 SACP Invitation, 20 February 2012 Consultative Meeting on Establishing a Peace Movement The SACP will convene a broad consultative meeting on establishing a Peace Movement in South Africa as follows:
The peace movement will aim for popular unity in the struggle for peace in Africa and the world, including for the rejection of foreign military bases in countries of the world, the dissolution of nuclear weapons, and to generally stop the resolution of political problems through the means of war. The meeting will discuss the situation of the African diaspora including a program of internationalist solidarity with people’s movements in Africa that face conflicts, imperialist threats, interventions, aggression, oppression and occupations. We will also discuss the material basis to stop continuing xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals in the country. This meeting will be followed by an International Seminar to be held on the Saturday, 24 March 2012 at the Yeoville Recreation Centre, at 15h30 with the African diaspora. A march of Internationalism will be held on Sunday, 25 March 2012 at 09h00 starting at the Yeoville Recreation Centre to the Beyers Naude Square in Central Johannesburg. We invite all local and diaspora organisations, movements and the media to participate. Those interested in participating can contact and confirm with Xolani Ntombela at 011 339 3621/2, Mobile: 078 846 5349 or [email protected] or [email protected] Issued by the SACP Contact: Malesela Maleka SACP Spokesperson – 082 226 1802 From: Ngugi wa Thiong’o, The Writer in a Neo-Colonial State, 1993: “The Kenya that emerged from the seventies is a good illustration of the workings of a neo-colonial state. At the beginning of the decade Kenya was a fairly ‘open society’ in the sense that the Kenyans could still debate issues without fear of prison. But as the ruling party under Kenyatta, and later under Moi, continued cementing the neo-colonial links to the West, the Kenyan regime became more and more intolerant of any views that questioned neo-colonialism. In the fifties, Kenyans had fought to get rid of all foreign military presence from her soil. In 1980 the Kenyan authorities had given military base facilities to the USA. The matter was not even debated in Parliament. Kenyans learnt about it through debates in the US Congress. Now within the same decade which saw the Kenyan coast turned over for use by the US military machine, the Kenya regime had banned all centres of democratic debate. Even the university was not spared. University lecturers were imprisoned or detained without trial; among them were writers like Al Amin Mazrui and Edward Oyugi. “Another lecturer, also a writer and Kenya’s foremost national historian, Maina wa Kinyatti, has served a prison sentence in a maximum security prison for doing intensive work on Mau Mau. Maina wa Kinyatti was educated in Kenya and the Unites States of America. On returning to Kenya at the beginning of the seventies, he joined the History Department at Kenyatta University College. He became very concerned that ten years after the Kenya Land and Freedom Army had forced colonialism to retreat and allow Kenya a measure of self-rule and independence, no work had been done by Kenyans scholars on the actual history and literature of these who died that Kenya might be free. He set about collecting the songs and poems of the Mau Mau era, some of which he later edited into a book: Thunder From the Mountain: Mau Mau Patriotic Songs. He also started work on the whole anti-colonial resistance within the context of the Kenyan history of struggle from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries. The result? He languished in jail, going blind, for 6½ years until October 1989. “Over the same decade, the regime became very intolerant of theatre and any cultural _expression_ that sided with the people. Kamiriithu Community Education and Cultural Centre’s Open Air Theatre was razed to the ground. A number of plays were stopped. Kenyan writers like Micere Mugo, Ngugi wa Mirii, Kimani Gecau, were forced into exile. In February 1985, the regime climaxed its decade of intolerance by bludgeoning 12 students to death, and 150 others into hospital; 14 went to jail for 6 months joining another 10 serving long jail terms of up to 10 years. Five others were tortured and subsequently sentenced from 6 to 12 months in jail for holding an interdenominational prayer meeting in day time on an open university sports ground. “How does a writer function in such a society? He can of course adopt silence or self-censorship, in which case he ceases to be an effective writer. Or he can become a state functionary, an option some Kenyan writers have now embraced, and once again cease to be an effective writer of the people. Or he may risk jail or exile, in which case he is driven from the very sources of his inspiration. Write and risk damnation. Avoid damnation and cease to be a writer. That is the lot of the writer in the neo-colonial state.” -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . |
