Djelia: Stories, Poetry, Fiction, and Features

This is an excellent video about the history of Haiti, imperialism, and Western powers by Kwame Ture. The video also suggests how Haiti will be liberated to its former glory.

By Funmilola (Fummylolah)

Dear Farouk,

How are you? I really hope that all is well with you. I'm sure that all should be well because in spite of your present predicament you are still entitled to three full meals with complements of juice and assorted drinks (even those who didn't attempt to bomb planes live on less than $1 a day in 9ja). When you are finally convicted, you will still be fed on government expense. You'll be allowed to play games and participate in sporting activities. If you so desire, you'll be allowed to pursue the Master's Degree that you abandoned. (By the way I struggled to pay the fees for my Masters). My father was never a bank chief (not even a community or micro finance bank).

By Crisford Chogugudza

All the evidence regarding the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize Accolades suggest that Africans are not hot favourites to receive the coveted prize. Whether this is deliberate or coincidental nobody knows. For many years, African luminaries have performed reasonable efforts in bringing or contributing to peace in Africa since the genesis of nationalism and Independence in late 1950s. Some of these African luminaries who qualify to receive the Nobel Peace Prize include the following among others Ellen Johnson-Sir leaf of Liberia, Ken Saro Wiwa of Nigeria, Joachim Chissano of Mozambique, John Garang of Sudan, the late Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo and Morgan Tsvangirai of Zimbabwe, the late Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, the African Union and Ecowas. A few of the above African grandees should all have been awarded this coveted peace prize at some point in time, if at all peace making was the only factor determining who should receive the coveted prize. Zimbabwe’s Morgan Tsvangirai has been in the running for the top Prize for two years and has clearly been snubbed on both occasions. The writing is already on the wall, Tsvangirai is not going to get the elusive prize and perhaps it is high time his nomination is withdrawn for 2011.

The two part series is a web documentary on the history of African Americans in Hawai'i. It was produced by the African American Diversity Cultural Center Hawai'i (AADCCH).

By Biko Agozino

‘Unlike societies right next to the Igbo for instance – more famously the Benin, or further West, the Yoruba or, all the way southwards of the continent, the Kwazulu of the legendary Shaka – the Igbo, with their strong social formation rooted in republicanism, would appear to belie my general claim. The Igbo have no history of expansionism, being content with a strong organization around autonomous clan entities that made contact – friendly or unfriendly with one another as the need arose (Wole Soyinka, Distinguished Nyerere Lecture, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, 2010: 1).

By Damola Awoyokun

We should pay closer attention to the debate between Fr Hassan Kukah and Dr Ebenezer Obadare. It represents much more than even the participants seems to realise. While Kukah sees Obadare’s complaints as mere “contribution to knowledge and in which case, there would really have been no need to do a rejoinder,” it is no exaggeration to say, the debate is the soul of the nation struggling to free itself from grip of sinister darkness that masquerades as light of truth. There is no instrument more cogent, more effective in enslaving Nigerians than religion and God-talk. Today, when armed robbers want to rob a bank, they call prayer meeting. When Yar Adua’s minders wanted to sell the ruse of his sickness in Saudi Arabia, they asked us to pray hard for him in order to distract us from the fact that they had kidnapped the instruments of presidency so that no one else could claim power. And for two months daily prayers flowed from National Assembly to every church and mosque. And we that dared to criticise the sick man as another Mugabe hanging onto power at all cost were made to feel heartless.