Date sent: Mon, 01 May 1995
From: Joe Gbujama
Forwarded by: Gordon Thomasson, Broome Community College
<THOMASSON_G@sunybroome.edu>
Ali Mazrui was at Georgia State University yesterday in Atlanta, giving his
highly regarded opinions on African history and the world. When
asked about the chaos in countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia, he
shrugged his shoulders and replied "The day of reckoning has come for those
nations." He argued that because Sierra Leone inherited and accepted a
generic political system from the Europeans, remnant of colonialism,
we were disadvantaged from the very start.
He speculated that perhaps the current turmoil in many African
nations is evidence that the Western Nation-State model is on a
natural decline in Africa. He indicated that other African countries
like Somalia and Ethiopia, are developing their own political systems
from scratch by loosely integrating traditional African and modern
Western legislative, administrative and legal models. However, he
did not discuss the specifics of the integrated models and how they
work.
He also addressed the Nigerian sanctions issue. Randall Robinson
(TransAfrica), he pointed out, did not just start negotiating on
Africa's behalf yesterday and that if Africans are going to work
with any group in America in solving their problems, it might as well
be TransAfrica because their record (Anti-Apathied, Somalian aid,
Namibian Peace, Haitian affairs etc) speaks for itself.
Nigeria's military government, he noted, has refused to acknowledge
the rightfully elected leader, Awolowo (who is now in jail) and if so
called Africa lovers don't speak out against it now (As they did with
South Africa) they will loose credibility. It is simply a matter of
consistency. "If some other group from out of nowhere had suggested
sanctions" he added "I would have been skeptical as to their motives,
but I believe TransAfrica has proved it's commitment to press the
American government through lobbying to act on issues affecting
African people."