By Philip Emeagwali
According to history books, gun-wielding European slave traders kidnapped one in five Africans and transported them across the oceans to the Americas. A less visible, but no means less drastic technological tool of suppression, is the compass, a device used worldwide for navigation. In the same way that Britain used its maritime knowledge and the US harnessed its intellectual capital to rule the world, the early slave traders used the simple compass to wreak havoc on civilization.
It is a sad fact that the innocuous navigation tool originated during and was fuelled by the Atlantic slave trade. The technological development of the innocent compass, invented in China for religious divination 2,000 years ago, allowed Africa to be ravaged in unspeakable ways.
It was the compass that created the Atlantic slave trade, enabling the early colonial navigators — and their blood merchants — to chart an accurate course from Gorée Island, off the coast of Senegal, to Brazil; paving the way for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which began on August 8, 1444. This trade in human merchandise covered four continents and lasted four centuries, and serves as a shameful beacon for the depravity of human greed and conquest.
The compass became the de facto weapon of mass destruction, which led to the de-capitalization and decapitation of Africa. It created the African Diaspora with one in five people taken out of the motherland. It was the largest and most brutal displacement of human beings in human history.
Today, it is hard to imagine that such destruction and the wholesale abduction of a race could result from a tool as common as the compass. Yet, as a people who survived the slave trade, we must draw our strength from lessons learned from the past and draw our energy from the power of the future. And the power of the future lies in “controlling” technology and harnessing it for the benefit of mankind, not for his destruction.
The people of Africa must take note that the Internet is our modern-day compass, and within it resides our own clay of wisdom. As we prepare for our great journey into the cyberspace of the future, with its technological promise — its clay of wisdom — we must understand the strategic value and potential of this all-important tool. Our image of the future inspires the present and the present serves to create the future.
Africa’s lack of substantial technological knowledge of the Internet and its potential may lead it to be assaulted or manipulated in unexpected ways, just as it was devastated generations ago for the lack of a simple compass. We didn’t recognize the power of the compass then; the danger is that we don’t recognize the power of technology today. While Africa merely contemplates the future, the West, the quickest off the mark to wield technology’s weapons, actually makes the future.
This fact, and how the power of technology can be wielded against the poor, was brought home to me clearly when I received the following email recently:
“About a year ago, I hired a developer in Africa to do my job. I am paying him $12,000 a year to do my job, for which I am paid $67,000 a year,” the sender wrote. “He’s happy to have the work and I’m happy that I have to work only 90 minutes a day. Now I’m considering getting a second job and doing the same thing.”
Technology in the hands of others has been used to exploit Africa for centuries. But now it’s time for Africa to grasp technology and finally embrace the modern age’s clay of wisdom and advancement. Africa has the chance to show the world how technology can be used for good, not evil. And the people of Africa can use today’s technology, not to mimic their own exploitation, but to right the wrongs of the past and empower themselves with the same tool that has been used to oppress them in the past. Africa can provide a shining example for the world in using technology for its own upliftment and the benefit of mankind.
This time, it is our choice.
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Excerpted from a keynote speech delivered by Philip Emeagwali at the African Diaspora Conference in Tucson, Arizona. For the entire transcript and video, visit emeagwali.com.
Nigerian-born Philip Emeagwali won the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, the Nobel Prize of supercomputing. He has been called “a father of the Internet” by CNN and TIME; extolled as “one of the great minds of the Information Age” by former US president Bill Clinton; and voted history’s greatest scientist of African descent by New African.
Chairman of the Ethiopian People’s Patriotic Front (EPPF), Arbegna Meazaw Getu, has announced that the executive committee has decided to relieve Dr Mussie Tegegn from his responsibility as head of external relations. The letter signed by Arbegna Meazaw states that effective Oct. 28, Dr Mussie cannot represent EPPF in any capacity, and that another person will be appointed soon to take over his place. (see the letter here)
The decision by the EPPF leadership to replace Dr Mussie Tegegn was made after the executive committee became dissatisfied with his performance, particularly his continued disagreements and quarrels with EPPF supporters around the world. The EPPF leadership came to believe that because of Dr Mussie’s behavior and actions, the organization was unable to get the support of Ethiopians around the world. The leadership thought that he became more of a liability than an asset to the organization.
The firing of Dr Mussue is part of the ongoing organizational restructuring of EPPF. In the next few weeks, the newly reorganized EPPF International Committee, as well as EPPF representatives in various cities around the world, will be made public. One of the main tasks of the EPPF International Committee will be to establish contacts with governments around the world, explain to them the resistance group’s mission and try to get their support. A diplomatic committee will be created to hold talks with members of the European Parliament and the U.S. Congress. EPPF hopes to help persuade the U.S. Congress to impose sanctions on the Woyanne brutal regime in Ethiopia that is destabilizing and creating wars in the Horn of Africa region.
Meanwhile, senior official of the EPPF International Committee, Ato Sileshi Tilahun, who had been visiting with the EPPF leaders and the troops in the field, is returning to London today after a three-week visit. After arriving in Eritrea’s capital Asmara, he drove over 800 km of rough road to reach EPPF camps.
EPPF chairman Arbegna Meazaw told Ethiopian Review on the phone that Ato Sileshi’s visit had been productive and thanked him (in a statement released yesterday) for coming to visit leaders and members of the organization in the field.
Ato Sileshi also held meetings with high-level Eritrean government officials in Asmara. He thanked the Government of Eritrea for providing shelter to Ethiopian freedom fighters and political refugees who have fled persecution by the brutal tribal junta in Ethiopia. Eritrean officials on their part told him that the people and government of Eritrea are on the side of Ethiopians who are fighting to liberate their country from the scourge called Woyanne that has turned the Horn of Africa region in to a perennial war zone.
In Somalia alone, over 2 million people have been made homeless by an illegal and brutal invasion of the country by the Woyanne regime. In Ethiopia, over 6 million people currently face starvation while Woyanne leaders continue to plunder the country’s resources and steal foreign aid. In the Ogaden region, Woyanne troops are engaged in indiscriminate killings of civilians and burning down entire villages, as reported by many in the international community, including some members of the United State Congress.
By Brady Gervais, TwinCities.com
Negussie Bussa and Leyouwerk Tsegaye must decide: Leave their two youngest daughters behind to an uncertain future when they are deported, or take them to the couple’s native Ethiopia where they fear possible death.
The Roseville couple and their four daughters face the possibility of being split after federal courts rejected the parents’ asylum claims. The Bussas and their two oldest girls immigrated in the early 1990s and settled in the Twin Cities. The two younger girls, Biftu, 13, and Habi, 11, are U.S. citizens and can stay behind.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Negussie Bussa said recently as he sat in the Sherburne County jail waiting to be deported. “I don’t want them to be harmed, but I have no options for where to leave them.”
The father, a member and current supporter of the Oromo Liberation Front, says back in his home country he had been jailed, mistreated and tortured, according to a petition in federal court. But the family’s asylum request was rejected as implausible by immigration and federal judges, who ordered they be sent back to Ethiopia.
“There is no doubt in (Negussie’s) mind he will be picked up from the airport and put in jail, maybe killed,” said Israel Gobena, the family’s attorney.
It is unclear when the couple and their oldest daughters Hawi, 18, and Alko, 17, will be sent back to East Africa. The fate of Biftu and Habi remains uncertain.
The friends the family has made since living in the United States are trying
to help. Members of their church have taken in the three youngest girls since the rest of the family was jailed on Sept. 17. Others are seeking the help of Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Norm Coleman and Rep. Betty McCollum.
It is up to the Bussas whether to leave their U.S.-born daughters behind or to take them with them, Tim Counts, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wrote in an e-mail.
“We understand that the arrest of an illegal alien may be disruptive to members of the violator’s family,” he wrote. Yet parenthood doesn’t make one immune from having to comply with the law, he added.
By all accounts, the Bussas were a hardworking family.
Negussie Bussa was attending Century College in White Bear Lake with his daughter Hawi. They were studying to become nurses. Leyouwerk Tsegaye worked at a hospital as a nutrition aide.
They were “perfect” neighbors, said Dick Flesher, who lived next door to the family several years.
When Flesher fell ill a few years ago, Negussie Bussa shoveled his driveway. Flesher and his wife, Loretta, said the Bussas keep their home in top condition.
“I just feel absolutely that it’s important for them to be together and stay here, particularly if there’s a possibility their lives are in danger (in Ethiopia),” Dick Flesher said.
Should the Bussas leave their children in Minnesota, they have few options.
The girls could enter the child welfare system, or stay with someone willing to take them in.
The Bussas “have to find an adult who is willing to act as a parent and has the legal authority to do so,” said Dianne Heins, pro bono counsel for the law firm Faegre & Benson in Minneapolis. Heins is not involved in the Bussas case.
A petition would be filed with the local family court seeking an order transferring custody to a responsible adult, she said. The parents wouldn’t be stripped of their rights. They could resume custody should they return.
But the Bussas say they have no one to care for their children long term, said Gobena, their attorney.
They don’t have much family in Minnesota, said Bula Atomssa, a cousin-in-law who recently visited the family in jail. It would be difficult and expensive to take in the two girls, he said.
They’re bright students and can be “assets” if their family can remain here, he said.
CLAIMS REJECTED
Negussie Bussa moved to the United States about 17 years ago on a student visa to earn his doctorate at Iowa State University, he said. His wife and two oldest daughters followed one year later as dependents.
In 1994, Negussie Bussa filed for political asylum for his family. He fears persecution should he return to Ethiopia because of his role in the Oromo Liberation Front, his continued support for the group and his family’s ethnic background. Although the Oromo are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, they do not play a dominant political role in the country, according to the U.S. State Department.
A federal immigration judge rejected their petition and ordered the family to leave the country in 2000 after noting:
# The family’s asylum application lacked details about Negussie Bussa’s claimed abduction and detention.
# Doubts about Negussie Bussa trying to flee the government while he was employed at a government university.
# Leyouwerk Tsegaye claimed her hearing loss was a result of government abuse, though she tried to conceal she had prior hearing problems.
The judge’s decision was appealed to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Their case is still pending, though the court has denied repeated requests for a stay of deportation.
“I believe in the justice system of the United States,” said Negussie Bussa. “I don’t know why it didn’t work for me.”
There’s a disconnect between the court system and what is happening in Ethiopia, the family’s attorney said.
A 2007 State Department report on Ethiopia outlined several human rights abuses during the year. To name a few, abuses included: limiting citizens’ rights to change the government; unlawful killings, and beating, abuse and mistreatment of detainees and opposition by security forces; poor prison conditions; use of excessive force by security services in an internal conflict, according to the report.
FAITH IN GOD
A Minneapolis church has rallied around the family.
The three youngest daughters — Alko, Biftu and Habi — are being cared for by members of the Our Redeemer Oromo Evangelical Church, senior pastor Melkamu Negeri said.
The church has raised around $4,000 to offset the costs of caring for the children, pay for food for the family at the jail and cover phone calls from the jail to the children, Negeri said. The congregation has also backed a petition requesting one of the parents be released to care for the children. Members regularly pray for the family, as well.
“Of course, we will do whatever we can to support them,” Negeri said. “They really do not hesitate to support each other.”
The family could despair given their situation, but their faith keeps them hopeful, Gobena said.
“These people are Christians, and they are treating the incident as good Christians would,” he said. “They are not hopeless. They are still hopeful that God has a way to let them be freed.”
The family still holds out hope they can remain in the United States, and together.
Hawi Bussa said she trusts God will not separate her family. And if they ultimately go to Ethiopia, she said, they “will be OK, somehow, some way. God will make a way.”
Brady Gervais can be reached at 651-228-2171.
HOW TO HELP
What: Fundraiser for Bussa family
When: 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Sunday
Where: St. Paul Student Center, University of Minnesota, 2017 Buford Ave., St. Paul
What: Traditional Ethiopian and American food, open to the public
PRINCETON, NJ — Barack Obama holds a statistically significant lead over John McCain in both Gallup likely voter models, according to Oct. 27-29 Gallup Poll Daily tracking. In the traditional model, which defines likely voters based on current voting intention and past voting behavior, Obama holds a 50% to 45% lead. In the expanded model, in which only current voting intentions are considered, his lead is 51% to 44%.
As in any election, the final outcome, in large part, hinges on who turns out to vote and who does not. If all registered voters participated, Obama would probably win comfortably. He leads McCain by 50% to 42% in the latest estimate of registered voter preferences, and has averaged a nine percentage point lead since Oct. 1. (To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.)
Both likely voter models currently show a slightly closer race than is evident in the registered voter estimate. Obama has never trailed in either likely voter model since Gallup began tracking likely voter preferences in early October, averaging a four-point lead using the traditional model and an eight-point lead using the expanded model.
Just five days remain until Election Day, and McCain and the Republicans are campaigning hard in key states to try and change Obama’s lead. Late comebacks are rare, but have occurred, including Harry Truman in 1948 and Ronald Reagan in 1980. — Jeff Jones
(Click here to see how the race currently breaks down by demographic subgroup.)
