Zimbabwe: Black America must not be silent
on April 29, 2008
Category: Zimbabwe, Elections, African Politics, Action Alert, African History
Zimbabwe: Black America must not be silent
Bill Fletcher (2008-04-17)
Much of Black America stopped discussing Zimbabwe after its liberation in 1980; at least, we stopped discussing it for a while. After years of regular coverage of the liberation war, details regarding Zimbabwe became harder to obtain as attention shifted to struggles in Mozambique, Namibia, Angola and South Africa. Not to be misunderstood, it was not that facts were being withheld for us here in Black America, so much as we paid less attention to developments, and did not dig for information.
[…]
So many of us chose to ignore developments, however. We ignored purges that had taken place within ZANU prior to Liberation. We ignored the violent crushing of a rebellion in the early years of the Mugabe administration. We ignored President Mugabe’s adoption of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank formula of “structural adjustment”, despite its economic theory running contrary to a pro-people economic transformation. And, we ignored the fact that the land was not being redistributed. We ignored this and other unsettling matters while the focus of much of Black America was on events unfolding in other parts of Southern Africa.
Links: Shocking photos of violence from Zimbabwe - FREE Zim
South West Radio Africa
Tags:
Zimbabwe
African-Americans
Solidarity
Mugabe
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3 Comments so far
1. Zimbabwe: Black America must not be silent
April 29th, 2008 at 2:44 am
[…] MySpace.com Blogs - Band4MassCann MySpace Blog wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptZimbabwe: Black America must not be silent Bill Fletcher (2008-04-17 Much of Black America stopped discussing Zimbabwe after its liberation in 1980; at least, we stopped discussing it for a while. After years of regular coverage of the liberation war, details regarding Zimbabwe became harder to obtain as attention shifted to struggles in Mozambique, Namibia, Angola and […] […]
2. solomonsydelle
April 29th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
I’ve been watching reports from Zimbabwe and having private conversations with friends and family about related matters.
I am not going to lie, I am exhausted by the ‘wahala’ and trying to figure out the best way to spotlight the nation’s woes and indicate my support for the people. Nevertheless, I hope and pray that something positive will happen and that things will get better or our Zimbabwean brothers and sisters, regardless of their skin color.
3. Jazzy
April 29th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Ok I say this with much trepidation, but speaking from this Black Americans point of view I at times feel a disconnect from Africa and its suffering, as much a disconnect as I do say for people living in Afghanistan. On the flip side many Black Americans are so busy caught up in their own drama that we don’t have time to take on anyone else’s plight. I know this may sound harsh but I think this happens to be part of the problem concerning relationships between Africans and Black Americans.