We will fight, if necessary...

"On the question of racial discrimination, the Addis Ababa conference taught, to those who will learn this further lesson, that until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned; until there are no longer first class and second class citizens of any nature; that until the colour of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes; that until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race. That until that day the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued but never attained. And until the ignoble and unhappy regimes that hold our brothers in Angola in Mozambique and South Africa in subhuman bondage have been toppled and destroyed; until bigotry and prejudice and malicious and inhuman self interest have been replaced by understanding and tolerance and good will; until Africans stand up and speak as free human beings equal in the eyes of all men as they are in the eyes of heaven, until that day the African continent will not know peace. We Africans will fight if necessary.  And we know that we shall will as we are confident in the victory of good over evil."


HIM Haile Selassie I


First off, please forgive my last entry.  I too am a little disappointed with some of it.  It is my honest and earnest attempt to write a blog a day and make my voice heard and counted.  But still, I press on.

So with HIM earthday anniversary approaching on the 23rd of July, I thought I would devote some time to looking at one section of that most famous and most eloquent speech given by the Emperor to the United Nations in 1963.  The reggae artist Robert Nesta Marley, popularized this brief section of Haile Selassie's speech in the song War.  Many, if not all, reggae followers and more who are merely passersby, know the lyrics and often times sing them with exuberance.  But almost 50 years onward from that occasion at the General Assembly, the lesson has yet to be fully understood.  It has yet to be fully realized.  Today, you can replace the names Angola, Mozambique and South Africa with your pick from the headlines, and you will see that the world still has a long way to go.

I just finished listening to a dissertation presented by a young man from Florida about the "Ideology of Divine Retribution" as it regarded the abolishment of slavery in the US.  In it, he lays out that abolitionists here in America, prior to the conclusion of the Civil War, argued, using the Bible, for an end to slavery.  While it seems enough of a truth that their argument may have been to free themselves of God's wrath, nonetheless, using history of the Bible as reference, they approached the respective arguments with the tenacity of all zealots.

In a similar fashion, with history as an example and moral compass, we must continue to agitate; agitate that not only will the African continent not know peace, but the world at large, until those philosophies, however much diluted and or broadened in scope, are done away with.  It is a must that we, as a world of people, learn the lessons of the past, and become bigger and better than ourselves.  Even bigger and better than our dreams.  It is in us as a human family, if we will only take the time to look deep within.