Ota Benga Alliance For Peace, Healing and Dignity

Le 12 janvier 2009, dans un texte très important, Que dire aujourd’hui de la RDC ? (voir http://otabenga.org/node/157) Ernest Wamba dia Wamba avait alors condensé en 16 points l’essentiel de ce qui vaut encore aujourd’hui à quelques jours du cinquantième anniversaire de l'Indépendance du Congo (30 juin 1960). À ce texte, il n’y a rien à ajouter sinon attirer l’attention sur les points les plus importants, à savoir que la question posée par rapport à la RDC s’applique avec une urgence accrue pour que le système qui tue les plus démunis cesse d’exister.  read more »

Appel pour la création d’un espace planétaire
pour la défense sans compromis de l’humanité  read more »

It is still lethally dangerous to be seen fighting for what was not achieved
50 years ago. The assassinations of Floribert Chebeya Bahizire (FCB), President of the the Voix des Sans Voix (Voice of the Voiceless), and his
driver, Fidele Bazana, on june 1st in Kinshasa show that, for 50 years, the
political leadership has continued to act in the same manner which led to
the overthrow, torture and killing of Patrice Emery Lumumba and his two
companions, Okito and Mpolo (January 17, 1961). In a world built through  read more »

Reading about what has happened at Kennedy Road Settlement in Durban makes me wonder. More like wondering and wandering from society to society, from places in history and geography. Has capitalism become the greatest laundering scheme, the greatest organized gang?  read more »

Dearest Friends,

Like many people in South Africa and around the world, I am still stunned by what has been done to the people living at the Kennedy Road Settlement in Durban.

From 2005, AbM seems to have managed to overcome many obstacles, but, or so it seems, it has not been able (yet) to overcome the biggest one, namely appearing to be giving a lesson in emancipatory politics to the ANC.  read more »

Dearest Friends,  read more »

Dearest Friends,

Warmest greetings to all.

In times like these you must be like the person on a not well traveled road who has had a serious breakdown and is wondering when help will appear. Changes in the wind sound like some car/hope in the distance.  read more »

Dear Friends, Foes and all those in between,

Before May 2008, we only knew of Abahlalibase Mjondolo. (AbM), then
in May 2008, we met members of Abahalalibase Mjondolo, at the Kennedy Road Settlement. Each one spoke, expressing in various ways the meaning of emancipatory politics; and then, the next day, we met again with S’bu Zikode, the President of AbM.

After he described the situation in which they were living, we asked what was the way out. “Healing” he responded.  read more »

A poem linking Israel's December 2008 to January 2009 siege of Gaza to Haiti.

First , not quite, but we have to start somewhere,
There were the Arawaks, the Caribs and the Amerindians
Then their land became known as Hispaniola,
As Saint Domingue, as the economic jewel
Of French overseas possessions
Thanks to Africans kidnapped, chained, shipped
Processed, codified, stamped as property
While always knowing they belonged
To no one but humanity
And through fidelity to humanity
Turned Saint Domingue into Haiti
Fraternity, equality and liberty
Their only motto  read more »

Jacques Depelchin is CAPES Fellow (2007-9) (Brasil) and Co-founder of Ota Benga Alliance for Peace, Healing and Dignity (www.otabenga.org). This is a response to an article in the March 2009 issue of Foreign Policy, “There Is No Congo,” written by Jeffrey Herbst (Provost of Miami University in Ohio) and Greg Mills (Director of the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation).[2]  read more »