News — Politics

Inspired by the Black Power movement in the U.S., the Nigerian playwright, Obi Egbuna, founded the British Black Panthers (BBP) in 1968 in London’s Notting Hill.  In Britain, people of Caribbean, African, or South Asian descent, who were mainly immigrants from former British colonies, were considered to be “black.”  The tripling of Britain’s black population from 300,000 to 1 million from 1961 to 1964 led to increased racial and class tensions, especially in London’s Afro-Caribbean community.  These tensions led to more police repression and the creation of the BBP.

While the BBP was not an official chapter of the Black Panthers, it was the first Panther organization outside the United States, adopting the Panther’s symbols of military jackets, berets, and raised fists.  Under Egbuna, BBP fought against police brutality. London police attempted to destroy the new party by arresting Ebguna and two other Panthers on bogus charges of threatening police.  Ebguna was found guilty, and while he was in prison, Althea Jones, a Trinidad-born Ph.D. student at the University of London, became the leader of BBP by 1970.

Althea Jones along with her partner and later husband, Eddie Lecointe, South Asian Farrukh Dhondy, and Neil Kenlock changed the focus of BBP.  The Party began grass-roots organizing of local black communities in England around each community’s issues of racial discrimination in jobs, housing, education, and medical and legal services. The BBP moved their headquarters to Brixton, a poorer black community in London.  Under Jones’s leadership the Panthers became a highly effective community organization that also collaborated on white working class issues and fought British imperialism. Like the Black Panther Party in the U.S., they stressed working-class solidarity in addition to fighting racial discrimination and oppression.

As part of their community work the BBP engaged in legal advocacy for blacks in 10 British cities as well as in London.  The high point of their advocacy work was their defense of the Mangrove restaurant that was the central meeting place for Notting Hill’s Caribbean community.  The police regularly harassed and raided the Mangrove without ever finding any drugs.  The BBP helped organize a demonstration against the police that led to the arrest and charging of nine black leaders with inciting a riot.  These nine included the owner of the Mangrove, Althea Jones-Lecointe, and Darcus Howe.  The Mangrove Nine trial was Britain’s most influential black power trial.  Jones-Lecointe and Howe represented themselves at the trial and demanded an all-black jury as a jury of their peers.  The jury acquitted all nine defendants, and for the first time, a judge publicly acknowledged that there was “evidence of racial hatred” within the London police.

Other BBP achievements included creation of a Youth League and the Freedom News newspaper, and organizing a march of 10,000 people protesting the Immigration Bill of 1971 that reduced black immigration.  In 1973 the BBP split into two factions, and ended soon after.  The BBP had many offshoots, including British Black Women’s Group, Squatter’s Rights Movement, and the Race Today magazine.  The long-neglected BBP has been highlighted in 2017 in a photography exhibit at the Tate Museum, a proposed film on the Mangrove Nine, and airing of Guerrilla, a new drama series loosely based on the BBP.

The Second Sudanese Civil War was an intense 22-year conflict between the central government in Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).  The war started in southern Sudan but spread to other places including the Nuba mountains and the Blue Nile region. Two million people died in this conflict but the war also led to the creation of South Sudan as an independent nation in 2011.

The terms of the Addis Ababa Agreement in 1972, which ended the first Sudan Civil War, were violated several times. In 1978, President Gaafar Nimeiry wanted to take control of the newly-discovered oil fields located on the border region between north and south Sudan.  In 1983, President Nimeiry violated the agreement by imposing Sharia Law across the nation and abolishing the mostly Christian Southern Sudan Autonomous Region.  Most South Sudanese people and other people who were non-Muslim living in the north were now punished by Sharia Law.

In response, rebels from South Sudan formed the Southern Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA), led by John Garang, to fight the central government in Khartoum.  As in the first war, child soldiers were recruited by both sides but were more frequently used by the SPLA.  In April 1985, a coup occurred.  Nimeri was ousted and the new government rescinded his 1983 decree and made other overtures designed to reconcile the north and south. In May 1986, the new Khartoum government led by Prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and the SPLA led by Col. John Garang met in negotiations for the first time. At the same time the SPLA and other Sudanese political parties met in Ethiopia where they fashioned the Koka Dam declaration which called for abolishing Islamic law and convening a constitutional conference for the entire nation.

In 1988, the SPLA and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a political party in Sudan, agreed on a peace plan which called for a cease fire and the abolition of military pacts with Egypt and Libya which had supplied the Khartoum government with weapons.  In February 1989, the Sadiq al-Mahdi government approved the peace plan but fighting continued into the 1990s with atrocities and human rights abuses occurring on both sides.

In July 2002, the Government of Sudan and the SPLM reached an agreement known as the Machakos Protocol, named after the town in Kenya where peace talks were held.  The talks continued into the following year and finally on January 9, 2005, the Government of Sudan and the SPLA signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement which ended the civil war.  The agreement also called for the creation of South Sudan in 2011, six years after the war ended.

For those who have insisted that organized sports and politics have no intersection points, the claim has rested on a spurious, almost uneducated conception of politics as the domain of those who make themselves available to be voted for.

Recently, the Swedish soccer star and former LA Galaxy forward Zlatan Ibrahimovic took a dig at athletes who make it a point to voice their opinions on political matters, singling out Los Angeles Lakers’ Lebron James for criticism.

“[LeBron] is phenomenal at what he’s doing, but I don’t like it when people have some kind of status, they go and do politics at the same time. Do what you’re good at. Do the category you do. I play football because I’m the best at playing football,” the 39-year-old soccer star had said.

To this, James responded after a Lakers game. He defended his stances as well as his understanding of politics, which Ibrahimovic seems to understand as an occupation of politicians. James made the point that politics is not an aspect of our lived experience that gets to be detached from anything else. All of our experiences are happening in a political space.

The NBA champion told the press: “I preach about my people and I preach about equality. Social injustice, racism, systematic voter suppression, things that go on in our community. There is no way I will ever just stick to sports because I know with this platform, how powerful my voice is.”

It is not the first time James or any other Black American athlete has had to defend their political stances against those who think that sports happens outside any understanding of politics. Colin Kaepernick in the last few years comes to mind and he will not be the last. But what if those who attack politically-conscious athletes are only attacking out of bad faith and not necessarily ignorance?

And if they attacked out of ignorance and are then served a response that clarifies matters, are they not acting out of bad faith doubling down? Ibrahimovic, who has created a stern and stubborn reputation on and off the soccer pitch, certainly did not see the lessons James and others gave in their responses to him.

Even after James had brought up Ibrahimovic’s own lamentations about how his Swedish identity is constantly under question due to his Muslim Bosnian roots, the soccer player would not be taught. He subsequently resorted to a bizarre bifurcation of racism and politics.

“Racism and politics are two different things. We athletes unite the world, politics divides the world. Everyone is welcome, it has nothing to do with where you are from, we do what we do to unite,” Ibrahimovic doubled down. It seems inconceivable to believe that Ibrahimovic does not comprehend that “where you are from” is a matter of political identity.

Ibrahimovic has enjoyed and endured a 21-year soccer career that and he is a man who has been called upon many times by global organizations as well as his country to act as a goodwill ambassador, among which included ending child hunger. It is baffling that a man who has had many conversations to this extent with diplomats and politicians does not understand social justice’s place in the realm of politics. Only two conclusions can be drawn from this confusion – it’s either Ibrahimovic is acting out of bad faith or he has learned nothing from all of his work over these years with UNICEF and others.

When Laura Ingraham of FOX News came for James a few years ago and told him to “shut and dribble”, at least, it was clear she was only bitter that the most famous active basketball player in the world did not support the politician she adored. She had no qualms when under athletes voiced their support for Trump.

But it is James who has to advice himself and stop responding to these attacks going forward. They will not die down and no amount well-intentioned responses would help. Bad faith and and determined ignorance can be inexhaustible spirits.

Malian singer Salif Keita has announced his entry into politics as a member of the West African country’s transitional council which will play a major role in the transition to civilian rule. The 121-member transitional council is expected to be in place for 18 months and will vote on legislative reforms and other changes before elections are organized.

Keita will be on the council alongside members of the military junta, former militants and members of civil society. The council, at its inaugural meeting on Saturday, approved as its president Colonel Malick Diaw, one of the army officers behind the August coup which overthrew President Ibrahim Boubakar Keïta. President Keita won a second term in elections in 2018 but the opposition accused him of collapsing the country’s economy and worsening the security situation in the country.

Diaw now becomes the third military figure appointed to hold major government positions following the overthrow of President Keita. Former Defence Minister Bah Ndaw currently leads the country while junta leader Col Assimi Goita is the interim vice-president amid concerns over what the opposition calls the militarization of affairs of the country.

“This is a decisive time for Mali,” multiple Grammy-nominated singer Keita told Bloomberg. “It’s very important that we correct the mistakes that have been made in the past.”

Keita is a record-making millionaire, award-winning soulful Afropop singer with global repute. Born into Mandinka culture which sees albinism as a curse or bad luck, he has been singing to highlight the plight of those with albinism across Africa. Growing up in the Malian capital, he joined the government-funded music band, Super Rail Band de Bamako.

At the beginning of the 1970s, he became the lead singer for the group that played Afro-Latin sounds. It was the group Les Ambassadeurs, which Keita joined in 1973, that offered him the platform for international recognition. The group would later flee Mali and settle in Ivory Coast due to political unrest. In 1984, Keita moved to Paris. In 2019, he announced that he was returning home to his country.

He had the year prior to that retired from recording and had begun speaking strongly against political tension in his country. “It’s hard to be a good person when you are corrupt, and our politicians are always corrupt,” Keita, known as the “golden voice of Africa”, was quoted by The Guardian in February 2019. “Mali is the most corrupt country in the world after Cameroon.

“Democracy is not a good thing for Africa. We were all happy to see democracy come to Africa, but it destroyed the human sensibility. To have a democracy, people have to understand democracy, and how can people understand when 85% of the people in the country cannot read or write? They need a benevolent dictator like China has; someone who loves his country and acts for his country.”