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September 6, 2005

The Herald of Zimbabwe - Original Article (English)

Last week Americans woke up to shocking images on their television screens when the major American news networks produced two different versions of the same event - one for the "jungle" outside the United States and the other for domestic consumption.

Many probably thought that American TV stations had mistakenly broadcast the world edition into the American slot. Most could be forgiven for thinking that the disaster unfolding in the southern city of New Orleans, off the Atlantic coast, was happening in some distant African country called "New Orleans" by colonial settlers.

The Corpse of a Young Girl Floats in a Lousiana Street.

Is shock not called for, with Hurricane Katrina tearing homes like papier-mache, fights and garbage fires in the streets, dead bodies strewn all over the roads as hordes of gun-toting looters raped hapless women, looting and firing at every moving object? Broken sewer pipes spewing raw sewage into the streets, thirsty people drinking fetid water, the staccato of gunfire from hoodlums terrorizing people and menacing soldiers ordered to shoot to kill - gunning people down whose only "crime" is to demand protection from the government?

The fact that New Orleans is a southern city populated predominantly by African-Americans completes the "Third World" image and also explains why President George W. Bush saw no need to cut his holiday short.

These are only black people, so-called African-Americans, who have been forever cursed with the burden of carrying a double barrel nationality that ironically reminds them that "you are African before you are American."

The late American civil rights activist Malcolm Little - the man who refused to carry a bastardized surname and opted to put an X after his first name to signify his lost identity - was spot-on when he said that being in America does not make a black man an American.

Malcolm X

"Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in

This is evident in the U.S. administration's slow reaction to the horrors ravaging the southern American states with their high populations of African-Americans, for these are the states that had the largest number of plantations worked by slave labor. These are also the Confederate states that prolonged slavery by refusing to sign the emancipation proclamation. Even though the proclamation was eventually signed, the lot of the black man in the Southern states has never changed.

A Black Slave After Being Whipped in 1863

These men who were illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama were never told what disease they were suffering from or its seriousness.

They were simply told that they were being treated for "bad blood," yet their doctors had no intention of curing them. The data for the experiment was to be collected from autopsies of the men. They were, thus, deliberately left to degenerate under the ravages of tertiary syphilis - which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity and, finally, death.

Nurses Examine a Tusckegee Subject.

The true nature of the experiment was kept from the subjects to ensure their co-operation. The fact that the sharecroppers were had a grossly disadvantaged lot in life made them easy to manipulate, since they were quite pleased at the prospect of free medical care.

The study was meant to discover how syphilis affected blacks as opposed to whites - the theory being that whites experienced more neurological complications from syphilis, whereas blacks were more susceptible to cardiovascular damage.

By the end of the experiment, 28 of the men had died directly of syphilis, 100 had died of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis.

It took the U.S. government 22 years, however, to offer an apology to the eight remaining survivors. On May 16 1997, the then U.S. President Bill Clinton invited the survivors to the White House and acknowledged that: "The United States government did something that was wrong - deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens as it was clearly racist.

"What was done cannot be undone, but we can end the silence. We can stop turning our heads away. We can look at you in the eye, and finally say, on behalf of the American people, what the United States government did was shameful and I am sorry."

I wonder if this is not just another experiment on black people - this time in New Orleans. What is so shocking is the fact that there are reports that the Bush Administration received sufficient warning about Hurricane Katrina, but chose to do nothing about it. It has been a whole week now since the hurricane struck, but New Orleans is still plagued by gun battles, with gangs of looters and carjackers roving the streets and bodies of the dead putrefying and bloating by roadsides.

And all that Bush has done so far is issue threats against the victims and deploying trigger-happy American troops - fresh from abusing Iraqi prisoners - to go and "restore order."

Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, boasting that the guardsmen have been authorized to shoot to kill, said:

"These troops are fresh back from Iraq, well trained, experienced, battle tested (we do not recall any battles in Iraq) and under my orders to restore order in the streets.  They have M-16s (powerful shotguns) and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will."

And they have done so with chilling regularity.

Mbare Township in Harare Before and After Mugabe's Operation Murambatsvina

Do I hear skeptics say Operation Murambatsvina was man-made and New Orleans is natural? Wrong!

[Editor's Note: Operation Murambatsvina, also referred to as Operation Restore Order, began as a crackdown against illegal trading and housing, but quickly became a movement to make homeless and drive out a large section of the urban poor, most of who support the opposition parties. A report on Operation Murambatsvina, written by Anna Tibaijuka, the Executive Director of the U.N. Human Settlements Program, stated that the operation was a "disastrous venture" which has violated international law and created a grave humanitarian crisis. The actions are described as indiscriminate, unjustified and conducted with indifference to human suffering.]

New Orleans is man-made as can be seen from the way the U.S. government settled it in a low-lying area, dangerously close to the Atlantic coast that is often ravaged by hurricanes.

[Editor's Note: Actually, the site of New Orleans was chosen by the French. The French founded it in 1718 and named it in honor of the Duke of Orleans. In 1762, France ceded the city and the territory to Spain. In 1800, the territory was returned to France, but government authorities did not take over until 1803, just 20 days before the region became part of the United States in the Louisiana Purchase.]

I am always reminded of that inspirational song by one of the greatest American rappers, the late Tupac Shakur, who wondered at the tragedies that always confront black people: They live in ghettoes in Africa; they live in ghettoes even in the so-called free world; where would they go when they die, unless heaven also has got a ghetto?