IndiAfrica Essay Writing Contest 2013

(20 winners of INR 25,000 each

| India/ Africa)

INDIAFRICA: A Shared Future is a unique people to people initiative that aims at engaging multiple stakeholders in India and Africa through contests, fellowships, discussions, events, collaborative projects and cultural exchanges.

INDIAFRICA is supported by the Public Diplomacy Division, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India and is managed by theIdeaWorks. INDIAFRICA works very closely with various institutions in Africa and India to drive this initiative.

The INDIAFRICA Essay Contest is open to students from any discipline in Africa and India between the age of 18-35 years (as on Dec 31, 2013) who are enrolled in colleges and academic institutions.

INDIAFRICA ESSAY WRITING CONTEST

Are you below the age of 30 years and a person with opinions and perspectives and willing to share them with the communities in India and Africa, then participate in the contest and stand a chance to win an attractive prize and an international platform.

THEME: How can India and Africa collaborate to co-create a brighter future?

PRIZES:

• Twenty prizes of INR 25000 each

• Certificates for all winners

• INDIAFRICA merchandise for all winners

CONTACT INFORMATION:

For queries: contact@indiafrica.in

For submissions: via the online registration page

Website: http://www.indiafrica.in

 

Entries Now Open:

The 2013 Commonwealth

Essay Competition

(win a trip to UK)

 

 

Deadline: 1 May 2013

Are you a writer? Are you interested in the world around you? Do you want your voice to be heard by others? If so, the Commonwealth Essay Competition is definitely for you. We encourage you to be creative in your response to our topics. You can submit a poem, letter, article, story, essay or even a short play. The choice is yours. Just get writing!

Every year, the Commonwealth Essay Competition inspires thousands of young writers from all over the world. Run by the Royal Commonwealth Society since 1883, it is the world's oldest and largest schools' international writing competition. Past winners include Mr Lee Hsien Loong, the Prime Minister of Singapore and Elspeth Huxley.

The competition is free to enter and in 2012 over 1,000 young writers, from 245 schools, in 38 countries across the Commonwealth received an award for their entry.

For 2013, we're delighted to announce that the Competition will be run in partnership with Cambridge University Press, whose support will enable us to engage even more young writers across the Commonwealth.

The Competition celebrates and nurtures the creative talents of young people across the Commonwealth, providing a platform for students to compete with their peers in each of the 54 nations which make up this unique association. Entrants are judged in two age groups, Junior (under 14 years) and Senior (14-18 years).

The closing date is 1st May 2013 and results will be announced in the autumn of next year, when a Junior and Senior Prize Winner and Runner Up will be announced and our judges will make a number of Gold, Silver and Bronze Awards.

PRIZES:

• Win a certificate

• Win resources for your school

• Be flown to London

• Be invited to meet famous authors; take part in workshops to learn news skills; and do work experience at international organisations

• See your entry featured in RCS publications and worldwide media

TOPICS:

Junior Category (Born after 1st May 1999)

• When has hard work paid off for you?

• Creative thinking saved the day.

• Tell us about a moment of opportunity which changed the life of your family, community,

• country, continent or the entire planet. 

• Is change a good thing?

• Opportunities galore!

Senior Category (Born between 2nd May 1994 and 1st May 1999)

• A funding agency has asked you to make a pitch for an idea involving schools that would benefit your community.

• “I knew this was my moment.”

• Discuss one or more examples of social and/or environmental development where enterprise

• plays, or could play, a key role in changing the way people live.

• “How enterprising!” a voice said as I closed the door behind me.

• Are we too risk-conscious these days?

Junior and Senior (A bonus topic open to all entrants)

• To boldly go ...”

RULES:

• The Competition is open to nationals or residents of all Commonwealth countries and territories.

• Special dispensation applies to entrants from Hong Kong, Fiji and Zimbabwe who are entitled to enter the Competition.

• Entrants must select a Senior or Junior topic depending on how old they are on 1st May 2013.

• Entries must be written in English and be the original work of the writer.

• Entrants must submit an entry form alongside their entries and complete all the mandatory fi elds.

• The maximum word-counts are 1500 words for Senior entries and 750 words for Junior entries.

• Entries will be disqualifi ed if they fail to meet these requirements.

*As Hong Kong is a former British Overseas Territory residents and/or nationals of Hong Kong are eligible to enter. Fiji is currently suspended from the Commonwealth but nationals and/or residents are still eligible to enter. Although Zimbabwe left the Commonwealth in 2003 residents and/or nationals are still eligible to enter.

HOW TO ENTER

Via the internet: Entries can be submitted online in 2013 at www.thercs.org/youth/competitions. Please read all the information and follow the instructions carefully. It is essential that entrants fi ll in the mandatory fi elds in the online entry form.

By Post: Please complete your entry form in block capitals and attach it to the front
of your essay. Send entries…

• Directy to us: Fao Young Commonwealth Competitions, The Royal Commonwealth Society, 25 Northumberland Avenue, London, Wc2N 5Ap Uk

• Americas/Caribbean: Fao Young Commonwealth Comeptitions, The British Council, 19 St. Clair Avenue, St. Clair, Port Of Spain, Trinidad And Tobago

• Africa: Fao Young Commonwealth Comeptitions, Baobab College, Po Box 350099, Chilanga, Zambia OR Fao Young Commonwealth Competitions, The British High Commission, Po Box 296, Accra, Ghana

Download: entry form (for submissions by post)

CONTACT INFORMATION:

For queries: competitions@thercs.org

For submissions: via the online submission website

Website: http://www.thercs.org/

Disclaimer: Writers Afrika is a resource for writers and is not involved in this opportunity or associated with its organizers. Queries and submissions should be directed to the appropriate e-mail address found under the Contact Information section of this post.

 

 

WomanSpeak Vol.7/2013

Call For Submissions

 

WomanSpeak, a Journal of Literature and Art by Caribbean Women, edited and published by yours truly, is calling for submissions for volume 7/2013, an issue especially themed, "Voices of Dissent: Women Speaking to Transform the Culture."

I am looking for the works of a new generation of Caribbean Feminist writers and painters who care about the lives of women and will dare to use their creative voices to shock us out of our complacency and into action.  I see a new Feminist consciousness struggling to rise up across the Caribbean these days. I see women organizing, they are naming the human rights issues facing Caribbean women and their children, they are gathering and disseminating the information, they are discussing the issues and commenting on them from a Feminist perspective. I see far flung pockets of Caribbean Feminists connecting with one another on the web and made hopeful by the enormous potential that holds for creating a real and powerful women's movement across our region. 

But where is the literature and art of the new Feminist movement of the new generation? Where are the women poets who will articulate the struggle, nurture and grow it, give it movement, meaning and empowerment by addressing the issues in their highest and best work? Where are the writers who will redefine Feminism for a new generation of Caribbean women, and do it in fine literature and art? Where are the women writers and painters who feel an urgency to speak out in their work about the social issues that matter most to Caribbean women? Where are the feminist poets and writers speaking with each other about the roles they play and the responsibilities they bear in the struggle to uplift the lives of all Caribbean women? Where does the bookish young Caribbean woman turn when she wants to read works by the best womanish minds of her generation to inspire her, to give her the words she needs to get herself and her own voice free? 

A Feminist is someone who believes that women's rights are human rights. A Feminist woman is one who cares about the lives of other women and children and supports local and global efforts to uplift, liberate and transform those lives, because she understands her own freedom is incomplete until all women are free.  Really, how can any of us say we are not Feminists? And yet so many women do.  Women against women's rights are in the majority in my country, The Bahamas. Any doubt of that was laid to rest when in 2000 they voted overwhelmingly against correcting discrimination against women in the Bahamian constitution as the whole world watched. Bahamian women again turned on their sisters in trouble last year when they voiced their absolute opposition to the proposed legislation that would have given battered wives the right to bring charges of rape against their abusive husbands. The majority of women I talk to avoid any involvement in the struggle for human rights for women because they have been trained by various father god religions to blame the devil, pray hard and leave it to their god to work out for them.

Dissent is impossible to find among women in New Age circles too. I call it the cult of positive thinking, that whole Louise Hay methodology that says you can change your life by changing the way you think. (This is not new at all, just a new spin on patriarchy's founding tenant, "I think therefore I am," deifying thought (traditionally male) over emotion (traditionally female). It just isn't fashionable right now for women to get angry, to get an issue, to take a stand, to create an action or a movement to transform the culture. We are too busy being hyper-grateful to even acknowledge the ongoing war against women across the Caribbean and the world, too busy having positive thoughts and sending out good vibrations to acknowledge the discrimination women face because they are women, or to get an idea about an action they could take to change it. As for the women falling in the wars, they speak out but no one can hear them, and the women who've been working in the trenches thirty years tending to the wounded and the dead, they speak out but no one can hear them over the din of prayers and platitudes. Any woman who does speak out for other women from a Feminist point of view (or anything at all like it) will often look around and find herself standing alone.

We are beginning to hear the voices of Caribbean women dissenters on the web. Writers like Simone Lied and associations like Code Red for Gender Justice are bearing witness to the persecution and suffering of women and actively protesting the patriarchal status quo in their work. But where are the poets, the fiction writers, the painters of the new generation of Feminists who work to articulate the struggle for equality, peace and justice for women? Whose works deliberately resist the powerful forces without and within at work to keep us in a second class state? I believe that when we make  spaces for them, they will come. WSJ Volume 7/2013 is one of these spaces.

We are seeking poetry, short fiction, fairy tales, essays, paintings and photographs for the new issue. Deadline (or, lifeline) for submissions is May 31, 2013. I'm planning for a September release. Please send submissions to lynnsweeting@gmail.com with "WSJ submission" and your name on the subject line.

 

Posted by Lynn Sweeting

 

The Day Nina Simone

Stopped Singing

by Darina Al-Joundi

 

Eunice Kathleen Waymon caught my eye. Her stage name appears strikingly white against the backdrop of Darina Al-Joundi’s magenta shirt on the cover of The Day Nina Simone Stopped Singing.

If you were hoping for an account of the gospel, jazz and blues diva who died in France as recently as 2003, this is not it. An appreciation of the grand dame’s music together with riffs of Led Zep form just part of a rich yet eclectic diet of cultural enrichment provided by Darina’s unconventional father, a political refugee from Syria.

Le jour où Nina Simone a cessé de chanter was first published as a play to great acclaim when aired at the Avignon festival in 2007.

This is a memoir of Darina’s coming of age against a backdrop of bullets in war-torn Beirut. While the author’s Shi’te mother is very often away her presence is felt when heard Kate Adie style reading the latest atrocities to ravage the country where she is “one of the great names in Lebanese radio.”

So it is Daddy Al-Joundi, philosophy and literature teacher who takes it upon himself to give Darina lessons in the art of fine wine tasting at age eight and introduces her to cult cinematic classics such as A Clockwork Orange and Last Tango in Paris. A passion for books and of Dostoevsky, Mayakovsky and Arab erotic writers is shared.

Loathing all religions, Al-Joundi senior sets out to steer his offspring down the same path, with strict orders for them to play Nina Simon’s Sinnerman at his funeral rather than traditional suras of the Qur’an.

Amid this tumultuous education recurring acts of rebellion are an indication that Darina, who loves the ritual of the Catechism, needs a little more structure in her life and not the kind that lead her to conspire with her sister to get Sinnerman played sooner rather than later.

It is a short journey from picking the emerald tobacco leaves alongside her paternal grandfather to smoking spliffs. From early childhood you sense that our author is a rocket waiting to go off and she throws herself into a voyage of sexual abandon with no holds barred. The sex isn’t all great, and most of it is anonymous. There are some nasty experiences, which reinforce our author’s independence and make her the woman she is today.

This is so much more than account of the war in Lebanon in the 1970’s. Al-Joundi fills you in and really highlights the sense of loss felt by the Palestinians, leading us to reflect on Middle Eastern stereotypes.

It’s a rollercoaster of a read and utterly captivating – you won’t want to stop the ride and get off. At 144 pages you won’t use it as a doorstop, but I bet you anything you’ll want to share it with a friend.

The Day Nina Simone Stopped Singing by Darina Al-Joundi and Mohamed Kacimi is translated by Marjolijn de Jager. Published by The Feminist Press, it can be found in paperback at Amazon for £9.89.

Rating: 4/5

Recommended for: Feisty women, all rebels with a cause, French speakers, those of a political persuasion, and for Middle-Eastern interest.

Other recommended reading: Keep up the momentum with  Une Femme Rompue/The Woman Destroyed by Simone De Beauvoir, or Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy.

By Rebecca Smeaton

 

Artist Bio 

Erin Currier
b. 1975, Haverhill, Massachusetts 

Part portraiture, part collage constructed of disinherited consumer “waste” collected in forty countries, part sociopolitical archive, but wholly humanist, Currier’s work has been featured in numerous solo shows, including a major exhibition at the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Embassy in Washington, DC. Her work is exhibited and collected internationally. She lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

Artists Statement 

What began as a natural integration of my sociopolitical beliefs with a sheer joy of art-making, has since developed into a full-fledged artistic praxis by which I integrate the human realm I come in contact with in the course of my travels- its individuals, cultures, and struggles- with its refuse, in order to comment on and participate in the issues I feel most passionate about. I have travelled to nearly 40 countries, immersing myself, to the best of my abilities, in the daily life of countries like Nepal and Nicaragua, cities such as Istanbul and Caracas, studying languages, getting around on foot or by bus, sketching, documenting extensively, making friends, and collecting disinherited commercial “waste”, after which I return to my studio to create series of works. Aesthetically, Latin American Muralist traditions, Eastern Spiritual Iconography, and Social Realism inform my work. In addition to drawing its subjects from the so-called developing world, my work often draws its aesthetic from the “Global South”, as well as its philosophical influence, in the form of Paolo Freire, Eduardo Galeano, Augusto Sandino, and Edward Said.

The more I travel, the greater my sense of urgency as an artist to address social inequality and economic disparity through my work. Above all, I am a humanist artist, politically active and unapologetically narrative in my repertoire of practices, and for whom art and the social world are inseparable.

 

—Erin Currier

Erin CURRIER

– Visual Artist –

BERLIN, Germany

By aloudblog / January 30, 2011 

The only regret I have is that I couldn’t go to Berlin and see Erin’s work in the flesh, so-to-speak. Staring at the pictures on my computer, getting as close as I can, I can just start to identify the collected pieces of rubbish that are used as a collage to form the clothing, the backgrounds, like layers of secret messages only revealed through time and close observation. I wish I could get so close that I could almost smell the grease smudged McDonalds wrappers that Erin used to represent an indian cow, a sacred and revered animal made from the left-overs of the most famous bovine-murdering company in the world. I didn’t, I couldn’t and until I do, my small flat screen will have to suffice, it just doesn’t seem right though.

(Portrait of Erin is copyright of Jennifer Esperanza.)

 

ALOUD: Erin, how and when did your passion to express yourself visually emerge?

ERIN CURRIER: I began drawing, painting, and collaging at a very young age with my mother—who worked as a draftswoman and architectural designer, as her own father before her had, for many years. As a child, I could be taken anywhere, remaining patient and quiet, so long as I had a crayon or marker in my hand!

ALOUD: What type of training did you receive?

ERIN: I went to college for theatre design with an emphasis in costume design (I received a BFA at the College of Santa Fe, NM). As part of the academic program, I studied all facets of the theatre: directing, acting, set design, lighting design, scene painting, etc. The experience continues to influence my work to this day, however, by my last year of university, I knew that I would not pursue a career in theatre, as I had an omnipresent desire to paint—a passion I was spending every spare moment engaged in.

ALOUD: How did you make the transition between these two fields?

ERIN: Soon after I graduated, I worked in a café where I would gather the day’s refuse: empty cream containers, sugar packets, tea boxes, stir sticks, the materials with which I would bring home after work to create Buddhist deities; as I was, at that time, studying Tibetan Thangka Painting and practicing Buddhist meditation. I had my first solo exhibition of this work at the café to an overwhelming response.

ALOUD: Can you describe specific turning points which have had a strong impact on the direction of your work and career as an artist?

ERIN: As well as making art, traveling the world has been the priority and focus of my life. After a couple of years working part time in cafes while working on my art, I began decorative painting, restoration, antique finishing, and mural painting with my partner, Anthony for several years. I continued to create spiritual iconography out of “post-consumer waste” as well. In 2000, Anthony and I took a nine month odyssey around the world: studying martial arts in China, living and painting in Nepal, traveling around India and Italy looking at art, visiting Thailand and Spain. This trip was the first of many that changed my life and art irrevocably. What had previously been relatively small portraits of spiritual figures made out of local packaging, became large-scale socio-political and spiritual figures made out of international trash gathered on several continents and packaging written in different languages. For example, I created a one-legged Indian Beggar as Siva, holding a crutch for a trident, a cow at his feet collaged from McDonald’s cheeseburger wrappers collected in Beijing. There was also an Angela Davis as the Green Tara, and so forth (this work can be viewed on my site in the chapter titled “Liberation Series”). As a result of the economic disparity and inequality I had encountered in the course of my travels, I had begun to read every book on Civil Rights and Human Rights movements that I could find, and my work took on a new urgency. I was inspired by activists like Davis—Septima Clark, Bob Moses, Diane Nash,etc.—who embodied spiritual principles through political activism.

ALOUD: How has your work evolved through time and experiences?

ERIN: What began as a natural progression of my socio-political beliefs with my love for making art, has since developed into a full-fledged artistic praxis by which I integrate the human realm I come in contact with in the course of my travels—its individuals, cultures, and struggles—with its refuse, in order to comment on and participate in the issues I feel most passionate about.

ALOUD: How does your practice sustain itself?

ERIN: For the past ten years, I have travelled the world, immersing myself to the best of my abilities in the places and cultures I am traveling in: studying languages, researching, talking to people, sketching, keeping journals, collecting packaging and debris with which to make art. I typically travel three to six months per year, then return to the studio where I create series of works which are then exhibited in a big annual solo show, the proceeds of which I am then able to travel with. It is a form of recycling in that, I take the refuse of the Global South and make it into art which is bought and collected in the “developed world”; the proceeds are then spent back in the Global South. In this way, I have been able to support myself through doing what I love most: making art and traveling; while also living in line with my socio political beliefs.

ALOUD: Do you tend to follow a plan or would you rather let things evolve organically?

ERIN: When I set out on a journey, I often have some idea of the direction my new work will take—as the direction is based upon issues I am currently most engaged in and passionate about. Inevitably, however, the work evolves organically as new issues are brought to light in the places I visit and through the stories of the people who I meet. For instance, I went to Nicaragua intending to create portraits of Sandinista revolutionaries and their movement’s namesake, Augusto Sandino. In the course of my travels there, I met a bookseller who told me the story of Roberto Lopez Perez—the poet who dressed as a waiter in order to gain access to a banquet where he proceeded to assassinate the cruel dictator, Anastacio Somoza. I also met Dona Luisa, who, along with a few other mothers of fallen Sandinista revolutionaries, runs a small museum in Leon in their honor. The Waiter, and Los Madres de los Revolucionarios, are but two of many pieces that resulted from many such encounters during my travels.

ALOUD: Do you draw a line between your life and your work?

ERIN: I do not draw a line between my art and my life. My art informs my life: the decisions I make, the places I decide to travel to, and, as a result, the people I meet, the friends I make, the opportunities that arise. In turn, how I choose to live informs my art. The two are inseparable and interdependent. Every moment that I live is in service to my art; “Art is Life and Life, Transformation”, the Catalonian artist Joan Brassos once stated…

ALOUD: if anything, what would you change about your current situation?

ERIN: Now I have begun to make Berlin my (hopefully) relatively permanent home base in place of New Mexico—where I had lived in Taos, Santa Fe, and the vicinity for nearly two decades. I have always loved Europe for a number of reasons: its languages, its arts, the simple life here that is relatively free of the oversized automobiles, the six lane freeways, the oversized Walmarts, Whole Foods, Home Depots, and, worst of all, the supersized military, all inherent to the USA. A move to Europe is one of several changes I hope to make around being increasingly mobile, being able to express myself through work that is increasingly smaller, lighter, less dependent upon systems of transport, shipping, etc., that contribute to the depletion of the world’s ever-dwindling resources.

ALOUD: How are you going to take it to the next level?

ERIN: I have long considered myself to be politically active through my art—that this is my responsibility, obligation, and privilege—as an artist and a woman; but I have felt an urgency to do more. I would like to figure out a way to continue to create meaningful art, to continue to sustain my minimal needs through making art, but to also step outside of the capitalist art market entirely. Just as the fields of architecture, engineering, medicine, technology, and education continue to seek innovative and sustainable modes of being, I think the “Art World” should follow suit. Conceptual art has reached record heights of extravagance with its wasteful, corporate-sponsored installations mounted in complicit and profit-starved museums, and for what? For whom?

ALOUD: Do you think that the risks of living one’s life outside the mainstream are justified by the rewards it offers?

ERIN: I feel that the reward of living and making art in a way that does not compromise one’s philosophical, socio-political, and spiritual beliefs is immeasurable; it is worth every risk, and, as it is, in the end, the only way to live.

When the time came to recommend another woman who would find her place on the pages of Aloud., Erin suggested:

Francesca Marciano is an award winning novelist (“Rules of the wild”, “Casa Rossa” and “The end of manners” amongst others) as well as screen writer (I’m not scared) who has travelled extensively and divides her time between Europe, the US and Kenya.

To see more of Erin’s work and find out about upcoming exhibitions, you can visit her website at : www.erincurrierfineart.com

The Exiles

An Interview of

Kathleen Cleaver

By Madeline Murphy

 

The rooster crow in Algiers at five in the morning is more like a wail than the familiar "cock-a-doodle-doo." It reflects the eerie sound Arab women emit by pressing and wiggling their tongues against the roof of their mouths in spontaneous exclamations of joy, or grief, or anguish. I awoke on the first day of September at 5 a.m. in Algiers, not so much because of my sensitivity to the sound of the unfamiliar cock crow, not because of the brightness in the room (the sun rises abruptly at 5:30), for I am a sound sleeper, but because the breath-taking tropical smells from the hotel garden forcefully invaded my subconscious.

Our fourth floor balcony overlooked the lush palms, gnarled eucalyptus and ancient olive trees of the international garden of Hotel St. George, which boasted plants and flowers representing all nations. I could see oversized split leaf philodendrons, their green stamen-like flowers blooming sensuously, huge yucca plants, their white bell-like blossoms reaching to the sky, and towering cacti of all varieties.

In the distance the Mediterranean’s gray-mottled indolence was soon to give way to changing, glittering blue /green jewel tones—from dark to light, from pastel to true color. On the horizon, the fire-ball sun rose quickly in full view shocking the sea into a dazzling brightness of its own reflection and turning the cool dawn into the heat of a mid-summer’s day. The added excitement of the purpose of my trip could neither be brushed aside not wasted in one moment of tourist weakness—the urge to sleep and be lazy.

Despite the fatigue of the trip to Algiers, the exotic sights, scents, and sounds were unrelenting in their fascination and in their hypnotic attraction. I had come to Algiers especially to interview Kathleen Cleaver. It had been difficult for me to find her, yet I finally had a lead: 9 Rue du Traite, El Biar section. My husband and I had planned this trip carefully. He was returning to the place of his army service in World War II. I came to explore the mysteries and complexities of the exiled Black Panther community.

Yet, when we had registered for our room the day before, we had been tersely informed by a hostile concierge that our reservations were good for only one night. In a strange land unable to speak fluent French, the isolation of being a tourist was frightening. The indifferent attitude of the concierge reaffirmed not only the typical foreign resentment that here were the usual opulent, arrogant American tourists, but also the cool diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Algeria. The U.S. maintains a consulate and not an embassy in Algeria. Algeria’s President, Colonel Houari Boumedienne, intent upon developing Algeria into an independent, solvent, socialist country has continued to gain government control of natural resources and seeks to trade with other nations where his country can obtain the most benefits.

Thus, Algeria is more aligned with countries of the Soviet bloc: Mainland China, North Vietnam, Arab Socialist Union, and the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Algeria is the “Mecca” and asylum for liberation groups and exiles from countries such as the United States. President Boumedienne was elected president of the OAU when Algeria played host to its fifth summit conference in 1968, and the first Pan-African Cultural Festival was held in Algeria the following year.

The fact that on the surface we were Afro-Americans required closer scrutiny as to our political stance. Algerians are wise in the game of U.S. deception. Indeed, this was not the best climate to seek two additional days lodging or to make my mission easier—finding 9 Rue du Traite. To complicate our position, the Algerian International Trade Fair was in progress, causing hotel accommodations throughout the city to be overcrowded. There are few hotels in Algeria, and with the language barrier, it seemed unlikely that we would be able to fend for ourselves.

Adding insult to injury, the hotel had had no running water during the past four days and the electricity only worked sporadically. We freshened up with “tote towels” as best we could and decided to get something to eat and to worry about our plight on a full stomach. Our isolation became more apparent as we sat in the hotel terrace dining room, for we were surrounded by the counterpoint of murmurs, the strange language of the trade fair visitors from Europe, Mainland China, the USSR, and Africa.

As we scanned the clusters of talking, gesticulating diners, we recognized a "Soul Brother." There he was seated in the corner. Our eyes met, first without recognition, then a quick “double-take”—Stokely Carmichael. Mutual joy. Beckoning to him and with broad grins, we invited him to join us, whereupon he crossed the terrace with long strides, obviously happy to greet "home folks." (I later learned during this short visit, that exiles, expatriates, have a longing, a nostalgia for Americans, not so much for the country, but mostly for the ease of communication with Afro-Americans, for news of home, a need to be current, a real "What’s happenin’ man?" communication.) Thus began an encounter that relieved our fears of estrangement, hostility, and helplessness. It reversed this uncertain, three-day sojourn. This chance meeting turned out to be the most interesting, rewarding visit of a lifetime.

*   *   *

 

Stokely quickly took us in hand. He was on a brief holiday and business trip from his adopted country, Guinea. His wife, Miriam Makeba, was fulfilling a concert engagement in Denmark. He was waiting for her return so that they could take their first real vacation since their marriage two years before. Stokely speaks fairly good French and is loved by the liberated Algerians. A quick request from him to the concierge and, voila, our reservations were extended (for as long as we wanted to stay). Pails of water were delivered to our room, the dining room was open to us any hour of the day or night . . . only the electrical problem was beyond his control.

Miriam Makeba and Stokely Carmichael 1968 

 

A few phone calls and Kathleen Cleaver’s whereabouts were confirmed. In spite of the fact that the former friendly relationship between the Cleavers and Stokely had been severed, true to his creed, he made no vicious statements, had no recriminations, and did everything possible to help me locate them. Stokely was, however, a bit nostalgic for old time’s sake, since Kathleen and he had worked closely together during the early days of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

By noon of the next day, a mini-taxi was careening us up the winding hills of Algiers, swerving through marketplaces, tree-lined streets of the embassies, skirting the old city and its Kasbah. We reached a small park—Place Kennedy—and upon inquiring directions three or four times, we finally found a back street lined with small stones, which led to yet a narrower street. There, facing a neglected vacant and hilly lot, was the Black Panther Party International headquarters. The rather attractive two-story white adobe-type building with brass plaques on both sides of the wrought-iron gated entrance proclaimed in both English and Arabic that this was indeed the International Black Panther Party headquarters. The building, given by the Algerian government, was walled in by a four-foot natural stone wall. Wrought-iron grilling was interspersed proportionally along its fifty-foot frontage. Arab children played, ran, and yelled along the sidewalk.

Across the street a man was sitting sideways, feet on the ground in the open front door of a car, leisurely eating his lunch. (He was there three hours later. Who knows whether he was watching me, the Panthers, or just unemployed?) After knocking, ringing, and calling, I was admitted by a young man into the patio of the building. The gate entered into the patio and to the left of it was a cement staircase leading onto a narrow balcony that fronted the house. The young man led us up these stairs and to the front door.

The first floor housed a general purpose room. To the left of a long hallway on the other side was a dark empty room and further down the corridor on the right were the kitchen and dining area. On the left, a very steep, narrow concrete stairway led to the second floor. At the rear of the house was the bathroom. Another entrance to the second floor could be gained from an outside curved stairway, which afforded access to a balcony and entrance into well-appointed office. I was ushered into the 9 x 12 all-purpose room of the headquarters, and a little after noon Kathleen, with her two-year old son Maceo, entered.

Because of all the rampant rumors about Eldridge and Kathleen, the split between Eldridge and Huey P. Newton, it was with apprehension that I began the interview. I feared there would be hostility and wariness—a guarded atmosphere. Quite the opposite was true. As the interview unfolded with Kathleen, there seemed to be a need for her to talk, to unburden herself, to set the record straight. Each time I would suggest that I was taking up precious time, she would say she had 15 more minutes to the interview, and I wound up with two and a half hours.

The constant blaring of the stereo with rock and jazz music, only indigenous to the States, seemed to be the security blanket wiping out alien language and customs—a link with what Kathleen termed, “the day-to-day involvement of the struggle—everyone misses the States.” She began to talk. Maceo, leaning against his mother’s knee, drowsed and drooped and nodded. It was time for his nap. Kathleen picked him up, took him into the dark bare adjoining room across the hall, and laid him unceremoniously on a blanket on the floor and closed the door.

While she was gone, I became acutely aware of my concern as a wife and mother of five about how exiled children managed. How does a revolutionary mother feel about rearing her children, especially in exile? How does she manage about food, clothing, shelter, and money? What are her problems as a wife and activist in the International Black Panther Party (IBPP)? As if she were reading my mind, and to forestall any intrusion upon her relationship with Eldridge, Kathleen quickly volunteered: “As to my marriage, in terms specifically, it’s no one’s business. I don’t ask others about their personal lives.”

But, as to the institution of marriage, she dubbed it, "A brutalizing institution as far as women are concerned." "Marriage for us," she averred, "is a 20^th century Afro-American anachronism, especially for the revolutionary movement, since the way people should live their lives in the revolutionary movement conflicts with the institution of marriage: irregular hours, impatience with the day-to-day ‘woman’s work’, shackled to a role of subservience. You’re a subordinate, you are secondary," she declared.

"It is known," Kathleen continued, "that engagement in the revolutionary struggle is very difficult for women. Therefore, it becomes more difficult to be a wife, mother, and worker, and to decided at any given moment which has priority."

*   *   *

I could see in her loss of weight, that gaunt look, the nervous chain-smoking, that these difficulties were taking their toll on Kathleen Cleaver. She is the only one in the exiled community who speaks French. Therefore, she acts as interpreter, troubleshooter, writer, chauffer, and manager for the eight Panther families and seven children who comprise the exiled community.

When I asked about the specifics of money, Kathleen replied, "We are debt-ridden. Our telephone bill from February to April was $5,000 and from April to June was $3,000. We can’t pay these bills. We rent four houses and the rent is overdue. All the funds are eaten up for seven kids, eight families, clothing, hospital, doctor bills and food. You can imagine what it costs."

She explained, "Most funds came out of Eldridge’s royalties. When he was declare a citizen of North Korea, Mainland China, and Vietnam, the U.S. Treasury applied the Trading with the Enemy Act to his royalties—the funds go into a block account. He received an advance for a book to be written, but with conditions not conducive to just getting around to writing, the company took back the money."

The U.S. has been very deceitful. We went to these countries with delegations, all of whom were different, but none of them had theTrading with the Enemy Act declare against them. . . . There is a tax lien on his money when he left the U.S., December 1968, until after May 1969. The U.S. uses its power to freeze us out. . . .We don’t get any reports on royalties accumulated from the sale of Soul on Ice and the other book, Eldridge Cleaver. They’re all part of the power structure—publishers—you can see what they’re doing: "You’re not getting any of that money, niggah!" Because they know what we are using it for.

Even though the stress and strain of those role changes can surely be brutalizing, Kathleen spoke in a pleasant, deep voice, with strength, resoluteness and discipline. Her direct, unflinching, gaze indicated more than anything else that Kathleen was staying with it. In speaking of her children, she was resigned to the fact that they will not be like ordinary children. Yet, though she knew this fact had to be, Kathleen exhibited ambivalence about her role as activist and mother, she seemed to want her children to be ordinary children.

Yet she pridefully stated that her daughter, Joju, born a year ago in North Korea, and Maceo, are really not allowed to be children, for as she says, "This is not the atmosphere that pampers them, though they are welcome and related to the work, they are viewed as revolutionaries and are motivated with a view toward a revolutionary war." To bring home the point and to dispel any illusions, she reiterated, her cold gray eyes flashing, "Children here are looked upon as fighters—oriented toward becoming revolutionaries." Kathleen’s intensity and belief in what she is doing can be attributed, in part to her unusual childhood. She was living outside the U.S. with her parents during childhood and adolescence. She was engaged in revolutionary work before marriage and had, as she admitted, “no intention of getting married."

Marriage to Eldridge Cleaver has not prevented me from taking the course I took. It is difficult with two kids: it’s hard to continue the work—in exile—being physically separated is a painful situation. In the case of exile, it is a form of imprisonment. You leave to avoid going to prison to continue to function, to struggle, but this makes it more difficult to communicate on a mass level.

In reminiscing about her early life, Kathleen revealed, "I grew up in a peculiar way in college towns. Mother and father were either students or teachers at the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina, Bishop College, Tuskegee. Father worked in a community development program in India with the State Department. From age 9 through 16, I was living in Asia and Africa—Sierra Leone—from boarding schools to college. I took one year at Oberlin College. Then I quit college and started working. College to me was abstract, unrelated to the way people lived their lives. Separated from it by having lived abroad, I felt college programmed me into an abstract, artificial state of mind. My parents wanted me to have an education to live a better life. They struggled for it. I had definite ideas. College does not correspond to this educational process."

Yet I went back to Barnard College. I received a worthless education, especially because it was a woman’s college. Education should allow me to think. American education is a program. It doesn’t stimulate. It only presents you with information which doesn’t allow you to think and it stifles creativity. American education is a factory system. Take Liberal Arts—you come out with a degree, and can’t get a job, which is a ruling class device to play at education on a mass basis with no use for it. Black and white schools separated are a rotten thing, also. I do recall doing my last high school years in Baltimore. I had relatives there. I had come to D.C. when my brother was brought home. He was ill with leukemia and subsequently died. I was so anxious to go to high school in the U.S. My mother wanted to study music, so she took time to go to Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, while I went to Edmondson High School. Mother’s dream was to become an opera singer. She was a soprano. You see, she had finished college at 16, started to teach to support her four brothers and sisters, and she never had time before to fulfill her dream. I never particularly like Baltimore. It was the first time I lived in a city—usually we lived in college towns which were small. I had never seen row houses before or ever lived in a ghetto. Though I miss the States, I sort of am accustomed to being outside. I have been in Algeria since May 1969, and it isn’t as hard for me. But everyone misses the States.

Though nostalgically repeating herself, Kathleen added, "Yet here, you see a broader scope and how we are part of the international picture." Warming to the subject of the international picture, Kathleen developed the subject of imperialism by saying,

As the U.S. becomes more involved in its own internal war, it will cease its imperialism, interfering with struggle and ideas by superimposing the U.S. ideals. The U.S. infiltrates, uses sabotage, doesn’t relate to peoples’ rights to decide what their own lives should be. They support armies, air forces, businesses, to further the aims of the U.S., forcing their economic, social, and political ideas on Southeast Asia, Africa, South America, Israel, South Africa. They have two spearheads directed at Africa in maintaining, through a base in South Africa, bootlickers, to mess with all peoples in South Africa, Black Africa. They use blatant exploitation, yet offer no technology, no education, no medical care. All that wealth and no help for the people. All that wealth being developed and exported to Europe.

"For example," she continued, "you can’t fly from East Africa to West Africa. The U.S. and European control direction and air routes. Phone calls to Nigeria from Algeria must go through England, mainly to benefit Europe. Europe and the U.S. join hands to exploit Africa. When I went to Mali on the way to the Congo, in the main city I saw the central marketplace where there were artisans making shoes, handbags, but the physical condition of the people was horrible. They are poor and tired. There is no happy, healthy, bustling atmosphere. It reminded me of scenes of black Afro-Americans in slavery. There is no excuse for this with advanced technology: no reason for the people to suffer as a colony of France. You can’t find anything resembling these conditions in France."

Maceo’s environment, his whole way of looking at the world is technological. An African child has no concept of this. The level of resources in the U.S. is more advanced. Yet the brothers and sisters of Mozambique, Angola, and South Africa, with so few exceptions are waging war. They know they are waging war. They really have got nothing to fight with. When you see this in comparison to the U.S., the struggle of black people in the U.S. should be moving at a more rapid pace.

When I asked Kathleen how this struggle could be accelerated, she rattled off the following as if by saying it faster, liberation would come about: “Especially at this time, the element erupting is the intensity of the liberation struggle. More and more explosions, black convicts inside the penitentiaries being killed for radicalizing prisoners. George Jackson is the best example. [In 1972, racial tensions combined with frustrations of imprisonment produced many prison uprisings. In August 1971, George Jackson, best known of three black convicts, The Soledad Brothers, was shot and killed as he tried to escape from San Quentin Prison, California, author of Soledad Brother.] There have been prisoners with less political understanding than he, less following, who have been murdered."

The black populace is in a condition of mass imprisonment. We must break out. We must educate the institutional army, the young blacks recruited, forced to serve, to be sent overseas. Black soldiers in West Germany are moving toward a revolutionary struggle and we are counseling them. This is true of black soldiers all over the world. We want to see the people in the black and white community in a very intense struggle in prisons, in the army, the schools, and in general to take a positive and helpful attitude toward the struggle—not the typical condemnation: to run and tell and sabotage the situations of prisoners and political prisoners caught in court and going to jail. We must relate in our area in aiding the prisoners railroaded into courts, use it as a test to see how much people will take. We will see hundreds and thousands of Jonathan Jacksons [brother of George Jackson]. We must relate to prisoners as an example of the most extreme form of oppression. We must develop a very high degree of national consciousness and unity. The prisoners have a great need for money for legal defense, reading material to keep them from being destroyed by isolation. This is the transition phase—the need for mass support, mass action, money raising to develop more and more political orientation of the masses. The ideological split in the Black Panther Party prevents us from having communication. We are reorganizing to develop a communication / information network through the Revolutionary Peoples Communication Network and in a New York paper called Right On. We shall continue to publish our bulletin.

Kathleen stressed, “We, the people, are sympathetic to the revolutionary struggle. Every black person in whatever position she or he was in Babylon (U.S.) must make a contribution with money and work and action.”

Since we had been discussing ideology, black political prisoners, black women revolutionaries, it was only natural to ask about Angela Davis and the Communist Party. Kathleen vehemently scorned the Communist Party and characterized its manipulation, as she called it, in this way:

The Communist Party in France and Italy carry the revisionist line to obscure, to hide anything to do with Jonathan Jackson, to serve their interest. The Communist party in the U.S. has done nothing. It can can’t do anything for black people in the U.S. It is using and exploiting black people to further the aims and objectives that have nothing to do with blacks. Angela Davis is being used as a ploy of the Communist Party and is being used voluntarily to convince people there is some hope in the U.S. judicial process. They don’t even say she is black.

Their fighting on a class basis carries no real condemnation of the real revolutionary violence, for there is nothing in their rhetoric which supports Jonathan Jackson and Ruchell Magee. If only Angela Davis would share the attention with the revolutionaries who engage in violence. Not doing so is part of the deception. I am not attacking Angela Davis, just the manipulation being made of her by the Communist party. You see, people are intimidated by the Panther causes of death, blood, and violence. The case of Angela Davis will be able to prove that the state is wrong and that the Communist party supports her in order for them to achieve a higher mass base of support.

Considering her middle-class background and life, my natural curiosity about Kathleen’s involvement in the Black panther prompted this candid response:

I started working in the Civil Rights Movement with SNCC in New York until December 1966, then I went to Atlanta to national headquarters to work from January 1967 to July 1967. I then went to California for a vacation and to see Eldridge Cleaver. I found the Black Panthers to be more advanced than SNCC. SNCC in the South was pretty much exhausted. There was a need for an organizational cadre to work in urban areas. They couldn’t get it together in the Northern cities. The movement with Eldridge dissipated all my earlier apprehensions. I was impressed with what the Black Panther Party was doing. It was fantastic. I fell in love with the movement, with Eldridge and the San Francisco Bay area. I felt this would be an opportunity for the most positive contribution I could make at that time.

*   *   *

To be there in Algiers, in the fading light, in the darkened room, making it harder to see the frail young woman whom I had interviewed for more than two hours, not much older than my eldest daughter, a young woman whose kindness and steely resolve had dissipated all my earlier apprehensions, I wondered how Kathleen expected liberation to be accomplished for Afro-Americans. Having worked for five years through the changing modes of civil rights, through the splits and schisms, from demonstrations to political imprisonment, and ultimately self-imposed exile, Kathleen answered my thoughts in this way:

“We want to let the Afro-Americans know that the revolutionary struggle is still going on, that the IBPP needs some indication from them. We want to hear from them. We want them to know they are a part of the world struggle. We want to know ‘Why aren’t you fighting more?’ The hardest thing to do is take some land. You can, however, interfere with the functioning of the apparatus. We see it as a highly mobile struggle. There is yet a vague possibility for holding areas. We see the struggle as highly political, therefore, we must apply force and violence with the strategy of guerillas, guerilla warfare, using small groups with specific tasks.”

*   *   *

Subsequent to this interview, Kathleen Cleaver has interrupted her exile to return to the U.S. for what the white press characterizes as a “nationwide speaking tour in support of what she said was the urban guerilla struggle.” Perhaps her interview with me was just a warm-up for a trip to the U.S. already planned in September. She had even then intended to return to Babylon to experience again “the day-to-day involvement with the struggle . . . to communicate on a mass level.” A little more than a month after Kathleen returned to the United States, she did indeed communicate the position of the International section of the Black panther Party in regard to the Afro-American national question.

In her appearance before the People’s Center Council, New Orleans November 25, 1971, she reaffirmed the International Black Panther Party’s adherence to Point 10 of the Black Panther  Party Program and Platform to seek a United nation’s-supervised plebiscite. Kathleen stated, “We must require the people of the world to recognize the truth of our history, our existence as an oppressed people—a nation trapped and held in bondage inside another nation—our right to be secure in our human rights, and the political nature of the imprisonment of thousands of Afro-Americans held within the confines of the political and military concentration camp prisons of the United States of America.”

Concluding that the United Nations is “one of the most important instruments available to us as people at the present stage of our struggle,” Kathleen Cleaver called the present stage of our struggle,” Kathleen Cleaver called for: “A United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held for the purpose of determining the will of the Afro-American people as to our national destiny.

“Also,” she adds, “the stationing of the United Nations observer teams throughout the United states to help halt and check the stepped-up slaughter, political imprisonment and persecution of our people by a racist government and the ruling class of the United States.”

Meanwhile, Kathleen suggests that, “An Afro-American People's Militia be organized immediately, with units wherever Afro-American people are found, for the purpose of securing our people against genocidal attacks.” And she concludes, “That an Afro-American liberation army be organized immediately, openly when we can, clandestinely when we must, to guarantee the implementation of this proposal, and to eliminate obstacles and enemies both within and without our ranks.” Not long after this speech, in Volume One of the IBPP Bulletin, dateline January 22, 1972, Algeria, “Information, Revolutionary Peoples Communication Network,” news of Eldridge Cleaver’s resignation was announced:

On January 15, 1972, Eldridge Cleaver, founder and head of the International Section, resigned in order to concentrate full-time on his work as a member of the Afro-American Liberation Army.

Prefacing the statement of Eldridge’s resignation, the reasons for the formation of the Revolutionary People’s Communication Network were reiterated: “to replace the former Ministry of Information of the Black Panther Party: to provide a new structure for dissemination of information and mass organization in keeping with the new conditions of struggle; and to structurally and organizationally separate the above-ground and underground apparatus of the revolutionary forces fighting inside the United States.”

Announcing that Pete O’Neal, founder of the Kansas City Missouri branch, would head the International Section of the Black Panther Party, assurances were given that “the International Section will continue the work that it has been doing in the past and plans to greatly expand upon it.”

It would seem that Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver, disassociating themselves from the static confinement of Algeria, will work on U.S. soil as well as abroad to carry the message that a Black Liberation Army is the most feasible way that black people can gain solidarity and self-determination.

In the madness of racism in the 1970s, one wonders if this is a movement toward self-determination, or rather counter-productive movement toward self-destruction. Only history will record the solution to this depressing dilemma of black liberation.

May 16 and May 27, 1972

Source: Madeline Murphy Speaks (1988), pp. 163-180

HUEY P. NEWTON

• February 17, 1942 Huey Percy Newton, co-founder and leader of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was born in Monroe, Louisiana, but raised in Oakland, California. On October 15, 1966, while at Oakland City College, he and Bobby Seale organized the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense with Seale as chairman and Newton as minister of defense. In September, 1968, Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for the death of a policeman and sentenced to 2 to 15 years in prison. In May, 1970, the California Appellate Court reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial and after two subsequent mistrials, the State of California dropped the case. In 1977, Newton was acquitted of the murder of a prostitute after two trials ended in deadlock. Newton was fatally shot August 22, 1989. In 1996, a one man play, “A Huey P. Newton Story,” was performed on stage and then turned into an award winning 2001 documentary film. Several biographies have been published about Newton, including “Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton” (1970) and “Huey: Spirit of the Panther” (2006).