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slave masters of the darker people the world over.
“This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality.
“If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.”
This was fiery Muhammad Ali, arguably the greatest boxer who ever lived, as he refused conscription to fight in the Vietnam War in late 1966, even as Uncle Sam threatened him with imprisonment.
At his scheduled induction in Houston on April 28, 1967, Ali refused three times to step forward when his name was called. The draft officer warned him that he was committing a felony punishable by five years imprisonment and a fine of US$10 000 but Ali would not budge when his name was called.
“I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,” he said, adding, “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.”
He was promptly arrested, and the New York State Athletic Commission suspended his boxing licence and stripped him of his title.
Other boxing commissions followed suit.
Condemned as unpatriotic and cowardly, Ali was tried, found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison. Released on appeal, he waited three years for the US Supreme Court to overturn the verdict. The verdict was overturned on June 28, 1971, and Ali – who was now known as the peoples’ champion – returned to the ring to reclaim his titles.
Suffice to say during his banishment, anti-war sentiment grew along with support for Ali, the anti-war advocate. He thus triumphantly returned to the ring not only a peoples’ champion, but their hero as well.
Born Cassius Marcellus Clay on January 17, 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky, the legendary Ali turned 70 last Wednesday. Its poignant to note that he dumped the name Cassius Clay condemning it as a slave name, he adopted the name Muhammad Ali saying; ‘‘Cassius Clay is a slave name. I didn’t choose it and I don’t want it. I am Muhammad Ali, a free name – it means beloved of God – and I insist people use it when people speak to me and of me.”
As I read the tributes to Ali last week, along with Martin Luther King Jnr who would have been 83 on January 15, I wondered what people like Charles Ray, the US ambassador here, feel when the exploits of men like Ali and Martin Luther King Jnr are recounted?
For Charles Ray – who today wants to lecture us on human rights and democracy – is just three years younger than Ali, and answered the Vietnam call twice, a whole year after Ali’s story grabbed the headlines.
Charles Ray joined the United States Army in 1962, and served in Vietnam between 1968-1969 and 1972-1973 and was awarded two Bronze Star medals for ‘‘meritorious and heroic service” in that criminal war that progressives like Ali and Dr King spurned and scorned.
Its said the bronze medal is the fourth-highest combat award of the US Armed Forces and the ninth highest military award in US military decorations. This means Charles Ray accounted for quite a number of innocent Vietnamese to qualify for that “honour”.
Ironically today, the loquacious Charles Ray – purports to lecture us on human rights and democracy – proudly donning the bloody medals from that genocidal campaign in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
Contrast that with what Muhammad Ali did after he was denied service in a “whites only” restaurant in Louisville, his hometown even after doing Uncle Sam proud at the Olympics.
Ali threw the Light Heavyweight gold medal he had won in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome into the Ohio River in protest over institutionalised racism. This is a medal that he had won at an international sporting event, a dream for any sportsman, which can not be said for the medals Ray flaunts to this day.
I am not being hard on the activist ambassador, I am just questioning his claim to be a champion of democracy and human rights here given his history elsewhere in the developing world.
Charles Ray is clearly not fit to tie Ali’s shoes or the shoes of anyone who has fought on the side of justice. When men like Ali say they are human rights advocates, I believe them, because their lives testify to that. Which is more than can be said for Charles Ray, who has once again travelled over 10 000 miles ‘‘to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people,” as Ali put it then.
Ray’s mission here, is no different from his sojourn to Vietnam. He is here to, in his own words, ‘‘do a job, and I like to get things done. I am here to advance US interests, and I strongly believe that US interests and Zimbabwean interests largely overlap.”
And we know what US interests are the world over. They have never dovetailed with the interests of the poor and downtrodden of the developing world.
The same way the US was found on the side of Rhodesia, even after the UN put the Smith regime under sanctions; the same way the US was found on the side of Apartheid South Africa’s National Party government, again after the UN imposed sanctions on that murderous regime.
This is why I reach for a shovel of salt whenever Uncle Sam or his minions claim to be fighting for human rights and democracy here.
Charles Ray should stand guided, actions speak louder than words.
Our country, under the stewardship of President Mugabe and Zanu-PF, stands accused of posing, ‘‘a continuing unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States.”
A foreign policy of plunder and subjugation to which, given our history of stolid resistance to all forms of domination, we can never capitulate.
Chinese revolutionary, General Mao Tse Tung captured it well where he said, ‘‘when the time is right, even cowards become heroes.” We see it today, when some people who had no guts to fight for their country when it needed them most preferring Rhodesian wages, claim they are willing to die for it today, suffice to say they will be saying it for the benefit of western cameras.
We can not be fooled by such rainbow heroes who come only when the storm is over neither can we be hoodwinked by latter day human rights activists like Ray, and their blood medals.
It is not too late for the activist envoy to redeem himself. He must walk his talk of building bridges. He needs to tell his bosses back home that Zimbabwe is fighting for justice. Surely Ali would never have agreed to be deployed to mastermind the low-intensity warfare Uncle Sam is waging here.
A proud, focused Ali, who made the enduring statement quoted above when he was just 24. Charles Ray is 67, surely age can not be coming alone.
Ray Charles was blind, Charles Ray can surely see.