M.D. YUSUFU: INVISIBLE HAND OF DEMOCRACY
Yusufu inadvertently supported and promoted national liberation struggle in Africa, writes Okello Oculi
On May 10, 2018, Dr. Haroun Adamu undertook what Ngugi Wa Thiongo expressed as ‘’writing the memory’’ of Muhammed Dikko Yusufu – widely known to those whose lives he touched favourably simply as ‘’M.D.’’ The geographical space he chose was Maputo, capital of Mozambique; and the occasion was an official celebration of the Independence of Mozambique. An East African Airways plane taxied to a stop and out walked Dr Agustinho Neto, leader of Movement for the Popular Liberation of Mozambique (MPLA).
President Samora Machel led Neto to a dais from which he took a salute followed by walking across a loyal carpet lined by soldiers for him to inspect a ‘’Guard of Honour’’. As a correspondent of the DAILY TIMES newspaper in Lagos, Haroun was at first puzzled by this drama, but quickly read in it a message to the American government, racist South Africa and their allies that this sector of Africa regarded Agustinho Neto as the legitimate head of state and government of Angola in opposition to their effort to impose on Africa Jonas Savimbi, leader of Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).
On hitching a ride in the East African Airways plane heading for Lagos, Haroun was startled to find M.D Yusufu in conversation with Dr. Neto. He was, obviously, invited to meet General Murtala Mohammed, the volatile Nigerian and charismatic leader. Murtala would later convince African leaders assembled in Addis Ababa to endow continental legitimacy on Neto’s MPLA. In a speech titled ‘’Africa Has Come of Age’’, the Nigerian head of delegation rejected and denounced a letter by American President, Gerald Ford, instructing African leaders to deny recognition to MPLA as the sole legitimate authority in Angola.
This detailed writing of memory by Haroun Adamu put meat and bones on an earlier passionate assertion by Linsey Barret that M.D. Yusufu, as an invisible operator in Nigeria’s foreign policy drama, had bent the stem and foliage of that policy firmly towards supporting and promoting national liberation struggle in Africa. In this construction of memory to suit the interest of freedom and human dignity of Africans, M.D. collaborated with and mobilised talents of those considered by others as ‘’radicals’’. His closest cotravellers were the historian Yusuf Bala Usman and the sociologist Patrick Wilmot who refused to agree with former Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa that British and American officials acted in Africa ‘’always as friends’’.
Dr Haroun Adamu saw M.D. as a companion to Kwame Nkrumah’s vision of promoting the freedom and unity of Africa. Secret Service operatives and intellectuals keep scripts of memories they create only to themselves: often shielding the full picture from prying noses, ears and eyes of journalists – and if deemed neces-
THE DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE ON WHICH LIBERATION MOVEMENTS WERE BUILT IS A VITAL MEMORY THAT MUST NOT BE ‘CAPTURED’ AND DESECRATED BY WARLORDS OF THE CYNICAL ‘INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY’. M.D .WOULD ENDORSE THIS GALLANTRY
sary - even from their political bosses. This secrecy hides from the majority of citizens actions of those fighting to protect or promote their freedom; thereby, inadvertently, giving open spaces to hostile foreign and local interests.
An illustration of this matter are explosive claims by NATO countries (cloaked as ‘’the International Community’’), that they are defenders of ‘’democracy’’, the ‘’rule of law’’, ‘’freedom’ and ‘’development’’. They aided Moise Tshombe to murder Patrice Lumumba; killed UN Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjold, for opposing the secession of mineral-rich Katanga from the rehabilitated Tshombe as prime minister of Congo; the recruitment of one thousand mercenaries from South Africa to protect their power. Mobutu was their Leviathan for over 30 years. Averill Harriman flew Belgian, French and Moroccan troops into Congo to halt what Pierre Mulele called a ‘’second independence’’ by deposing Mobutu’s protection of foreign exploitation of Congo’s resources. These countries are busy covering this sordid record with a holy layer of memory.
This counter-revolution used assassinations of visionary leaders of liberation movements. In Mozambique Eduardo Mondlane was killed with a parcel bomb while Samora Machel’s plane crashed over rocks decorated by South Africa as a runway outside Maputo airport. In Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, Amilcar Cabral was shot. In South Africa Chris Hani was shot. In Angola, Agustinho Neto was killed with a poison which Soviet doctors could not clean out of his body. In Algeria, Ben Barka was kidnapped and killed in Paris.
Supporting opposition groups with sophisticated weapons sought to overwhelm liberation armies. South Africa invaded Angola and Mozambique; but met defeat in Angola by a combination of Cuban, SWAPO and ANC troops. Thousands of dead white soldiers shattered the myth of white invincibility: breaking up rule by European immigrants in Namibia and South Africa. In Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, Cabral’s policy of humane treatment and counter-education of young Portuguese prisoners of war boomeranged and provoked a military coup against Salazar’s dictatorship in Portugal itself. In Mozambique plots to overthrow FRELIMO continue to poison her electoral democratic politics.
In 2005, Professor Joseph Ki-Zerbo urged a conference of intellectuals meeting in Dakar that Africa must reject the false ‘’globalisation’’ and deceptive ‘’liberal democracy’’ which have left Africa ‘’lame’’, traumatised and ‘’in a coma’’. The duty of the African intellectual must be to ‘’invent a New World and Africa’’ based on original memories of liberation struggle for humane development. The democratic governance on which liberation movements were built is a vital memory that must not be ‘’captured’’ and desecrated by warlords of the cynical ‘’International Community’’. M.D .would endorse this gallantry.