BIDEN'S REAL AGENDA IN ANGOLA

Biden's gone to Angola for the loot, specifically for minerals like cobalt and copper necessary for powering devices and electric vehicles. That's educator George Lee Jr's blunt assessment of US President Joe Biden's 11th-hour visit to Angola on 2 December. 

The outgoing president’s tour will include the $5 billion Lobito Corridor, a key infrastructure project co-funded by the United States and the European Union that connects Angola's port of Lobito on the Atlantic coast to the mineral-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Zambia via a 1,300-kilometre railway. Lee argues the project will only hasten the exploitation of Angola and the DRC. It's part of Washington's effort to counter China's economic clout in Africa.

Continued….. Angola's strategic location on the southwest coast of Africa has long made it a key player in international affairs. It's a convenient export point for goods from Central Africa to the West. However, it's also been central to significant historical events, including a proxy war between Cold War rivals. Moscow backed the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) led by Agostinho Neto, while Washington supported the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and its offshoot, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), led by Jonas Savimbi. The civil war began in 1975 and ended in 2002.

Following the war's end, China provided infrastructure development loans that sped up Angola's economic recovery. In turn, China gained access to Angola's oil industry, which now supplies 72 per cent of its output to China.

Given China's heavy investments in the region's mining industry, the jury is out on whether Washington can catch up with Beijing.

Video credit: @theconsciouslee (X)

Sources;


https://newscentral.africa/biden-in-angola-for-first-visit-to-sub-saharan-africa-as-us-president/

https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-to-spotlight-angola-s-lobito-corridor-his-legacy-to-counter-china-in-africa/7879407.html

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/on-first-visit-to-angola-biden-says-future-of-the-world-is-in-africa/3412458

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/angola

https://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/angola/Angl998-03.htm

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1137636/main-destinations-of-oil-crude-exports-from-angola

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/12/chinas-southern-africa-debt-deals-reveal-wider-plan

South African freedom fighter and pan-African intellectual Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe would have turned 100 today.

Sobukwe was born on 5 December 1924 in a Black township on the outskirts of Graaff-Reinet in today's Eastern Cape province. After a childhood marked by academic excellence, he enrolled at Fort Hare University in 1947, an institution whose alumni included many anti-colonial icons such as Robert Mugabe, Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela.

Continued….. Like many before him, it was at Fort Hare that Sobukwe's revolutionary flame was lit. Becoming a prominent figure on the university’s political scene, he'd serve as the president of the Students Representative Council and Secretary of the newly-formed African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL).

After University, Sobukwe briefly worked as a high school teacher before landing a job in the African Studies department at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg.

In 1958, Sobukwe led members of the ANC, who, disgruntled by the party's ‘liberal-left multiracialist' policies, ceded from the organisation and formed the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC).

On 21 March 1960, Sobukwe led hundreds of PAC members and citizens in a march to Orlando police station in Soweto in protest against the so-called Pass Law, which restricted the movement of Black South Africans. A similar protest also took place on the same day in the township of Sharpeville, where 69 people were gunned down in cold blood when apartheid forces opened fire on the peaceful rally. Sobukwe and other PAC leaders were arrested in the aftermath of the demonstrations. He was later sentenced to a three-year prison term.

After completing the prison sentence, Sobukwe was again detained under the so-called General Law Amendment Act, which allowed apartheid authorities to prolong the imprisonment of any political prisoner indefinitely. The law became infamous and was dubbed the 'Sobukwe clause.'

In 1969, Sobukwe was released from Robben Island and subsequently banished to Kimberly in the Northern Cape province, where he was placed under 12-hour house arrest and restricted from engaging in political activities.

While in Kimberly, he fell ill with lung cancer. Restrictions imposed on his movement complicated his attempts to receive timely medical care. By the time doctors treated him in Johannesburg and Cape Town, his condition had deteriorated and he succumbed to the disease on 27 February 1978.

By the time of his death, he had made a profound and lasting impression on the struggle against apartheid. Nearly five decades have passed since Sobukwe's death. However, his ideas for a united and prosperous Africa continue to resonate with many people on the continent and beyond who are committed to ridding it of all colonial and imperial vestiges.

Sources:

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/11/30/robert-sobukwe-the-south-african-leader-once-as-revered-as-mandela

https://www.ufh.ac.za/news/News/UFHcommemorateRobertMangalisoSobukwe%E2%80%99scentenaryspecialMemorialLecture
https://www.unisa.ac.za/sites/corporate/default/Unisa-History-and-Memory-Project/Personalities/All-personalities/Robert-Sobukwe

https://southafrica-info.com/history/robert-sobukwe-one-race-human-race/0

MANDELA CALLS OUT THE US!

South African anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela died on this day in 2013 at the age of 95. Mandela is remembered as the man who helped lead South Africa out of the crimes and excesses of apartheid. Western mainstream media may portray him as a kindly grandfatherly figure who liked to dance and forgive his oppressors, but we remember him as an anti-imperialist until the end.

Continued..........In this video, Mandela calls out the United States as a warmonger - a country that supports carnage, consistently breaks the rules and is more than willing to go to any lengths, even at the expense of fundamental human rights, to push its hegemonic agenda.
He lambasts the US for its invasion of Iraq and the war it initiated 21 years ago. This unnecessary military campaign resulted in the deaths of anywhere between one- and two-million men, women and children.
When former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked if US sanctions that claimed the lives of up to 500,000 Iraqi children were justified, she responded, 'We think the price is worth it.'
Mandela was instrumental in tearing down South Africa's oppressive apartheid regime, as well as speaking up for other oppressed peoples, such as the Palestinians. His commitment to the Palestinian cause was unwavering till the end. This commitment was on full display when he uttered these words: 'But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.'
May he continue to rest in peace and power!
Video credit: Democracy Now

Sources:

https://www.newsweek.com/watch-madeleine-albright-saying-iraqi-kids-deaths-worth-it-resurfaces-1691193

AES AFRICANS FIND PAN-AFRICAN CONNECTIONS WITH CUBA, PT. 1

On 8 November, a delegation of 12 people from Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger arrived in Havana, Cuba. For the next seven days, they would travel to multiple Cuban cities, meet with many Cuban revolutionaries, and visit a string of historical sites to learn from Cuba's socialist model, Cuba’s ability to survive the 64-year US blockade and the island nation’s relationship to Africa to help move the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) forward.

The delegation was organised by the Thomas Sankara Centre in Burkina Faso (@burkinabooks on Instagram), with participation from the Union of Nigerien Students (USN) based out of Niger and the Headquarters of the Revolution based out of Mali. @AmisturCuba and @ICAP_cuba hosted the delegation throughout the country.

Continued….. In this video, you hear directly from some of the delegates. All three AES members—Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger—have had historically strong relationships with Cuba at one moment or another and continue to work with Cuba. Burkina Faso, in particular, had especially strong relations with Cuba during the 1983-87 popular and democratic Revolution led by Captain Thomas Sankara (1949-87). During Sankara's presidency, the national slogan of the country, ‘the homeland or death, we will succeed,’ came from one of Cuba's national slogans coined by Argentine doctor-turned-revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara. Burkina Faso also created Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) to serve as the most fundamental revolutionary organisation regrouping the grassroots of the country. These CDRs were inspired by a similar organisation with the same name in Cuba and which continue to exist to this day throughout the Caribbean nation.

Mali, too, had a close relationship with Cuba under Pan-Africanist independence leader and first President Modibo Keïta. Keïta welcomed Guevara in Bamako and Malian students and artists traveled to Cuba for training.

Despite this rich history of exchange, this delegation is the first time a group of Africans from the Sahel visited Cuba with the explicit purpose of learning about Cuban socialism and Cuban-African relations since the formation of the AES. Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have charted a path of self-determination, sovereignty, anti-imperialism and economic development for their people. Cuba is a country that has been upholding and advancing its revolution since 1959. Furthermore, as the delegates learned during their trip to the island, the Cuban revolution is in many ways ontologically African in nature, as Cuba has an African national identity and a Pan-Africanist foreign policy.

For these reasons close relationships between the AES and Cuba are of utmost importance and exchanges of this kind may pave the way toward greater African emancipation.

Continued……. The conflict and insecurity in Mali continue to be exacerbated by external actors, and allegations of uninvited foreign backing of terrorist groups have only escalated tensions.

Sources:

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/malian-army-eliminates-senior-terrorist-leaders/3411551

https://x.com/Idarfa/status/1862952806124294301

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/drone-strikes-malis-military-regime-kills-8-tuareg-116361330

https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/01/26/malis-peace-deal-ends

https://thearabweekly.com/creation-azawad-liberation-front-deepens-crisis-sahel-region

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/5/mali-breaks-off-diplomatic-ties-with-ukraine

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/8/20/ukraine-is-losing-the-plot-in-africa

https://en.sputniknews.africa/20240805/mali-severs-diplomatic-relations-with-ukraine-1067741125.html

MANDELA: YOUR ENEMIES ARE NOT OUR ENEMIES!

Eleven years ago today, anti-apartheid hero and South Africa's first democratically elected president Nelson Mandela died. His life was devoted to fighting against the settler oppression of Black South Africans. The price he paid was having to spend almost three decades in prison after the racist regime jailed him in the early 1960s for his anti-apartheid activities.

The mainstream media, when reflecting on Mandela's legacy, conveniently like to forget that he remained loyal to those who supported the anti-apartheid struggle. As he puts it in this clip of a TV appearance in which he responds to an audience member who wants him to disown leaders despised by Western nations: “Your enemies are not our enemies!”

Continued……. We, as African Stream, can relate to this message. We have personally paid the price of choosing to have an independent editorial policy that does not align with the foreign policies of Western nations. For refusing to adopt their enemies as our own, we have been banned by social-media platforms such Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

REMEMBERING FRED HAMPTON

This week marks 55 years since 21-year-old Fred Hampton, one of the most charismatic leaders African people the world over have ever known, was assassinated in a raid orchestrated by the Chicago Police Department and the US Federal Bureau of Investigations, known as the FBI.

Hampton, born on 30 August 1948 in Chicago, was a visionary leader who dedicated his life to pursuing justice and equality for Africans in the United States. After being a young and dynamic voice in the Civil Rights Movement, Hampton rose to prominence through his involvement in the Black Panther Party, becoming chairman of the Illinois chapter.

Under Hampton's leadership, the BPP initiated the Free Breakfast for Children Programme, providing thousands of African children with nutritious meals before school began.

Continued……At the core of Hampton's ideology was the belief in self-defence and self-determination for Africans. He advocated for the right to bear arms and defended the community against police brutality, urging others to do the same. Hampton's fearless approach to confronting systemic oppression made him a symbol of resistance and hope.

His assassination was a blow to the Black Panther Party and the larger struggle for African liberation. Yet, Hampton's ideas and principles continue reverberating throughout revolutionary movements in the US and worldwide.

ANGOLA: SLEEPY JOE DREAMING OF AFRICAN LOOT?

The latest video of US President Joe Biden falling asleep during a summit - in Africa, this time - has been branded yet another ‘embarrassment’ for the outgoing US leader.

However, the incident is also emblematic of a deeper issue - namely, how the US and wider West merely feign interest in establishing genuine partnerships built on mutual benefit and respect. In reality, the African continent continues to be viewed primarily as a resource-extraction hub, fuelling the development of Western infrastructure. Its people, including impoverished Africans whose labour actually extracts these resources, are left to bear the social, economic and environmental costs, while the benefits are reaped mostly by those ensuring the poverty persists.

Continued……Biden’s summit-snooze happened in Angola. It was his first visit to Africa as US President - and he was there for talks with heads of state and investors regarding the US-funded Lobito Corridor. This is a rail road that’s set to link African mines to ports, thus providing greater convenience for modern-day European plunderers when it comes to getting our minerals out of the continent and onto Western markets.

Doubts over Biden’s mental fitness at 82 to govern saw him drop out of the presidential race - and his dropping off at the Lobito summit was no doubt due in part to his frailty. But he may as well have been telling his audience: “Just give us the minerals already, I’m tired of these formalities and having to pretend I care about Africa!”

Video credit: @FoxNews (on X)

Sources:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14157877/sleepy-joe-biden-africa-trains.html

https://en.cibercuba.com/noticias/2024-12-04-u1-e43231-s27061-nid293237-biden-queda-dormido-medio-reunion-presidentes-africa