From: Mumia Mumia@aol.com 
Date sent: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 10:35:11 EST

BUBBA IN AFRICA by MAJ
Column Written 3/24/98

"Capitalism is but the gentleman’s form of slavery."
Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah

The springtime spectacle of American President William Jefferson Clinton
touring West, Central and Southern Africa is one that is vaguely disturbing.
To this, the most irredeemably political of men, the wild, green and sun-
drenched landscape, peopled by teeming black crowds at every whistlestop,
poses irresistible photo opportunities. To men whose very career seems to
rest on the vaporous gases of imagery, Africa promises to be a virtual
wellspring, designed for domestic consumption. One wonders, however, why now?

Certainly, an important factor is the ongoing and utterly unrelenting coverage
of the president’s latest ‘bimbo eruption,’ the most recent revelation of
which woman claimed an assignation with the nation’s chief executive, and
perhaps, why. If so, the vast and wondrous continent seems somewhat sullied
by such usage.

What coaxes Clinton to the hallowed shadows of Senegal’s Goree Island is the
siren song of capital: the urging of US business to further exploit rich
black African resources and a potentially cheap, vast labor pool. What brings
him is not African interests, but US ones: profit.

Nor is it a coincidence that an American president braves African shores at
the same time as Congress is considering the so-called African Growth and
Opportunity Act, passed by the house in mid-March. It is a measure of the
nature of politics itself that the naming of a bill usually bears little
resemblance to the features of a bill, as evidenced by Clinton’s Anti-
Terrorism and effective Death Penalty Act, which scuttled historic habeas
corpus protections (of thousands of non terrorists), and which enacted
several draconian laws against foreigners either in, or entering, the US
(this, despite the fact that most ‘terrorist’ activities in the US comes, not
from foreigners, but from Americans, as in Oklahoma).

Africans should be particularly leery of Americans promising gifts. Nor
should the ruthlessness of US Capitalism be taken lightly, for millions of
blacks in America are the descendants of people who were themselves, human
capital.

Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL.) has likened the African Growth and Opportunity
Bill to a NAFTA for Africa: "We do not need a deal between undemocratic and
permanently entrenched kings and presidents-for-life in Africa and
multinational businesses in the United States and elsewhere that do not hire,
promote or value African-American employees at home…Why should we trust the
people who discriminate against us and disparage affirmative action at home to
be respectful of African workers?" (The Nation, 6 Apr. 1998).

Capital has one imperative: profit, whither on Wall Street or in Harare Square
in Zimbabwe. Businesses aren’t formed to employ workers, but to provide ample
returns to investors (often at the expense of labor).

For 400 years Africa has been the site of American exploitation and Yankee
imperial puppetry of African neocolonial ‘leaders’ like Mobutu Sese Seko. It
has entangled African states in total Cold War rivalries, and shipped its
commercial, municipal garbage to Africa’s shores for a pittance.

Will this initiative be any different? History does not accord us much hope.

Time will tell whether the next century brings a new positive change, or
merely more exploitation.

©MAJ

Text © copyright 1998 by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

Share this page with a friend

International Action Center
39 West 14th Street, Room 206
New York, NY 10011
email: mailto:iacenter@action-mail.org
En Espanol: iac-cai@action-mail.org
Web: http://www.iacenter.org
Support Mumia Abu-Jamal: http://www.millions4mumia.org/
phone: 212 633-6646
fax: 212 633-2889
Make a donation to the IAC and its projects

 

The International Action Center
Home     ActionAlerts    Press