Speech By Emma Lwaitama Nyerere At The Pan-African Anti-Apartheid Conference
BRIEF MESSAGE OF SOLIDARITY WITH THE STRUGGLE FOR SELF DETERMINATION OF THE PEOPLE OF PALESTINE by EMMA LWAITAMA NYERERE
A Tanzanian Pan African Federalist & Internationalist
March 2022
Distinguished Organizers of this Event
Distinguished Participants
Comrades and Friends
Ladies and Gentlemen
Let me begin by thanking the organizers of this event for inviting me to be one of the Participants.
Let me also begin by sharing the photograph below of the late President and Father of the Tanzanian Nation, the late Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere and the distinguished foremost leader of the Contemporary Struggle for Self Determination of the People of Palestine, the late Yasser Arafat, accompanied with a quotation by the late Mwalimu Julius Kambarage on the Struggle for Self Determination of the People of Palestine: “We have never hesitated in our support for the right of the people of Palestine to have their own land.” – Mwalimu Julius Nyerere
Comrades and Friends
Ladies and Gentlemen
I was born in 1979 and in the late 1980s and early 1990s I was in my teens and twenties. I spent these years at the University of Dar es Salaam in a home of the family, who often came home with the Ambassador of the State of Palestine in Tanzania at that time. From these times I picked up consciousness sympathy and empathy with what the late Comrade Mwalimu Julius Nyerere has characterized as “plight of the Palestinians,” summarized in the quote below: “The plight of the Palestinians is very different and much worse. When we were fighting for our independence, I was in Tanganyika, Kenyatta was in Kenya. But the Palestinians have been deprived of their own country…”
Comrades and Friends
Ladies and Gentlemen
The struggle for national self-determination of the people of Palestine, irrespective of whether they were Arab or Jew by nationality, found for me an echo in the struggle for national self-determination of the peoples of the African continent who also suffered from the settler colonialism of people who came from other parts of the world and wanted to replace the indigenous peoples who inhabited places the settler colonialist found justification for occupying and then organizing to eliminate the indigenous native populations of the given area and thus replacing these original indigenous inhabitants with settlers from foreign countries where they may have been suffering from disadvantage themselves.
As the Father of our Nation Tanzania , the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere observed, the Palestinian people faced a unique obstacle in their struggle for national self-determination, namely that the Palestinians were organizing for their independence from refugee camps in foreign countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt, and the settler colonialist was, absurdly, presenting himself/herself as the aggrieved indigenous native!!!!
Comrades and Friends
Ladies and Gentlemen
Growing up in a house of family who, on numerous occasions, brought home for family evening tea, diplomats from then revolutionary and Pan Africanist Embassies of Algeria, especially under the Presidency of Chadli Bendjedid (from February 1980 to January 1992) and of Abdelaziz Bouteflika ( from April 1999 to April 2019) as well as of Libya under the Presidency of Muammar Gaddafi (September 1969 to March 2011) a as well as diplomats from the Embassy of Palestine in Tanzania, I began very early to develop a consciousness of the extreme injustices that the Palestinian people have suffered over the year since its occupation by settlers who came from Europe and elsewhere where they were persecuted by others only to be encouraged to persecute their kind host peoples, the Palestinians.
Comrades and Friends
Ladies and Gentlemen
I learned very early on in my teens and early twenties that since the 1948 Nakba (“catastrophe” after the partition of Palestine and subsequent declaration of the settler colonialist State of Israel on 14 May 1948 that was marked by acts of genocide against the Palestinian people resulting in unprecedented expulsion of more than 700,000 people from their homes thus turning most Palestinians into refugees ) and the 1967 Nakba ( the “setback” after the war of 1967) Palestinians have continued to be turned into refugees and displaced people who continue to be turned into a minority at home while the settler colonialists have sadly turned themselves into a manufactured majority!
This is well illustrated below in the following three graphic representations ( Figures 1, 2 and 3) of what is meant by NAKBA 2 and why the 15th May is an important commemorative date in Palestinian history as well as what happened after the United Nations’ Partition of Palestine on the 27th November 1947 and the establishment of the settler colonialist State of Israel on 14th May 1948 on land that was once one indivisible nation of Palestine.
The NAKBA, the force expulsion Palestinians of Arab ancestry from large parts of what once one indivisible nation of Palestine triggered the first war of liberation of Palestine by Palestinians joined and led by the Arab states neighboring the settler colonialist state of Israel. This first Arab-Israel war resulted greater occupation by the Isreali settler colonialist State of Palestinian territories just like the second war of liberation of Palestine by Palestinians joined and led by the Arab states neighboring the settler colonialist state of Israel.
Comrades and Friends
Ladies and Gentlemen
For a young person like me, brought up in a social milieu that ingrained in my consciousness the legitimacy of the struggle for the right return or reparation for the Palestinian people who are now in refugee camps in various Arab countries as well as those condemned to exist in various forms of exile together with Palestinian who are internally misplaced in occupied Palestine, let alone the legitimacy of the overall Palestinian struggle for self-determination , for me , I can only say the Founding Father of the Tanzanian State was right in being in solidarity, by word and deed, with the struggle for self-determination by the Palestinian people.
Comrades and Friends
Ladies and Gentlemen
No wonder when I grew up I became a firm supporter of the Palestine and Tanzania Solidarity Committee led by such illustrious Pan Africanist and internationalist sons and daughter of Tanzania such as the late Professor Haroub Othman, the late Salim Msoma and the distinguished left wing law Professor Issa Shivji, just to mention a few. I am happy that this Solidarity Committee continues to do its solidarity work is diligence and it is represented at this event. Its representative provided feedback on what obstacles are currently being faced by those pursuing solidarity objectives with respect to the struggle of the Palestinian people for self determination. Certainly, the influence in Tanzania of personnel representing the settler colonialist State of Israel has increased in steadily in last five or so years, but the influence of the ideas that were planted in Julius Nyerere era that favor solidarity with the struggle for self determination of the Palestinian people is equally strong.
Comrades and Friends
Ladies and Gentlemen
Looking at the illustration ( Figure 4) below of how Palestinians have lost almost all their land to settler colonialists over the years 80 years while the so-called international community seems to look the other way, one cannot fail to sympathize with those among young Palestinians who may argue that even the two states solution for the resolution of the so called Palestine Question is no longer a realistic a goal that Palestinians can aspire for any longer !!
Looking at that illustration of how Palestinian Arabs who were the majority in 1947 have now been turned into an internally displaced minority and a large body refugees in Arab countries and in exile elsewhere while the Jewish settler colonialist has through state sponsored violence and ethnic cleansing turned itself into a a majority, one cannot avoid agreeing with a Palestinian youth who is quoted to have observed recently that: “I don’t have any hope in the international community, I only have hope in us, the Palestinian people.”
What is happening in Ukraine right now as we sit here, comrades and friends, does suggest that it is high time Africa’s youth, join Asia’s youth and the youth of Latin America in seeking to revive the Bandung Spirit of the 1960s, as it has been pointed by an illustrious son of India, the Executive Director of ActionAid India, a retired international member of the Governance Board of ActionAid Tanzania, Comrade Sandeep Chachra, who recently, commenting on the current Russia invasion of Ukraine observed that: “The world has too many challenges to deal with for war and conflict to add to the burden of problems crying for solutions. The global solution to war and conflict can only be achieved if the international processes and structures put in place to create peace and equality are made just and effective.
This calls for a greater voice for the people of the Global South. A democratic United Nations and an effective movement of the Global South inspired by the Spirit of Bandung are the most effective ways to create and maintain world peace.”
Comrades and Friends
Ladies and Gentlemen
Let me conclude here by saying:
Long Live the Struggle for Self Determination by the Palestinian People!
Long live the Youth of Palestine who have refused to have memories of their stolen land erased for good as the settler colonialists desires!
Erase fear and Ignorance among us.
Long Live the Struggles of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America for true Self Determination!
Long Live the Struggles of the Youth of Africa, Asia, and Latin America who seek to revive the Bandung Spirit of the 1960s!
Thank you for listening
Asante Sana.