AFRICAN BLOOD & SWEAT BUILT THE WEST

The West often claims it is more developed because its people work harder and are more ingenious. However, we know European colonisation stole wealth from our continent. Europeans used our resources to build ‘civilised’ countries in Europe and the Americas, elevating the standard of living for a portion of the global population.

And this clip featuring our ancestor, South African freedom fighter Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, shows the truth. However, the term, ‘Third World,’ that Mama Winnie uses was created to distinguish between countries of the global majority that refused to align with either the United States or the Soviet Union during the 20th century’s ‘Cold War.’ So, while some in the Global North will use the term to describe poverty conditions, we recognise its dignity.

What do you think of Mama Winnie’s remarks?

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ANTI-ZIONIST JEW ON ZIONIST & FASCIST COLLABORATION

In this @thepeoplesbubbiefilm clip, @jvpny member Esther Farmer reads from a piece she wrote published in a 2021 book she co-edited, ‘A Land With a People: Palestinians and Jews Confront Zi*nism.’ She describes her father’s opposition to Zi*nism, as it collaborated with fascism and Nazism.

However, African Stream would like to point out that the state of Israel also collaborated with former N*zis to support apartheid in South Africa.

The apartheid system bore striking similarities to European Nazism in that the populations were strictly categorised based on race, and various laws forbade intermarriage and intermixing. Laws also kept white people in power.

The first leader to officially impose apartheid laws, D.F. Malan, once said, ‘I have been reproached that I am now discriminating against the Jews as Jews.

Continued….. Now, let me say frankly that I admit that it is so.’ However, authorities recognised South Africa’s wh*te population had a disadvantage in being small, so they bestowed the wh*te status onto Jewish people, too.

John Vorster led South Africa from 1966 to 1979, serving as prime minister and later as president. He spent much of his early adulthood supporting the N*zi expansion across Europe as an active member of the organisation, Ossewabrandwag, which sought to bring N*zism to South Africa.

Despite this history, Israel lent generous material support to the apartheid regime beginning in the late 1970s, even inviting Prime Minister John Vorster, who expressed public admiration for H*tler, as a guest to Israel. From that point on, Israel would supply South Africa with all sorts of weapons to combat freedom-fighting Africans. Israel even gave South Africa the information it needed to build nuclear bombs.

Did you know about the collaboration between Zi*nist Israel and South African apartheid leaders? Let us know in the comments.

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AFRICANS INVENTED THE BANJO

Did you know that African people invented the banjo? The banjo is an instrument that nowadays is largely associated with rural White country artists, but it would not exist without African innovation.

Africans were kidnapped and brought to the Americas, bringing with them their culture and their music styles. Stringed instruments are common across Africa, and many of them bear a striking similarity to the banjo found in the southern United States. African instruments such as the kora, the akonting, the ubaw-akwala, the xalam and the ngoni are all precursors to the American banjo.

The earliest historical documentation of the American instrument all attribute its origin to enslaved Africans. The latter used materials that were readily available to them in the Americas to recreate the instruments they were familiar with in Africa. They originally used gourds and animal skins, which is how these instruments are usually made in Africa.

Continued…. Banjos and other, similar stringed instruments were also created by African people across the Caribbean.

The Banjo was such an important centrepiece of African life across the Americas and the world at large that Jamaican-born writer Claude Mckay noscriptd his novel about Pan-African exchanges ‘Banjo.’

It was only through generations of racism in the US music industry that the instrument was decoupled from its African roots and attributed to Southern White populations.

This clip by @protectourhistory gives a good account of the story - as well as some fine examples of the instrument being played! Do you play?

🎥 credit to protectourhistory via tik-tok

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MUGABE OWNS UK JOURNO

Today marks 44 years since Zimbabwe became an independent state - breaking free of the yoke of British settler-colonialism.

Independence came after a bitter and protracted armed struggle, waged against the racist regime of Ian Smith by two liberation movements: the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU).

In December 1979, the warring parties signed the Lancaster House Agreement, which paved the way for the country’s first democratic elections. ZANU’s Robert Mugabe won those, and officially became the country’s first post-independence leader on 18th April, 1980.

To commemorate that momentous occasion, here’s a flashback to when Mugabe put a condescending British journalist in his place. At an African Union summit during the late noughties, the ITN correspondent tried to get a reaction out the Zimbabwean president. Mugabe did not hold back.

Which of today’s African leaders do you think are equally ‘no nonsense’?

ISRAEL PUSHING U.S. TIKTOK BAN?

The U.S. political establishment is pressing to ban TikTok, and it’s being framed as a bid to counter Chinese influence. But is this a red herring? African Stream’s Ahmed Ghoneim argues it’s Israel that’s behind the drive to axe the platform which is spreading pro-Palestinian sentiment. And a leaked recording of the head of the Anti-Defamation League, seems to back the case.

However, even if TikTok does get the chop before the US presidential election, would it really make any difference to public opinion?

Give us your thoughts.

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JAMAICAN TEACHER BRAIN DRAIN

Despite promises to reduce immigration, the United Kingdom actively recruits foreign teachers due to a severe shortage.

In 2023, the UK hired 486 Jamaican teachers, double the previous year. This has left Jamaica’s education system in crisis, with unfilled vacancies and fewer subjects for Jamaican children to study.

While low wages and economic challenges contribute to teachers leaving, what do you think Jamaica should do to retain its homegrown talent?

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GALLOWAY BLASTS SUNAK OVER ISRAEL-IRAN STANCE

Why can’t Britain admit Israel’s attack on the Iranian embassy compound in Syria was wrong? In this clip you’ll see MP George Galloway call out Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during a parliamentary session.

Sadly, he was a lone voice criticising Tel Aviv’s destruction of the consulate in Damascus on April 1st. An action that’s in clear violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Galloway lambasts other politicians for failing to challenge the government’s position. And he also lays into the media, for remaining silent. A recent interview of the UK’s top diplomat by Sky News’ Kay Burley being a rare exception.

Continued….. It was Israel’s strike that provoked Iran’s retaliatory response that saw hundreds of drones and missiles launched at Israel. The UK government was quick to denounce Tehran, but gives Tel Aviv a free pass. Mind you, have the British ever been worried about right and wrong when it comes to Iran?

Galloway reminds the PM how Britain overthrew Iran’s democratically elected socialist leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953. He was targeted by the British and Americans for working to keep oil in Iranian hands for the benefit of his country. Apart from exploiting Iran’s oil wealth for decades through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, Britain also looted archaeological treasures dating back to the Persian empire, which are kept in British museums. But all that seems to be lost on Rishi Sunak.

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There are fears the UK is about to make the Sudan war a whole lot worse. The Guardian newspaper reports Foreign Office officials are in secret talks with the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group. The aim, says the British government, is to improve access to humanitarian aid.

However, human rights groups fear it will just legitimise the RSF which is accused of war crimes and dent Britain’s moral credibility. A UN report accuses the militia of killing 15,000 in Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state.

Maddy Crowther, co-director of the human rights organisation Waging Peace, told the Guardian: 'I’m shocked. It feels like a terrible move. For the Sudanese, it will be experienced as a real slap in the face.'

Continued…. At least 13,000-15,000 civilians have been killed during the RSF’s one-year conflict with the Sudanese Army. Around 25 million face acute food insecurity, while nine million have been displaced internally and two million have fled the country.

In response to a Freedom of Information request, the Foreign Office said it instigated the talks, although contact has not been made with RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti. The 49-year-old is a former commander of the Janjaweed militias, the RSF’s forerunner accused of gen*cidal violence in Darfur in 2003.

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FRENCH GENERAL: EUROPE MUST INTERVENE IN AFRICA

In the face of an anti-imperialist revolution unfolding across France’s former colonies of the Sahel region, French army general François Gérard Marie Lecointre speaks in this @lefigaro clip about the need for greater European unity to re-engage in military action across Africa.

He makes clear that European action in Africa would be a matter of protecting European interests. Lecointre suggested hardship and population growth in Africa would spill into Europe and that only Europe could solve Africa’s problems.

His emphasis on European unity also sheds light on Europe’s shared supranational foreign policy.

Continued…Meanwhile, after successful military coups in recent years in the Sahel, the unity and shared foreign policy of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger—together known as the Alliance of Sahel States (AES)—have been able to combat terrorist paramilitary groups without French intervention.

It seems as though European military leaders are clear on the need for a Pan-European policy and actions. Are Africans ready to adopt Pan-Africanism?

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AAMER RAHMAN: ‘DEMS VS GOP’ NO CHOICE FOR US

Here we are again. Another US presidential election is coming up in November, and we are back to the same old, same old: Democrats vs Republicans, Joe Biden vs Donald Trump, deadly foreign policy vs deadly foreign policy. But is the ‘lesser of two evils’ a real choice?

In this clip from comedian Aamer Rahman’s comedy standup tour in February in London, he relays to the audience the reality in which our people live. We are stuck in a system that only demands that we choose in the voting booth who will oppress us and kill people like us around the world. We cannot ignore the Biden administration’s role in aiding Israel in killing more than 33,000 Palestinians while it continues to play a covert role in aiding the displacement, hunger and murder of our people in the Sudan and the Congo.

Continued…. Our people’s unwillingness to back Biden is not an endorsement of Trump. With the system as it is, we find ourselves in a lose-lose situation.

But we need not despair. All around the world, people are waking up to reality and coming together to struggle for a better world. Through collective organised efforts, change is possible.

Do you support Joe Biden or Donald Trump, or do you think it’s time for something new?

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Nigeria is taking action over its meningitis crisis - becoming the first country in the world to roll out a new vaccine that’s widely hailed as revolutionary, as it offers protection against five strains of the disease.

It’s among the 26 African nations that have been deemed “meningitis hyper-endemic” by the WHO. In the last six months, seven of Nigeria’s 36 states have registered between them some 1,742 suspected cases, and counting. That includes 153 deaths.

Meningitis can be very deadly, especially in its bacterial form. It targets membranes protecting the brain and spinal cord. In the initial phase of the roll-out in Nigeria, some one-million under-30s will get the jab.

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WHEN GERMANY TURNED AFRICA INTO A LABORATORY

Colonial Germany’s genocide in Namibia is slowly attracting the attention long denied it. But the imperialist power also did despicable things in its East African ‘possessions’ that are even less widely known about.

One of its most revered scientists - Robert Koch, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on tuberculosis - used Africans, kept in concentration-like conditions, as guinea pigs for trials of a dangerous experimental drug for sleeping sickness.

While some might put it all down to the ‘bad old past,’ as African Stream’s Clinton Nzala here explains, some things haven’t really changed.

Would you agree?

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SWAPO’S FIGHT FOR NAMIBIAN INDEPENDENCE

Today marks a significant anniversary in present-day Namibia’s push for independence from apartheid South Africa. Sixty-four years ago, on April 19th, 1960, The South West People’s Organisation was founded. It campaigned to free what was then South West Africa, from oppressive rule.

In the aftermath of the First World War, South Africa was given a League-of-Nations mandate to administer the territory that was previously a German colony. However, citizens of South West Africa were not consulted sparking resistance from the start. Anger grew further when the South African racist regime exported its apartheid policies to the region. In 1966, the UN terminated the mandate given to Pretoria, but the apartheid regime refused to comply, prompting SWAPO to take up arms.

Continued…. For the next two decades, SWAPO waged a long and bloody struggle to free their homeland. They were supported by the armed wing of South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), as well as Cuban and Angolan military. Eventually, their combined strength on the battlefield secured victory. In 1988, the South African regime was forced to accept a UN-brokered deal to withdraw its troops from Namibia and southern Angola.

The following year, elections were held, and SWAPO’s Sam Nujoma secured a resounding win. On March 21st, 1990, he was sworn in as Namibia’s first post-independence leader.

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TUNISIANS: MORE EU MONEY TO KEEP AFRICANS
OUT? NO THANKS!

Italy’s Georgia Meloni was in Tunisia on Wednesday for talks on curbing cross-Mediterranean migration. It was her fourth visit in less than a year. Among the agreements signed was a promise for 50-million euros in aid. It comes on top of last July’s splurge - 150-million euros for curbing migration and another 150-million euros for budgetary support for the debt-ridden country.

Europe’s externalisation of its borders - which has also included deals with Libya and Morocco - has benefitted corrupt government officials and traffickers, while exposing migrants to exploitation. There have been allegations of endemic police abuse, including extortion, violence and sexual assault.

Arrested migrants have been fined and deported for illegal entry - without regard to whether returning them to their countries would put them at risk of torture or imprisonment, which is a violation of the UN’s Refugee Convention.