{UAH} Edward Mulindwa

Abbey,

Please ask Edward Mulindwa to stop copying in UAH to debates he is
having on other forums. Secondly, you should develop a policy on
copying (CC and CCC). It is not appropriate to copy to UAH one's views
on a debate being held on another forum, unless the posting is a
stand-alone article ie a writing that does not need any further
explanation. A view expressed in an on-going debate can be
mis-understood or misleading because one would not have read what has
already transpired. For eg, a view may be a reply to a question, but
unless you have read the question, the answer that you read is likely
to be unsatisfactory, mis-leading, misguided, ill-informed, wrong,
rude etc.

Edward Mulindwa has already fallen in this trap. Here he is posting
debates he is having in other forums which, from the little I have
read, is focussing on the issues of pan-africanism and how it
translated itself in the context of the South African liberation
strugggle and the role of Mandela in it. Principally the debates wrere
held about the different pathways for the liberation of black people,
the content of black nationalism and the different trajectories that
the liberation struggle in South Africa took, and the intellectual
justications that sorrounded them: BLACK CONSCIOUISNESS, being the
fundamental core of the African struggle and the pedestal on which the
liberation struggle should be waged, as opposed to NATIONAL DEMOCRACY,
containing concepts such as new democracy and socialist transformation
and that viewed the theories of the national united democratic front
as the only pathway, not only for liberating South Africa from the
grips of apartheid, but also for building a new South Africa. In
otherwords, one looked at apartheid in normative terms, as an ideology
of seperateness that saw black and white as different, that it is only
black people who could liberate themselves, that even liberal whites
were enemies or had little contribution to make to black liberation
thus using such stereo-types as political justification for the
creation of a black nation, whereas the other looked at apartheid as
being merely another facet or manifestation or stage of capitalist
exploitation that uses race as an organic instrument of oppression.

To put it simply, one strand of thought looked at the ideology of
black power or black consciousness as being the lever or main motice
force for the liberation of African people; the other took the view,
that black South Africans could only be libreated by a policy of a
progressive united democratic front; ie a front that operated on the
basis of class interests that cut across colour, religion or
nationality. The first view was promoted by the Pan-Africanist
Congress led by people like Sobukwe and later Steve Biko and others.
The second second view, promoted aggressively by the Communist Party
of South Africa, was later on adopted by the ANC as its policy, thus
you saw the ANC, the Indian National Congress and the South African
Communist Party enterring into an anti-apartheid National Democratic
Front. Indeed, when Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), the
liberation army,was formed, it was Joe Slovo, a white communist who
volunteered to become its first military commander. At the first
congress when Umkonto was formed, there was stunned silence for almost
20 minutes when the delegates were asked who would be the commander of
the army they had just agreed to set up. Finally, Joe Slovo, the
white communist stood up and said he would, although he never had any
military training of any kind.

So therefore when people discuss these issues, they need to be
informed about the ideologies that guided the actors at the time and
including people like Mandela. I am not being rude or patronising
here, but Edward Mulindwa is clearly totally ignorant of this history
and to make it even worse, Mulindwa is totally incapable of
understanding such complex concepts as black consciousness, national
democracy, national united democratic front, concepts which dominated
the South African experience and from which Mandela came.

I am not asking you to muzzle Mulindwa, all I asking is for you to do
two things:

1. Discourage him from copying UAH onto discussions he is having on
other forums. If he finds those discussions stimulating, then he can
start them as a thread here on UAH. The reasoning is that we can not
respond to erroneous or even stupid statements made on those other
forums.

For eg, in one of those postings copied here by Mulindwa, one person
claims Joe Slovo was a member of Mossad. This claim, apart from being
a lie, is totally scandalous and really makes my blood boil, but I can
not react to it because it is made in another forum. Anybody who knows
South African history would be equally be incandescent with rage to
read such a lie. For, in 1963, when the Sharpeville massacre took
place, 69 peaceful demonstrators were shot dead by police in a
massacre that shocked the world, the ANC decided to end its policy of
peaceful protests and demonstrations and took up the armed struggle.
At the congress that set up its guerrilla army Umkhonto we Sizwe, it
was Joe Slovo, a whiteman, who volunteered to be the first commander
of this newly formed army when no one else would. And Slovo spent the
whole of his life figthing against the apartheid regime. And he made
tremendous personal sacrifices; the very week he volunteered to be
the commander of the guerrilla army, he and his wife Ruth sent their
young children to exile in the UK and moreorless disappeared from
their lives. Ruth was assasinated in a petrol bomb attack in
Mozambique, I think in 1974. I don't know if you watched it, but
Slovo's daughter made a documentary on Absent Parents, which was
broadcast here on British TV, about growing up as a daughter of
parents married to the cause of black liberation- how she basically
grew up as an orphan and how that impacted on her. And this is a man
who is called a mossad agent in a debate that Mulindwa is happy to
post here in the knowlegde that no one can challenge it as we don't
belong to those forums.

2. Advice Edward Mulindwa to be selective in what he writes about.
This will stop him from being looked at as being ignorant or out of
depth, because some of the views he has expressed here about Mandela,
he probably picke up from the debates about black conciousness versus
national united front as the vehicle for national liberation in South
Africa, but because he is not intellectually equipped to handle
complex ideas, he comes across as being uncouth or reckless, or
psychopathic or pathetic and to be pitied, for eg, when he refers to
Mandela as a "murderer", denounces him for being anti-zionist, praises
apartheid era laws and courts etc.

Abbey, the danger is, if you don't take action against Edward
Mulindwa, you risk seriously impeding the forward development of UAH
as a serious medium for intellectual intercourse and political
discourse. If you put together all of Mulindwa's rantings on Mandela
in the last 48 hours, you would be forgiven for thinking that they
have been written by Eugene Terre Blanche, the white hooligan who
headed the segregationist Afrikaner Nation, or the notorious UK
racist, the late Enoch Powell who spoke of the "rivers of blood"
flooding the UK as a result of black migration. You live here in the
UK, and I am sure you would agree with me, if Mulindwa published some
of his views here, he would more likely be regarded as a very odd
bigot and racist, because he is black himself. Mulindwa is just like
that pitiful character Okot B'tek wrote about who cried " God, Why was
I born Black?"

George Okello

--
Anybody know where Mr.Simon Peter Okurut is? UAH forum is devoted to matters of interest to Ugandans and Africans in general. Individuals are responsible for whatever they post on this forum.To unsubscribe from this group, send email to: ugandans-at-heart+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com or Abbey Semuwemba at: abbeysemuwemba@gmail.com.