[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Letter from Azania (So. Africa) to Cynthia McKinney

[Jan & Durl Kruse]

> Forward from grandpa's friend in Stone Mountain, Georgia (Philip Smith)

> LETTER FROM TIYANI LYBON MABASA, PRESIDENT OF SOPA, TO SISTER CYNTHIA 
> McKINNEY
>>> (forwarded with permission of the author)
>>>
>>> SOCIALIST PARTY OF AZANIA
>>> Head Office: Unit 8, Renaissance Ctr.
>>> Ghardi Square, Johannesburg 2001
>>> P.O. Box 11039
>>> Johannesburg 2000 - SOUTH AFRICA
>>> Tel : 011 838 4823
>>> Fax : 011 838 4247
>>> Email: lybonmabasa at web.co.za
>>>
>>> 28th JULY 2008
>>> To Sister Cynthia McKinney:
>>>  
>>> We were particularly and greatly thrilled by your nomination as the 
>>> presidential candidate of the POWER TO THE PEOPLE Committee and also 
>>> that of your vice presidential candidate, Sister Rosa Clemente. 
>>> These are indeed critical times for the United States but much so 
>>> for the world and most particularly Africa and its people. We are 
>>> excited and also support the endorsement of this nomination because 
>>> of how we have come to know you, Sister Cynthia McKinney, and what 
>>> you stand for.
>>>
>>> The people of Africa and Azania, better known as South Africa, are 
>>> greatly heartened by the fact that it is not in your character and 
>>> style to keep quiet or turn a blind eye to the challenges that face 
>>> you. You have consciously taken sides a long time ago and have been 
>>> outspoken about countries such as Zimbabwe long before other people 
>>> discovered where they were on the world map.
>>>
>>> Sister McKinney, your message has been unequivocal on the question 
>>> of the place and state of Black people in the United States and 
>>> elsewhere in the Diaspora, but you have been much stronger on Africa 
>>> and the plans that have always been afoot to destroy the continent 
>>> and its people. It could have been much easier for you, like so many 
>>> others, to fall into the trap of mistaking the evil consequences of 
>>> the policies of imperialism, most particularly western imperialism 
>>> led by the UK and the US as causes like in the case of Zimbabwe.
>>>  
>>> You have painstakingly pointed out in the US Congress and for all 
>>> who cared to know how the policies of the IMF and World Bank 
>>> structural adjustment programs imploded the Zimbabwean economy in 
>>> the late eighties and also how the Bush administration went out to 
>>> finish their dastardly job by introducing into Congress "the 
>>> Zimbabwe democracy and economic recovery Act" (signed into law on 
>>> the 21st December 2002) which you referred to as "nothing more than 
>>> a formal declaration of US complicity in a program to maintain white 
>>> skin privilege." You also referred to it as racist and against the 
>>> interests of Zimbabweans, which was nothing else but "the 
>>> recolonisation of Zimbabwe." It is now an open secret that they set 
>>> out to making the Zimbabwean economy totally unworkable. These acts 
>>> under the guise of rescuing Zimbabwe and restoring democracy as 
>>> early as 2001 were not meant to assist the people of Zimbabwe and 
>>> their elected government in any way, but to destroy everything and 
>>> to block the path of self-determination for the people of Zimbabwe.
>>>
>>> We contend that the crises in Zimbabwe was at the very beginning 
>>> orchestrated and organized by western imperialism, most particularly 
>>> Britain and the US when Mugabe justly implemented an agrarian reform 
>>> program that was long overdue. Indeed it should have happened in the 
>>> very period of liberation, that is, taking land from white people 
>>> who in the first place acquired it through the dishonorable means of 
>>> colonization, giving it to Black people who rightly owned it. Mugabe 
>>> had stirred a hornet's nest and for this he could not be forgiven by 
>>> the west, who considered him an arrogant and unthankful African 
>>> leader whom they have failed to put in his rightful place like 
>>> others. What we today call the "crisis in Zimbabwe" is the direct 
>>> consequence of what imperialism has done and continues to do in 
>>> Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa.
>>>
>>> In large measure, the crisis is due to the failure of Britain to 
>>> honour their financial obligations made as part of the Lancaster 
>>> Agreements. Since that period imperialism has progressively charted 
>>> a course designed to promote instability in Zimbabwe and the region, 
>>> which has ranged from threats of economic and military sanctions, 
>>> sanctions of all forms and finally a threat and possibility of 
>>> military invasion. George Bush referred to Zimbabwe as a component 
>>> part of his "Axis of Evil."
>>>
>>> We thank for your great insight into these matters lest we be 
>>> informed by our enemies who our friends are. Malcolm X once 
>>> remarked: "If you are not careful, the newspapers (media, be it 
>>> electronic or print) will have you hating the people who are being 
>>> oppressed (Africans), and loving the people who are doing the 
>>> oppressing (west)."
>>>
>>> Indeed we had said for some time now that Africa is looking and 
>>> hoping for someone who will stand in the forums and platforms of one 
>>> of the world's leading nations and declare that people of Africa 
>>> deserve to live and that the continent and its people must survive. 
>>> Africa should not be pushed to the back of beyond where it will be 
>>> left to die from crippling poverty, disease, wars, dislocation and 
>>> destabilization. The countries of Africa are wealthy, they produce 
>>> rich minerals, oil, gold, diamonds and a host of other things which 
>>> the world can ill afford to live without but yet they are the 
>>> poorest in the world. Africa is being destroyed for its wealth. We 
>>> believe we have found in you that person and that voice. We needed a 
>>> voice that will be politically independent and will break in a 
>>> definite sense from the two American parties of capital and big 
>>> business, the Republicans and the Democrats that have authored so 
>>> much hardship for Africa and its people.
>>>              
>>> We do not for one moment think it is going to be easy for you nor 
>>> will the forces that be, allow things to run smoothly for you 
>>> because your heart and mind is with the people, be that as it may 
>>> be, that has been the real essence of our struggle to break the 
>>> stranglehold of the status quo that has brought nothing but great 
>>> suffering and pain to our people. This has been the trend across the 
>>> continents.
>>>  
>>> Your POWER TO THE PEOPLE platform does not divide the people nor 
>>> does it seek to undermine anyone but it is an invitation to all 
>>> those who accept and realize that the present framework of the two 
>>> parties of capital has not worked for those who needed change the 
>>> most, the poor and the hopeless. Every year they have sunk more and 
>>> more into desperate and destitute situations and conditions. Their 
>>> children fill the jails, they are ravaged by illiteracy and disease 
>>> such the HIV and AIDS pandemic, their children die early from 
>>> poverty related social ills such as prostitution, drug abuse and 
>>> gang wars, the list is endless but to be sure, all of them need 
>>> "POWER TO THE PEOPLE".
>>>
>>> We are writing this piece when freedom fighters like Mumia Abu-Jamal 
>>> have spent more than a quarter of a century in death row. Black 
>>> youth remain the largest population group in American prisons though 
>>> their people are just 12% of the entire population. America needs a 
>>> Black leader who will not shun away from these things. The world 
>>> needs a leader, a Black American leader, who will bravely confront 
>>> the horrors facing Black people in the US but who will be brave 
>>> enough to raise the issues of Africa. The current elections cannot 
>>> be contested without a focus on the devastation of Hurricane Katrina 
>>> which brought back the memories of Slavery and how Black lives were 
>>> still regarded as valueless. We believe that the "Power to the 
>>> People" campaign seeks to bring power back to American people that 
>>> power which presently reside with the murderous bureaucrats of the 
>>> two parties who are waging unending wars in many fronts of the 
>>> world. People have to fight and wrest this power for their own 
>>> salvation. It is much clearer than ever before that we are our own 
>>> liberators and our destiny lies in our own hands.
>>>   
>>> Steve Biko, the Azanian martyr, icon and liberation hero, captured 
>>> it even more succinctly when he said, "Black people should not be 
>>> spectators of the game they should be playing." This is true 
>>> everywhere in the world where social conditions are being used to 
>>> exclude millions of people from actively deciding about their own 
>>> fate and destiny. Your campaign and platform seeks to give all these 
>>> people a chance, POWER TO THE PEOPLE! 
>>>
>>> You cannot turn a blind eye to what is today happening to Black 
>>> people in the US. Their lot is not in any way different from that of 
>>> Black people in the African continent. The 2008 report by the Black 
>>> AIDS Institute in US says, "More black Americans are living with the 
>>> AIDS virus than the infected populations in Botswana (once number 
>>> one in the world), Ethiopia, Guyana, Haiti, Namibia, Rwanda or 
>>> Vietnam". It further says, "If Black America were a country, it 
>>> would rank 16th in the world in the number of people living with the 
>>> AIDS virus." "Power to the people" should also mean the power to 
>>> break with the conditions that have made our people victims 
>>> everywhere in the world.
>>>
>>> The present rulers have not shown any interest in dealing with this 
>>> pandemic in the US. The same report observes despite the fact that 
>>> the US administration spends billions of US dollars anti AIDS 
>>> programs in other countries but "America itself has no strategic 
>>> plan to combat its own epidemic" also that "American policy makers 
>>> behave as if AIDS exists 'elsewhere' -- as if the AIDS problem has 
>>> been effectively solved in this country." How can we turn a blind 
>>> eye when our people are dying in their millions? 
>>>
>>> The political accounts that were first opened by slavery, 
>>> colonisation and today the debilitating foreign debt remain not 
>>> close. So whether you are in Johannesburg, New York or Abidjan you 
>>> face the same problems, Africa needs the total and unconditional 
>>> cancellation of the debt including the Apartheid Debt, Black people 
>>> in the US are calling for Reparations but more the destruction of 
>>> the carnivorous system that is underpinned by private ownership of 
>>> the means of production.      
>>>  
>>> Sister Cynthia, you have long chosen sides and we are comfortable to 
>>> say with confidence as people of Africa, the forgotten continent, a 
>>> continent and a people marked for destruction that, "You want what 
>>> we want and feel what we feel" and that creates a whole lot of 
>>> difference between you and the many people whose program is to make 
>>> "America great again." When was America great and at what expense 
>>> and sacrifices did she become that great? We do not deny that she 
>>> has a potential of greatness but that will only be so, when she 
>>> learns to fight on the side of justice and defend the weak nations 
>>> who have suffered under rampant Americanism.
>>> In conclusion, we cannot complete this without mentioning the work 
>>> that lies ahead in building the Reconstruction Party that will take 
>>> forward the struggles of Black people. It is important to build a 
>>> party that will provide for Black people a reflective chance, to see 
>>> indeed how far they have gone in the country that has been built 
>>> through their back-breaking labour in the cotton fields, a country 
>>> they gave blood for in the many wars but most particularly the war 
>>> for independence. Black people should not allow any programs that 
>>> seek to expel them from the work and product of their labour. 
>>> Anything, including freedom, paid for by blood is very important. 
>>> Black people deserve better than what is the offing for them because 
>>> they have given so much blood. 
>>>  
>>> Sister McKinney, and your running partner Sister Rosa Clemente, we 
>>> wish you well in these difficult times of struggle, we who believe 
>>> it is possible to fight on the side of the workers and the poor need 
>>> to join hands and assure one another of our unflinching support and 
>>> undying love. The Reconstruction Party, an independent Black party 
>>> based on the will and collective experiences of Black people in the 
>>> US will indeed and in time link up with the struggle to build the 
>>> labour party that should unite all the poor and working people of 
>>> the US. For our part let us not kill hope!
>>> Yours in struggle
>>> Tiyani Lybon Mabasa
>>> President,
>>> Socialist Party of Azania 
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