Not yet Uhuru!

I would like to thank Tajudeen [Abdul-Raheem] and Gerald [Caplan] (Pambazuka News 160, Pan-African Postcard and Letters) for those mind blowing comments on the late Ronald Reagan. These two articles are a splendid entry point for an argument I have always made. I totally disagree with Baroness Thatcher when she gushes that Reagan freed the world. Not the African world as far as I am concerned. The pro democracy movement in Africa owes its roots not to the goodwill of the “free world” in Cold War language but quite to the contrary it is a direct consequence of the struggles of African people on either sides of the Atlantic, struggles that are intertwined in one Pan African aorta pumping for justice.

On making "America walk tall again by beating up tiny poverty-stricken nations”, I still shudder when I remember the TV clips of the eerie formation of the USAF's 82nd Air Division flying out of Barbados to go and hit Granada in1983. I still remember the pretexts used to bomb the Cuban airport construction engineers: the runway was too long and could be used to attack the US. That at a time when the USSR could have as easily deployed their Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.

In classic doublespeak, the bad guys are up to no good on the island. Strangely however, work resumed on the airport, the long runway of which was required for long haul aircraft in the tourist industry as in its only wrong when Africans and those of African descent say or do it. But even for the Reagan White House, the day of reckoning came at the Battle of Quito Cuenavale where the CIA- backed UNITA and apartheid South African forces were taught a lesson they'll not forget any time soon. For me it was that defeat in Angola and not the fall of the Wall that marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War. The spirits of Yemaya and Nehanda oversaw the Independence of Namibia and the release of Nelson Mandela to avenge not only the fallen in Grenada and Angola but in all the struggles where the cry still is: Not yet Uhuru!

A luta continua.