Tag: Patrice Lumumba

“The basic cause of most of the trouble in the Congo right now is the intervention of outsiders — the fighting that is going on over the mineral wealth of the Congo and over the strategic position that the Congo represents on the African continent. And in order to justify it, they are doing it at the expense of the Congolese, by trying to make it appear that the people are savages. And I think, as one of the gentlemen mentioned earlier, if there are savages in the Congo, then there are worse savages in Mississippi, Alabama and New York City, and probably some in Washington, D.C., too.” – Malcolm X on radio station WMCA Nov. 28, 1964

George Jackson said, “If terror is going to be the choice of weapons, there must be funerals on both sides ... And let the whole enemy power complex be conscious of that!” Or, as Brother Imam Malik Khaba (formerly known as Jeff Fort) put it: “Ain’t gone be no killing, without killing.”

Cobalt is essential to our military industries’ ability to manufacture the modern weapons of war. So, the Congo War, a.k.a. the African holocaust, is a war for the sake of war itself.

The Congolese people continue to suffer staggering casualties in the ongoing African holocaust, which has cost between 5 and 6 million Congolese lives since 1996, and which continues to cost 45,000 lives a month.

Blacked out by a media smokescreen are the corporate executives, government officials and expatriate personnel of Western enterprises whose success amidst chaos implicates them in the deracination and death of millions of Black people.

Some of us remember the first elected prime minister of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, as he brought to the world the vision of a prosperous Congo where this beautiful land will benefit the Congolese people and not world corporations. A modern day holocaust is occurring in this picturesque land of abundance.

Following "Break the Silence" Congo Week, Kambale Musavuli urges the global community, and African-Americans in particular, to revitalize international attention on the Congo as a means of shedding light on the ongoing conflict and harnessing the potential for strong advocacy relationships.