{"id":184975,"date":"2021-05-17T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2021-05-17T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=184975"},"modified":"2021-05-17T10:51:39","modified_gmt":"2021-05-17T09:51:39","slug":"open-letter-to-superstar-rapper-j-cole-about-rwanda-and-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/05\/open-letter-to-superstar-rapper-j-cole-about-rwanda-and-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Letter to Superstar Rapper J. Cole about Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

12 May 2021 – <\/em>I\u2019m no rap or hip hop aficionado, so I contacted my fellow Pacifica Radio producer and Hard Knock Radio host Davey D. Cook to see what he could tell me about you as soon as I saw that you\u2019ll be suiting up to play for the\u00a0Rwandan Patriots <\/a>\u00a0at the debut of the Basketball Africa League in Kigali, Rwanda, from May 16 to May 30.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure you know that this has been all over the sports and entertainment press since it was announced in\u00a0The\u00a0<\/em>New Times of Rwanda <\/a><\/em>on Sunday, May 9.\u00a0The Athletic <\/a><\/em>\u00a0says you signed to play three to six games for the Patriots, and even if your b-ball career lasts no longer than that, you\u2019ll have hugely increased the hype around the debut of the NBA-affiliated Basketball Africa League. The top headlines, four days away from the Africa League\u2019s debut, are all about you.<\/p>\n

Davey D. told me you\u2019re a conscious, intellectual guy who went to Ferguson, Missouri, to protest in 2014 after Ferguson cops shot down Michael Brown, and that you make conscious music. I got online and learned that you\u2019re of mixed race but Black-identified and that you\u2019ve experienced life as you look\u2014Black. And that you grew up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, a city of 200,000+ people, more than 41% of whom are Black, without much money.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe top headlines, four days away from the Africa League\u2019s debut, are all about you.<\/em><\/strong>\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I also learned that you\u2019re a brainy, highly disciplined guy who graduated from high school with a 4.2 grade point average, then went on to St. John\u2019s University in New York City, and became a superstar rap and hip hop artist a few years after graduating. I read your op-ed in\u00a0The Players\u2019 Tribune <\/a>\u00a0about how you struggled with competing basketball and rap ambitions at St. John\u2019s but decided to throw your energies into the latter. I watched your documentary\u00a04 Your Eyez Only <\/a>\u00a0and read what you wrote about making it to lift up Black people and give voice to those who have none.<\/p>\n

All very impressive, so I hope you won\u2019t be lending all your brain power, star power, and talent to a public relations coup for the President of Rwanda and his brutal, totalitarian regime, which has carried out a catastrophic war and occupation in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for the past 26 years. This war may look like \u201cBlack-on-Black violence,\u201d which it is superficially, but the spoils of this war\u2014DRC\u2019s vast mineral wealth\u2014go to the West, and to China, as a result. The United States backed Kagame\u2019s four-year war that ended in the Rwandan Genocide, and then the war, occupation, and plunder of DRC.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope you won\u2019t be lending all your brain power, star power, and talent to a public relations coup for the President of Rwanda and his brutal, totalitarian regime\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a quotation and a quotation within a quotation from Canadian investigative journalist Judi Rever\u2019s book \u201cIn Praise of Blood: Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front <\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I also wanted to flesh out some troubling details on how the Rwandan-led rebel alliance had swept across Zaire so quickly, and do a profile on their financial enablers. Details were emerging as to how the United States government and Western-backed business had assisted the rebel army at the height of the refugee killings. The information was limited but solid: On April 16, 1997, more than a month before Mobutu was toppled and less than a week before Rwandan troops were to machine-gun and slash refugees south of Kisangani, Laurent Kabila\u2019s finance minister, Mwana Nanga Mwampanga, signed a $1-billion mining deal with America Mineral Fields (AMF), whose headquarters was in Hope, Arkansas, President Bill Clinton\u2019s hometown. Jean-Raymond Boulle, the company\u2019s CEO, was close enough to Clinton to receive an invitation to his first inauguration. Boulle gave rebels the use of his Lear jet and advanced $1 million in mineral taxes and fees to Kabila in return for a contract to rehabilitate and develop the country\u2019s zinc and copper mines, a project that was estimated to be worth $16 billion. On April 17, the New York Times ran a story boldly stating that the Zairean rebels\u2019 new allies were men armed with briefcases:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018A week after Shaba Province fell to Laurent Kabila and his rebel troops, mining company executives are swarming around this region of mineral riches and signing lucrative deals despite the uncertainty hanging over the nation\u2019s future. Less than two days after Lubumbashi was captured last Thursday, the executives were already flying into the city aboard private jets and setting up shop in the Hotel Karavia. They could be seen meeting at poolside and over meals with the rebels\u2019 finance minister and the newly appointed Governor of the province. The stakes here are enormous. The province has billions of dollars in untapped mineral reserves. The rolling fertile land holds millions of tons of cobalt, copper and zinc.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s unfortunate that Adam Silver and the NBA decided to stage the Africa League debut in Rwanda\u2019s capital, Kigali. The Nation sportswriter and EdgeOfSports podcaster Dave Zirin, in\u00a0Voices Are Raised Against the NBA Launching Its New African League in Rwanda <\/a>, wrote that, \u201cThe pleas of those raising these concerns should not fall upon deaf ears. The NBA has spent considerable time and energy marketing itself as a league that gives a damn about social justice and stands for something more than mere profit.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not finding fault with you for not knowing much about Rwanda or DRC\u2019s recent history. How many Americans know anything about Africa South of the Sahara? You don\u2019t even read about it in much of the left press. I know nothing about it until several events led me to make a study of the African Great Lakes Region twelve years ago.<\/p>\n

Here are just a few of many articles and radio reports I myself have produced during the past 12 years, while studying and deconstructing all the lies we\u2019re told about catastrophic conflict in the heart of Africa:<\/p>\n

Intel Report on Assassins: \u201cRwandans are cold-ass mofos”<\/a><\/p>\n

Kagame\u2019s new Order of Thieves Without Borders: Neocolonial kleptocrats with Clinton connections <\/a><\/p>\n

Kibeho Massacre, Kibeho, Rwanda, April 22, 1995 <\/a><\/p>\n

Project Censored with Guest Host Ann Garrison \u2013 January 1, 2016 <\/a><\/p>\n

In Praise of Blood: Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Fron<\/a>t, a book review<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s the BBC on Rwanda and President Kagame in 2016, and they didn’t get the half of it:\u00a0Rwanda\u2019s Untold Story Documentary <\/a>.<\/p>\n

I could fill up a page with links about this, but I\u2019m just hoping to catch your attention with at least a few.<\/p>\n

The debut of the Basketball Africa League is going ahead, and no one seems to doubt that you\u2019ll be playing for the Rwandan Patriots. I\u2019m a fanatic basketball fan myself, and I’m not asking you not to play with the Rwandan team, but I am asking you not to participate in the PR coup. Please don’t have your picture taken with the President of Rwanda or the Foreign Minister or any other top officials, especially not at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, because the president is himself a genocide criminal.<\/p>\n

I imagine that Bill Clinton will show up for this, so please don’t have your picture taken with him either; he is as responsible as Kagame for the catastrophe in Rwanda and Congo. See\u00a0Rwanda, the Clinton Dynasty, and the Case\u00a0 <\/a>of\u00a0 <\/a>Dr. L\u00e9opold Munyakazi <\/a>\u00a0as well as Judi Rever\u2019s groundbreaking investigative work.<\/p>\n

With all due respect,<\/p>\n

Ann Garrison<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She attended Stanford University and is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. In 2014 she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize<\/em> for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at @AnnGarrison<\/em>, ann@kpfa.org,<\/em><\/a> ann@anngarrison.com.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 blackagendareport.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

12 May 2021 – I hope you won\u2019t be lending all your brain power, star power, and talent to a public relations coup for the President of Rwanda and his brutal, totalitarian regime. The top headlines, four days away from the Africa League\u2019s debut, are all about you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":184977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[237,1924,276,558,487,1412,1146],"class_list":["post-184975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-africa","tag-authoritarianism","tag-democracy","tag-dictatorship","tag-human-rights","tag-rwanda","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}