ARETHA FRANKLIN, KOFI ANNAN AND OUR WORLD
Okello Oculi pays tribute to Aretha Franklin, ‘queen of soul’ and Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations
The legendary singer Aretha Franklin edged out by two days a historic diplomat, Kofi Annan, on that trip to ancestral ‘After-Africa’. Annan would have prayed God to save him from the traditional curse of burying a sister younger than his 80 years of age by four long years. Aretha used the power of song to move leaves of joy; and contemplation; and exhilaration, in souls across racial and geographical spaces.
As Africa’s Black Secretary General of the United Nations from 1979 to 2006, Annan used the spoken word to bend, arouse and calm minds, temperaments and wills in the drama of diplomacy. Boutros-Boutros Ghali, a former professor of International Law and Diplomacy, Gamal Nasser’s shuttle-diplomat and editor at Al-Haram newspaper in Cairo, was his immediate predecessor. It was ironic that he was succeeded by a fellow citizen of Kwame Nkrumah who rejected the Sahara Desert as a divider of Africa into Black and Arab Africa.
In 1994 Kofi Annan was in Rwanda when President Bill Clinton allegedly blocked the provision of planes to carry weapons and soldiers mobilised by African states to stop the imminent genocide in Rwanda. Current leaders in Rwanda have never accepted Clinton’s warped view that just as the ‘’holocaust’’ against Jews had taught Euro-Americans to value democracy, Africa too must learn to value democracy by counting bones of victims of a genocide in Rwanda. Kofi Annan’s urgent appeals for the UN Security Council to beef up the small UN contingent in Kigali were blocked in the corridors of diplomacy in New York.
The same powers in Washington, London, and Paris invaded Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Annan had the courage to call their gangster diplomacy ‘’illegal’’. Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair lied to his people about Saddam owning ‘’weapons of mass destruction’’ and would later be denounced and despised at home. Likewise, President George Bush two whose disastrous rule became a huge campaign for Barack Obama. Annan was truly more in line with hearts and consciences of citizens globally.
Annan drew in Nelson Mandela to support his harassment of African leaders to see HIV-AIDS as a microbiological ‘tsunami’ against their peoples. It was no use blaming Euro-American scientists for inventing a weapon for their multinational corporations seeking a new frontier - for weeding populations and reaping profits - by selling drugs to tame it. African leaders bore political responsibility for curbing its gale across the continent. This was compassionate diplomacy.
He assembled in Mexico to endorse an eight-item ‘’Millennium Development Goals’’ programme for engaging rich and poor economies in ending poverty’s wastage of human bodies and talents of millions of people in Africa, Asia, South America and Pacific islands and territories. This was intensive humanitarian economics.
ARETHA FRANKLIN HAS BEEN EULOGISED AS ‘QUEEN OF SOUL MUSIC’. ANNAN IS ACCLAIMED AS ENDOWED WITH ‘CHARISMA AND DIGNITY’; HIS ‘VOICE VERY SOFT BUT HIS WORDS VERY STRONG’
Before Kofi Annan was employed at the United Nations in 1962, Kwame Nkrumah’s won for establishing the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Guinea-Conakry’s Ambassador Dr Diallo Telli. A Paris-educated lawyer, he was leading Africa’s drive to expel racist South Africa from membership of the United Nations; a campaign to release Nelson Mandela from prison; and against colonial dictatorships in Mozambique, Angola, Guinea Bissau, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Annan inhaled his diplomatic fumes.
He saved Annan from the shock of confronting Euro-American proponents of democracy and ‘’freedom’’ while earning vast profits from colonial exploitation of Africa.
Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Roberta Flack and Miriam Makeba played their historic roles in dripping adrenalin into bloodstreams of African-American and African peoples fighting to overcome ‘’pressures’’ by Euro-American racists denying them places in the sun. They sang to wash off accumulating pains and pulls into despair. Their songs drew men and women to cling together in dance to affirm their humanity and ethnic solidarity. Their melodies helped people to cross racial boundaries by holding invisible hands dangling from souls and minds; ever planting and weeding a growing American nation exploring boundaries of nationhood.
Paradoxically, the power of American cultural diplomacy carried their melodies across continents. Miriam Makeba chose the back of the Yankee elephant to urge her quest for Mandela in the lyric: ‘‘Tell me now, where did the Little Flea go; somebody tell me!’’. Although the racist rulers of her country, South Africa, banned her songs, she used the American rooftop to spread her demand for freedom. Bob Marley, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Masekela,Sparrow, Tabu Ley and Manu Dibango joined the dance with their thuds of male voices.
President Donald Trump is whipping the American media as liars, carriers of ‘’fake news’’ and being ‘’wicked people’’. These accusations had earlier driven Africans and the Non-Aligned countries to call for a ‘’New Information Order’’. Foreign correspondents covering Africa repeatedly accused editors of their print and broadcast media of demanding only stories of famine, tribal conflicts and disease out of Africa. That media has remained atavistic; playing down Annan’s infusion of African Familyhood into veins of UN diplomacy.
Aretha Franklin has been eulogised as ‘’Queen of Soul Music’’. Annan is acclaimed as endowed with ‘’charisma and dignity’’; his ‘’voice very soft but his words very strong’’; ‘’very calm and trusted’’, an ‘’epitomy of human decency and grace’’; a ‘’believer in the capacity of global youth to lead’’, while President Putin called him a man of wisdom. What Africa must do is create ‘’Walls of Fame’’ for them in every capital and at Africa Hall in Addis Ababa.