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Sunday, October 17, 2010

Preview #17, Journal of Pan African Studies, Poetry Issue

Film Review

Reviewed By Marvin X
© 2002 by Marvin X

Note: We send out this review on the 50th anniversary of independence in the Congo. Lumumba said he was fifty years aheadof his time, and so it is. But even fifty years later the same problemsof poverty, ignorance and disease remain, the Europeans are stillthere stealing the wealth, although the Chinese have entered the drama.Hopefully, with the Chinese, in exchange for precious minerals, thereshall be construction and reconstruction, although we don't understandwith a population of seventy million mostly unemployed why Chineselaborers are needed. There seems little jubilation among the population.One Congolese said, "After fifty years of independence, happiness hascome to the man in charge and those around him--they eat well and arewell paid."

--mx

My African consciousness began with the murder of Patrice Lumumba. After high school graduation, I enrolled at Oakland's Merritt College and found myselfin the midst of the black revolutionary student movement. StudentsHuey Newton, Bobby Seale, Richard Thorne,Maurice Dawson, Kenny Freeman, Ernie Allen, Ann Williams, CarolFreeman and others were rapping daily on the steps at the front door ofMerritt College. Some of them wore sweatshirts with JomoKenyatta's picture, sold by Donald Warden's African AmericanAssociation, which held meetings on campus, and sometimes DonaldWarden, renamed Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour, rapped. The theme was often the African independence struggle, especially the Mau Mau's in Kenya.

But a frequent topic was the 1961 brutal murder of the democratically elected Congolese Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba. The brothers were well read and in their raps they documented thefacts and figures of the African liberation struggle. They gavereference to such books as Kwame Nkrumah's Neo-Colonialism:the final stage of imperialism, where he documented the riches ofAfrica, especially the Congo, that the West coveted and committed massmurder to maintain. Patrice Lumumbawas the first African leader I'd known about who was assassinated, andthe brutal way he was eliminated helped expedite my Africanconsciousness, especially learning how his so-called comrades betrayedhim to continue the Western world's plunder of the Congo's vast mineralriches.

On one level, it was hard to believe, since I was attempting to get blackenized and didn't want to face the reality of black treachery. As students,most of us were Black nationalists, not yet the revolutionary blacknationalists we would soon become, that allowed some of us to employ aclass or Marxist analysis to the Pan African struggle, which Nkrumah'swritings brought to the table.

The brothers leaning in the Marxist direction were Ken Freeman, Ernie Allen, and maybe Bobby Seale, all of whom were associated with SoulBook magazine, a revolutionary black nationalist publication featuring the writings of LeRoi Jones, James Boggs, Max Stanford, Robert F. Williams, Sonia Sanchez, Askia M. Toure', myself and others, although I was a budding writer, just out of high school and knew nothing about Marxism.

If I had, it would have helped me understand the class nature of Lumumba's final days. I couldn't comprehend how Mobutu, Kasavubu, and Tshombe could be so wicked to conspire with the white man to kill theirbrother. It would take the black hands of Malcolm's murderers for me tobegin to understand.

Actually, I wouldn't fully understand until years later after reading a monograph by Dr. WalterRodney, himself the victim of assassination in Guyana, South America,entitled West Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade, in which hecarefully deconstructed African social classes and their role in theslave trade, detailing how the political, military, judicial, and evenreligious institutions became corrupt and expedited our removal fromthe Motherland.

Amiri Baraka sings to us:

My brother the king
Sold me to the ghost
When you put your hand on your sister and made her a slave
When you put your hand on your brother and made him a slave
Watch out for the ghost
The ghost go get you Africa
At the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean
Is a railroad of human bones
the king sold the farmer to the ghost....

It is hard to believe it has been forty years since the death of Lumumba, maybe because in the interim we've had innumerable cases in Africa andeven in America of similar acts of treachery. Supposedly blackministers were involved in the death of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.Black elected politicians have been selling out the black community forat least the past thirty years, especially since the 1972 GaryConvention of the Congress of African People. We have no choice but tosee our struggle as class struggle, race being incidental.

We cannot have any illusions that a black face will save us, only black hearts. Those who study the Bible and Qur'an know the history of all men is the story of treachery, deceit, lust,greed, jealousy, envy and murder -- but the glass can be seen as halffull: the history of man is also about good transcending evil,liberation defeating oppression, ascension after crucifixion, joy aftersorrow, victory over defeat. Yet, how many prophets survived? How manyrighteous people survived and continued in their righteousness, ratherthan succumb to iniquities?

Men of Lumumba's character are rare upon the stage of history, men dedicated to theliberation of their people, men who are confident that no matter howgreat the odds, freedom will come soon one morning.

Raoul Peck's film was depressing because it showed a leader in a IndianaJones snake pit full of vipers and cobras of the worse sort, snakes whodanced to the rhythm of Western drums, not those of the mighty Congo,for Lumumba'smission appeared doomed from the start, he said himself that he wasfifty years ahead of his time. This may have been the truest statementof the movie, for only ten years remain before the half-century mark inthe modern history of the Congo or Zaire. Maybe in the last ten yearsof his prophecy, the people of Zaire will become truly free.

What the movie failed to give us were the deep structure motivations for the behavior of men like Kasavubu, Tshombe and Mobutu. Yes, the Europeans were there, had been there stealing the wealth, especially of Katanga Province which held 70% of the nation's riches, but we needed to seethe very beginning with Belgium King Leopold's butchery, including hisrole in the European carving up of Africa at the 1890s BerlinConference. We need to know the custom of chopping off limbs so en voguetoday with diamond seeking armies in Zaire, Sierra Leone, Liberia, andelsewhere originated with King Leopold. Only then can the unaware andunread understand what demonic forces created such inhuman beings asthe three main characters that surrounded Lumumbaand ultimately brought about his downfall. From the movie we aretempted to say his own people did him in, but we know better, we mustknow better-think of diamonds, chrome, uranium, plutonium, cobalt, zincand other minerals.

Look at Zaire today with several competing armies from neighboring countries (Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, et al) warring over the same minerals for the same European masters who instigated the treacherous actions of Kasavubu, Tshombe and Mobutu. Their names have a poetic ring that we should rememberforever as the sound of death in a people, the sound of condensationand the lowest rats in creation, but understand they represent classinterests and their class mates are visible throughout Africa and theworld, even in the American political landscape: we have ClarenceThomas, Ward Connelly and Colin Powell -- new world rats, but rats none the less, who are every bit the measure of the Congo Three.

And let us not forget the reactionary behavior in the black liberationmovement, the murder by incineration of Samuel Napier in the BlackPanther fratricide, the assassination of Bunchy Carter and John Hugginsby the US organization in the BSUmeeting room on the campus of UCLA, the Muslims setting a prostituteon fire in San Francisco and other terrorists actions such as theZebra killings.

Even the Black Arts Movement had its psychopathic shootouts with the wounding of Larry Neal and otheracts we need not list. Shall we neglect to mention the hip hopgeneration also has its catalogue of madness such as the eastcoast/west coast killing of rap giants Tupac and Biggie Small. Let Lumumbabe a lesson for us all. Let's learn from it and move to higher ground.Some of our madness is simply that -- we cannot attribute all evilacts of man to white oppression, although white oppression ininexcusable. We must take responsibility for Black Madness.

We are happy the director created a screen version of this historic drama. The actors made us feel the good in Lumumba and the evil in his associates, black and white, for the whitesperformed their usual roles as arrogant, paternalistic colonial masterswhose aim was to hold power until the last second as we saw when theyreleased Lumumba from prison to attend independence talks in Belgium. We saw the stark contrast of character in the speeches of Lumumba as prime minister and Kasavubu as president. Lumumba was strong, Kassavubu capitulating even on the eve of freedom, signaling his intent to remain a colonial puppet.

For those who came away like myself, and one could sense the sad silencein the audience as they departed the theatre, a friend remarked that wemust not give up hope because the enemy will never tell you when youare winning.

For more writings and/or information on Marvin X go to

www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com

Remember Me: Sermon for Sunday October 3, 2010

I want to be remembered.

I want my name said.

Remember I was the daughter of Ernestine,

who was the daughter of Nettie,

who was the daughter of Connie,

whose mother I do not know,

but still remember to remember.

I want to be remembered for remembering.

I want to be remembered as a bridge.

Remember I tried to help us get there.

I want to be remembered for being a shelter.

Remember me for building and sharing.

I want to be remembered for being a loyal friend.

Remember I loved you

even when you were an imperfect vessel.

I want to be remembered for my loving black heart.

Remember how I loved unconditionally

until it was impossible.

I want to be remembered for saying the words whispered in my ear.

Remember me swinging nouns and verbs like swords.

I want to be remembered for my courage.

Remember me standing in the valley of the shadow

with truth in one hand

a desert eagle in the other.

I want to be remembered as being a part of the paradigm shift.

Remember me as a mother of lions.

I want to be remembered as a warrior.

Remember me as a guerilla in your midst.

I want to be remembered as a fierce enemy.

Remember I am Nzinga, born again,

Nat Turner & Harriet, used to be me.

I want to be remembered for acting up.

Remember me setting fires on stages.

I want to be remembered for the words.

Remember me crying over the news.

I want to be remembered like Garvey.

Remember to forgive my sins

look for me in the whirlwind.

I want to be remembered for my love of nation.

Remember us from doors of no return

spread like ocean seed from shore to shore.

I want to be remembered for my determination.

Remember that if I can

I’ll come again

a warrior still

rising again and again

my love won’t sleep.

Remember me.

--Ayodele Nzingha

October 2010

Submissions to the Journal of Pan African Studies, Poetry Issue, will be accepted until November 15. Please include a brief bio and pic, MS Word attachment. Send to jmarvinx@yahoo.com.