Maravi

Africa can’t to forget colonialism – Chavez

Africa can’t to forget colonialism – Chavez
Written by Larry Moonze in Isla Margarita, Venezuela
Wednesday, September 30, 2009 4:54:32 AM

VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez has said Africa cannot afford to forget colonialism and imperialism if the continent intends to own its fate. And President Chavez has urged Latin Americans to learn the history of Africa including studying nations of the African continent.

President Chavez said the just-ended second Africa and South American heads of state and government summit (II ASA) held in Isla Margarita was of unquestionable significance in the battle of ideas.

“The memory of Africa is a deep wound,” President Chavez said. “It is too easy to affirm that the future of Africa depends on the Africans, and then ask them to forget colonialism and imperialism. Mother Africa cannot forget, not even our America. No people can be the owner of their fate if they forget.”

He said South America was standing up, opening its arms and strengthening bonds with the African peoples because it understood that in both parts of the Atlantic, the blood, history and hope were the same.

“This week has had an unquestionable significance for the battle of ideas fought by Venezuela every day, together with the peoples from the South, in the international field,” President Chavez said.

“This has been the spirit of the II Africa-South America Summit. A spirit that encourages us to find the political, social and economic union with Africa by focusing on the new multipolar world order. We have the duty of building this new order if we want to sing the common anthem of true justice and real fraternity in the planet.”

He said Africa and South America were essential in the foundation of a new universal balance.

President Chavez said that balance included the union of wills and the proposal of new common and feasible goals.

“He who wants honey has the courage to confront the bees,” said President Chavez, quoting an ancient Senegalese proverb. “We want the sweet honey for our children, and the children of our children. We have more than enough courage. We will move forward and confront the bees.”

President Chavez said it was important that South Americans know Africa.

He said he was concerned that about 90 per cent of South Americans knew little or nothing about African states.

President Chavez said Africa was more of the mother to Latinos than Spain, the coloniser.

“The historians of 19th Century were in charge of falsifying the African continent and planting it with misconceptions, which have been reinforced by the media,” President Chavez said.

“They sold us perverse ideas such as the one telling us that the history of the African peoples started with the European presence, that they are inferior, violent, and ignorant due to their race, that they are lazy and have not known how to use their resources, that they do not have modern states because they have preferred to be dependent and backward. This distortion of reality, we have to say it, has been planned to reproduce the discourse and praxis of the most brutal domination by colonisers from the past and today’s transnational capital. They do not know the African strength and cultural legacy because ambition and attacks still survive in the soul of the manufacturers of lies.”

President Chavez said Africa and South America should seize the opportunities and make the 21st Century their era.

Labels: AFRICA-SOUTH AMERICA SUMMIT (ASA), COLONIALISM, HUGO CHAVEZ

posted by MrK @ 3:55 AM