How Kwame Ture Would Have Helped Zimbabwe

By Obi Egbuna

AS African people throughout the world prepare to pay tribute to Kwame Ture (formerly known as Stokely Carmichael) on the eighth anniversary of his death, many may wonder what he would be saying and doing about the attempted siege on Zimbabwe. Kwame Ture succumbed to prostate cancer on November 15 1998. Throughout his political life, whether in the Student Non Violent Co-ordinating Committee, Black Panther Party, the All African People’s Revolutionary Party and the Democratic Party of Guinee, Kwame Ture always felt educating black people about political developments in the world was his historical responsibility. During the Vietnam War as SNCC’s National Chairman, Kwame helped coin two slogans, "Hell no we won’t go" and "Victory to Ho Chi Minh". This militant stance helped Dr. Martin Luther King JR and SCLC understand they had to speak out against the war and follow the courageous example of the youths of the civil rights movement. It also provided a safety net for Muhammad Ali when he followed the wishes of the Hon Elijah Muhammad not to enter the draft to fight in Vietnam. Kwame Ture went on to support Gamel Abdel Nasser then president of Egypt during the 1967 six-day war with the Israelis.

Kwame represented SNCC in Cuba in 1967 at the Latin American Solidarity Conference. At this historic gathering, a young Commandante Fidel Castro boldly proclaimed, "If US imperialism touched one grain on his head there would be immediate and maximum retaliation." Kwame was one of the first spokespeople of a national organisation in the African (American) Community, to declare that Africans in the US should give the Palestinians their unconditional support against Zionist Israeli aggression.
He used the example of Fatima Bernawi, an African woman who fought side by side with the Palestinians of Al Fatah. While the moderate forces in our community spoke only about the efforts of the African National Congress during the struggle against apartheid, Kwame urged Africans worldwide to equally embrace the other two liberation movements fighting on the ground, the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania and the Azania People’s Organisation.

When the Reagan administration bombed Libya on April 15 1986, it was Kwame who coined the slogan "Bombs in Africa could get you Bombs in America." When George Bush Sr. invaded Iraq in the early 1990’s Kwame said, "if I’m the Imam of Mecca and American imperialism declares war on Satan then I’m Satan’s comrade in arms." Kwame’s connection to the struggle in Zimbabwe goes back to his days as the Black Panther Party’s honorary prime minister, when he condemned Cecil John Rhodes for colonising Zimbabwe and naming it after himself. While there were others who made people think they had to choose between Cdes Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo, Kwame urged people to champion the Patriotic Front because Zimbabweans were best qualified to determine their own political direction. President Mugabe and Kwame have some similar liberation experiences; both consider Ghana’s founding president Dr Kwame Nkrumah as their biggest influence. Cde Mugabe taught in Ghana at the time Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party ruled that country with courage, honour and dignity, and there he met his first wife, the late Amai Sally Mugabe and together they became one of the foremost Pan African revolutionary husband and wife team.

Kwame had the honour of being invited to Guinea Conakry by his namesake, Nkrumah, who was exiled there after Africa’s most infamous coup deposed him in 1966.
Kwame was under the Osagyefo’s tutelage until his death in Romania in 1972, and remained there until he passed away in 1998; he was buried in Guinea next to Ahmed Seku Ture the country’s founding president. The courage President Mugabe has shown standing up to western powers reminds people of the resilience Nkrumah demonstrated by overthrowing the settler regime in Ghana on March 6 1957.
These comrades also made great contributions to African-Asian anti-imperialist solidarity, President Mugabe by building and maintaining a strong bond to China during the Second Chimurenga and today through the innovative Look East policy that could break US imperialism’s monstrous grip on the African continent.
Kwame did this by showing the African (American) community that they must support the Vietnamese in the war against the administration of Lyndon Johnson because president Ho Chi Minh was a student of Marcus Garvey, and he told members of SNCC who visited him in Hanoi that Garvey’s love for Africa, inspired his own patriotism for Vietnam.

As Zimbabwe celebrates 26 years of independence and democracy, the Blair and Bush administrations have worked around the clock trying to isolate and demonise the country. They have tried to dismiss the land reform programme, which is now the model people all over the world are following, be they from South Africa or Namibia, or as far away as Venezuela or Bolivia. While it can be argued that Latin America has emerged as the vanguard of anti-imperialist resistance, the world’s boldest voice on the issue of land reclamation and self-determination belongs to Cde Robert Mugabe. While Zimbabwe has over 1,6 million Aids orphans, humanitarian groups like the Global Fund continue to allow Blair and Bush to deny Zimbabwe access to resources even though the country has recorded the biggest success in the fight against the pandemic in Southern Africa.
As we celebrate the 52nd anniversary of the Brown vs the Board of Education of Topeka and the legal genius of Thurgood Marshall, let us salute the Government and people of Zimbabwe for having Africa’s most educated nation. Brother Kwame always said that Africans in the Democratic Party were an example of visible powerlessness, the members of the Congressional Black Caucus who supported the illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe under the guise of the so-called Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act validate his assertion.

The Congressional Black Caucus also refused to observe the 2002 presidential elections in Zimbabwe, or the parliamentary elections that took place on March 31 last year. Kwame would have raised the question, how could we be against the war in Iraq but support the US and British imperialist campaign to effect illegal regime change in Zimbabwe? Raising such a shameful contradiction would only have been second nature from a comrade who always reminded us, Africans in the Diaspora that Africa was home, and we had just us much of obligation to defend it as those born on African soil.
Let us remember Kwame’s last written statement to the world was titled "Hell, yes, we’re going to Libya" where he called for the lifting of US-imposed sanctions on Libya and the blockade on Cuba.

Kwame had the misfortune of witnessing firsthand the CIA orchestrated coup that overthrew the PDG in Guinea Conakry in 1984 after the death of the Pan African giant Ahmed Seku Ture, the nation’s first president and leader of the revolution against French colonialism. This enables us to know that Kwame would never have sat idly and let Condolezza Rice call Zimbabwe an outpost of tyranny, just like he called former US secretary of state and joint chief of staff Colin Powell who grew up in the same neighbourhood with him a traitor and an embarrassment to the African-American community.
Kwame even challenged Powell to debate on the Gulf War, which of course the General could not accept.

He would have asked the NAACP to publicise the positive report on Zimbabwe’s 2002 presidential elections, and stand strong like one of their founding members the great Pan Africanist WEB DuBois. Gone are the days when the US State Department thought they could tell our organisations how to view and analyse African Affairs at home or abroad. This would have shown the African community in the US that even though we could not prevent the Bush administration from imposing its political will in the White House, we can stop them from taking their dog and pony show to Africa.
Kwame would also have reminded those in our community who have openly criticised Zimbabwe recently that serving as extended mouthpieces of an administration they claim to oppose makes them look confused, opportunistic and cowardly in the eyes of the masses.

Brother Kwame would also have urged African Women worldwide to rally behind Vice President Amai Joice Mujuru, a Zimbabwean warrior from the time she went to fight in the bush to depose Ian Smith’s regime, in the same manner he used various platforms to educate our sisters about the bravery of Cde Assata Shakur while she has been in exile in Cuba, our home away from home.The African (Americans) in the US must welcome the challenge of continuing to defend the integrity of the Zimbabwean revolution.

Brother Kwame would also have urged all organisations in the African (American) community who have promised to defend Zimbabwe to honour the commitments they have made to its Government and people, Africans all over the world must stand behind Zimbabwe.