Draft Platform of Africana Mass Party

Draft platform of Africana Mass Party

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Biko Agozino

May 11, 2017

Africa needs a democratic revolution led by the working people. For that to happen, the united peoples of Africa must start their own socialist party whose primary goal is to take over state power from the neocolonial bourgeoisie and their imperialist allies. Once in power, the party must embark on a revolutionary programme of actualizing Africa’s unfinished liberation.

The revolutionary situation in Africa today can be analyzed concretely and strategically under the following themes and categories as a guide to the resolution of activists committed to launching a platform for a social democratic revolution across Africa under the ideological leadership of the working people and revolutionary intellectuals in alliance with the peasantry, following Lenin closely (1):

The articulation of race-ethnic-gender-class politics

The old neocolonial regimes across Africa have been thoroughly discredited and have lost the hegemonic struggles for legitimacy before the people. They represent the less than one percent of the class of phantom bourgeoisie, a parasitic class that lacks any of the productive capacities usually associated with a capitalist ruling class, according to Fanon. The rulers use clientilism to buy the services of the workers in the state machineries of the army, police and the bureaucracy as the state apparatuses for oppressive and exploitative rule over the masses. They are in alignment with archaic monarchical rulers who should have been abolished throughout Africa and replaced with elected Town Mayors checked by Town Councils. The African comprador bourgeoisie are maintained in office with the support of the foreign bourgeoisie who are only interested in the expropriation of surpluses from our hard-working people and in the extraction of natural resources.

In some African states, power has shifted to reformist regimes that frequently prove incapable of transforming the structural contradictions that condemn more than one billion talented Africans to a life of insecurity in the midst of abundance. Some of these neoliberal regimes try to legitimate themselves in office by obsessing about the recovery of public funds stolen by past regimes while the elements in the current regimes rarely get caught until they are out from office and their bourgeois rivals try to recover stolen loots from them, to be stolen by the incumbents in turn.

None of the neoliberal reformist regimes in Africa has shown interest in convening the constitutional conference of all Africans to chart a new course of state formation that would benefit all Africans at home and in the Diaspora with emphasis on class-race-ethnic-gender justice articulation or intersectionality. All the ministerial appointments are given to lackeys of the bourgeoisie and the vast majority of them are masculinists and ethnic triumphalists without room for gender parity despite the immense talents of African women and their enormous contributions to the decolonization struggles and despite the symbolic gender parity in the African Union parliament.

Given the above conditions, no bourgeois regime deserves the loyalty of African activists, workers and peasants. It is up to us as scholar-activists to ally with workers and peasants and build an alternative platform for the masses and boldly campaign to win power democratically and thereby end the misrule of our people by a parasitic gang of exploiters and oppressors.

The foreign policy of Africana Mass Party

The Africana Mass Party must avoid being boxed into the colonial boundaries imposed on Africans by imperialists. Already, opportunist groups are laying claim to the name of parties circumscribed by the boundaries of individual neocolonial states in Africa. Let us leave them with their discredited ideologies of bourgeois nationalism and let us avoid what Fanon identified as the pitfalls of national consciousness.

Let us boldly call our party the Africana Mass Party with a manifesto to organize in every African state. Instead of regarding Africa as the center of our foreign policy, let us smash the colonial boundaries that the masses have disdainfully disregarded. Africa should be the center of our domestic policy and the working people should be mobilized to erase the crippling colonial boundaries and allow our mighty people to rise and be counted as citizens of the 21st Century.

In alliance with imperialism, the ruling classes across African states have intensified the war of maneuvers and war of positions against our people by colluding to arm terrorist groups and the genocidal states as the excuse for foreign aggression in Africa (4). The reformist regimes run around the imperialist countries begging for more arms with which to wage war against our people and simply hide the huge military aid funding that they receive annually from imperialists in foreign bank accounts while committing genocide against our people with crude fetishes of militarism. They divide the masses by inciting the lumpen proletariat to rise up and attack fellow Africans whose languages are mocked as incomprehensible Makwerekwere (2).

The Africana Mass Party in Africa will abolish the importation of arms from any foreign suppliers and will concentrate on building social security by investing in agricultural, educational, health, scientific, and technological revolutions that will also enable Africans to develop and produce all the means necessary for the defense of our people. Since the armies, police and bureaucracies across the states in Africa have shown no interest in fighting against the enemies of Africans but only specialize in committing genocide against our people, let us commit ourselves to the abolition of the armies of occupation and the repressive police forces that the imperialists imposed to keep our people under oppression eternally.

The need for dual power now

The Africana Mass Party must organize a dual power now even before we win any state office. We must have organs for the education of our people, for health research, for agricultural experiments and outreach for cooperative economics, for media and cultural work and for the security of the workers and peasants without waiting for the discredited phantom bourgeoisie to offer leadership to Africans. This will enable the Africana Mass Party to counter the dictatorship of the phantom bourgeoisie with the democracy of the working people across Africa.

Let us plan our local party branches in every ward and in every state across Africa and in every diaspora African majority state that commits to our program to enable us to hold our annual congresses as soon as possible. With the trust that we are bound to enjoy among the majority of Africans at home and abroad, if only one-third of Africans are able to sign up as card-carrying members of our party it will be one of the biggest mass parties in history.

As a revolutionary party, the masses of our people will be attracted to our party and will rapidly swell our ranks. We had better be ready to lead this massive awakening in our people lest petty bourgeois ideologues hijack them and deceitfully use them to shore up the discredited system of neocolonialism. Let the bourgeois parties go to the people against the Africana Mass Party and let us see who would more quickly organize and mobilize our people across the ridiculous colonial boundaries that our people have always transgressed in their search for survival.

The tactics of the Africana Mass Party

We must concern ourselves with objective conditions and not with any ideas in the heads of any individuals. Our work is carved out for us by Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, Claudia Jones, WEB Du Bois, Pierre Mulele, Amilcar Cabral, Walter Rodney, CLR James, Samora and Justina Machel, Ruth First, Joe Slovo, Kwame Toure, Chris Hani, A.M. Babu, Samir Amin, Edwin and Bene Madunagu, to mention but a few, as that of the merciless practical critique of the pitfalls of national consciousness with which the phantom bourgeoisie has been dividing and dominating our people (3).

As Steve Biko observed, the most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressors is the minds of the oppressed. If we allow our people to be seduced permanently by the ideology of nationalism, sexism and ethnicity, they will continue to refer to the comprador bourgeois dictatorships across Africa as ‘our national leaders’ whereas the working people have no nations yet, all we have is Africa full of oppressed and exploited working people yearning to be mobilized and united to free ourselves from oppression and exploitation democratically.

The bourgeoisie maintains its domination over the masses in Africa through the exercise of hegemony or intellectual and moral leadership sold to the people, not by force but not without force or the threat of force, but through coerced consent engineered through ‘deception, flattery, fine phrases, promises by the million, petty sops, and concessions of the unessential while retaining the essential’, as Lenin put it (1), followed by Slovo and by Madunagu in the defense of national democratic revolution strategy as a step towards revolutionary internationalism (3).

To counter the bourgeois propaganda and threat or use of force, we need to launch our newspaper as an essential tool in the mobilization and re-education of our people across Africa. The availability of Internet and information technologies means that we have no reason to postpone this crucial decision any further except the lethargy that Eskor Toyo railed against. Even before the party is launched, let us constitute the party organ and start reaching out to the people on a daily basis (5).

Petty bourgeois defense of the nation

Given the threat of wars and terrorism across Africa today, it is common to observe petty bourgeois intellectuals calling for the defense of the fatherland by all patriots. This is a way to deceive the masses by making them believe that their interests are the same as those of the bourgeois dictatorship and their imperialist partners. The defeat of terrorism is sold to the masses as a task for all the people but the propagandists have never offered any example where terrorism was ever defeated militarily even by the mighty militaries of imperialism. Instead, wherever the imperialist forces have intervened militarily to defeat terrorism, they have managed to make matters worse for the poor masses who are routinely destroyed by the imperialists as collateral damage while being simultaneously targeted by the terrorists for kidnapping and suicide bombing.

Down with militarism and up with education of the masses as a way to eliminate the oppressive conditions of mass impoverishment that breed terrorism. Down with national consciousness that seeks to divide and weaken Africans and up with internationalism among African states to leverage our immense resources for a peaceful and democratic development of our societies. Down with sexism and sectarianism!

How can war be ended in Africa?

The wars raging across African communities cannot be ended with mere slogans. The wars cannot be ended merely by appealing to the working people of Africa to declare their will and preference for peace. The wars are raging across Africa not because the bourgeoisie is an evil class bent on the complete destruction of the people; although bourgeois war-mongers definitely benefit from the wars.

The wars raging across African communities are the result of 1000 years of underdevelopment that stripped Africans of our indigenous philosophy of non-violence and imposed the rapacious ideology of capitalist greed as the means of achieving societal goals via selfish profits. To end the tendency to wage wars across Africa, we must overthrow the system of capitalism and replace it with socialism.

When the working people take over control of state power across Africa, there will no longer be any need for the workers’ state to wage war against the working people. The Peoples Republic of Africa will be too busy providing the social security needs of Africans and will not have the time or resources to devote to war-mongering internally or externally. With the unity of the working people across Africa as citizens of a democracy of scale, no internal or external ants would ever be tempted to attempt to swallow the African elephant again by force or by fraud.

The Mass Party will usher in a new type of state in Africa

The dual power structures built by the party now will lay the foundation for a new type of state across Africa through which the people shall govern their own lives. The bourgeois states imposed on Africans by imperialism and retained by the comprador classes rely on the monopoly over legitimate force to keep the people under domination.

The Africana Mass Party will abolish the capitalist state of militarism as soon as we achieve state power, the proletarian state would cease to be a bourgeois state for the oppression of other classes by the bourgeoisie. The standing army and the police state would be abolished and replaced by the masses of the people armed with knowledge and technologies of the self to defend their rights and maintain their wellness democratically and non-violently.

The Africana Mass Party is not an anarchist party because we recognize the need to win state power and use the power to smash the exploitative structures of capitalism before allowing the state to wither away when there is no longer any need for the state to be an instrument for the oppression of other classes by the ruling classes. We will prevent the restoration of the police force by organizing community watch committees across Africa and by relying on restorative justice models as opposed to retributive justice.

The agrarian and national program of the Africana Mass Party

Currently, there are agrarian and nationalist crises all over Africa. Nomadic cattle herders are frequently in conflict with sedentary peasant farmers because somebody’s cattle ate somebody’s crops and somebody is always trying to steal somebody’s cattle, resulting in armed conflict in which massacres are common.

The cattle herders should be commended for single-handedly supplying the beef that has fed our people for more than 100 years and the peasant farmers must be commended for growing most of our staple food items. The current crises arose from the fact that the mode of production lags behind the means of production and we must revolutionize both the mode of production and the ownership of the means of production in the agrarian sector and in the industrial sector.

Instead of relying on the archaic medieval methods of herding cattle for hundreds of miles in search of pasture and water, we must develop cattle ranches where the cattle must be kept and feeds are brought to them instead. This will create sources of livelihood for the youth who may specialize in cutting grass and supplying to the ranches while the ranches would help to improve nutrition by supplying milk to school children.

Moreover the youth who are employed by wealthy absentee owners of the herds would finally have the ample opportunity to go to school with their peers. Some of the peasant farmers may team up and start their own cooperative ranches too with the support of grants from the Peoples Republic of Africa.

With the threat of desertification intensifying and forcing ethnic nationalities to encroach on the land of their neighbors, the Africana Mass Party will nationalize all land in Africa and allocate land to all who need it to avoid a situation where a few capitalist farmers own all the fertile land while the masses of the people are reduced to unemployed landless farm workers. We will support the conservation of forests by developing wind and solar power generators for cooking and electricity across Africa. We will launch a program of planting trees for each African citizen every year to help us to sequester the carbon emission in the atmosphere.

The Africana Mass Party seeks to defeat those who are bent of dividing the people along ethnic lines. We will build a larger state to encompass the whole of Africa as an alternative to unviable multiplication of sovereign state structures that imperialism mushroomed across Africa for the obvious purpose of underdeveloping the divided and weakened Africa, as Rodney observed.

However, the unification of Africa will not be attempted by the Africana Mass Party through militarism and violence but through the democratic unification of the people. The more democratic the Peoples Republic of Africa, the more confident the Africana Mass Party will be in guaranteeing the right to self-determination for all ethnic nationalities, and the right to secession from the Peoples Republic of Africa.

Africana Mass Party and Africana womanism

The Africana Mass Party recognizes the undeniable contributions of African women to the liberation struggle. As Samora Machel stated, we do not regard the liberation of women as an act of charity for which the men expect to be patted on the back. Rather, we regard the liberation of women from sexism as inextricably intersected or articulated with the struggle against imperialism and racism; it is the precondition for the revolution (3). Accordingly, all elected or appointed offices of the Africana Mass Party, all offices of the Peoples Republic of Africa and all employment opportunities in industries will be filled on the basis of gender parity.

We will enforce compulsory education for all our people, including women and men. We will enforce equal pay for equal work. We will legalize the right of women to choose abortion and we will legalize sex work. We will legalize same sex relationships and provide comprehensive health coverage for all Africans. Women and men will have equal access to land and equal human rights in the Peoples Republic of Africa where oppressive widowhood practices will be outlawed.

The need for a new international socialist alliance

Socialists are not nationalists; we are internationalists. Thus, the Peoples Republic of Africa will offer citizenship to the African Diaspora internationally and to working people globally who wish to join us in building the People’s Republic. As the crises of late imperialism force poor people to risk their lives in their attempts to migrate, the peoples republic of Africa will be welcoming poor refugees and migrants who seek to come to Africa in search of peaceful coexistence, irrespective of race-class-gender.

We will ally with socialist parties in other parts of the world and collaborate in the innovation of policies that will advance socialism worldwide for the benefit of the working people of the world. For this purpose, the Africana Mass Party will convene an international conference of all socialist parties in the world to be held in Africa for the first time. We must declare to the world that the Africana Mass Party is active in the new Socialist International without waiting for an international congress and that we are ready to advocate for all oppressed nationalities anywhere in the world.

Our internationalism starts right here in Africa by abolishing the ridiculous colonial boundaries that imperialism imposed on us. Our internationalism is extended to the African Diaspora all over the world who have a right to return as citizens of the Peoples Republic of Africa united democratically, while Diaspora states that wish to join the Peoples Republic of Africa will be welcomed with open arms.

What should we call our party?

We must call our party simply the Africana Mass Party without limiting the organization to the colonial boundaries of any African state or to the continental Africa, excluding the Diaspora. We must reach out and organize branches of our party across Africa and the African Diaspora and avoid the lethargy of nationalist parties.  As Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem used to scream: Do Not Agonize! Organize! (6)

* Biko Agozino is Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Virginia Tech.

Further readings and references

1.  V. Lenin (1963) ‘The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution: Draft Platform for the Revolutionary Party’, in Selected Works, Vol. 2, Moscow, Progress.

2.  B. Agozino (2016) ‘Series Editor’s Preface’ in David Matsinhe, Apartheid Vertigo: Discrimination Against Africans in South Africa, Aldershot, Ashgate.

3.  See Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, New York, Grove Press, 1963; Kwame Nkrumah, Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, London Thomas Nelson, 1965; Claudia Jones, Carol Boyce Davies, Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of a Black Communist Claudia Jones, Durham, Duke University Press; WEB Du Bois, ‘The Pan-African Congresses: The Story of a Growing Movement’ in W.E.B. Du Bois: A Reader, David L. Lewis, ed., New York, Owl Books, 1995); Pierre Mulele, Ludo Martens, The People’s Uprising in the Congo (Kinshasha) 1954-1968: The Way of Patrice Lumumba and Pierre Mulele, Brussels, Labour Party of Belgium; Amilcar Cabral, Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings of Amilcar Cabral, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1979; Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, London, Bogle l’Ouverture, 1972; CLR James, A History of Pan-African Revolt, Washington, D.C., Drum and Spear Press, 1969; Samora and Justina Machel (Ian Christie, Machel of Mozambique, Harare, Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1988); Ruth First (The Barrel of a Gun: Political Power in Africa and the Coup d’Etat, London, Allen Lane, 1970); Joe Slovo (The South African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution, SACP, 1988); Kwame Ture (Ready for the Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael, London, Simon & Schuster, 2003); Chris Hani (My Life: An Autobiography Written in 1991, Johannesburg, SACP); A.M. Babu (African Socialism or Socialist Africa?, London, Zed Press, 1981);  Samir Amin (Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or ending capitalism?, Oxford, Pambazuka Press, 2010); Edwin Madunagu (Problems of Socialism: The Nigerian Example, London, Bogle l’Ouverture, 1982); Bene Madunagu, (Women’s Health and Empowerment: Speeches, Essays and Lectures, 1995-2006, edited by Edwin Madunagu and Akpan John, Calabar, Clear Lines Publications, 2007).

4.  A. Gramsci (1971) Selections From the Prison Notebooks. London, Lawrence and Wishart

5.  Eskor Toyo (1989) The Working Class and the Third Republic, Calabar, Directorate for Literacy.

6.  Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, Pan-Africnism: Politics, Economy, and Social Change in the Twenty-First Century, New York, New York University Press, 1996.

First published by Pambazuka News May 11, 2017.

Open Letter to TT Prime Minister

The Office of the Honourable Prime Minister of TT

Through

The Office of the Honourable Attorney General

Through

The Office of Law Revision Commission

lawrevision@legalaffairs.gov.tt

Dear Honourable Dr. Rowley,

AN OPEN LETTER ON POLICY CHANGE

I wish to commend your government for maintaining the status of Trinidad and Tobago as a High Human Development Index country, along with most Caribbean countries, according to the annual ranking of the UNNDP. I hope that you will increase the rate of development, say in the area of gender equality, to help TT to join the Very High Human Development Index countries soon. I also hope that you will share your secrets to success with African countries that continue to hug the Low Human Development Index ranks with a few exceptions.

I worked at UWI St. Augustine from 2006 to 2009 as a Professor of Sociology. During that time, I was fortunate to receive a government of Trinidad and Tobago researcher-initiated grant to study the ‘Causes of Crime in the Country, the Region and Globally’. The major activities were mentoring junior researchers, the formation of the Caribbean Criminology Network across the three campuses of UWI, and the hosting of an international conference on the theme of Developing a Caribbean Criminology.

I am writing to share one of the policy implications of the findings that you may wish to consider to help the country and the region to reduce the high rates of violent crime and serve as a shining model to other developing countries and regions. Similar policy recommendations have already been published and so you may already be familiar with them but I am using this opportunity to urge you to summon the political will and courage to implement them at little or no cost for the benefit of the people.

In April 2016 The Honourable Faris Al-Rawi, the Attorney General of TT, told The Guardian Newspaper that in Trinidad and Tobago, “A remand cell has nine people in it, four of whom are in for charges of murder and the rest there for possession of two joints of marijuana. They share the cell for two and three years and then you have to ask yourself if you are encouraging recidivism or criminality by association.”

From the statistics that he cited, it can be estimated that marijuana remand prisoners cost the government 75 million dollars annually for remand prisoners alone. Given that criminologists have for a long time validated the theory of differential association by Edwin Sutherland according to whom criminality is learned through association with other criminals, the detention of nonviolent drug users and other petty offenders with violent offenders could only lead to the petty offenders becoming more violent when released.

The government can change this overnight by instructing the Law Revision Commission to immediately reclassify marijuana as a legal substance to be regulated in the same way as tobacco and alcohol which kill lots of people every year while marijuana has never killed anyone.

We educators can be relied upon to teach young people to say no to all drugs and when they suffer any adverse effects, the hospitals will help to reduce the harm without involving the criminal justice system as is the case with the much more dangerous tobacco and alcohol.

Besides, doctors are willing to recommend marijuana for medicinal uses to patients and so the government should allow this option to be exercised legally instead of forcing patients to patronize drug gangs. Raffique Shah wrote a passionate plea in The Express of March 13, 2017 seeking permission to be allowed to use cannabis oil to treat his Parkinson’s disease.

As you may already know, Jamaica has taken the lead in the region by decriminalizing the medical uses of marijuana. Trinidad and Tobago can afford to take a step further by legalizing it for recreational purposes and regulating it to ensure that underage children are not able to purchase it from licensed dealers contrary to the current situation where anyone can buy from dealers who do not check the age of the buyers.

The only ones benefiting from keeping marijuana illegal are the drug gangs and they will be forced out of business by legitimate dealers who would be licensed and who would pay taxes on their sales to generate more revenues. Other products could also be manufactured from hemp to help diversify the economy.

The government will also save money from ending unnecessary prosecutions by directing police officers to cease and desist from going after non-violent marijuana users. This move will earn police officers more respect and love in the community and they may no longer be called Babylon. Instead, more ladies will wine on them during carnival.

This policy has bipartisan support with Mr. Basdeo Panday once expressing his support for re-legalization since he remembered when sugar cane field workers were paid part of their wages with marijuana during the colonial days. Dr. Peter Hanoomansingh supports this with evidence from his doctoral dissertation in History.

Internationally, South Africa and Israel have decriminalized medical marijuana this year with huge business potentials, the Italian army is authorized to grow medical marijuana and supply to hospitals, eight states and the District of Columbia in the US have voted to legalize it for recreational uses and 26 states have authorized the use of medical marijuana, Portugal has decriminalized all drugs since 1997 and The Netherlands has been experimenting with legalized marijuana sales in coffee shops since 1976. Uruguay recently legalized marijuana for recreational uses.

If the government is afraid of the electoral consequences of legalization, then call a referendum on the policy and let the people decide. Otherwise, encourage a bipartisan bill to be presented in parliament for legalization. Or encourage citizens to sue the government for the deprivation of liberty and let the courts decide. The more courageous move would be for the Honourable Prime Minister to lead the policy change with an immediate directive to the Law Revision Commission to reclassify marijuana as a legal substance.

Since the law against marijuana was imposed by colonial officials without justification, it is time for Trinidad and Tobago to echo the mantra of the founding father, Dr. Eric Williams, by telling the people that Massa Day Done so that law abiding adults can use their freedom to decide what to consume without posing a threat to themselves or to others in a democratic society.

Yours truly,

Dr. Onwubiko Agozino

Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies

Virginia Tech

Blacksburg

VA 24061

USA

540-231-7699

agozino@vt.edu

CC:

Omatie Lyder, editor in chief, Express: omatie.lyder@trinidadexpress.com

Fazeer Mohammed, host of Morning Edition, TV6: fazeer2001@gmail.com

Jones P. Madeira, editor in chief of Newsday: jones.madeira@gmail.com

Anthony Wilson, EIC, Guardian: anthony.wilson@guardian.co.tt

Carisa Lee, producer of The Morning Brew: lee.ccarisa@mail.com

Joshua Seemungal, reporter, TV6: jseem001@fiu.edu

Satesha Mahabir: satesh@cnc3.co.tt

Varun Bhagerty, CNMG: varun@cnmg.tt

Sandra Maharaj, CNMG: smaharaj@cnmg.tt

Lost Path: Sociology of Depression

By Biko Agozino

On December 23, 2016, a young Nigerian Engineer contacted me by email to say that his Uncle, a Professor of Chemistry at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Nigeria, recommended that he should interview me for a video documentary on ‘getting lost’ or depression from a Sociological perspective. Having written a book chapter on ‘Postcolonialism and Insanity’ in the past, I quickly accepted the invitation to contribute to his documentary. But I wanted to know more about the purpose of the video. He told me that he nearly lost a close friend to suicide and decided to do the documentary as a way to help others.

With Kwanzaa approaching, I had the seven principles of Umoja (Unity), Kujichugulia (Self-Determination), Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility), Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics), Nia (Purpose), Kuumba (Creativity), and Imani (Faith or Wellness) in mind when I suggested that we could conduct the interview any day from 26 December, 2016. Kwanzaa is a celebration at the end of the year from December 26 to 31 by people of African descent based on African cultural principles developed by Dr. Maulana Karenga. It is celebrated more in the African Diaspora than in Africa itself today.

The young man asked if I could record a video of myself answering his questions and send to him. I suggested a live Skype interview for him to record but the picture quality may not be ideal for a documentary. In the end, I decided to do a Powerpoint presentation with narration and I mailed this to him on December 28. He downloaded the large file from Google Documents but could not hear the narration. I suggested that he should download the most up to date Powerpoint X program and he did. He later posted on his Facebook page that I gave him the most valuable gift of the year through my presentation and I thanked him for giving me the opportunity to engage the community.  He went on to edit the Powerpoint presentation into a video with soundtracks and posted the series of slides and commentaries on Youtube. Feel free to see the work and leave a comment by clicking the link.

You will notice that the powerpoint presentation does not cover all the relevant sociological texts but you are welcome to fill in the gaps by, for example, bringing in the genres of Black Psychology and Symbolic Interactionism which I left out of my present(ation).

Policy Impact of This Blog

By Biko Agozino

Sometimes the authorities listen to good ideas but the implementation often skews the ideas away from success. Finally, President Buhari has bought the idea that I blogged in April calling for ranches to be set up as a way of modernizing beef and dairy productions while avoiding clashes between herders and farmers. The retired General Buhari has just announced that soldiers would be sent to Argentina to learn ranching and return to set up ranches in Nigeria. Why only soldiers when the army of unemployed youth could be mobilized and empowered by being funded to be trained and enabled to run ranches as cooperatives across the country. Here is my original blog on the issue:

http://massliteracy.blogspot.com/2016/04/in-praise-of-nigerian-cattle-herders.html

 

and here is the news of the proposal to train soldiers on ranching:

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/12/nigerian-army-set-cattle-ranches-nationwide/

Decolonizing Criminology

By Biko Agozino

Do not let the smiles fool you. Yesterday and today, I have been privileged to see grown men and women shed tears profusely at the University of Wollongong, Australia, during the symposium on Indigenous Perspectives on Decolonising Criminology and Criminal Justice organized by Dr. Juan Tauri and colleagues in the Forum for Indigenous Research Excellence. It is rare to see such raw emotions at a scholarly symposium but this one was not just scholarly, it was a scholar-activism symposium with participants from the community who shared their survival of the dehumanizing effects of imperialistic social control, reflecting my methodology of committed objectivity. 

I am honored to see my own work being affirmed and being extended by colleagues from around the world. I am hopeful that the work we all are doing will result in the deepening of democracy through the pushing back of the legacies of colonialism and the control-freak state to allow more diversity, equality, fraternity, and liberty to the majority of the people suffering the consequences of race-class-gender authoritarian populism. I also shared my own experience as a survivor of genocide in Biafra, a fact that the world was reminded of by Amnesty International on 24 November in a report on the killing of 150 nonviolent Biafra commemorators in Nigeria in 3 months since August 2016. Coincidentally, the AI report was released as I was presenting my plenary on the 'withering away of the law thesis' in which I wondered why the postcolonial states have tended to cling to the genocidal and other repressive fetishes imposed by colonialism rather than continue the push for decolonization to its historic conclusions. But more importantly, why are even critical criminologists and community organizers afraid to demand the further decolonization of civil society for the benefit of all?

DR. JEROME TEELUCKSINGH ON CLR JAMES THE BLACK JACOBIN SOCIOLOGY SERIES

'Uninvited' by Kenyetta A.C. Hinckle

By Biko Agozino

On Sunday, 09/19/16, I heard an artist, Kenyetta Hinckle, open her exhibition on Virginia Tech campus with a talk about her reworking of colonial photographs of topless African women in sexualized poses. She gave them suggestive titles like 'Vendetta', 'Reprisal', 'Witness', 'The Sower' and called the entire series, ‘Uninvited’. These titles remind us of the fact dramatized by Fanon in critique of Freud when he suggested that some women invite rape by fantasizing about it whereas rape is by definition, uninvited or non-consensual, just as there is no such thing as colonization by invitation, despite assumptions that we asked for it. She wondered why people called her little African but scratcher as a child.

Kenyetta Hinckle also exhibited paintings of Tituba, the African Caribbean woman who was accused of being responsible for inducting Salem Massachusetts girls into witchcraft. For some reason, her work was displayed along the ‘Corridor Gallery’ and people kept streaming past during her engaging talk, making it look like a street arts performance.

Her work reminded me of attempts to justify the unjustifiable records of the postcolonial genocidal state. Interestingly, she said that when she was in Nigeria as a visiting professor at the University of Lagos, some of her colleagues told her that the topless photographs came from a time before 'civilization'. I told her how apt that was given that Sigmund Freud saw civilization as a violent exercise in the repression of the instinct for love and death, pleasure and pain. She spoke again to my Africana Philosophy of Nonviolence class on 09/19/2016

When I shared the story of her initial talk on Facebook, an art historian and visual artist challenged my Freudian interpretation as follows: ‘You know, of course, that the Nigerians she spoke to had something entirely different in mind. I hope you also pointed out that they are wrong, and they cannot be wrong and right all at once. As an aside, Biko, have you noticed how the vast majority of younger Nigerians who graduate from Nigerian universities have little grasp of grammar in any language?’ I responded as follows:

‘They are obviously wrong as Cheikh Anta Diop proved long ago with Civilization or Barbarism, with Precolonial Black Africa, and with The African Origin of Civilization. But at the unconscious level, they are also right as Freud would argue. The artist understood that they were suggesting barbarism and she said that she was shocked because as an African American woman, she could be seen in the role of neo-Tarzanism given her effort to cover up the innocence or Dadaism of the women with her African fractal patterns of drawings that looked like thin veils. She also reported that on her trips across Europe, white men were frequently flashing their genitals at her under the assumption that she must be a sex worker and when she complained to her white male professor, he asked what she was wearing as if it was her fault. She said that she was appalled to hear in Nigeria that the police routinely shoot non-violent protesters to death but she was told to hush it because that was the order of things under neocolonialism.

‘Regarding the murder of the English language by Nigerian graduates, I will agree with Martin Luther King Jr. that they can serve even if their grammar is ungrammatical. So like Fela Kuti, Naija musicians, and Chief Zeburudaya, let the creative ones go on adding value with the ginger in the swagger of their grammar. The artist noticed the peculiar grammar of our broken English because everyone kept telling her, 'welcome back', when it was only her first visit. Freud also argued that the repressed keeps returning to futilely challenge the patriarchal authority with infantile dreams of killing the father to marry the mother, trying to repress his own instinct to love and death, and seeking to exploit nature. Fanon said that such Oedipal neurosis was not known in the Caribbean, perhaps because female-headed families were more common, but also maybe because the instinct for imperialism is peculiarly European. Thanks for your usual provocation. You should offer VT an exhibition.’

Then, one of my former students from Trinidad and Tobago and now a Lecturer commented as follows: ‘Oh my how I wish I was at VT right now’. I replied as follows: ‘Thanks, I will report on the discussions for the benefit of your … class. But note that Chief LeRoy Clarke and Shawn Peters, among others, have been offering similar 'pain things' (paintings) about the Caribbean crisis of control-freak societies. I hope that your class is watching them and not only the TV.’

Another Facebook friend also commented saying: ‘Interesting perspectives on "civilization" - I was unaware of Freud's comments on the subject. It reminds me of the day, when I was teaching at Ascension High School in Eleme, Nigeria, that one of my students asked about "civilized" countries, making it clear he felt that European countries were civilized and African ones, including Nigeria, of course, were not. I was not terribly surprised by his comments, but disturbed by them, nonetheless. The other students, (5th formers, I believe they were) obviously agreed with him. I began my rebuttal by pointing out the horrors inflicted on others by such Europeans as Hitler and Stalin, people from two of the countries this student thought were civilized. I said that Nigeria was indeed "civilized," that it contained some of the finest (and civilized - in the most positive use of that word) people in the world, and that we have to be careful not to denigrate countries due to a perceived lack of "civilization" nor feel inferior to countries that had no superiority over any African nation.’

And I responded, saying: ‘Thanks for sharing your critical thinking with your Nigerian students. Dr. Assata Zerai also reported that when she was a visiting professor at the University of Ife, undergraduate students kept telling her that we were wicked sinners until the missionaries came to save us. Freud presented his unusual hypotheses in Civilization and its Discontents and also in Moses and Monotheism. But the hypotheses run through his body of work. He believes that the Id is the wild one bent on gratifying all pleasure instincts. But soon the Ego emerges through socialization to check the selfishness of the Id by teaching the little motherfucker that the mother was not accessible to his Eros. Frustrated, the brothers leave home to found their own families where they repress their own sons while still battling with their despotic father with the childish dream of liberation in the form of patricide. Finally the Superego comes in to regulate the instinct for pleasure by imposing the work ethic that makes people sweat for their living when they would rather avoid all work and simply enjoy erotic pleasure (with the exception of the privileged few such as artists and intellectuals who may truly enjoy their work). The trick is to let people believe that by working, they are simply battling with nature and conquering it in order to exploit it.

Thus civilization is an endless exercise in repression of natural instincts of Eros and Nirvana. Herbert Marcuse (Eros and Civilization) subjected Freud to a detailed critique in which he demonstrated that this idea that repression equals civilization runs through Western Philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to Hegel before Nietzsche dissented with his queer sense of morality as immorality. Marx, Lenin, Mao, Du Bois, Diop, Nkrumah, Fanon, Rodney, Cabral, Toyo, Achebe, Davis, hooks, Amadiume, Nzegwu, Collins, Ekwe-Ekwe, and Hall are my model critics of Freud because they revealed that what was mistaken as Eros was mainly the profit motive of greedy capitalists who would not hesitate to kill their fathers or sons to maximize profits. Freud speculated that some of my model critics did not really end repression but actually founded repressive regimes that they brazenly called the dictatorship of the proletariat in their efforts to refuse the 'reality principle' that civilization progresses through repression. Marcuse disagreed with this speculation by Freud and insisted that a non-repressive civilization is possible when we allow our imagination to roam free in the arts and sciences without being bogged down by the 'performance principle' that is prone to aggression in the psychology of Freud. I have critiqued Freud elsewhere on his view that Africans, Aboriginal Australians and Maoris were extremely neurotic for their stringent maintenance of incest taboos compared to Europeans who had no qualms about marrying their first cousins. Today, science has proved that those 'natives' that Freud called barbaric in this context knew what they were doing because inbreeding weakens the genetic pool.

During her presentation to my class, Kenyetta introduced the land of Kentifica which she discovered and mapped as the intersection of globalized Africana homeland and Diaspora with its own handmade musical instruments (as is the norm in Africa), with food shared publicly as performance (common in Africa), with colorful hair designs and textiles covered in African fractal patterns (also common in Africa). She said that she resented being called Oyibo (European) in Nigeria and retorted to her seamstress that she spoke the way she did because some of our people sold others into slavery. I intervened to remind the class that one of the books we were reading for the Introduction to African Studies class was How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney. That book proved that it was not really a slave trade but a class war in which a few African chiefs collaborated with their European class allies to wage war and capture Africans to be enslaved. The rest of our ancestors fought hard to prevent our beloved from being captured and enslaved and the struggle continued through the middle passage to the plantations. We are all survivors meeting one another against the odds.

About the artist…

http://www.kachstudio.com/

Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle is an interdisciplinary visual artist, writer and performer. Her practice fluctuates between collaborations and participatory projects with alternative gallery spaces within various communities to projects that are intimate and based upon her private experiences in relationship to historical events and contexts. A term that has become a mantra for her practice is the "Historical Present," as she examines the residue of history and how it affects our contemporary world perspective. Hinkle received her MFA in Art & Critical Studies Creative Writing from CalArts and BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Her work and experimental writing has been exhibited and performed Fore at The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, Project Row Houses in Houston, TX, The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, CA and The Museum of Art at The University of New Hampshire. Hinkle was the youngest artist to participate in the multi-generational biennial Made in LA 2012. Hinkle’s work has been reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Artforum, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post and The New York Times. Hinkle was listed on The Huffington Post’s Black Artists: 30 Contemporary Art Makers Under 40 You Should Know. She is also the recipient of several fellowships and grants including: The Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Award, The Cultural Center for Innovation’s Investing in Artists Grant, Social Practice in Art (SPart-LA), and The Jacob K. Javits Full Fellowship for Graduate Study. Hinkle is a recent alumna of the US Fulbright Program in which she conducted research at the University of Lagos in Lagos, Nigeria.