Amandla Volume 15 Issue 12
page 14
AFRICA Malian Air Force Buys Pricey French Chopper To Fight Local Jihadists A fully-loaded “Super Puma” military helicopter is the latest addition to Mali’s beleaguered air force which has been struggling to defeat rebels in the country’s central and northern region. The Super Puma, a twin-engine, heavy lift helicopter, had been returned to the French Airbus company in October by a Texas-based operator that went bankrupt. The CHC Group was given the green light to shed some 99 Super Pumas, at least one of which was turned around by Airbus and sold to Africans. Each Super Puma costs an estimated $15 million. A second Super Puma is due to arrive in Mali this coming month. Despite the new piece of military hardware, jihadists this week managed to carjack two ambulances and another vehicle in the southwestern town of Dilli. Five Malian soldiers lost their lives while transporting ballot boxes during
Sunday’s municipal elections – the first since 2013. Voter turnout in Mali was low as security jitters remained high despite the presence of over 10,000 United Nations and French forces. Voters are electing 12,000 council members across Mali as the government prepares to enact a 2015 peace deal and ward off the stubborn rebel threat in the north. Mean-
while, pro-government militia groups and former rebels who signed the peace deal are intermittently fighting each other in northern areas where the state remains absent. "We're again, as we've been several times since 2013, at a defining moment," said International Crisis Group analyst Jean-Herve Jezequel, referring to France's 2013 military offensive against jihadist
ship in bringing Africans from all walks of life to deliberate and brainstorm onpertinent issues of and about Africa and Africans. Dr. Karenga also paid glowing tribute to past leaders of the struggles for a just African. Kwanzaa,which is 50 years old this year, is a 7-Day African holidays that startsDecember 26. Speaking under the theme It’s Nation Time Again, the Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at California State University, Long Beach emphasized that the struggles against oppression, imperialism, and racism continue unabated. Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, Head of the Nation of Islam, delivered the Closing Charge. He pointed out that in the struggles, sometimes the worst enemy is within. He challenged the crowd to help rescue and heal the world of its troubles. He reiterated Dr. Karenga’s stand “to make a new world
in our awakening.” He opined that the Black person is simply fighting for free- continued from page 13 dom, justice, and equality and “if we are not getting it and the next day they come under their flag, then we back and they’ve forgotten,” have to get it under our own says Huang Daizhong from flag.” He charged that Black China’s Zhejiang province, people can get their own only who has been leading this projwhen they are united. “Fifty ect for the past six years. The million is a lot of us to have results have been meager. So our own,”he philosophized. far, just two factories are mak“You represent the intellec- ing use of the bamboo processtual strength to teach the un- ing techniques he has taught learned the righteous way”, them—both are making toothhe added. Hon. Minister Far- picks. rakhan suggested that people In Huang’s home province of would be liberated from Zhejiang in eastern China, mental and economic slavery mass production of bamboo if only the word of absolute handcrafts was the first step in truth is impacted to them. establishing a textile industry Tracing the history of hu- and training a largely rural popmankind, he remarked that ulation with few technical the Black person is the origin skills. (Textile producers now of humanity and civilization. account for 10% of that He observed that it is imper- province’s gross industrial outative for Black people to put.) Huang had hoped the have some love in their same principle would work in hearts and to envy no one. Rwanda, but has been disappointed. “Rwanda hasn’t reached this point of being able continued on page 3 to manufacture yet. It will still take many years,” he says.
Have some love in your heart – Minister Farrakhan
by Kofi Ayim
The Institute of the Black World (IBW) 21st Century held a 5-Day mammoth “State of the Black World Conference IV” November 16-20, 2016, at theRobert Treat Hotel, Newark, NJ. The opening day ceremony of the multifaceted event included the Pan African Institute that focused on the struggle for democracy and development in Africa, the Caribbean,Central and South America within the context of reparations for people of African descent. It was chaired by Mr. Danny Glover, an Actor, Humanitarian, Activist and Chairman of the Trans-Africa Forum. In a capacity filled and elaborate closing ceremony, Dr. Maulana Karenga, creator of Kwanzaa and its Seven Principles and Founder of the US Organization heaped praises on Dr. Ron Daniels, President of the Institute of the Black World for his leader-
groups in northern Mali. He expressed pessimism about the country’s peace prospects. No one in Mali "really believes this peace deal can change anything significant," Jezequel said, since the accord was struck due to outside pressure rather than by a national consensus. Two African scholars writing in The Conversation, an independent source of news and
December 15, 2016
views from the academic and research community, examined the term “jihadists” used widely in the western media. “It would be false,” they said, “to attribute political violence in this region solely to groups embracing jihad. At least two more rationales exist. One is about community self-defense. The other involves a struggle led by Fulani herdsmen, more vulnerable than other Fulani communities of the area.” “Seeing the current increase in terrorist attacks in Mali as just another tentacle of globalized Islamic terrorism therefore misses the point,” wrote the UK-based professor Yvan Guichaoua and Dr. Dougoukolo Alpha Oumar Ba-Konaré of Mali. “The mixture of groups within Mali are primarily the product of local historical conditions, not an externally imposed ideology.
African countries are importing Chinese textile companies GIN
For a country’s civilization Rwanda isn’t the easiest place to start a garment industry. Transportation to the landlocked country is expensive— it costs more to send a container from Kigali to Kenya’s port city of Mombasa, where all of C&H products depart from, than to send goods from Mombasa to Guangzhou in southern China. Ma has to import all of her materials, including the cloth, string, and the zippers. Still, Ma, who has been working in textiles in developing countries for more than 16 years, believes she is uniquely equipped to meet the challenge. Unlike Huang and other Chinese managers who grow frustrated with their local staff, she says she tries to understand her employees and how they work best. “You just have to know them,” she says. continued on page 9