KAUNDA: UNSUNG HERO OF AFRICA’S FREEDOM STRUGGLE

On 27th April, 1924, one of Africa’s liberation heroes - Kenneth Kaunda - was born in northern Zambia. Kaunda, fondly known as KK and Super Ken, was not only Zambia’s founding president but a Pan-Africanist icon who gave the best of his 97 years of life to ensuring that every single inch of African land was free of colonialism. As President of Zambia, Kaunda led other African leaders to form the coalition of Frontline States, a collection of countries in southern and East Africa that had gained their independence in the early 1960s. The group played a key role in mobilising resources and support for the armed struggle against racist and colonial regimes in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Namibia, Mozambique, Angola and South Africa.

Continued…. These efforts helped to ensure that, by the 1990s, most colonial regimes in Africa had collapsed or were on the verge of collapsing. The contribution of less widely known heroes such as Kaunda must never be forgotten.

Had you heard of him before?

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JEWISH STUDENT CONDEMS GAZA MASSACRES

Pro-Palestinian protests continue at colleges across the US, with students remaining defiant. They include Jared Kannel, who gave this viral interview at Columbia University in New York.

He believes authorities are labelling the rallies ‘anti-Semitic’ to deflect from Israel’s ‘non-stop massacre of Gaza.’ Jared also reveals he was raised a Zionist, but realised he was on the ‘wrong side’ after understanding the Palestinian perspective. He was speaking after police began arresting students and dismantling their camp on college grounds.

Despite police crackdowns, similar protests keep going across the country, with students staying resolute. They say they want their schools to divest funds from entities connected with Israel and cut ties with Israeli institutions.

Jared typifies the mood during this interview with TRT World, the Turkish news outlet.

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Our African proverb of the week comes from Cameroon and reminds us there are more important things than material wealth. If you’re blinded by money when making big decisions, like getting married, then you’ll suffer eventually. Are there similar proverbs in your country? Please share in the comments.

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DRC PUTS APPLE TO TASK ON ‘BLOOD MINERALS’

The DRC government is threatening legal action against Apple for mining ‘blood minerals’ in the country’s war-torn east. Lawyers have sent the big-tech firm a cease and desist notice, ordering it to stop using ‘illegally exploited’ materials in its products.

It’s claimed Apple buys so-called 3T minerals that are smuggled to Rwanda and laundered into the international supply chain. Cash from their sale is thought to fund armed groups which run illegal mines and commit human rights abuses.

Continued….. The DRC has seen a sharp uptick in violence in recent months. In October 2023 alone, more than 200,000 people were displaced during fighting between M23 and other Congolese militias. Since the 1990s more than six million have been killed in the country’s east, with more than seven million displaced. It’s been a silent crisis that’s been very lucrative for multinational giants, even as Africans pay the highest price.

So, will this move by DRC lawyers have an impact? It follows a US federal appeals court ruling in March that said big-tech firms were not liable for the use of child labour in Congo mines. According to judges, the multinationals only have a buyer-seller relationship with suppliers.

Well, the stakes have just got higher. Apple has three weeks to respond. Let’s wait and see.

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AFRICAN LEADERS, STOP SELLING OUR COUNTRIES

In this video, 23-year-old rapper and Pan-Africanist based in Kenya @realsensicalsense ranted about many African leaders upholding the neo-colonial system. 

For centuries, the world’s industrial powers have treated Africa as an open market for cheap raw materials to fuel their economies. At the end of the European slave trade and throughout the colonial period, Europeans forced Africans into a global economy that disadvantaged Africa and other colonised regions of the world. Today, most African countries are nominally free.

Continued….. Yet, African states still find themselves beholden to unfair trade deals, widening the gap between the industrialised Global North and the extractivist economies of the Global South. It’s a race to the bottom at the expense of our lands and people.

Every country is looking out for its interests. In some cases, two countries can strike a mutually beneficial deal. New collaborations between Russia and African countries like Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are allowing these Sahelian states to move away from France’s stranglehold and develop new industries. 

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JUDGE JOE BROWN: OJ SIMPSON WAS INNOCENT

The mainstream media describes former US football player OJ Simpson as someone who got away with murdering his ex-wife and her friend in 1994 in Los Angeles.

Approximately 95 million people worldwide watched this ‘trial of the century’ on television. The case highlighted the racial split in the United States, with 75 per cent of white people believing Simpson was guilty, while 70 per cent of Black people said he was innocent.

In light of Simpson’s 10 April death from cancer at the age of 76, we re-visit this @fallenstateTV interview with Judge Joe Brown, a former lawyer and TV personality who ran for mayor of Memphis, Tennessee. His insights on the contradictions he saw in the prosecution's case might pique your interest. 

Do you agree with him? Let us know in the comments.

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PLO: TIME TO DITCH ‘INHERITED’ MODELS
OF GOVERNMENT

Ever wondered what Africa would be like now had the European colonisers never come? What kind of societies would we have, and what kind of leaders?

This is no mere exercise in fantasy. According to Pan-African scholar PLO Lumumba, we need to think hard about the kinds of government we really want on our continent - because, right now, we are making do with systems inherited from the colonisers, which are not fit for our purposes.

He goes further. We need to see beyond the artificial borders imposed on our lands. Division doesn’t help us on the global stage. What’s the point of 54 nations with little clout when united? They’d hit the ball out of the park.

Lumumba is the first to admit that it’s easier to talk about all this in grandiose terms than actually making it happen. Watch him here passionately plea to Africa’s young to seize this ‘inter-generational project’ by the horns.

Are you on board? So what’s the plan?

APARTHEID CANNOT BE REFORMED

He was no fortune teller but the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) party's Johnson Mlambo correctly predicted a partial overhaul of South Africa's apartheid system would not lead to the total emancipation of the country's people. In his words, 'Apartheid cannot be reformed.'

Lo and behold, his words ring true some three decades after racial segregation officially ended. Despite achieving what many see as political freedom, South Africa is still characterised by high levels of poverty among its majority Black population and currently ranks as the mos unequal country in the planet. It’s the result of apartheid-era economic systems and structures that were never properly dismantled by successive governments.

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ICE CUBE: MUSIC INDUSTRY FEEDS PRISONS

In this clip from the Club Random Podcast, TV host Bill Maher sits down for a discussion with West Coast rapper Ice Cube.

@icecube explained how the same people who own US private prisons own the labels and how they directly or indirectly make sure that the music feeds the US prison system.

In the US, Black people are five times more likely to be incarcerated than white people.

In Ice Cube’s words, this is a process of social engineering that musicians unwittingly take part in, contributing to the cycle of imprisonment affecting young Black men.

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JOSHUA MAPONGA: AFRICANS WILL FIND THEIR WAY HOME!

It’s no secret that many Africans are seeking new lives outside of their continent, and that the diaspora is already large. But Zimbabwean-born public speaker, intellectual and preacher Joshua Maponga says that’s a trend that will inevitably reverse, as Africans everywhere become ever more conscious of the harm that imposed ways of thinking have done - once their subjugation (mental and physical, colonial and neo-colonial) ends and they reconnect with their own forms of spirituality, their traditions and culture. Maponga has a great faith in the next generation of Africans, do you share it?

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WHY ARE YOU INFATUATED WITH THE DOLLAR?

Stop worshipping the US dollar. That’s the message from Christopher Mutsvangwa, a senior official of Zimbabwe’s ruling party, Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).

He responded on 15 April in Harare to those expressing doubts about the viability of Zimbabwe’s new currency, Zim Gold (ZiG).

On 5 April, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, the country’s central bank, launched ZiG to replace the inflation-battered Zimbabwean dollar, which lost over three-quarters of its value in the last 12 months, during which annual inflation had soared to 55 per cent. 

About $285 million worth of foreign currencies, gold and precious minerals back the ZiG.

Continued….. Mutsvangwa wondered why people would have more faith in the dollar than in the country’s gold, used as a medium of exchange for centuries before the United States became a country.

The government says gold backs the ZiG so that the new currency doesn’t suffer the fate of its predecessors, which depreciated quickly, mainly due to Western unilaterally-imposed economic sanctions following Harare’s land-reform programme more than two decades ago.

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MASS GRAVES UNEARTHED IN GAZA

Palestinian Civil Defense recently uncovered close to 800 bodies in mass graves at Nasser and al-Shifa hospitals in the Gaza Strip. Disturbing reports of victims found stripped naked with their hands tied behind their backs began to circulate in recent weeks, prompting concerns about possible war crimes amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes and an imminent major raid in Rafah.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said that ‘among the deceased were allegedly older people, women and wounded.’

The Israeli military raided the hospitals, claiming to attempt to root out H*mas fighters that Israel alleged operated inside the complex. After a two-week raid at al-Shifa Hospital, UN monitors called it an ‘empty shell.’

Continued….. ‘The intentional killing of civilians, detainees and others who are hors de combat is a war crime,’ UN human rights chief Volker Türk said in a call for independent investigations into the deaths.

Israel’s bombardments and escalated siege have k*lled more than 34,000 Palestinians, including nearly 15,000 children and almost 10,000 women, the High Commissioner’s office said. More than 77,000 people are injured, and over 7,000 others are assumed to be under the rubble.

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Today marks the anniversary of a famous African victory over British colonial forces.
On April 29th, 1881, the Basuto Rebellion, also known as the Basuto Gun War, finally came to an end.

People in present-day Lesotho rose up to defeat a bid by British rulers to disarm them.
Fighting between the two sides erupted in September, 1880, after authorities of British Cape Colony, in modern-day South Africa, enforced the so-called Peace Preservation Act (PPA). The legislation ordered Basuto people to surrender their weapons.
Many refused, viewing it as a push by colonialists to increase their domination of a region they’d controlled for ten years.

In 1868, to avoid being overrun by Boers in the neighbouring Transvaal, the King of Basuto, Moshoeshoe, agreed to make the territory a semi-independent British protectorate.

Continued…. However, after his death in 1870, the land was annexed into Cape Province, which became a self-governing British colony two years later. This put the Basutos under control of Cape authorities, a fact that was widely resented.

Pockets of resistance flared up and this, coupled with widespread gun ownership among Basuto men, unsettled authorities. They then tried to enforce the PPA, but when that failed Cape soldiers attacked the Basuto to forcibly disarm them. However, The Basuto put up a formidable fight and inflicted substantial losses on the invading forces.

By April, 1881, it was clear without reinforcements from other parts of the British empire, it would be impossible to defeat the Sothos. On April 29th, Cape authorities signed a peace agreement that would allow the Africans to keep their guns but register them and pay an annual gun levy.

The Basuto victory demonstrated their capacity to resist domination by British agents. Two years later, Cape authorities decided the territory should be handed over to the British government for direct control.

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