Prof PLO Lumumba speaks about the African Renaissance

[Applause] it start by recognizing the vice Chancellor of the University of Dar Salam permit me also to recognize the deputy Vice Chancellor and to recognize Professor panina Lama and in the audience permit me to recognize MOBA my Lord I recognize you I also take this opportunity to recognize the other academics who are present here the students who are here and members of the press I'm so very happy to be invited once again to be present with you to celebrate and commemorate the life and times of muu Julius cber G I first came to Tanzania as

a student on the 9th day of December 1984 when I was a student leader at the University of Nairobi and the then president of Kenya invited me among other students to accompany him and that is when I met I then 10 years later in 1994 visited at the invitation of Professor Haru bman on the occasion of 40 Years of celebration of leadership in Africa and that is when I forly was introduced to mimu Julius cber G and his foundation it's therefore gladdens my heart that I'm in the country of a man whom I admire and

in a hall named after and in a hall that is named after another great African the for Dr quame nura the subject that has preoccupied Us in the last few days is one that is as topical as it is relevant the rise or fall of Africa on account of the African politician and in order to do justice to that subject and to remain faithful to My Chosen subject which is a call for Hygiene in African politics there is a sense in which one must take a historic Journey if only to appreciate the factors that animated

Africans to seek to regain their independence from the colonial Masters historians will remind us that we were fast enslaved that Africans were taken and this we seldom say the first civilization to take Africans out of this continent were the Arabs and they took Africans from the eastern coast and he said that in that part of the world there are not many Africans who remained because it was in the business of the Arab enslaver to castrate Africans we never say that but we must say it because it is historically significant then the Europeans came the Portuguese

came the Spaniards came the Germans came the French came the belgians came Africa became the hunting ground for the European colonizers and we were the spot we built our ancestors built the United States of America our ancestors built Europe and when slavery had lost its shine and Sheen the Europeans abolished it but they replaced it with yet another pentious Enterprise the colonization of Africa the Europe sat in Berlin in Germany in 1884 and they looked at the map of Africa and parceled it out the British had their share the Germans had their share and Tanzania

or tanganika was their share as was Rwanda and urun the Spaniards were joury come lately is in the arena and they got little Equatorial Guinea and Southwest Africa the French were here the Portuguese were here and we were colonized this time round they did not take us away they came here and they controlled us and they told us not in so many words that we were children of a Lesser God and we were treated as if we were children of a Lesser God in fact they told us that on the day of creation we were

merely heers of wood and drawers of water and if anybody were to doubt it in 1948 it was more blatant when Henrik faot instituted the appetite regime in South Africa but yet there is a sense in which the God that we worship never sleeps the colonial Enterprise ran its course and the European tribes the Europeans never called themselves tribes they called them nations were engaged in a war first in 1918 the European tribes fought and they had something called the League of Nations which died then they fought again in in 1945 and what is unique

about the European nations is that when they are engaged in Tribal wars they called them world wars so there was another war between 1945 1939 and 1945 and after that a new kid on the Block the United States of America took the lead in saying that colonialism was something that was undesired but at that time Africans were never quiet those who had been taken out had already started agitating many of us here will remember Marcus gavy of whom Bob Mary says gavy was a Buffalo Soldier in the heart of America and many of us will

remember the web Dua many of us will remember that they started agitating that Africans must regain their dignity and their independence and indeed in 1847 in Liberia a small group of Africans were brought back in Monrovia and Liberia became the first independent black nation in the continent of Africa so soon thereafter in siero they also created yet another Colony but Africa was colonized except Ethiopia which they tried to take in 1938 and exiled Professor Dr haasi and unfortunately they were defeated as you remember in the Battle of adoa Africa can defeat European tribes this history

is necessary that we are able to appreciate the freedom that we gained so that gavi came WB du came but there was another crop after the 1940s who had had the advantage of European education and there are people in Europe also who are beginning to recognize that indeed equality was necessary and this was not anything new in 1776 in the United States of America the American state sitting in Philadelphia in the United States of America declared unto themselves that all men are born equal that they are endowed by their creator with sat alienable right that

among those are life liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness a few years later in France After the Revolution they also recognized that we were to be equal so that the colonized Nations which had now taken Africans thought that they were safe they had taken Leopold Sedar Sango from Sagal to Peri and they thought that they were creating a little French man little did they know that they were creating somebody who would want to overthrow them they took Felix Bu from civo and they thought that they were creating somebody who would be subservient to them they

took Ahmed SE and Modo and they thought they were safe little did they know that they were creating the Future Leaders and agitators against French colonization and he did not stop there the Portuguese also took austino NATO and Aila cabal and they to adamon Lane to Lisbon little did they know that those individuals would be the Catalyst that would be necessary in the process of decolonization the British also had their fair share they took others they took mimar Hastings kamuzu Kenneth David Kaa and many others to the United Kingdom J Kenyata little did they know

that those would be the individuals who sometimes later and in Ghana of course they took the foruma and in Nigeria they took Dr namik Abu bakar tala and sah the S of soot there is a sense therefore in which these individuals started recognizing that having been enslaved having been colonized we now had to liberate ourselves and the agitation started and kukuma and his Ghana acquired Independence in 1957 and I still can hear quame nura through the vicissitudes of time saying in Akra Ghana that Ghana is free and will never be colonized again but the freedom

of Ghana means nothing if the rest of Africa is not free I can hear I can hearu Julius saying that is prepared to delay the independence of tanganika so that tanganika Kenya Uganda would become independent at one time mimu could see the future with the exactitude of a Jewish prophets J kinata and obote could not and therefore we gained independ are separate states and the story will be told shortly so what do we see the agitation the demand by the people that we must be decolonized and why is it that we were asking that we

must be decolonized why is it that we are demanding that we must regain our independence because throughout the ages it was always the divine plan that men must be masters of their Destiny and when we gained our independence the leaders of the day were eloquent as they were clear that the reason why we were asking to be independent is because we wanted to take charge of our Affairs we wanted to be the governors we wanted to have our young men and women acquire education we wanted to control the production of our food through agriculture we

wanted to build our infrastructure we wanted to improve improve the quality of the lives of our people by improving their health we wanted to eliminate poverty we were clear on what we wanted and this message was as clear in West Africa as it was clear in East Africa as it was clear in central Africa as it was clear in Northern Africa so that if you listen to quame uruma is as if you'd listen to atino Nato and if you listen to Nato it's as if You' listen to Samora Moses Melle and if you listen to

Ahmed Ben Bella in the mreb is as if you'd listen to Patrice Emy lumumba there is a sense in which there was unanimity that this was the only way and we attained Independence and I remember saw very vividly in 1957 s in Casablanca Morocco was it in 1960 when the then eight independent African countries met on the foruma was clear that we must ensure that everybody else regains their independence and that we must remember that the colonial Master is not asleep and that if we don't unite he'll come under other guises through the neoc colonial

project but they listened to kukuma not and even before they assembled in 1963 in the month of May in Adis SAA Ethiopia no sooner had countries started attaining Independence that the colonial Pro neoc Colonial project started taking roote and in 1960 the first cudit and assassination took place in Togo when syanu Olympia was eliminated one year later Patrice Emir lumumba was eliminated so that in 1963 in the month of May when 32 heads of states and government assembled in Adis Sababa Ethiopia there were several speeches but three speeches Stand Out Kuma speech M speech and

Emperor Hai speech hassi was the host and is in all in own inimitable style he reminded the congregation who are present in Africa Hall in Adis Sababa Ethiopia that that was a momentous occasion and that the long-term health of Africa not only required but demanded that Africa must pull in the same direction haasi said andu took the Baton from haasi and repeated the same words celebrating the fact that we were independent and we had the opportunity of determining in our Affairs but the greatest of the speeches was that of theuma had a sense of urgency

which everybody else did not have he said not in so many words but in effect that if we want to immunize ourselves from the Diabolical machinations of the aswh colonial Master now turned neoc colonizer we have to move here as one Africa with the United States of Africa with one Army with one currency with one Central Bank and with one nation but they listen to him not they had started getting used to the trappings of power so what they came out with on that day in the month of May 1963 was a weak organization of

African Unity the oou which many commentators were quick to describe in many ways and many times as the toothless Bulldog it was never a dog he did not have teeth but the effect of it is that he did not do very much some say it was a talking shop MOBA who was then active in political life and in other sectors will attest to that yet later we were to create another body the African Union and we'll have something to say about that so we come out of Adis Sab by Ethiopia in 1963 clear as to

what we want to do the African politician begins to emerge we have them in different parts but they begin to show characters that are to totally inimical to our expectations you of [Applause] say they started getting used to the trappings of power and we started having countries which we thought would liberate us and I'm talking about the hygiene of the politics it started disappearing many of these individuals now thought that they were demig Gods suffering from what I call the Messiah complex thinking that they had been brought to Africa to liberate her and that they

suffered from two major diseases one of them is the mat syndrome and the other one is the Messiah complex they think that they their countries owed them Africa started producing leaders that one cannot recognize how many of you will forget jahel basa of Central African Republic that man who murdered little children in the streets because they did not buy uniform from his wife that J Bas how many of you will will forget who changed his country's name and presided over a kleptocratic regime the Democratic Republic of Congo is the richest resource country on Earth conservatively

decide that under her belly she has minerals which is equivalent to 34.1 trillion United States dollars and yet today it is one of the poorest Nations on Earth it is the only nation on Earth which the day of the election has its president saying we know we ought to have elections but we have no money to hold elections when you see a country which has as its official name the Democratic Republic of Congo know that there is no democracy in fact I dare say that any country two countries that I know insisting on having as

a part of the official name the Democratic Republic of something are never Democratic the other one is Korea the people's Democratic Republic of Korea is as if when you can't graduate to be a doctor you go to the church and you ask to be baptized as Dr madim but that is not the point the point is that who can forget mut who can forget ID of ugand who can forget meist to ha maram over ethopia and one can go on and on because hygiene had started disappearing from African politics our agriculture was beginning to suffer

European musicians who had a little sense of guilt came to perform in Africa Bob gof to free the Ethiopians out of hunger there was no hygiene in our politics we could not run our education systems our young men and women were going to India because the budgets meant for Education were consumed by individuals whom we had entrusted with the task of presiding over it our health sectors were beginning to collapse and as I've said before the political leadership did not have any faith in those institution typically the typical African politician perhaps not in Tanzania today

if they were sick they had a call they would not go to mimil they would go to London if they were Kenyan they would not go to Kenyata hospital they would run to the United Kingdom tragedy no hygiene in our politics because Africans had started engaging in theft in fact I used to say that African politicians were thieves then I went to Uganda and I was told that they are not thieves they are looters and when I went to Liberia last week they I was told they are not looters I was told they are looters

on an industrial scale that is The Logical metamorphosis of the African politician whose appe for public wealth is completely insatiable hygiene was disappearing from African politics and we could see the effect of The Disappearance of hygiene in African politics but there was always the IC wild po Colonial Master to assist who deters started visiting Africa in was consumed namik in Nigeria was consumed the foruma was consumed Apollo Milton oot was consumed a mil cabal in Guinea BAU was consumed Patrice lumumba was consumed CS were so frequent in Africa that afro pessimist were now hard to

say that coups were as frequent as breakfast but even breakfast was not frequent on African tables we could not feed ourselves because there was no hygiene in African politics your typical African politicians took the view that they had a Divine mission to preside over their countries they arrogated to themselves the Monopoly of wisdom if you listen to some of them and I listen to the radio announcements announcing the activities of one leader of an African country Hab man juvenile it would take three minutes to say the things that he had done