Where is the Pan-African spirit? The absence of African solidarity with African Americans who are being killed in US cities by state security forces driven by white supremacy is deeply saddening. From all over Africa, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia, Black people must rise up to condemn the killing of our sisters and brothers in the US and offer any support we can to the #BlackLivesMatter movement.
Where is your voice, Mr. President?
Mr. President
Let your voice matter
Where Black Lives Matter
My President
Where is our voice?
Africa, Mother Africa
The Womb of Diaspora Africa
Mother Africa, the womb of Pan-Africa
Where is your voice?
While your children are gunned down
Where is your collective voice?
As the blood of your children is let out
In execution manner in the streets
And neighbourhoods of America
Where is your voice Mr. President?
As the police in America
Like their kith and kin the Klux Klux Klan
Humiliate and brutalise our kith and kin
And so brazenly do the American police
Kill our young ones with no white hood
And white cassock but with guns
And in uniform too
Yes, guns and uniforms paid for with public money
To protect the public but not the Black public
As in their eyes
The eyes of the American police
It is the lives of the White republic that Matter?
Mr. President
My President
In America of President Obama
Our kith and kin are being assassinated
As was done to Lumumba and as was done to King
By arms of the supremacist establishment order
Who throughout the years
Have kept our communities in a permanent state of disorder
As young men in America are being gunned down
And protests mount
In cities across America, Canada and in the United Kingdom
Crying and moaning and speaking to America thus:
“All we are saying…Black Lives Matter”
Why, Mr. President, Why, My President
Why is Africa not hearkening to the wailings and tribulations?
Our kith and kin are mourning, Mr. President
My President, where is your voice choked with grief?
Why is Africa not rising?
Addis Ababa of the African Union, do you have TV and Radio sets
To set your hearts asunder?
Accra of Kwame Nkrumah, where is your thunder?
Cairo of Gamal Abdul Nasser, where is your lightning rod?
Algiers of Ahmed Ben Bella, where is your steel?
Conakry of Sekou Toure, where is your voice?
Bamako of Modibo Keita, where is your voice?
Lusaka of Kenneth Kaunda, where is your voice?
Kampala of Milton Obote, where is your voice?
Arusha of Julius Nyerere, where is your voice?
Maputo of Samora Machel, where is your voice?
Lagos of Murtala Mohammed, where is your voice?
Harare of Robert Mugabe, where is your voice?
Windhoek of Sam Nujoma, where is your voice?
Pretoria of Nelson Mandela, where is your voice?
The praetorian voice of collective action
That will wake up anon
The resounding voice of New Delhi of Nehru
The arousing voice of Belgrade of Tito
The commanding voice of Jakarta of Sukarno
The inspiring voice of Havana of Castro
Why are we not hearing the
Pan-African rallying voice of Port of Spain of Eric Williams?
Pan-African rallying voice of Kingston of Michael Manley?
Pan-African rallying voice of St. George’s of Maurice Bishop?
Yes, the Pan-Africa rallying voice of Ouagadogou of Thomas Sankara?
And the illuminating voice of Georgetown of Walter Rodney?
Oh, my President, where is your voice?
Oh, African Union, where is your collective voice?
Oh, Caricom, where is your collective voice?
My Foreign Minister, where is your voice?
Why have you not summoned the US Ambassador?
What are you waiting for?
Pan-African lives are being riddled with police bullets
Day in and day out
In the streets and neighbourhoods of America
Can’t you hear the shrieks of the Souls of Black Folks?
The Invisible Man – this human
Whose blood remains
Remain with us from the slave trading
To plantation life
To Civil War to broken promises
To Civil Rights?
Oh, why is Accra not responding?
Expressing no feeling?
Why is Kampala not responding?
Expressing no pain?
If Addis Ababa will not rise up
Accra and Kampala should
Pronounce to our kith and kin, that
They do not walk alone
Their pain is our pain
Their grief is our grief
Mr. President,
Instruct your ambassador and chancery staff
To carry your flagstaff in solidarity marches
With their own placards attesting firmly that
Black Lives Matter
Let our embassy staff join the human rights protests
For Black Lives Matter
Kampala must rise – Otafiire light your fire
Accra must rise – Pratt ignite your ire
Let your voices ring out
…and in funeral dirges to stir and wake up
Museveni
Stir and wake up
Mahama
Into Action
Into Action
Let Africa Rise Up
For Black Lives Matter
My President, when are you going to make the call to your American peer?
My Speaker, when are you going to make the call to your American peer?
To ask them the introspective question
What is it that drove our son to kill five police officers?
Is this not the question that America should rather be dealing with?
Black Lives Matter remains a human rights
And as well as equality and justice issue
And so
Let me feel you as my President
As Bob Marley makes me feel
As I feel for my kith and kin
Crying with them
Mourning with them
Wailing – Equal Rights … Justice
With the call for equal rights, justice … beating in my chest
Justice makes equality right and equality makes justice right
Yes, Freedom and Justice
Let me feel you, my President
Let your voice matter where Black Lives Matter
As Nkrumah and Malcolm X felt each other
Yes, As Nkrumah and Martin Luther King felt and for each other
As Jesse Jackson and Harry Belafonte felt with Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo
Hear the voice of Farrakhan
My President, let your voice count
And make that call to the White House
Tell Obama that your flags are flying at half-mast for Black lives
Africa must rise up to the occasion
And for a Pan-African response
Hear me African Union Chairperson
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma
You are a woman with a womb
Your children sent to the tomb early by racist bullets
What else must be said
To stir you to act
Let’s not take for granted
The African-American solidarity against apartheid South Africa
Let’s not take for granted
The sacrifices of the Dellums, Robinsons, Sullivans, Youngs, Heights, Davies, Angelo, Winfreys
Madam African Union, to put it bluntly
One good turn deserves another
Mr. President, what have you instructed your ambassador to do, demonstrate and remonstrate?
African-America rising in solidarity helped with the defeat of apartheid South Africa
And it is Africa rising in solidarity with African-America that will cleanse apartheid America
Africa must rise
And Lift Up Every Voice in solidarity with African-America
Madam African Union, to put it bluntly
One good turn deserves another
Let’s not forget how British PM Harold Wilson sided with his kith and kin in Rhodesia
At the expense of Nkrumah
And likewise
How Margaret Thatcher sided with her kith and kin in Apartheid South Africa
At the expense of Samora Machel
While Obama orders flags to fly at half-mast for the five police officers
Our hearts fly at half-mast for all blacks executed by American police
As Black Lives Matter
This must be made clear
That, Blacks are human beings first
When, when, when in America can our kith and kin shout
Free, Free, I am free
I am free at last
God Almighty, I am free!
© Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, Ga West, Ghana. 12 July 2016