Why Zim should celebrate, remember Chokwe Lumumba Cde Chokwe Lumumba
Cde Chokwe Lumumba

Cde Chokwe Lumumba

Obi Egbuna Jr Correspondent
On  February 25 2014, when Attorney Chokwe Lumumba, who was a revolutionary and people’s servant of the highest order, transitioned to the ancestors, the Government and people of Zimbabwe lost one of their most genuine and ardent supporters inside US borders.

At the time of his passing, Cde Lumumba was in the eighth month of his term as the Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, which was not only monumental because the state of Mississippi historically has always been a bedrock of white supremacy and fascism, but there is a direct correlation between Cde Chokwe’s historic triumph and President Mugabe and zanu-ps’s resounding victory over Zimbabwe’s former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and the pro-US-EU party, MDC which occurred four months later.

It was Cde Lumumba’s strategic plan to utilise his platform as the Mayor of Jackson which guaranteed him access to not only the National Conference of Black Mayors, but the World Conference of Mayors, to intensify efforts in connection to issues like reparations, and the immediate lifting of US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe and the US blockade on Cuba.

In 2009, on behalf of the New Afrikan Peoples Organisation (napo) which he chaired, Cde Lumumba decided napo should be a signatory of a historic appeal crafted by numerous grass roots organisations and individuals, that upon completion was submitted to the White House and the US Senate and Congress, calling for the immediate lifting of US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe. Another crucial point in relationship to this document and initiative is Cde Lumumba was instrumental in securing the endorsement of the National Conference of Black Lawyers, an organisation which is widely recognised as not only the legal arm of our struggle for liberation inside US borders, but our branch of legal solidarity with African liberation movements worldwide.

While the biographical profile of Cde Lumumba states that the assassination of Dr King played an extremely crucial role in shaping his political development, he also stated his 1987 visit to Libya as part of a collective effort defying the Reagan administration’s travel ban on Libya, truly touched his soul in a way words cannot describe especially since the visit was one year after the bombing of Libya on April 15th 1986.

When Cde Lumumba discovered the Congressional Black Caucus came within five votes of unanimously endorsing US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe, he not only was appalled, but he compared it to the CBC’s endorsement of a plan by the Bush administration to lobby for the extradition of our sister and Cde, Assata Shakur from Cuba.

As our Cdes in Zimbabwe become more familiar with Cde Lumumba’s track record of revolutionary service and legal brilliance, it would come as no surprise, if they almost instantaneously begin to make parallels between Cde Lumumba’s life and the legacy of the national hero and icon Cde Herbert Wiltshire Chitepo.

In 1975, when Cde Chitepo was assassinated in Zambia by the Rhodesian Secret Service by a car bomb, Cde Lumumba graduated cum laude in his law degree from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. In order to ensure poor and disempowered Africans were the beneficiaries of his legal skills and expertise, Cde Lumumba became a staff attorney in the public defender’s office, which is almost identical to how Cde Chitepo became the director of public prosecutions in Tanzania and the first African lawyer in Zimbabwe. After learning about Cde Chitepo’s role in Zimbabwe’s second Chimurenga, Cde Lumumba felt it would be intellectually dishonest on the part of Africans in the US, to celebrate Nelson Mandela as the embodiment of a freedom fighter with a legal background and openly ignore Cde Chitepo. Because the slogan of the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika is Free the Land Cde Lumumba always felt a natural kinship to President Mugabe and zanu-pf, he was particularly fond of zanu-pf’s slogan Pamberi Ne Chiumrenga (Forward with the Revolution). Cde Lumumba reached this conclusion because it stemmed from Zimbabwe’s main indigenous language, Shona.

In February 1980, two months before Zimbabwe’s independence Cde Lumumba was a key organiser of a march from Harlem to the UN demanding an International Forum for Minority populations in the US.

As a co-founder of NCobra (National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America) Cde Lumumba felt Zimbabwe’s land reclamation programme not only gave the movement for reparations throughout the African diaspora new life and momentum, but bridged the ideological gap between Old Africans and New Afrikans. Another key organiser in the New Afrikan community who shared these sentiments was Sister and Cde Njeri Alghanee, who was the co-chair of NCobra, who stated with the death of Yasser Arafat in Palestine, President Mugabe should be recognised as the international spokesperson of Land Reclamation and Land Rights for all indigenous peoples on the planet.

When Cde Alghanee died in a car crash on June 24 2010, the New Afrikan sector of our movement lost perhaps besides Cde Lumumba, Zimbabwe’s boldest defender within their ranks.

A grave concern of Cde Lumumba was that it should never be assumed at home in Mother Africa or anywhere in the Diaspora, that New Afrikan organisations are perceived as viewing developments on the homefront as foreign policy or secondary in our liberation struggle worldwide, the only way to shatter that notion is for New Afrikans to raise their profile in the efforts to defend Zimbabwe’s sovereignty.

In 2001, the year that the UN Conference against racism, xenophobia and other related intolerances took place in Durban, South Africa, Cde Lumumba and other New Afrikan leaders worked tirelessly to counter the Bush administration’s efforts to sabotage the gathering, due to their displeasure with Slavery, Reparations and the Palestinian question becoming discussion and agenda items.

While Cde Lumumba felt this strengthen both the argument and movement for Reparations, he felt it would be a blatant error and political miscalculation to not use this opportunity to strengthen ties with President Mugabe and zanu-pf.

Due to Cde Lumumba’s tireless work in the courtroom and his sophisticated understanding of utilising the United Nations, around this same period there was a malicious attempt to bar him from practicing law in the State of Mississippi, it would be safe to say the Bush administration feared Cde Lumumba could be entertaining suing the US Government for illegally imposing sanctions on Zimbabwe.

When Cde Lumumba put his expertise and muscle behind the lawsuit of Attorney DeWayne Boyd who sued the US Department of Agriculture for Reparations, which highlighted the illegal expropriation of so called African American owned land, it was inevitable that at some point Cde Lumumba would turn attention to Zimbabwe.

When discussing his personal involvement in our struggle, Cde Lumumba would fondly reflect on how his Mother would collect money for SNCC (The Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee) whose member Kwame Ture (formerly known as Stokely Carmichael) and Mukasa Dada (Willie Ricks) popularised the slogan Black Power all over the world. Cde Lumumba, let it be known that in the African world at this historical moment, I would be hard pressed to find any African leader and Government, who engenders that slogan more than President Mugabe and zanu-pf. As we are still mourning Cde Lumumba’s loss and celebrating his incredible body of work, we anxiously await more.

  • Obi Egbuna Jr is the US Correspondent to The Herald and a US Based Member of the Zimbabwe-Cuba Friendship Association. His email address is [email protected]

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