Open Letter: Brother Kanye West, let me school you about the cruel dictator you met with in Uganda

Brother Kanye West,

You owe Africans, the African Diaspora and the global community an apology for meeting with Uganda’s dictator Yoweri Museveni.

Malcolm met Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Tom Mboya, and Gamal Abdel Nasser. You, on the other hand, met with Museveni, an enemy of Africa.

Museveni seized power by the gun way back in 1986 when Ronald Reagan was the U.S. president. He dreams of controlling other African countries. So, he invaded Rwanda in 1990 –leading to the genocide in 1994; he invaded Congo in 1997, leading to a series of wars that’ve claimed the lives of more than six million people; and, he invaded South Sudan in 2013, and the death toll is estimated at nearly 300,000.

He was treated in the U.S. and five senators, including Cory Booker, condemned the attack.

A Track Record of Hate

Brother Kanye, let me now introduce you to Museveni’s past ugly comments.

In an interview published in the September 1994 issue of The Atlantic Monthly Magazine, Museveni said, “I have never blamed the whites for colonizing Africa: I have never blamed these whites for taking slaves. If you are stupid, you should be taken a slave.”

How do you think descendants of enslaved Africans, whose ancestors died in the millions during the Middle Passage, or Maafa, while packed like sardins in ships, feel? How do you feel?

Survivors were worked to death on plantations while enduring fiendish torture. C.L.R. James in The Black Jocobins describes how French slavers stuck dynamite into the anus of rebellious Africans then lit the fuse; Howard Zinn, in A People’s History of The United States, describes enslaved Africans with feet dangling from trees, roasted with fire lit below.

Today, their descendants form the American underclass. I’m not talking about the proportionally minuscule percentage who are rich professionals, athletes, entrepreneurs, and entertainers, such as yourself. I mean the majority; stuck in neighborhoods with no prospects for decent education. They provide fodder for the prison industrial complex described in Michelle Alexander‘s The New Jim Crow. Or, like Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and Laquan McDonald, to name three of many, they’re murdered by racist cops.

Brother Kanye, here’s more about Museveni.

He also said, “Scientists should meet them, study them, take their blood, look at their genetics.”

Museveni even diminished Adolf Hitler’s crimes. He’s quoted in Ugandan weekly newspaper, The Shariat, in April 1998, saying, “As Hitler did to bring Germany together, we should also do it here. Hitler was a smart guy, but I think he went a bit too far by wanting to conquer the world.”

Museveni is also a self-hating African and when Trump called Africa shit-hole countries the dictator said, “I love Donald Trump.” He’s an agent of neo-colonialism.

A Real Wakanda

I’d like to close with some advice for you Kanye.

I do support your idea, if you’re serious, about creating Wakandas in Africa. It’s the world’s richest continent –Congo alone has resources worth $27 trillion–yet Africans are the poorest people on earth. European countries have exploited Africa for centuries; now China has entered the mix.

Africa could become a global economic powerhouse through a partnership of the continent’s mineral and natural resources and farmland, with skilled Diaspora workforce and some of the $1.3 trillion annual spending power of African Americans.

It would involve working with emerging young leaders fighting corruption, like Uganda’s Bobi Wine, South Africa‘s Julius Malema, Kenya‘s Babu Owino, Zimbabwe‘s Nelson Chamisa and others.

This is how to end European and Chinese exploitation and to create the Africa envisioned by Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah and other Pan Africans.