PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Rembering Sharpeville S/Heroes of March 21, 1960!
by Mongezi Sefika wa Nkomo Tuesday, Mar. 16, 2004 at 12:07 PM
mnkomo@hotmail.com 412-361-3022 or 412-362-9998 Azania Heritage International c/o Thomas Merton Center, 5125 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15224

The current local struggles with a Global perspective is to RE-AFFIRM the historical social peace movements through a culture and political direct actvism for ECONOMIC JUSTICE is at the heart of the Azania Heritage International (AHI)'s mission since her Pittsburgh founding as a loose alliance in September 1991 at a public forum held at the East Liberty Public Library. It is in the above context that academic and community actvist associated with AHI led by Professor Dennis Brutus, Iskandar Langaliballele Mapetla, Professor Matamabnadzo, Dr. Uhuru Hotep, Mongezi Sefika wa Nkomo and Professor Jean Jacques participated in a teach-in on about March 21, the UNd Day to Eliminate Apartheid, RacismSexism, AGEISM and ALL FORMS of CONSITUTTIONAL and LEGALIZED DISCRIMINATION including HOMOPHOBIA, XENOPHOBIA, RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY ETC! Mongezi in his opening address summarise the Local Direct Action with a Global Perspective as old as the "Landing of Afrikan, captured into slavery, by European traders, and sold to white famers at Jamestown harbor of Virginia British colony of 1619 and the arrival of land dispossessing Dutch East India (Free Trading and Free Marketing State/Private Corporate) Compay headed by Johann Van Reebeck in Cape Town of April 1652." "This teach-in about Marc 21, 1960 Sharpevile massacre of non-violent and peaceful demostrators and machers for African Human Rights in their own ancestral land is not dissimilar with Pittsburgh resident's march against State sponsored Police Brutality among the African American communities and neighborhoods, especailly killing of unarmed BLACK MALES-! Secondly,it is March 21, 1960 and June 16, 1976 every weekday in the African American community like their brothas and sitahs in the continetal and carbbean Africa where child care,jobs with a living wage, right to organize as unions, quality public education through government budgets at city, county, state and federal/national levels are under attack if not non-existence since the 1990's boom of the private stckexchanges and importation of IMF/World Bank (Afrikan) Structural Adjustments imposed directly by government policy or indirectly by non-profit private foundations who are creating an ideological rational for privatizantion of ALL SOCIAL SERVICES that have resulted from New Deal and Civil Rights gains for African Americans, children, disabled,labor, students women and youth, including LEAGAL ALLIENs, in a country whose majority are descendants of European alliens who did have no legal right to own land here except BRUTE FORCE and RELIGIOUS LIES! Just like the minority land holders in Zimbabwe and South Africa whaor ofEuropean aliern descent! " Also we, AHI, endorse the Regional Peaceful and Non-violent but Civil Disobedience Against War in Iraq and ALL WARS at the expense of economic justice for social peace at home and abroad." Professor Chiseko Mike Matambanadzo assterd that Africans haver been involved in local and global resistance for economic justice both at the hands of European Christian monopoly capital;ist and Arab Muslim mercantile capitalist who occupied large parts of regional Africa in the southern and northern parts today. As an indigenous native of Zimbabwe, Southern Africa Matambanadzo reminded his audience that "RACISM" has been a globalist agenda institionalized agaisnt Africans at home and abroad in organized fashion like cultural dehumnization of indigenous Africanist beliefs and relions, customs, ethics, morals, and family values that made, according to Steve Biko- "Forigners in southern Northen and some parts of western Africa because of pre-eminince of occidental and oriental religions, customs and political ideologies! The trouble in Zimbwabwe is African "non-wjites" have been copted in western bourgeois ideology in the ruling party and government that has ties to IMF and World Bank since 1980, but western white racist press do not explain why America has military and traing agreements with Zimbawe and other 45 African countries today!" Mugabe has visted United States and Zimbabwe has a US Embassy like Uganda, Central African Republic and only Cuba does not have one. This shows the politics of Zimbabwe are no different from those of Ronald Reagan-George H.W. Bush-Bill Clinton-George Bush II "Weapons of Mass Destraction" in the last 23 years since 1981! AHI, according to Mongezi is to connect current and historical dots of alliance and coaltion building with an Afrikan Trans-Atlantic Linkages with local direct action on a global perspective like March 20, 2004 Anti-War Regional Convergence. Dennis Brutus emphasized the need to look at the US non-adherence to princi0ples of an elected popular democracy in Hait. A resolution forwarded by Brutus, seconded by Mongezi was unanimously accaptedas a consensus that: 1. To condemn the unilateral use of force by the US government in general and the Bush administration by supporting Haitian-Cotra[s based inside and outside Haiti, in a Savimbi/INITA of Angola style when his father was CIA Director in the seventies, vice president in and president in the 1980's through 1991." 2. Support the demands by the CARICOM ( Cariabean sates) and AU (African UNion) members states demanding a due process and human right of elected President Aristide of Hait, to speak at the global conference of his peers ( heads of state and government) at the United Nations's General Assembly as as sooa as possible; c) Support the African National Congress's official statement on " respect for democratical elected governments in Africa and Diaspora" that the selected, judicially, government of George Bush' intention to undermine democracy in the USA and abroard for private corporet profits and public welfare for the oligarchy minority ruling elites! c) Azania Heritage International (AHI) and allies such as the Pittsburgh Social Forum, NAACP, Urban League, National Urban Peace and Justice Council and other African American community organizations and their multi-racialist coalition partners inside and outside the Thomas Merton Center, including Orhganizing Pittsburgh have Afrikan Continetal Advocacy Demonstrations and/March on May 25 Afrikan Liberation Day or June 16 Soweto Day remembrancethrough direct action in our neighborhhoids like Hill distric from Freedom Square through Sugar Top, Bloomfield, Friendship, Garfield, East Liberty, Homewood and end at Malcolm X Park at Point Breeeze> Last but least speaker was Professor Jean-Jacques, PhD, of Senegal and colleague of Paul Le Blance, Dean of Graduate Studies at La Roche College, who emphasised the African Continental Cultural and Political Federal State based on models by Cheok Anta Diop, PhD of Senegal who is regarded as the cientific, anthropological genius behind the African-Centered Pan-Africanism, Black Conscious, Black Power through economic justice and social peace found in the USA African comminities, academia and popualr culture including Kwanzaa etc. Dr. Diop held a series of globalis, internationalist conferences, lectures in France through the United States from 1959 through the 1980's and mainstream Eurocentric schalrs from the racist founder of white supremacist "Orientalist Studies" London University's School of Economics has recenlty has recenlty pyblished a book by "Afrocentricity" Stephen Howe.

On Saturday 9am to 5pm March 13, 2004 the Fisher Hall, Room 611, at the Roman Catholic Duquesne University in Uptown, Pittsburgh, PA a Teach-IN was held for actvists, organizers and resource supportes allied with Azania Heritage International under the leadership of Mongezi Sefika wa Nkomo.

The Thme was "Remember to Commemorate Sharpeville March 21, 1960 S/HEROES ! and Celebrate the Commitment of United Nations Day to Eliminate All Constitutional and Legall Apartheid, Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Xenophobia, Religious Bigotry and ALL FORMS of Discrimination in the Public, Private and Non-Profit Sectors, especially in memember states of UN and the founding members specifically such as the United States of America (USA) and the REpublic of South Africa (RSA), especially the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and so on and the New Republic of South Africa constition since ince 1994 as progressively amemded to include BI-GAY-Transgender RIGHTS!"

The primary focus of this All Day informal combination of a lecture series, seminar and worshop as individualsd came amdwent was locating the African Continental and Diasporan Agendas within the current Global Anti-War Regional Convergence.

Azania Heritage International (AHI) founded in September 12, 1991 hosted the all day event and the Kwame Ture Institute under the leadership of Dr. Uhuru Hotep sponsored the event at Duquesne University with the support of the Skill Development Center at Duquesne University.

Presenters were led by Mongezi Sefika wa Nkomo with the Afrikan Vision Team whose head caoch is South African Globalist Organizer Professor Dennis Brutus,and
assistandt coaches-
a)-Historyof Racism and Current Dynamics Professor Chiseko Mike Matambanadzo an indigenous native of Zimbabwe and is in the History Department, Sllipery Rock University, Sllippery Rock, PA, Chairperson, AHI Board of Directors and member of Pittsburgh Black Radical Congress;
b)Cutlral Dynamics and African Continetal and Diasporan Unity-Professor Jean-Jacques Sene an indigenous native of Senegal and History and Politics Professor at La Roche College, Pittsburgh.
c)Decolonization of the African Youth in the Diaspora
Dr Uhuru Hotep- Kwame Ture ( Stokely Carmichael) Leadership Training Institute for Actvists and Organiznb Black Youth and Associate Director, Skills Development Center, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA.
c) Langalibalele Iskander Mapetla- AGI Deputy Secretary-General and Organizer for Unite and Resist (State Police Brutality).
d) Mongezi Sefika wa Nkomo-Founder, Azania Heritage International, member of the Thomas Merton Center and volunteer, among other local and international affilliations.

Mathambanadz: The post civil rights and post apartheid era in America and Adrika respectively has led to the emergence of the anti-Black Consciousness non-white leadership in black political community and goverment leadership with local corporate and global IMF/WORLD BANK ties in similar fasshion to their ancestral Afrikan kings qnd quees who collaborated with imperialist European Christian and mercantilist Arab Muslim slave traders.

The Sharpeville Massacre of March 21, 1960 was shows a legacy of Pan-Afrinaist Non-Violent Marches and Peaceful Demonstrations by African Continetals long before Dr. Martin Luther King became a grassroots cultural global incon

Pan-Africanism came of age in 1900 when Sylvester Williams convened a non-partisan and inclusive people of Continetal and Diasporan Afrika to address the local and global dehumnaization effects of Africans who were traded into slavery; impact of colonial sttlerism in Africa, Caribbean etc and their consequences in fowing generation as a collective people suffring economic exploitation, political oppression and cultural de-humanization as "Kaffirs" in Africa and "Niggers" in America!

Racism, according to Professor, is not personal like, prejudice. Racialism is institutionally historical in origins and is organizationally pertuated by current formally and informally organizational bye-laws, corporate for profit and non-profit entities; borough and city ordainacies, county regulations, school board decisionson budgets, state and federal constitutions, laws and various agency policies and regulations covering individuals' civil and group human rights.

In Africa, of the South, specifically, the British introduced the "racially dehumanizing and derogative term KAFFIR" an Arab word meaning an infidel or non Islamic believer. This was a legacy of Islamic Arab conquerers of North Africa and later southern and eastern Europe from around the 7th century AD.

Africa conquering North Africa around sixtth or seventh cenbtury AD they had mised with milenin black Africans through marriages and we Black by the time the Spanish colonized call them "Moors from Africa" Black men from Afrika by 800 AD.

So African civilizations in North mediterian areas did not only suffere from Greek and Roman invasions of Alexndra the Greek Macedonia and the Ceasars of Italian-Rome, including Julius, Augustus and Mark and leater the Arab-Muslim under the wealth trader and mercantilist invader, Muhammad.

The Spanish Empire that was conquered included some parts of France, Holaand, Belgium etc and that is how the Dutch speaking Hollanders who invaded modern Azania (South Africa) call Africans Kaffirs since 1652.

Also the British Imperialist domination of Africans and the Dutch, French (hugenotes), German settlers by 1828 created an official British Kaffraria ( Land of the British Colonized Heathens). ( In fact there is still a bank, about 1979 when Mongezi wnet into exile which has an official name:British Kafraria in the Eastern Cape where the 1820 British settlers landed.)

So the commemoration of Sharpeville March 21 ia bout genocided of Afrikan people in the Diaspora and Motherland through slavery trade, slave plantations, settler- land dispossession and later imperialist colonization by the 1884 Berlin European Conference on African Balkanization;
De-Construction and Jim Crow in Ubited States, caste and racialist color/class distinctions in Latin and Hispanic America in the Caribeean, Central and South America; land dispossesions in west, central, east and south Africa in modern nation-states like Liberia,Ghana, Ivory Coast Nigeria, Kenya, the Congos ( Democratic and Brazzaville) Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia,Namibia and the Republic of South Africa where agricultural and mineral wealthy lands are 95 % owned by Europeans and whites of that descent as local and foreign stock exchange and personal stock buying or investments from America,Australia, Britain, Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy Holland and now Russia is following the Asian-Japaneese histotical presence in the continebt. direct.

Individuallly, whites like the rest of members of the human race are not "RACIST" as they do not own or create organization that make profit of misery of African people, but highly respected institions and organizations in white society have a history linked to RACIALIZATION of exonomic explotation and political oppresion in addition to religious dehumanization and spiritual demonization ALL THING AFRICAN as BLAC SPIRITS, BLACKMAIL, BLACK SHEEP OF THE FAMILY etc Lokk at the language and the ROLE of "BLACK".
To understand this please read " Black Consciousness and the African Quest for a True Humanity" by Steve Biko in his selected writings and speeches published in" I write What I Like".

Dr Uhuru Hotep emphasised the imperative of family/communaly oriented enterprise for social profit and community development Africans should understand the financial support that poltics or racialism get is from the commercial and private sector where Blacks are, per capita and per centage wise the buggetst spenders and thus indirect investors in RACIALIST DEHUMANIZATION of AFRIKANS!

The cultural icons from Michael Jordann through Oprah Winfrey have been, commodified, like Martha Stewrat and Elvis Presley, to make money through commercials etc for the same system that gave the selection to George W. Bush in 2004. Some of them fund anti-affirmative action reactionary non-whites like Connely Ward, a California Reaganite mainstream activist.

African families should fight racialism and celebrate March 21 by consolidating business enterpreneurships paralleling DIRECT ACTION ACTVISM of Local action with global perspectives in the context of African-Trans-Atlntic Non-Racialist and Non-sexist linbkages!

Dennis Brutus emphasized that Sharpeville Massacre is similar to the massacre of Aristide suppoerters today in Haiti with military and political backing of George Bush administration in the same way Dr. Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South Africa in 1960, was supported by USA as a fellow mwmber of the North Atlntic Treaty Organbization (NATO), which the Republican Eaisenhower was POresident and Richard Nixon Vice President.

In the spritit of both Sharpevill March 21, 1960 and the United Nations Day Against Racialism etc the following resolution was moved bt Dennis, seconded by Mongezi and consensus aproved, that:

'At the Pittsburgh March 13, 2004 on Saturday March 13, 2004, those gathered at the First Annual AfrikanContinetal Advocacy Teach-In consensusly agree on the following and resolve that"
a) Condemn the removal of democratical elected governments in the Africam Diaspora and Motherland, with particular reference to the illegal outsting from office of President Arsitide in Haiti, by contra-like forces with indirect support of the Bush II administration;

b)In support of the CARICOIM ( Caribean Union) states and the (AU) African Union in general and the African National Congress and the government of South Africa that President Aristide of Hasit be restored to power until his term office ends;
and
c) Demand that the President of Haiti, in the form of twicw duely and democratically elected as head of government and state in his country and twice removed by pro-IMF/WORLD Bank and US supported financial thugs and political criminals from exile and inside the country, be given due process in a platform of his peers so that his side of the story and those of Hatian opposition, US President and Secretary of State as chief witness against i Aristide in the United Nations General Assembly.

d) The Azania Heritage International (AHI) as organizers of the Afrikan Continetal Advocacy 2004-2005 should contact Organizing Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Social Forum, NAACP etc and other alliance and coalition partmerships how the undemocratic nature of ONE DEMOCRAZY-PUBLICAN PARTY WITH TWO WINGS imposing Economic Structural Adjustment Programs (ESAP) like programs in Pittsburgh, State and the Nation, the ESAP have falied in Africa, Asia, Central and Southern Maerica undewr the supervision of the US controlled IMF/World Bank Neo-Liberalism."

Jean-Jacques Sene concluded the day by asserting the need to understand RACIALIST is fundamental "allienation of people from their indigenous and positive aspect of their culture that resist economic exploitation and political subjugation". As a the French who clonized some parts of western Africa, inclduding, Senegal, his native country, "learnt a lesson when colonized and Latinized/Romanized by the Julius Cesar and his successors who transform the Celtic-Gaul culture into what is today"

France was ethnically related to the Irish etc by linguistic and cultural heritage but the Roman Imperialism transformed them hence the French and the Portuguees believed in colonial assimilation Racialism ala Latin-Roman Style and the Anglo-Dutch-Saxon in colonial apartheid Racialism. That is why racialism in the United Staes is similar to that in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa and assimilation policies of France, Portugal and Spain are too similar and dismmialr to the United States racism. But as many African Americans have found-France is as racist as America but the tactics and styrategy differ only in context and context of laws and culture of imperialism!

Mongezi Thanked the thirty or so persons who came in sections of the day long program and reminded them of March 20. Anti-War Regional Convergence!

Amandla isengaWethu!
People is still with us, THE PEOPLE!
Report submitted March, 16, 2004
M.Sefika wa Nkomo
Azania Heritage International

www.azaniaheritage.worldbreak.com

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