POETIC INTERCOURSE

I had sex with Poetry last night 

In a dim lit setting that was just right 

Perfect, in every way, was her undress 

And beautiful was her bare nakedness 

Tender were her breast that were lustfully sweet 

Warm was her chest, from where I felt her heartbeat 

Erect were her nipples, stiff and stout 

All of which caused my erectile to stand out 

Beckoning was her navel to sensual serenity 

The perfect center piece of her naked body symmetry 

That was located right above the vulva, which was the remedy 

Of calming the urge manifested in my centermost extremity 

Pre-fuck juices giving the head of my dick a sheen 

Secreted upon visual stimulus, she made me cream 

Then penetrating her centermost cavity, her vaginal source 

Such was the start of our poetic intercourse 

Experiencing what I believed to be a sexual renaissance 

With every thrust, bump, and grind, she moved in response 

Delicious was the feel of her feminine rose 

As we fucked, and recited to each other sensual prose 

In comparison to the movement and feel, there was nothing else 

The fuck faces she made alone, was as much of a turn on as the act itself 

Seamlessly choreographed, ... yet unrehearsed 

As I licked her body, she sucked my soul with poetic verse 

With the lights down low, and a dimness to surround me 

She held on, putting her arms and legs around me 

Time passed, we both looked down, to the goings on about 

In her receptacle, I was churning in and out 

To explain the feeling with words,... I’m at a loss 

As we both watched my shaft dip, like a lobster tail dipped in butter sauce 

Tantalizing her with a quiet fury and force Tasty was the feel of our poetic intercourse. I felt a warm wet sensation, as I felt her body rise The feeling of hot, juicy girl cum, flowing between her thighs 

Her fuck face gave way to scrunched brows, and closed eyes 

Holding me tightly, as I thrust and grind, she gave a faint, feminine cry. 

When her grip relaxed, I let up a bit 

She positioned her left hand on her left tit 

And turned on her stomach, spread her legs, and exposed her loot 

Umm,... the sight of her hairy pussy looked like kiwi fruit 

I mounted her ass, with no thoughts of evasion 

Halfway in, her coochie rose to the occasion

In a sexy voice, she said 'don’t move' 

Then she began to do a pelvic rock, hip swivel groove 

I stood still for a moment, but I had to advance 

And join in, in this doggy style, hip dance 

Lovingly riding her booty like a horse 

Gripped by her lyrical grip in this poetic intercourse 

Positioned for continual G-spot stimulation 

She humped up and down, and did hip gyrations 

Holding both her shoulders, all of me, to her I gave 

And rode Poetry like a boat rides and ocean wave 

The way her head was turned, I could see the shedding of a tear 

Already pressed against her, I put a question in her ear 

Never stopping the fuck, and the feeling to entice 

I asked if she was alright, she said 'yeah baby, the feeling is just 

so nice' 

I kissed the side of her face, as I continued to juice her mound 

And make her booty roll up and down 

Of the bed, she let me know that she was loving` the flavor

By making the sounds a pregnant lady makes when she goes into labor 

I sped up the hip movements, as we made the bed wiggle 

Pumping in and out of her, making her as cheeks jiggle 

Joyfully pleasuring her pussy, with no remorse 

Creaming the cream of dreams in this poetic intercourse 

After ejaculating in an intense manner 

And causing Poetry to gush in an erotic clamor 

I held her, the rest of the night, a hold from which we wouldn’t divorce and verbalized verses of rhyme, capping off our poetic intercourse before I Penetrate Your Soul Let Unique Masturbate Your Mind. 

African Immigrants Making Headway In USA

Immigration laws may frustrate African immigrants in the USA, but, says Ruben Diaz Jnr, the Bronx Borough president, African immigrants are "here to stay". Africans in Newark, New Jersey, have even won a kind of victory, and made history, with the naming of a street there after Ghana. As Leslie Goffe reports from New York, the naming of "Ghanaian Way" has given pride to Ghanaians and other Africans in Newark, and given life to an area of the city that was known for death.

It’s not every day that a street in the United States is named in honour of an African country. In fact, before Victoria Street in Newark, a city in the state of New Jersey near New York, was re-named “Ghanaian Way” in June, it had never happened before.

“This is a great day for us,” says Edward Nsiah, one of a group of Ghanaians who convinced the city of Newark, which was one of the first big cities in the US to have a black mayor, to name one of its streets after his homeland. “This is an inspiration of what we can do as Ghanaians.”

Thrilled at the honour, and at their growing influence, hundreds of Ghanaians, among them several chiefs and queen mothers, attended the naming ceremony for Ghanaian Way in Newark, a city where thousands of Africans have settled over the past 25 years and where their growing numbers have made them much sought after by politicians.

To court the African vote, a US congressman, a state assemblywoman and several other politicians attended the naming ceremony. Among them was Ras Baraka, the Newark City councilman credited with convincing the city to re-name Victoria Street, the “Ghanaian Way”. It is a street that had been known for its derelict and abandoned buildings but which later became a bustling commercial zone, transformed by Ghanaian restaurants and grocery shops.

“They got ‘Little Chinatown’, ‘Little Italy.’ It’s time for us to celebrate our heritage,” Councilman Baraka, an African-American, told the gathering. “Ghanaian Way is an opportunity to do that.”

Ghanaian Way might not have happened at all, had Ghana not beaten the USA at the 2010 World Cup and jubilant Ghanaian expatriates, drinking beer at a shop in the old Victoria Street, not taken to the streets in celebration.

Threatened with arrest by the Newark police who thought they were rioting, the Ghanaians turned to their councilman, Ras Baraka, who rescued them, and later pressed Newark’s government to name a street in the city in recognition of the Ghanaian contribution to Newark’s economic, cultural and political life.

“From now to forever and eternity,” Baraka declared to the hundreds of Ghanaians who came out to see the new street name unveiled, “this street will be the street of the Ghanaian people in the South Ward of Newark, New Jersey, in the USA.”

A few miles away from Newark’s Ghanaian Way, in New York City, Africans here, too, have been flexing their political muscles and preparing to make history. Rev David Kayode, a Nigerian Baptist priest employed as a counselor by the New York City Department of Homeless Services, is hoping to become the first African-born person elected to public office in New York City.

Kayode, a Democrat, says he wants to be the “voice for the voiceless” in the 28th Council District, an area in Queens, New York, where a small, but growing African population has settled.  “New York City is ready for an African on the City Council,” insists Rev Kayode. “I think it will happen that I will be the first.”

In 1997, Nigerian Emmanuel Onunwor became the first African-born person to be elected to public office in the US when he became the mayor of East Cleveland, Ohio. In 2010, Somalia-born Hussein Samatar became the first African elected to public office in Minnesota, a state where thousands of Somalians have settled, when he won a seat on the Minneapolis school board.

Though the number of Africans in the US has more than quadrupled over the past 20 years from around 400,000 in 1990 to almost 2 million today, thanks in part to an end to restrictive, racially-based US immigration quotas, the numbers of Africans in the New York area is still too small, and dispersed, for them to easily elect one of their own to public office without the support of other groups.

Nigerian Chika Onyeani, publisher of the African-Sun Times, a New York area paper for African expats, says Africans in the US are politically naïve and disorganised and could learn from older immigrant groups from Italy and Ireland, who voted along ethnic lines, and newer immigrants from the Caribbean and Latin America, who regularly elect their own to office.

“We do not have ethnic blocs like the Irish or the Italians that can win elections,” says Onyeani. “We don’t have a ‘Little Africa’.” The problem for Africans who have run for public office in New York in the past, says Onyeani, author of the new book, Why Blacks Can’t Run, is they “speak to Africans alone” and “do not have broad appeal.”

But Sierra Leonean Sidique Wai had broad appeal and broad support when he ran for the New York City Council’s 35th District seat in 2001. Well-liked inside and outside the African community, Wai, the president of the United African Congress, an advocacy group for African immigrants, had the support of New York’s Liberal and Independence parties and a host of other influential groups and individuals. But Wai’s bid for office was derailed by 9/11, which occurred as New Yorkers were preparing to go to the polls.

An African and a Muslim, Wai says anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic feeling meant he had no chance of being elected in New York at that time. “It destroyed my political career completely,” says Wai, who polled only 600 votes, a good 11,000 ballots behind the eventual winner.

A tireless figure, Wai can be found during many evenings and weekends giving lectures on citizenship at one of New York’s 47 African-run mosques.

Africans in New York City are now so politically well-organised, claims Wai, that in 2009 an alliance of African organisations, led by his advocacy group, the United African Congress, convinced Africans to vote as a bloc and help New York’s Mayor Bloomberg win a second term in office in a very close race.

“Every elected official in this country, now realises,” says Wai, “that there is a growing African community all over this country.” Evidence of this can be seen in the Bronx, in New York, the borough where most of the city’s 500,000 or so Africans live. Earlier this year, the Bronx’s borough president, Ruben Diaz Jnr, launched the Bronx African Advisory Council, the first of its kind in the US. It was created to ensure elected officials respond to the concerns of Africans in the Bronx, many of whom are new immigrants from Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal, finding their way.

But though many are newcomers, they appear to be adjusting well to life in the Bronx. In the Highbridge and Claremont sections of the borough, which some call “Little Africa”, African businesses can be found on most streets. Among them is Papaye Diner, a popular restaurant, and the African Movie Mall, which sells the latest Nollywood DVDs. There are, too, dozens of African travel agencies, real estate firms, and grocery shops in the Bronx.

“Africans have come to our borough and contributed [in the realms of] culture and spirituality,” Bronx Borough president Ruben Diaz Jnr told a New York newspaper recently. African immigrants, he said, are “here to stay.”

Still saving the Africa Centre

In May 2011 Kaye Whiteman wrote an article in these pages called “Saving the Africa Centre”. The title was taken from a campaign being waged at the time supported by those who feared that the historic venue in London’s King Street, Covent Garden was going to close, with the loss of an important part of the African experience in the British capital. As a Trustee of the Centre, he argued that although its heritage was vital, the Trustees felt that the King Street building was no longer fit for purpose, and that the Centre needed a new vision for the 21st century. Here, as it is about to embark on the adventure of leaving its home behind, he looks at the Centre’s future.

The Piazza in Covent Garden is one of London’s atmospheric open-air venues, with the ghosts of the old fruit and vegetable market ever present, and the shadow of the Royal Opera House looming large. The Africa Centre used to make much of the fact that it was once a banana warehouse. It was thus appropriate that, as it bows out of this particular locality, the present owners of much of the area’s real estate (CapCo) should have made it possible for the Centre, for the first time in its history of nearly 50 years, to have its own Africa Day in the Piazza.

This took the form of an Africa Centre Summer Festival on 3 August, which is planned to be an annual feature, even when the King Street building has closed its doors. It was an innovative way of demonstrating that the Centre did not need to be confined within the walls of a particular structure, and was thus a deeply symbolic day.

The event had a number of side attractions in the Centre itself (an exhibition of art works alongside the opening of Zoë’s Ghana kitchen in the Centre’s shop-front) as well as African stalls in the east piazza.

There were also film screenings and photography (the latter on a screen in Covent Garden station), but the central attraction was a stage outside the portico of St Paul’s church, where there was continuous performance from early afternoon to well into the evening. Beginning with Tunde Jegede’s Griot’s Tale (“stories of memory, loss, sacrifice and redemption” by way of mixed performance arts), the show continued through a number of musical turns including the punchy Wale Ojo and the Kalakuta Express and the excellent “masters of Soukous” from Congo – Kasai Masai. The performance was interspersed with catwalk shows from the 2013 collections of London Fashion Week that had had good publicity during the preceding week.

By evening the piazza was packed with more than 5,000 people for the performance by two stars from Nigeria – Nneka and DJ Edu, as well as the unusual Middle Eastern fusion band, Celloman. The whole festival was warmly received by those attending. As the celebrated artist/sculptor Yinka

Shonibare (he of the ship in a bottle on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square) who curated the Piazza event said later: “never be afraid to do the things you believe in”, adding that he felt the young people in the Piazza were relating to the Centre. This “Piazza bounce”, an atmosphere of rare enthusiasm generated around this event, was the starting point for several weeks of heightened, indeed almost frenetic, activity in the run-up to the historic mid-September closing of the Africa Centre doors.

In the last days of August and the first 10 days of September the Centre saw an intensive programme including several more showings of The Griot’s Tale, and shows and talks linked to the 26 August Notting Hill Carnival, which each year has a larger and larger African participation, especially from Nigeria where there are a number of partner carnivals, as in the Rivers State. Among many other events, the Centre drew on its much-publicised musical legacy with concerts involving artistes such as Soweto Kinch, Yomi Bashiru, Naija Grooves and many others, as well as a Karaoke Africa evening featuring rappers and poets. There were also discussion sessions, for example involving Chris Spring, curator of the African collection at the British Museum, and photographer and designer Hassan Hajjaj on textiles fashion and art from Africa, as well as the writer Hannah Pool on “If African fashion is cool at present, what does this really mean for African creators and designers?”

One evening lingers particularly in the mind – the seventh Africa Centre quiz night, which has become institutionalised over the past five years, with the help of Richard Morgan, a talented quiz-master from the corporate world. The excitement and interaction generated by the special exercise of brain-power involved in quizzes (combined with African food from Zoë’s Ghana kitchen) has helped maintain the Centre’s image as a social hub and unifying force in the community of the African diaspora and all those interested in Africa.

It also helped sustain the Centre in some of its recent periods of difficulty, reinforced by an increasingly diverse and buoyant programme. The atmosphere was cordial to the point of poignancy, a kind of prequel for the emotional last evening of different musical and spoken word performances on 10 September. My own feelings have been a strange combination of sadness at leaving a building where so much history has happened, from the drinks with the liberation movements in the Soweto bar in the basement, to the parade of celebrated writers, artists, musicians, thinkers and politicians who have passed through its portals. One of the merits of the 2011 campaign to ensure that the Centre was saved was that it reminded many people of the rich history of the place, and its importance in the development of multiculturalism in Britain.

The day after this last celebration of the glories of the past 49 years, removal men began to move in. The thoughts of those that have believed in the Centre began to move to the absorbing challenges of the future in reformulating its aims and objectives and developing a governance that accords with present cultural trends and social and political thinking, and adapted to present and new technologies.

At the memorial mass (also in Covent Garden) for Margaret Feeny, the Centre’s first Director (1964-78), I talked to Baroness Shirley Williams, who had been involved with the Centre in its early years. She offered the unsolicited view that what was important for the Centre was to “sustain its spirit”.

This is a deep and abiding truth that has to animate and guide the trustees who now have the difficult task of finding a new Centre that meets all present aspirations. Although in some ways these involve very different needs from the early 1960s (not least arising from an African diaspora in the UK that numbers several million), the mission of the Centre remains fundamentally the same. This derives from the extreme importance of having a focal point somewhere in the centre of London to talk of Africa, and to promote the continent in all its ramifications, as well as building on the rich historic legacy. Now that the Centre is achieving greater financial stability and looking for a sustainable future, it will be important that the 50th birthday which falls in October next year should happen in a new home and promote a clear vision of what the Centre wants to do and be. As Trustees’ Chair Oliver Andrews has said, “we are on the brink of a new era, with the Centre as a rallying point in London for a continent that is on the brink of new achievements in this century”.

America's Black Indians, a Hidden Heritage

It was a shock for the Hollywood actor Don Cheadle to discover recently that his great grandfather, William, was enslaved not by whites, as most African-Americans were, but by Native Americans. The descendants of these former slaves are now seeking citizenship in the Chickasaw ethnic group, as their ancestors tried to do without success 100 years ago. Leslie Goffe reports.

Don Cheadle is a star of the films Ocean’s Eleven and Hotel Rwanda. He was stunned when it was revealed to him on American TV that several generations of his family had been the slaves of members of the Chickasaw Indian ethnic group (commemorated in the statue, right) in Oklahoma. At its height, more than 10,000 African-Americans were kept as slaves by Native Americans. “One of the longest unwritten chapters in the history of the United States is the treating of the relations of the Negroes and the Indians,” wrote the pioneering African-American historian, Carter G. Woodson, in 1920. The Cheadles were owned by Jackson Kemp, a wealthy and powerful Chickasaw leader who was said to be so brutal that one in three of his slaves, fearful for their lives, fled at the very first opportunity. “It’s crazy,” Cheadle told Henry Louis Gates, the Harvard University professor who unearthed the actor’s Chickasaw slave history for a TV programme on African-American genealogy.

Cheadle had played slaves in movies and played former slaves on television, but had no idea he had a unique link to slavery. “You feel like the two biggest blights on the way this country started (are) slavery and the genocide of Native Americans,” he says.

For Cheadle, who was nominated for an Oscar for his role as a Hutu who saves Tutsis from genocide in the film Hotel Rwanda, it beggars belief that Indians who suffered so much at the hands of whites would participate in a system which caused Africans so much suffering. After all, Indians faced near genocide at the hands of whites and some, among them the Chickasaw, were forcibly removed from their fertile homeland in the American South and sent west to semi-arid Oklahoma by the US government to make room for white settlers.

“That’s mind-blowing,” says Cheadle, struggling to understand how Indians, oppressed by whites, became oppressors of blacks. But Kziah Love could help Cheadle understand. A former Chickasaw slave herself, Love told an interviewer in 1937, when she was 93 years old, what life had been like for an enslaved person in Indian Territory. “That was a sorry time for some poor old black folks,” explained Love, who remembers living in fear of one particularly violent Indian slave owner.

“I believe he was the meanest man the sun ever shined [sic] on… He was sho’ bad to whup niggers… He’d beat ’em most to death… One time he got mad at his baby’s nurse and he hit her on the head with some fire tongs and she died.”

Almost everything American Indians knew about slavery, they learned from the European-descended people in the country. Within a short time of encountering natives in the American South, the Europeans altered their [natives’] way of life beyond all recognition.

The Native Americans had been principally hunter-gatherers with their own spiritual and religious beliefs. Soon they were Christian converts who dressed and acted like whites. So much like the Europeans did the Chickasaw, the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Creek, and the Seminole become, the Europeans even called them, approvingly, “The Five Civilised Tribes”.

But to be truly “civilised”, Native Americans had to be convinced to become slave owners like the whites and view slavery as good and not an evil. It was the only way to protect and preserve an economic system built on human bondage. Thus did the Chickasaw and other natives embrace chattel slavery and become allies of the white slavers and enemies of enslaved Africans.

“It has always been the policy of this government,” admitted the governor of South Carolina, James Glen, in 1758, “to create an aversion in Native Americans to negroes.”

Alienating Africans from Native Americans was essential for the slave system to succeed in America, says historian William Loren Katz, author of the book, Black Indians:

A Hidden Heritage. “Their acceptance of bondage was considered vital,” he says. “In short, a major escape route and potential set of allies had dried up for millions of Africans held in chains.”

It didn’t take much for whites to win the Chickasaw over to slavery. The Chickasaw were eager for the metal pots, guns, and the alcohol that white traders brought to their territory. One of these traders, James Logan Colbert, a Scotsman, had a particularly devastating impact on the Chickasaw. Glad of the trinkets Colbert brought to them, and impressed by his links to the big trading companies, the Chickasaw allowed the Scotsman to set up residence among them. He brought with him dozens of enslaved Africans and put them to work on land he had them carve out of the bush. The Chickasaw elders were eager to have the influential Colbert as an ally, and so arranged for him to marry several of their daughters, which led, in time, to the creation of a “mixed race aristocracy” that came to dominate the Chickasaw people, and profoundly affect their views on race. “The mixed bloods were more assertive than their full blood counterparts,” says Arell Gibson, author of the book, The Chickasaws. The “mixed bloods” better understood the ways of the Europeans and were, crucially, Gibson says, “more like their Anglo fathers than their Indian mothers.” This “mixed race aristocracy” were the chief slave owners among the Chickasaw. Full blood Chickasaws owned very few slaves. Don Cheadle’s family, for example, was owned by two mixed blood Chickasaw families, the Cheadles and the Kemps. Chickasaw slave documents from 1860 show that Jackson Kemp owned 61 slaves. But the largest Chickasaw slave owner, with 150 slaves, was Pitman Colbert, a mixed blood descendant of James Logan Colbert, the white trader who helped introduce the Chickasaw to chattel slavery. Colbert and his clan’s ugly influence did much to shape the Chickasaw attitude to race and lead the group, in 1861, to fight alongside the pro-slavery Confederate states against the anti-slavery Union government in the American Civil War.

The rebel Confederate states lost the war and slavery was abolished in the United States in 1865. But the Chickasaw refused to liberate their slaves. They claimed they were a semi-autonomous nation within the United States, and that Federal Law did not bind them. So they would do as they please in the matter of slavery.

Cheadle’s great-great uncle, Isaac Kemp, had been a slave of the Chickasaw before escaping and joining the anti-slavery Union side in the American Civil War. But his wife, Lizzie, his children, and his mother, Frances – Cheadle’s great-great-great grandmother – remained in enslavement in Chickasaw Country.

When Isaac got back from the war, he was desperate to reunite with his family. But he knew he could not return home to the reservation or he would be enslaved again, as his family still was. Isaac made a home for himself in one of the new, all-black towns with black mayors and black banks and black schools and black everything. These towns sprang up all over the place after slavery ended in the United States. Living in them were former slaves who had been enslaved by whites and Indians. Isaac’s allblack town was called Wiley, and was only a few miles from where he had been slave, and where his loved ones still were. Interestingly, in the Hollywood film Rosewood, which is set in an all-black town, Cheadle plays a man not unlike his relative Isaac Kemp. Cheadle plays Sylvester Carrier, a proud, independent businessman who fights to protect his family against a murderous white mob.

Isaac Kemp’s fight was not with white people. His fight was with the Chickasaw, the only Indian ethnic group which had still not, in 1866, freed its slaves. Isaac wrote letter after letter to the Freedman’s Bureau, a US government agency, for help reuniting his family. But there was nothing the Bureau could do for Kemp. Surprisingly, when freedom finally came to Indian Country, and the former slaves were free to go wherever they pleased, few chose to leave. The reason is they did not know whites and the white world. And what they had heard of the treatment of blacks by whites made them think their prospects were better among Native Americans.

Besides, what the former slaves knew best was Indians and the Indian world. They spoke some English but mostly they spoke Indian languages. They ate staple Chickasaw dishes like Pashofa, a stew made of cracked corn, hominy and pork, and they drank Chickasaw Sassafras tea. They were Black Indians and so most decided to make a life for themselves in Indian Country, amongst their former slave owners.

The Chickasaw Black Freedmen, as the former slaves came to be known, thought their future would be bright because the US government had signed a treaty with the Chickasaw in 1866 giving “all persons of African descent, resident in the said nation…and their descendants, heretofore held in slavery among said nations, all the rights, privileges, and immunities, including the right of suffrage.”

But the Chickasaw gave the Freedmen nothing. They reneged on the deal, leaving the Freedmen a people without a country. The Chickasaw were the only one of the Five Civilised Tribes who did not grant citizenship to their former slaves. In this event, the US had promised, in the 1866 treaty, it would remove the former slaves from Indian land and grant them citizenship in the United States. It did not. The US, and the Chickasaw, both reneged on their promises.

“Thus did the Freedmen live in the Chickasaw Nation, for over 40 years, without civil rights or protection of the law,” wrote the historian, Daniel Littlefield, in his book, The Chickasaw Freedmen: A People Without a Country.

In 1866, the same year the Chickasaw refused to honour promises made to the Black Freedmen, they extended special privileges to white men who married full blood Chickasaw women, which allowed them to become, for the first time, full citizens of the tribe. It became clear these white men – so-called “squaw men” – were marrying Indian women principally so they could become tribal members and thus gain access to tribal lands and resources.

By contrast, Black Freedmen, who had lived among the Chickasaw for generations, and whose slave labour had made the tribe rich and powerful, were denied citizenship and left in legal limbo in rundown log cabins on the margins of the reservation. They hoped the Chickasaw would have a change of heart one day. But they waited in vain. Occasionally, the Freedmen, who were unwilling to leave for the US, and fed up with non-violent resistance, took up arms. That’s what King Blue did in 1894, according to the newspapers. In 1888, the Freedman leader, King Blue, had been a man of peace and had gone to Washington with Fletcher Frazier to see what could be done.

Six years later, King Blue had taken up arms and led a “band of Negro Indians” in “open rebellion” on whites and Indians living in the eastern section of the Chickasaw reservation. King Blue and his men went out each day on “marauding tours” and, some reports said, “terrorised… peaceably inclined Indians. This gang of black-skins are in open rebellion against the government of the Chickasaw nation.”

King Blue’s special target was the “squaw men” who had married Indian women in order to grab Indian lands. On one marauding raid, he and his men turned up at a white farmer, George Truax’s, 500-acre spread. “Old King Blue,” one newspaper said, hog-tied Truax and his Indian wife and “then proceeded to destroy everything.” King Blue had tried non-violent resistance. He had first been up to Washington in 1877, and written letters in 1882. He went to Washington again in 1883, and then again in 1888. He had grown tired of going up to Washington and of writing letters and nothing being done about the plight of his people. But before anyone had the chance to drive the Freedmen out of Chickasaw Country, the US government, which had its own plans for Indian lands, turned up and started driving everyone out.

In the 1880s, the US government began plotting to take millions of acres of land away from the Chickasaw and from the other Civilised Tribes. It wanted to make a new state out of the Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory there and put more land in the hands of oil companies and the millions of white immigrants from Europe. To do all this, the government needed to somehow shrink the reservations and dilute the power of the tribal leadership. By 1893, the government had come up with a crafty scheme to end the tribal ownership of land. It would give tribal members an individual portion of land for themselves instead of them having to share tribal lands in common. It was a simple appeal to individual greed. The scheme did not seem sinister, at first blush. But the Indians, who had long ago noted that the “white man speak with forked tongue”, should have known better. It was the job of the government man Henry L. Dawes, and his Dawes Commission, to convince the Indians to accept the sweeping, new plan for tribal lands.

What Dawes did not reveal to the Indians was that once the roughly 20 million acres of land the tribes owned was shared out among tribal members, there would be around 4 million acres left over, in surplus. This land, the US government had craftily arranged to purchase from the tribal leaders at far less than the land was really worth. The Indians were deprived not only of the full price for millions of acres of their land, but also lost the rights, too, to mineral resources worth billions of dollars.

They were conned by the US government, who also took, at no charge, an additional 126,000 acres from the Indians to erect town sites and schools for white immigrants arriving from Europe, and to build churches and lay out cemeteries for the interlopers, as well.

To give a boost to white businessmen, the government took away 400,000 acres of Chickasaw and Choctaw land rich with coal and asphalt deposits. It also took a million acres of Indian land rich in timber. It was a free-for-all for white speculators and a wild land grab for white settlers.

“I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them,” actor John Wayne said of American Indians in an interview. “There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.”

Watching all this happen to their former Chickasaw slave masters and other Indians must have been sweet revenge for Freedmen like King Blue and Isaac Kemp. Their revenge would be even sweeter when they discovered the government was creating a register of the members of the Five Civilised Tribes and would, additionally, create a special category in the register for the Freedmen themselves. This register was known as the Dawes Rolls, or more precisely the Final Rolls of Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilised Tribes. It would be the first time Freedmen were recognised, officially, as being associated, at all, with the Five Civilised Tribes.

Unfortunately, the Chickasaw Freedmen would not become citizens as they were adjudged not “Indians by blood”. Thus, they would have no legal claim upon the Chickasaw at all. But still, many thought, something is better than nothing, and they greeted the work of the Dawes Commission heartily. The Freedmen were disappointed they would not become Chickasaw citizens but were delighted each of them would receive 40 acres of land. Of the more than 250,000 people who applied for membership in the Five Civilised Tribes, just over 100,000 of them were accepted while 60% were rejected. Among the rejected were many whites trying to pass as Indian to get hold of lucrative land allotments.

“The Dawes Commission proved a disaster for Native Americans,” says Henry Louis Gates, pointing to the break-up of the reservations, ending of self-government for Indians and the grabbing of Indian land to create America’s 46^th state, Oklahoma. By contrast, says Prof Gates, the Dawes Commission did “offer a chance for former slaves like Don’s ancestors to claim Chickasaw identity and get some land”. Cheadle’s great-great-grandparents, Mary and Henderson, received 40 acres of land each in the all-black Oklahoma town, Wiley. Their descendants remained in Oklahoma, near the Chickasaw reservation, for years before eventually ending up further north in the state of Missouri, where Cheadle’s father, Donald Frank Cheadle, a clinical psychologist, was born, and where his son, Don Jr., the actor, was born too. But it appears the Chickasaw have had the last laugh. Down on their luck for many years, after the US government had grabbed their lands and broken up the tribal system, the Chickasaw have recently become fabulously rich in the casino business. And unfortunately for the descendants of the Freedmen, the failure of their ancestors to secure citizenship in the tribe means they are not legally entitled to share in the Chickasaw casino riches.

Angela Molette is a founder of the Freedman Descendants of the Five Civilised Tribes. She and others have been seeking citizenship in the Chickasaw tribe. But Molette says today’s Freedmen are seeking recognition, not money.

“I hear all the time that black Indians are trying to get into the nations for money. That can’t be further from the truth,” says Molette, who lives in Oklahoma, not far from the Chickasaw tribal lands where her ancestors were enslaved. She says descendants of Freedmen like her are more concerned with preserving the graves of their ancestors on Chickasaw land and participating in sacred rights than in casino cash.

“We are making no demands (on) our host or parent nations,” Molete insists, hopeful that the Chickasaw and the descendants of their former slaves can find a way to cooperate and compromise. “If there is some fear about us trying to take over, they can just wipe that out of their mind.”

The Africans who could be kings in Britain!

A “British Obama” – is that idea viable? Probably not, in the foreseeable future. But hold on…Adam Afriyie of Ghanaian/English descent is supposed to be planning to challenge Prime Minister David Cameron’s leadership of the Conservative Party. It could be the start of the “silly season”, nonetheless there is a good African line-up in the House of Commons! 

There is a West African stalking-horse parading around the corridors of British politics and, even more so, the offices of the national media, and it is unlikely to go away for a while yet. The story that Adam Afriyie, the ultra-rich Conservative MP for the ultra-affluent Windsor constituency, whose father was Ghanaian and mother English, was considering challenging Prime Minister David Cameron for the Tory leadership was so unlikely that it was regarded as being the start of the “silly season” (when real news is scarce and newspapers make stories out of anything). Whatever its status, this story has exposed a flaw in the current Conservative political landscape.

These days every black politician with a high national profile can count on being called the “British Obama”. Commentators are as keen to discover their own equivalent of the American leader as their ancestors were to discover El Dorado, the fabled city of gold.

Yet President Obama does hold the key to understanding the Conservatives’ near obsession with finding the “ethnic answer” to their predicament. They want to win the next election – outright – so that they will not have to depend any further on coalition partners.

It is received wisdom that Obama beat his rival Mitt Romney in a comparatively tight presidential contest because of his overwhelming support from the African heritage sector of the electorate. That is the very sector, now key to British politics, in which the Conservatives are adrift.

The party has made previous half-hearted attempts to advance a black candidate with whom, they supposed, the African/ Caribbean heritage voters could identify. The figures on whom they have alighted so far – Derek Laud and (Lord) John Taylor, and I am not sure of the seriousness of the candidacy of Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones (“the black farmer”) – have made that proposition somewhat risible.

Now without apparently really trying, the Conservatives have found themselves an “African” factor which certainly appeals to the Tories even if the voters at large may be less convinced.

Three high-profile MPs with a West African background have come to the fore since the last general election three years ago – and they have much in common – to challenge Labour’s Chuka Umunna for the title of the “British Obama”. They are rich, having made their fortunes in business, handsome (well, telegenic), mix in “good company”, and represent constituencies in the Conservative heartland – running from the west to south-west of London. In short, they belong already to the established “political class”.

Yet these very assets could be regarded more aptly as drawbacks by the general electorate. David Cameron’s coterie of nouveau riche “toffs” is being challenged by those who are even more “nouveau” and “riche”, and “toffish”.

Adam Afriyie

Forty-seven years old, Afriyie was born in middle-class Wimbledon, southwest London, but grew up on a council estate in Peckham, a socially and economically depressed part of southeast London.

There he was educated at the local Oliver Goldsmith Primary School before going on to Addey & Stanhope grammar school in nearby New Cross, and obtaining a BSc in Agricultural Economics from Imperial College (Wye), London University.

Adam cites an interest in several sports, including basketball, in which he was his university’s team captain, and charity running. Running is an interest he would share with former athlete, and present novelist and disgraced politician, Jeffrey Archer, in whose unsuccessful campaign to be the first directly-elected Mayor of London he participated. hitherto neglected sectors of society – such as the first prime minister from a cultural minority, Benjamin Disraeli; the first to be born overseas in a Commonwealth country, Andrew Bonar Law; and the first woman to become prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.

The purpose of a stalking-horse is to launch a suicidal bid for the leadership to expose the weaknesses of a seemingly impregnable incumbent with the view to encouraging a more realistic contender to make a serious challenge later. The bestknown example in contemporary British politics was Sir Anthony Meyer, a 69-yearold known until then more for his affair with the black former model and blues singer Simone Washington than for any of his politics. He stood against Mrs Thatcher in 1989. The “Iron Lady” routed him by a massive 314-33 votes, but the number of abstentions and unexpected weaknesses in her performance induced the charismatic former cabinet minister, Michael Heseltine, to make a more successful challenge a year later, which brought about her resignation.

Adam’s wealth, bearing, and rightwing stance, would endear him to Conservatives. And Labour and the Liberal Democrats would not challenge his ethnicity. As a newcomer from a new community, he would not carry any of the baggage of past (and present) disputes which have split the Tory party. Anonymity is Adam Afriyie’s chief asset. Now, of course, because of the recent publicity, he is not unknown. And if he should be considered to be no longer suitable for the purpose, there are a couple of other West African heritage MPs in the House of Commons who might fit the bill.

Samuel Gyimah

At 36 years old, Gyimah is unlikely to challenge David Cameron for the party leadership – well, not yet anyway – because he is the prime minister’s parliamentary private secretary. He was born at Beaconsfield in affluent Buckinghamshire but accompanied his mother when she returned to Ghana. Gyimah stayed in Ghana for 10 years, being educated at Achimota School in the capital Accra, before moving to Freeman College in Hertfordshire, UK.

He read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Somerville College where he was elected to the prestigious post of President of the Oxford Union. After graduating, Gyimah joined the investment bankers, Goldman Sachs, and later left to set up his own business in the recruitment and internet sectors. Chairman of the Bow Group 2006-2007, Gyimah edited an anthology of essays on the future of the Conservative Party.

Although he had previously lost out on selection as candidate for another parliamentary seat, Gyimah won the stereotypical conservative East Surrey constituency in 2010. Since entering Parliament, he has been active in debates on education and employment as well as fighting local campaigns for the “green belt” (areas bordering cities in which building development is not permitted) in Surrey.

He is a supporter of various charities and ran in the London Marathon in 2008 to raise funds for the Downs Syndrome Association. He is also the vice president of the National Centre for Young People with Epilepsy.

Chuka Umunna

On the other side of the House, the 34-yearold Chuka Umunna has established himself already as a high profile and senior representative of the Labour Party for whom he is the shadow business secretary. His ubiquity – especially on TV and in the radio studio – has tended to obscure the fact that Africans are under-represented at the higher echelons of the Labour Party compared to their Conservative counterparts.

Labour has been associated more directly with the Caribbean heritage community. Yet the policy of supporting candidates who have come up through service in local government in urban boroughs, which reached initial fruition with the election of Bernie Grant, Diane Abbott, and Paul Boateng in 1987, has not made the expected progress. Since then Labour’s leading African/ Caribbean supporters have advanced in Parliament through appointment to the House of Lords – such as the Baronesses Amos, Scotland, and Howells, from families from the Eastern Caribbean – or as with Trevor Phillips in community/race relations, they have made their own way in non-party public administration/services.

Chuka Umunna comes from a mixed Nigerian and Anglo/Irish background. His father, Bennett Umunna, an Igbo from Awka, had been a businessman and director of Crystal Palace Football Club in southwest London, but he was killed in a road accident in Nigeria in 1992 while running for the governorship of Anambra State. Chuka’s mother, Patricia, is the daughter of the High Court judge, Sir Helenus Milmo. Umunna’s early education was at Hitherfield Primary School in Streatham, and Christ Church Primary School in Brixton Hill, both in inner-city southwest London, and then at St Dunstan’s College in Catford, southeast London. Subsequently, he qualified in law through the University of Manchester, the University of Burgundy at Dijon (France), and Nottingham Law School.

After four years with the City of London law firm, Herbert Smith, which acts mostly for large companies, he moved to Rochman Landau to specialise as an employment lawyer acting mainly for individuals and small companies.

Chuka was already closely involved with the Labour Party, with a particular interest in social and economic issues. He was a member of the management committee of the centre-left think-tank pressure-group Compass, and achieved public recognition by his writing for a wide range of publications and his regular radio and television appearances.

Umunna was elected MP for Streatham in 2010. Very quickly he became a member of the Treasury Select Committee and then parliamentary private secretary to Ed Miliband, the new Labour leader. Exactly one year after entering the House of Commons, he was appointed shadow minister for small business and enterprise, and acquired his present position in October 2011.

Among a wide range of activities, he is a board member of Generation Next, a not-for-profit social enterprise providing activities for young people in London; the Fabian Society; Unite and GMB; a patron of Latimer Creative Media, and a supporter of Cassandra Learning Centre.

Chuka cuts a suave, sartorial image and is said to model suits on the website for Alexandra Wood of Savile Row, a centre of high quality (and expensive) tailoring. He has been quoted as admiring such high-flying, media-conscious politicians as former Prime Minister Tony Blair, (Lord) Peter Mandelson and Conservative grandee (Lord) Michael Heseltine.

While he would seem to have a more credible claim on the epithet “British Obama”, Chuka is more “Blair than Barack”.

And that could be the problem. He might just be too smooth for his own good. The British public, if not the party political establishment, do not take kindly to somebody they see – rightly or wrongly – as being too “smart” (in intelligence and/ or style).

Over the last decade or so, there has been a “rush to youth” with the three main UK parties opting for young, photogenic, media-friendly leaders at the expense of more experienced hands. Across the floor of the House of Commons, Chuka Umunna is faced by his opposite number in the Coalition Government, Vince Cable, who is 69 years old – and looks older.

When the leadership of Cable’s party, the Liberal Democrats, last became vacant, he was not even considered as a candidate, even though he was well-known nationally, had a good political and business record and was interim leader while a new leader was chosen. Cable, it was reckoned, was just too old and craggy for the modern age. Instead the Liberal Democrats swooned after the rising generation of rich, handsome, young men such as Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne and David Laws.

And look where it has got them – two have already had to resign on account of scandal and misdemeanours. After rising to their highest position for several generations, under the leadership of Charles Kennedy who articulated the opposition of a large part of the electorate to the military intervention in Iraq, the Liberal Democrats have plunged in the public opinion polls, such that they have slipped to a par, or even below, the quixotic United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).

Many Liberal Democrats are looking wistfully for guidance to none other than Vince Cable (described now as being “the leader in waiting”).

Helen Grant

The 50-year-old was a high flyer when she was elected on the retirement of the flamboyant and controversial Ann Widdecombe to the Maidstone and The Weald of Kent constituency in 2010. She was selected as an A-List fast-track candidate. Grant became the Tory’s first black female MP, and two years later she was appointed under-secretary of state for justice, and under-secretary of state for women and equalities.

Helen was born in London to a Nigerian father and English mother. After her parents separated, she was raised on the Raffles council estate at Carlisle, in the northwestern extremity of the country. Helen represented Cumbria at hockey, tennis, athletics and cross-country running. She studied law at the University of Hull and was helped by her local MP, Willie Whitelaw, deputy leader of the Conservative Party, to win a place at the College of Law in Guildford, Surrey. After several years of working for other firms, she now has her own practice, Grants Solicitors, specialising in family law.

Disillusioned by the response to her initial approaches to the Labour Party, she found the Conservatives more welcoming. Helen resigned as non-executive director of the Croydon National Health Service Primary Care Trust from 2005 to 2007 to concentrate on her political career.

She worked with the former leader Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice in the formation of the party’s policy to deal with family breakdown. Towards the end of 2012, Helen got caught up in the controversy over MPs’ expenses and her progress may have stalled.

Chinyelu “Chi” Onwurah

The 47-year-old is unusual in representing Labour in Newcastle-upon-Tyne Central in the northeastern England industrial heartland, instead of a rural constituency in the more affluent South.

Her Nigerian father worked as a dentist while studying at Newcastle Medical School and married her mother, the daughter of a sheet metal worker, in the 1950s. The family moved to Awka in Nigeria in 1965, but when civil war broke out two years later Chi and her mother returned to England while her father stayed on to fight in the Biafran army.

Chi achieved a degree in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College, London, and while studying for an MBNA at Manchester Business School worked in hardware and software development, product management, market development, and strategy for a variety of companies operating in several countries. She was head of telecoms technology at OFCOM. Chi spent many years on the national executive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement (and its successor organization, ACTSA). She was appointed junior shadow minister for business, innovation and skills shortly after winning her seat in 2010.

Any chance?

The “British Obama” – is that proposition viable? Probably not – in the foreseeable future.

It is certain that if there is any chance of a challenger being able to land a solid blow on David Cameron’s leadership before the next general election in 2015, one of the more senior members of the Conservative Party will step in to appropriate the honour.

Nevertheless, as long as all parties are struggling to achieve an outright majority, they will acknowledge the necessity of the “Obama effect” in winning the support of the ethnic majority. Even so I believe the present generation of African politicians are likely to stay around longer and make a bigger parliamentary impact than their predecessors a generation ago.

Wealth, business, a “glamorous” profile, the “right” schools and universities, the “right” constituencies … they have taken the sensible decision to join the political class before engaging in the parliamentary process, and, in politics as in so much of British life, it is still “class” that really matters.

That is unless they themselves get fed up with any lack of progress and go off into something else … which so many “bright young men” who have started off in politics have already done.

Holland’s Sinterklass Reeks of Racism

Holland’s Sinterklass reeks of racism. For many years, the people of the Netherlands have celebrated the festival of Sinterklass (Santa Claus) with black characters which have their roots deep in African slavery. But now Holland’s black population cannot take the insult any more and want the black characters banned.

It was the Frenchman Jean Paul Sartre who asked one of the weightiest questions of his time: “What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes?”, Sartre asked.

It must be a very difficult time to be Dutch today. Just imagine that a short century ago, your grandfather owned a large stock of African slaves. He treated the stocky black men and women as his chattel property, like any of the other properties he owned. The heavily-muscled black males worked like mules in his plantations. From sunrise to sunset they worked, with grandpa having nary a worry about salary or suchlike. The black slaves grew the cotton, the sugar-cane, the tobacco and whatnot, which they processed into marketable products that went all over the world and brought enormous profits, profits that were ploughed back into building modern machinery, big castles, and well-laid out towns and cities.

It was this wealth from slavery that totally transformed Europe from a place that constantly lost one-third to one-half of its population to hunger and plagues.

While the male slaves laboured in the plantations, the women slaves existed to cook, waited over the master’s wives and nursed the master’s children even as their own children were plucked from them and auctioned off. They also provided sexual pleasures whenever the master’s libido was stirred. The slaves were also encouraged to “breed” (yes, that was the word used) like mules; the more the merrier for the profit margins of the plantation. Human beings were plucked like cattle from pens, branded and sold off whenever the masters felt like it. Abraham Lincoln, who became the proud president of the USA, once sold a slave for a bottle of molasses!

And all of a sudden, the world turned upside down, and the very profitable enterprise was ended. The slaves were freed and they developed mouths. And Jean Paul Sartre became a prophet. Imagine the trauma the slave masters had to go through! Their world upended in chaos!

Today, the Dutch appear unable to drop a Sinterklaas (Santa Claus) on their little ones without his Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). Imagine the enormous cultural shock the little angels will suffer. And where is the racism in that? Not long ago, almost 10% of the Dutch population signed a petition that support the tradition; surely they can’t all be racist!

This appears to be the cry of the Dutch who continue to celebrate Sinterklaas, a festival so riddled with slavery symbolism, that it beggars belief that some people can even think about organising it in this age and time. But the Dutch do it, and many of them have absolutely no qualms about it.
Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas or Santa Claus), celebrated on 5 December, is probably the greatest festival in the Netherlands. The Dutch variation of the name is a bastardisation of the real Saint Nicholas, said to be a fourth-century bishop from Asia Minor who helped the needy. Like Santa Claus, Sinterklaas is a white man with populous white beard. But unlike Santa Claus who is helped by elves, the Dutch variant continues to be served by black-faced helpers – “Zwarte Pieten” (Black Petes) – white men who dress themselves up as black men in brassy clothes and enter town in raucous, bombastic processions.

They decorate themselves with bushy Afro-wigs on their heads, with their lips painted ruby red and ears decked with gold hoop earrings. They prank around and act the characters of black people with the brains of a fool – utterly ignorant, docile, yet jolly servants who continue to faithfully serve their white masters.

In fact, the Dutch have a Piet for many functions: there is a “Hoofdpiet” or Head Piet; a “Wegwijspiet” or Navigation Piet, who is supposed to be the navigator of the steamboat from Spain to the Netherlands; and there is “Pakjespiet” or Packing Piet who packs the gifts. According to the legend, the Pieten distribute presents and ginger biscuits to children deemed good; and they threaten to pack mischievous ones in sacks and ferry them back to Spain to pick oranges.

Between 5 and 6 December every year, Dutch children leave their shoes near the chimney, and in the morning they express surprise when they discover gifts in them. Of course, the gifts were bought by their parents who try to rationalise the obvious racism of the Zwarte Piet caricature of black people by telling their children that the Pieten have black faces because they climb down dirty, soot-filled chimneys.

What no one bothers to explain is how climbing down chimneys could result in curly, Afro wig hair, large red lips, large earrings, the loss of a literate tongue, and little brains. In fact, the whole Sinterklaas idea reeks of rank racism.

It is, thus, difficult to understand how the Dutch, with their brutal history of slavery and colonialism, can fail to see the enormous insult they heap on the injuries of black people by this mindless festival in which they appear to take so much joy. No one dare mock the Jewish Holocaust, but millions of Dutch people think nothing of jesting about a part of their history that should shame their nation.

Everything about Sinterklaas appears as though the Dutch still hanker after slavery and regret its abolition. It brings to mind what Frantz Fanon wrote in Black Skin, White Masks: “Negrophobes exist. It is not hatred of the Negro, however, that motivates them; they lack the courage for that, or they have lost it. Hate is not inborn; it has to be constantly cultivated, to be brought into being, in conflict with more or less recognised guilt complexes … That is why Americans have substituted discrimination for lynching. Each to his own side of the street.”

Of course, most black people in the Netherlands today find the Sinterklaas highly offensive, but because they are a minority in the larger Dutch population, they have no avenue to express their frustrations. Sadly for them, the Dutch media, even those with liberal pretensions, treat protests by black people as overreactions by “sensitive” people who like to overreact.

Gradually though, the momentum to outlaw the obscene Zwarte Piet seems to be gathering pace. The man who is spearheading the fight is Quinsy Gario, a Curaçao-born Dutch performance artist. He wants the Zwarte Piet abolished.

In 2011, when Sinterklass arrived in the Dutch town of Dordrecht, Gario led some black activists on a protest. To forestall any action that would disallow little white Dutch angels from enjoying their black minstrels, the city officials made it illegal to demonstrate in the town centre.

That notwithstanding, Gario and his colleagues decided on a defiant stand-in protest. Wearing T-shirts emblazoned with: “Zwarte Piet is racism”, they stood by the side of the road. This was too much for overzealous police officers who badly manhandled Gario. Thankfully the brutality inflicted on him stirred some red-hot controversy.

Then in 2013, as God will have it, the Dutch were thrown into an unwanted international limelight. On 22 October, Verene Shepherd, chair of the United Nations’ Working Group on People of African Descent, in an interview with the Dutch television news programme, EEN Vandaag, stated that: “The Working Group cannot understand why it is that the people in The Netherlands cannot see that [Sinterklaas] is a throwback to slavery... As a black person, I feel that if I were living in The Netherlands, I would object to it.”

For her troubles, Verene Shepherd, who is Jamaican, was subjected to racist vituperations of the worst kind via offensive e-mails. So incensed were the Dutch by Shepherd’s statement that two days after she made it, more than two million people responded by endorsing a Facebook (Piet-ition) to keep Zwarte Piet’s image unchanged.

The “Save Zwarte Piet” Facebook petition was initiated by two Dutch publicists, Kevin van Boeckholtz and Bas Vreugde. The Telegraaf, the Netherlands’ largest newspaper, chipped in with articles denouncing anti-Piet protesters as troublemakers. The paper even presumed to speak for black people by patronisingly claiming that the protest did not represent black people in the Netherlands.

But that was not all. One of the best- known black faces in the Netherlands, sports newscaster Humberto Tan, narrated on national television the type of negative retorts he got, including a lynching threat, when he supported the anti-Zwarte Piet campaign.

The singer Anouk (who represents the Netherlands at this year’s Eurovision contest) and Doutzen Kroes (the model in Victoria’s Secret), two high-profile Dutch female celebrities married to black men, also had ugly sexual insults hurled at them after they condemned Zwarte Piet.
Even Jan Pronk, a supposedly leftist politician, who once served as the UN representative to Sudan, endorsed Zwarte Piet: “These are very old traditions,” he said, “I don’t think it’s so bad.”

No wonder Gario got threats of unspeakable violence, including death, because he dared to speak about the racist history of Zwarte Piet. In response, the Dutch tabloid media continues to mock him.

Taking a cue from the tabloid media, Geert Wilders, the anti-immigrant politician whose Partij voor Vrijheid (Party for Freedom) currently leads in the Dutch polls, tweeted that he would rather eliminate the UN than Zwarte Piet.

But the opponents of Zwarte Piet are not just rolling over. In the words of Gario: “The world is watching, and the Netherlands has been found wanting.” Thus, totally embarrassed by the actions of the Zwarte Piet supporters, more Dutch people appear to be coming around to the conclusion that Zwarte Piet is a relic whose time has passed, and should be consigned to the ashes of history.

In an interview published in the Het Parool newspaper, an Amsterdam councilwoman, Andree van Es, herself as white as you can get, openly called for Zwarte Piet’s end: “The Sinterklaas celebration once began without Zwarte Piet, it’s time it continues without Zwarte Piet,” the councilwoman said.
In the last few weeks, a Facebook page with the slogan “Zwarte Piet is Racism” has become the major platform for the anti-Zwarte Piet battle.

The director of the Anti-Discrimination Bureau for Amsterdam, Jessica Silversmith, now says “there is more opposition to Zwarte Piet than you might think.”

She said that her office, which used to receive one or two complaints per year, saw a sudden rise in complaints to more than 100 last year, and she fears that the figure will increase for 2013. “It’s not only Antilleans or Surinamers who are complaining, it’s all kinds of Dutch people,” she added.

In early December 2013, a documentary laying out the arguments against Zwarte Piet was broadcast on national television. One of the Netherlands’ leading news blogs, “GeenStijl” took everyone by surprise when it launched a vitriolic attack against Zwarte Piet.

“Zwarte Piet,” the blog said, “is nothing more than a repulsive parody of a slave, fine-tuned to indoctrinate schoolchildren into the finer points of racism. The sooner we get rid of Zwarte Piet, the sooner we won’t look like idiots to the rest of the world.”

One columnist for the NRC Handelsblad, the Netherlands top business newspaper, asked whether the country was really as tolerant as it pretended to be. The writer deplored the fact that whereas the USA re-elected its black president, not a single member of the Netherlands’ cabinet is of non-Dutch ancestry.

The Dutch playwright, Mark Walraven, says he used to be one of those who painted their faces and delighted children with Zwarte Piet pranks. Not any more. “I stopped after I began working with black people,” he said. “Many of them are offended by this symbol. Many countries have abolished these things but in Holland they still exist.” Walraven added that it was possible to have Sinterklaas without Zwarte Piet.

Although Verene Shepherd asked the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutter, to use his influence to stop the Zwarte Piet festival, it is not an appeal the Dutch premier will heed any time soon. He simply shrugged off the mounting criticism: “Zwarte Piet is black. There’s not much I can do to change that,” he said.

The prime minister was backed by the leader of the PvdA (or Labour Party), Diederik Samsom, who said: “I don’t particularly like to quote Premier Rutte, but he put it well. Zwarte Piet is simply black.”

However, the Dutch home affairs minister, Ronald Plasterk, says he is in favour of a change. “I can live with it if green or blue Petes should also run around between the Black Petes. I don’t think the children would have less pleasure from this.”

One change that anti-Piet activists have suggested is replacing his black face with smudges, since the “cover story” is that Zwarte Piet becomes black from going down chimneys.

Some people appear to be grudgingly embracing the change. Leading the way are two of the country’s leading chainstores, Blokker and V&D, which have dispensed with Piets with black faces in their catalogues and replaced them with images of kids with ash-smudged cheeks.
The fight against Zwarte Pieten can be won, but it needs more ammunition, soldiers, and Quinsy Garios.

Security crisis facing Nigeria, Richard Attias' open letter

RIchard Attias will be organising the New York Forum Africa in Gabon between 23-25th May. In addition, look out for the May Issue of African Business featuring an interview with Richard Attias. And finally, below is an open letter Richard Attias felt compelled to write President Jonathan Goodluck

New African reports

H.E. Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan
President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
The State House
NG-Abuja

Dear President Jonathan,

It is incumbent on all men to speak out against acts of injustice, of senseless violence and of terrorism. It is for this reason that I have personally been called to action and why I feel so passionately that action must be taken to address the security crisis facing Nigeria at this very moment. I am therefore writing to you now to beseech you to act swiftly and decisively, in a manner befitting a head of state. I am of course referring to the recent acts of the Boko Haram militant group both in Abuja and in Borno State.

The deadly attacks on the bus station in Abuja, which left 75 deceased and 141 people wounded was an indiscriminate act of violence reminiscent of the kinds of attacks which have been perpetuated by armed terrorist groups around the world, targeting civilian non-combatants. While these tactics have been used repeatedly they are only effective in proving that the criminal elements who are responsible are merciless and have no place in society.  The government of Nigeria must be equally merciless with its response to seek out those responsible in order to send a powerful message: this was not acceptable and it will never happen again.

Your country should be congratulated for being recently recognized as our continent’s largest economy, with record GDP growth and the promise of creating a more inclusive society for the current and the coming generation. In a few weeks time, you country will host the World Economic Forum Africa summit, a meeting that I know well as I produced it myself for 15 years in cities across the continent. Never, at any point did we face such a security crisis as the one which is underway now in Nigeria and with so many high level officials, heads of state and global CEOs due to arrive it important to not just tell, but to show the international community that Nigeria is open for business and that it’s a safe, secure destination.

With regard to the kidnapping of the 129 school girls in Chibok area of Borno State, my wife Cecilia and I want the girls, and the world to know that our heart beats to the rhythm of their ordeal. Why were these schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram? They were taken because they were guilty of seeking an education free from the shackles of religious fundamentalism that this militant group aspires to impose on the whole of Nigeria.  These girls now deserve our support and help.

As I stated in a recent opinion piece in the Huffington Post, we must not remain silent, and thereby complicit, nor should we allow criminals who believe in their own impunity to prey on children. We must remember that each of our girls could be a schoolgirl in Chibok. 

In his Easter prayers this past week, His Holiness Pope Francis prayed for your country, and for those impacted by recent events.  As a man of God, Mr. President, Please show the true ilk and conscience of a leader and respond.  Show that the forces of justice, peace and stability are stronger than the anarchy that has crept into Nigeria this past week. This is your moment.  The true test of nation and leadership comes at an hour which choses us, not at an hour of our choosing.  

Yours sincerely,
Richard Attias
Founder, New York Forum AFRICA