The Final Call

Reconnecting the international struggles of Black people

By the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan | Last updated: Jul 26, 2006 - 7:24:00 AM

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[Editor’s note: On May 7, 2006, Minister Farrakhan appeared on “The Open Line Show” on 98.7 KISS FM in New York, N.Y., which is hosted by James Mtume. We publish edited excerpts from the discussion, which included several questions called in by the listening audience. Click here to order CD/DVD of the show.]

A mother holds her malnourished boy as they wait for treatment, Dec. 21, 2005, at a Medecins Sans Frontieres clinic in Lankien in southern Sudan. Promises of aid to Africa must be kept in 2006 or millions of people will die needlessly, the top U.S. adviser on poverty, Jeffrey Sachs, said Jan. 9, while insisting that every penny must be accounted for to ensure it is used properly. Photo: AP/World Wide Photos

In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.

Ken (a caller from New Jersey): As a people, we have to unite with African people around the world. We need a membership in the African Union. African Americans deserve a right—a voice to speak on an international level. We have to take that voice to the African Union and let it speak for us and let other African leaders help us in our cause here. Also, the Eighth Pan African Congress is in Harare, Zimbabwe this year in October. Will you be attending and do you suggest that we attend?

Minister Farrakhan (MLF): Yes, I have been to the African Union. I was there when it was being formed. We have pressed for observer status with the African Union and I think we will be there with our Brothers and Sisters in Africa when they have their next meeting, hopefully sometime in July.

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan

I would advise you to go to Harare. It is time to stand by President Robert Mugabe. It is wonderful that the Eighth Pan African Congress will be held there because he is under fire. Remember, Mr. Mugabe was the darling of the Commonwealth nations as long as he let White people keep the land. He and Joshua Nkomo fought to take the land back because the land belongs to the people. Right before he was going to win and take over, they invited him to London and made a deal that they were going to buy back the land of the Whites. But they reneged on their promise.

Then, after 20 years or so, the soldiers said, “This is not what we’ve fought for.” So Mr. Mugabe began to take the land away from the Whites and reapportion it to the Blacks. Now, he is the bad boy, and the Commonwealth is working to destroy him. So all the support we can give to Brother Mugabe is what we should do.

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James Mtume (JM): What is your take on what’s going on in the Sudan and the atrocity that’s occurring in Darfur and the fact that the Black community and Black leadership here seem not to be embracing that issue?

MLF: When we were called Negroes, we did not have an international presence. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad single-handedly turned us from calling ourselves Negroes to accepting ourselves. No matter what shade of color we were, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad asked us to refer to ourselves as the Black man, the Original People of the Earth. And when we saw ourselves as Black people, then every person of color on the Earth, we identified with them. So in the ’60s, nothing could happen on the African continent that Black people in America were not concerned with. Nothing could happen in the Caribbean, Brazil, Central America or in the Islands of the Pacific where Black people were concerned that we did not feel, because a nervous system was being created for Black people that we felt the pain of one another wherever we were on the Earth.

But after Malcolm X was assassinated and Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated and Elijah Muhammad was gone, there was a shift in language. We were no longer Black. The wise people said, “Let’s change the language, so we can change their focus and give them a new understanding of who they are.” The new language was “minority,” “disadvantaged,” and then came “African American.” What was happening was a severing of the nervous system that tied Black people to the struggle of each other all over the world.

Graphic: Harold Muhammad/MGN Online The Sudan is an Islamic regime that is against the State of Israel. They are saying Arabs in the Sudan are enslaving Africans. This language is very clever and the media pushes this language so that there would come a natural hatred of Blacks for Arabs so that Arabs look like the real culprits. --Minister Louis Farrakhan

So today, there can be a Darfur. Who cares? We think, “That’s not us.” There can be a Rwanda and a Burundi. Who cares? We think, “That’s not us.” So we do not feel suffering until there is a Hurricane Katrina. That’s us, but what’s going on in Haiti, that’s not us. What’s going on in Brazil, Costa Rica, Columbia, Nicaragua and Guatemala, we do not think that is us because of the language shift.

During the recent demonstration on the Mall against the situation in Darfur, 95 percent of those who were there were Caucasian. I am not going to denigrate their sensitivity to suffering. But Blacks were not there because the Blacks who could make something happen were never invited. It is not that Black people do not care about Darfur, but Darfur, on the scale of suffering in the world, pales. At first, they reported 180,000 dead in Darfur—then 400,000, and two million people displaced.

Yet, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 3.5 million have died, but there is no talk. In Northern Uganda, children are walking at night, trying to run away so that they would not be kidnapped and made to fight against the government in Kampala. But there is no talk. Why the Sudan?

For the last 16 years, the Sudan has been on the agenda for regime change because the country housed Palestinian Resistance Fighters and Osama bin Laden, and put him out. But the Sudan is an Islamic regime that is against the State of Israel. They are saying Arabs in the Sudan are enslaving Africans. This language is very clever and the media pushes this language so that there would come a natural hatred of Blacks for Arabs so that Arabs look like the real culprits.

I, along with my International Representative, Akbar Muhammad—who is in the studio with me and I want to speak on this in just a few moments—were together on a peace mission in 1994. I went to Ghana and spoke to then-president Jerry John Rawlings. He said if you want to help ease the crisis, get in touch with Kenneth Kaunda to accompany us. So we went to Kenya and met with President Daniel Arap Moi, who at that time was over EGAD, a group of nations that were working for peace.

So when we met with Pres. Arap Moi, he sent us to Uganda where we met with President Yoweri Museveni. But the most important meeting was a meeting with Brother John Garang, who, for 20 years, was fighting the government in Khartoum. Was it over slavery? Min. Akbar was with me. At no time during our talk with Dr. Garang, which was four hours in length, was there ever a mention of slavery. I mentioned the word “justice,” then Dr. Garang's wife broke down and cried and said that I was the only person who came that talked about justice. What was the injustice?

The Arabs had mixed their blood with the Africans that live in the North. They are Arab-ized and Islamic; and the same racist poison that has poisoned the bloodstream of Islam has made the Arab North feel superior to the Christian Animist-African South in the Sudan. The South is Black, so Black until there is blue in their color. Racism exists there like the enemy has done to us: When you are lighter, you think you are better than your Black Brother or Sister. There is an elitist attitude among light-skinned Black people against dark-skinned Black people. The same game that the enemy has played here and in Africa, is now dominating the scene in the Sudan.

The Sudan is the largest land mass country on the African Continent. If it were fully developed, it could feed all of Africa. In the South, there is an abundance of oil. In the eastern part of Nigeria, they wanted to break that part off years ago and call it Bi-Afra, and it ignited a civil war. The civil war was to unite, which could give the people power, because there was a regime in Lagos that the governments of America and Britain did not like. I sent Brother Akbar there to look into the situation in Darfur and James Mtume went himself. Bro. Akbar, tell them about the janjaweed, the farmers, the herders. Tell them what is really happening on the ground there and then we will come back to why no Black people demonstrated on that Mall.

Minister Akbar Muhammad (AM): There is a saying, “When there’s darkness, stand still.” Most Black people in America did not participate in the demonstration because of the cloud that was around it. They really did not understand and then they were not invited en masse. They tried to get some to come, but they stood still because they have heard so many different things.

Sudanese President Omar El-Bashir waves his hand to journalists after attending a closed session during the annual summit of the Arab League in Khartoum, Sudan March 28. Photo: AP/World Wide Photos

When the peace accord was signed in the South, immediately this conflict broke out in the West. Until the last five days, most people in America knew nothing about the rebel group that started this conflict. They had a peace accord in Abuja. The Sudanese government said they would sign. The rebels first resisted. President George Bush sent the Deputy Secretary of State there to force the rebels. Now, how could you force the rebels to sign unless you have some clout with them, or were you supplying them with money and weapons?

Whenever we look at the world and talk about a government, they show a picture. If you talked about Iraq during the time of Saddam Hussein, they would show his picture. If you talked about Syria, they would show President Hafez al-Assad. If you talked about Saudi Arabia, they would show King Abdullah. If you talked about Egypt, they would show President Hosni Mubarak. They have talked about the Sudan, but if I asked an audience across this country what the president of the Sudan looks like, most people do not know. He just went to Iran to meet with the leader of Iran and very little information was printed showing him in a picture with the Iranian leader, because he is as Black as me or either Blacker. So he does not fit the script of “the Arab who is killing Africans.”

Last week, the Washington Post published “The Five Facts about Darfur.” One blaring fact was that all of the people are Black. So if you talk about Arabs killing Africans—I went into a room and the man said, “Would the Arab tribe leaders stand up.” That includes the ones that are called janjaweed. When they stood up, they were all Black. He said, “Now, will the African tribe leaders stand up”—and they were all Black. So we looked at each other because the picture in America is that these White Arabs are killing Africans. The Brother said clearly what makes them Arabs is that they only speak Arabic. They are herders, what you would call nomads. What makes them Africans is they speak an African language and Arabic. They are all Muslims.

They have had this clash for 500 years. This conflict with the rebels exacerbated it because the government did form a militia. And this militia was not to make people suffer and murder and rape, but it was to root out the rebels taking shelter among the villagers. But this picture is not seen in America.

MLF: When you see Senator Tom Lantos leading the march on the Sudanese Embassy and Eli Wiesel, these are Zionists. These are pro-Israeli Zionists. Why are they leading the march? Do you really think that they have compassion for what is going on in Darfur? Human suffering is human suffering. Don’t tell me you have compassion for the Blacks who are suffering in Darfur when you have Palestinians suffering under your nose and you do not care anything about that. If there are three million-and-a-half people dying in the Congo, you say nothing about that? The people dying in Uganda, you say nothing about that? Then what is the motive? This is what Black people have to look at. It is that there is oil in the West.

So, what I say to Black people about the former slave-masters—who did not care about lynching, who did not care about our suffering, who do not care about what happened in Hurricane Katrina—don’t be deceived that they care about what is happening in Darfur.

And they do not care what is happening to us here. If they can promote Black people calling Black women b-----s and whores; they can promote gangster life, guns and drugs, yet the Black community is dying as we speak, how in the hell can I think they are concerned about Darfur when we are dying in Harlem, Brooklyn and the Southside of Chicago? Stop it. Black people, wake up to the deceit.