Abuy Nfubea
I have occasionally spoken with brother Chimurenga Waller about the significance and enormous impact that Omali Yeshitela's leadership has had on the liberation struggles of those whom Malcolm X called Field Negroes, brother leader Mbandaka and Runuko Rashidi, the grassroots movements, and how this has had a strong impact on the spirituality of the hip-hop generations well as the immense love that many of us feel for him and his example of life. In fact, at 82 years old, chairman Omali is one of the few African intellectuals, activists, philosophers, community leaders, and internationalist visionaries from the Black Power movement and the Garvey tradition who are still alive in the 21st century. His teachings and influence have been crucial to the resurgence of more than 12 generations of Pan-Africanist activists focused on the liberation of the continent worldwide.I believe it's important for our children of the Trap generation to know, and I would humbly like to share my story of how and my relationship with him, and how, where, and why I met him. I do so from Spanish and Equatorial Guinea context, in a very subjective, personal, emotional, and militant Garveyist perspective, whose personal and activist growth has been shaped by Chairman Omali's pedagogy and his enormous personal and collective example of love for African people.
SPANISH NEW BLACK PANTHER PARTY
In 1995, FOJAH's internal debate was about to culminate with the discussion of the paper "The Final Call" at our Second Congress. The Spanish section of the Black Panther Party was not yet under the leadership of Dr. Khalid Mohamed, but rather under the international guidance of Aroon Micheal. Thus, it was a debate with a clear strategic focus, proposing to move towards a scenario that would definitively overcome, through military means, the consequences of the political conflict against terrorism. Therefore, we centered the debate and the agreements on returning the "question of Black self-defense" to the center of the Pan-Africanist political agenda. The internal debate and the organization's lines of action defined the milestones of the New Strategic Direction: The party's foundational paper proposed a profound restructuring of the organization, prioritizing its integration as a driving force within a future coalition that later became the Pan-Africanist Federation in Spain OEUA (Organization of the United States of Africa) of Ras Babiker and sister organization Rufi in Barcelona. We advocate for a renewed strong African internationalist momentum, aiming to lay the groundwork for a leadership renewal. Following the congress debate and the approval of the Black Panthers' programmatic foundations, held on November 17-18, 1995, at the Rafael Alberti Theater in Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, under heavy security, the party culminated in the election of a new leadership. Junior assumed the position of general coordinator, incorporating the ideological framework and amendments that guided this historic political debate.
2 PAC SHAKUR
I recall that this occurred a year before the murders of 2Pac and Biggie, amidst the social debate following the extraordinary global mobilization known as the A Million Men March, convened that year by Minister Lois Farrakhan and the NOI. At that time, I was the field marshal and head of the ideological apparatus, along with the information officer of the Spanish section of the Black Panthers, José "Tigre" Méndez. We had both led the Spanish delegation to the historic march on Washington, D.C.
As I mentioned, it was in this context that I first met President Omali Yeshitela in October 1995. This moment was marked by two decisive circumstances and debates. On the one hand, we were immersed in the internal debate surrounding the political platform of the Second State Congress. Upon my return, I participated in several media outlets discussing the significance of that mobilization. Almost all of them were racist white journalists or sensationalists in the style of Vito Quiles today, with the exception of two that I highlight: on the one hand, the invitation extended to me by the journalist Carmelo Encinas on Cadena SER and Curro Castillo on Radio España for a debate with the sociologist and professor at the Complutense University of Madrid.... Among the souvenirs I brought back in my suitcase were copies of several black newspapers and magazines that I bought in Baltimore such as Jet, EBony, Nation Time, Amsterdam News and Burning Spear. Spanish public television broadcast a report on the program Informe Semanal about the alternative mobilization carried out in Oakland and San Francisco. The report also featured Penny Hess, a white activist and writer, president of the African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC), and author of the bestseller *Overtuning the Culture of Violence*. This book, written by Penny Hess and published by Burning Spear Publications, was, I must admit, the first time in my life I had heard about reparations for slavery, colonialism, and apartheid—reparations we would achieve years later at the 2001 Durban Conference. However, prior to this, Omali Yeshitela and her movement and party had already held more than three world congresses for Black reparations before Durban. All of this, explained by a white woman, deeply impacted me.
AFRICAN SOLIDARITY
Among other things, because she refuted the widespread fallacy among white people: the cynical and anti-Black argument that “Africans enslaved themselves.” This argument points to the presence of Africans who collaborated with European slave owners and “sold” other Africans, thus shifting the responsibility for the slave trade from the shoulders of the European colonial slave owner to the backs of the colonized and enslaved African. Today, as the voice of the enslaved African community grows stronger globally and demands reparations increase, the “African collaborators” argument, which shifts the blame, may be gaining traction in universities and bourgeois historical publications, not as a historical argument but as a political defense against the legitimacy of the reparations demand.
The third factor in my infatuation with Omali at that time was that we were immersed in the guerrilla warfare in the streets of Alcalá and the rest of Spain against the impunity of the racist terrorism perpetrated by the Nazi skinheads who had killed Lucrecia Pérez (Dominican), Ndombele, Murab, Guillem Agulló, and Ricardo Rodríguez; a bomb with an incendiary device exploded at the Complutense Institute where Frank Pérez studied; and another bomb threat was thwarted by the bomb squad and the police at the Pedro Gumiel high school against Principal Concha Albertos for being, literally, "a friend of Black people," etc. The Black Panthers FOJAH party was focused on defending the physical integrity of the Black community from both police brutality and, above all, from those murdered by the racist terrorism that the media called urban tribes. So, my infatuation with Omali occurred a year before 2Pac and Biggie were killed. So I never dreamed that years later we would meet in person in Florida, London in 2004, Madrid in 2005, and that I would be able to bring Omali to Huelva, Spain in 2007.
PRINCE OF ZAMUNDA
In that first televised encounter in 1995, Omali had the bearing of an African prince, a kind of Kunta Kinte with a touch of the lumpenproletariat. My mother said he smelled like a mix of Wutan Klan, Sista Souljha, Run DMC, Miriam Makeba, and a good dose of Fela Kuti. A breeze of Bantu nobility spoke with a majestic pose, something like a mix of Malcolm X, Dedan Kitmati's Mau Mau, Huey P. Newton, Winnie Madikizela, and Eddie Murphy's Prince of Zamunda. I think I had seen him before at the funeral services for Dr. Huey P. Newton in 1989 in Oakland, California, but I didn't remember him or know who he was. It was in this context that I met this figure who would contribute to and shape the rest of my life: the word Uhuru.
UHURU
Although he was Dedan Kitmati in Kenya, "Uhuru" means "freedom" in Swahili. Historically, it was the battle cry of the Mau Mau movement (1952-1960), which fought against British colonial and slave rule to reclaim usurped lands. The Mau Mau Rebellion: Origin: It was an armed uprising, primarily by the Kikuyu people, against the British colonial administration, which had appropriated the most fertile lands in the country. In a conflict where the rebels resorted to sabotage, the cry of "Uhuru" was used: The fighters used the word as a password and slogan to inspire unity in the fight for independence. The person who truly ensured the political survival of this term into the 21st century and popularized it was undoubtedly Omali Yeshitela when he founded the Uhuru democratic movement in Chicago, Illinois in 1992.
ONE AFRICA ONE NATION
BROTHER LUWENSHI
DIOP OLUGBALA 2005
LONDON 2024
UHURU RADIO
HUELVA 2007
BERLIN 2009
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