. Neither will it be about an articulate black African teacher-turned-politician, who spent around a decade in prison for challenging white colonial racism and working for the betterment of black Zimbabweans. It will be about the four decades Mugabe was at the helm in post-colonial Zimbabwe, in which his rule was anything but admirable. As a young politician in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mugabe was by no means the most prominent of the black nationalists fighting white colonial rule. Neither was he the most motivated. He was, however, the most eloquent. For a clique of educated black elites, whose political and societal outlook was fashioned in mission schools, Mugabe was the man of choice to convey the message to white rulers — in voice and comportment — that blacks were no longer “uncivilized tribesmen.” They were sophisticated enough to deserve the franchise. In everyday manners and air, Mugabe was an “English man” who spoke their language in the shapely tone of an eloquent and “cultured” gentleman. It is no wonder that when he arrived on the nascent nationalist scene, fellow nationalists noticed his gift of gab and appointed him publicity secretary in their organization, the National Democratic Party. At the time, Mugabe had come back home, presumably for the holidays, from Ghana, where he worked as a teacher, with the intention to go back to West Africa. He may never have wanted to stay in Rhodesia for long. He became the reluctant latecomer who would go on to dominate Zimbabwean politics for almost half a century. Much of what people outside Zimbabwe know about Mugabe starts on April 18, 1980, when the colonial tether on Zimbabwe snapped and the country gained independence from Britain. The popular story is that Mugabe, as a Marxist revolutionary, ushered in a new era of liberation and social progress, exemplified by the early expansion of the education and health delivery system for black people. Yet Mugabe was neither a socialist nor a revolutionary. He was a rebel, but one who wanted to replace white rulers with a self-interested political project. When he “talked revolution,” it was out of expediency, to further his goal of securing the presidency for life. When he donned revolutionary garb, it was always fleetingly (in the early 1980s, for picture poses), and with an unseemly addition: a tie that clashed with his safari suit. Mugabe never hid his disdain for pot-smoking and dreadlocked black men, instead marveling at European classical musicians, especially Beethoven. In an oft-recounted story, Mugabe was quick to express his displeasure about Bob Marley’s invitation to perform at the 1980 independence celebrations. It’s said that he wanted a pianist, preferably British, possibly Cliff Richard. As an intellectual, Mugabe was never a serious one. His idea of intellectualism was confined to the accumulation of certificates, academic or otherwise. His much-vaunted “seven university degrees,” many achieved through correspondence, were a testimony to this shallowness. A cursory Google search of his works pulls up one collection of his speeches titled Our War of Liberation: Speeches, Articles, Interviews, 1976-1979, but nothing intellectually intriguing. His politics correspondingly lacked ideological robustness, and many of his party and national programs were not designed to outlive him. For that reason, he loathed any discussion about succession, and was violent to anyone posing any kind of threat to him.
It is easy to point to the social programs during the independence euphoria of the 1980s as an example of Mugabe’s commitment to black people and socialism. But throughout the 1980s, and with “Britain’s willful blindness,” Mugabe sought to build a one-party dictatorship in the mold of the Kims’ North Korea. In fact, he invited North Korean military supervisors to help him create a private army brigade that hounded the opposition and committed one of the worst atrocities against African people in independent Africa. In the end, the Gukurahundi massacres left an estimated twenty thousand civilians, most of them isiNdebele-speaking black men, women, and children, dead in unmarked mass graves. Mugabe’s politics were a bizarre populism that relied on force rather than the support of the masses. While this aided his self-interested political ambitions, it was simply unsustainable; his hold began faltering as early as the 1990s. Faced with a fast-changing global political economy and louder demands for change at home, Mugabe’s ostensible socialism was exposed as the clumsy fraud that it was. Western donors who had footed part of his bills started isolating him, and corruption in his government sprouted. The perceived glories of the 1980s went down the drain and, with them, the social programs. Epidemic after epidemic exposed the weak foundations of the health care delivery system, from HIV and AIDS in the late 1990s to cholera and typhoid in the 2000s. Educated Zimbabweans hopped in desperation from one country to another, carrying wads of certificates that often yielded little more than menial jobs. The Mugabe-era education system, specifically, was bad for the country. With it, he stifled critical minds and killed innovation. Schools taught people to cram for exams and follow instructions to a tee. The most famous teacher in the village or township was the one who whacked the hell out of children for failing a test. Most school were a mirror image of Mugabe’s political modus operandi; slapping down dissenters and ruling the country with a huge stick in hand. Pupils passed with high grades, but out of fear: fear of the teachers’ reprisals or, in the case of college students, fear of being left behind when others’ ostensible qualifications allowed them to leave the country after graduation. Mugabe, a teacher trained in the 1940s and 1950s, when blacks weren’t expected or allowed to think critically, managed to oil and expand what his Rhodesian predecessors had left behind. He flaunted the education system whenever he got the chance. It churned out a politically compliant population that loved instruction manuals and textbooks. Individuals who recited what they memorized under the watch of an angry teacher — and ended up doing it with glee. That was sometimes seen as a sign of intelligence amongst Zimbabweans. Those who managed to skip the border to escape the hellhole that our country had become made for lovely, smiling, articulate butlers and waiters that attended to tourists in places like Dubai and Cape Town. Zimbabweans could, of course, read and cram the menu, enough to explain food recipes to visitors in impeccable English. They also made for the best implementers of NGO projects — whether or not they believed in their employers’ philosophies (most of the times they didn’t). They became the best foremen and machine operators on farms in South Africa’s Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces — because they could read and follow instructions on seed and pesticide packages. Most never uttered any criticism, come rain come sunshine. Sadly, that extended to the politics of our nation. And Robert Mugabe knew it.
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