Seun Kuti and Bro. Diallo Tackle the Leadership Crisis Holding Africans Back on ‘Bird’s Eye View’

In his now-widely famous last letter — addressed to his wife while he was being held in prison shortly before his assassination — Congo’s first Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba asserted, “Without dignity there is no freedom, without justice there is no dignity and without independence there are no free men.”

It’s apt that Lumumba is the focus of this week’s ‘All Praises Due’ segment of Bird’s Eye View, as hosts Seun Kuti and Diallo “Bro. Diallo” Kenyatta discuss the nuanced dichotomy between conquest and justice. At the start of their conversation, Bro. Diallo suggests that revolution — the show’s core premise — can also be called “counter-conquest,” which leads to Kuti referencing Cointelpro, the Counter Intelligence Program by the American government aimed at going after pro-Black movements and other organizations with ideologies deemed too radical.

Kuti adds that radical ideas and practices are the basis for successful revolutions, citing Vietnam’s independence crusader Ho Chi Minh, iconic Chinese Marxist theorist and leader Mao Zedong, South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), and the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which fought for independence from the Portuguese. To the latter African examples, however, Kuti acknowledges the gross failures of both movements-turned-political-parties after the initial success of their revolutions.

Kuti paraphrases the quote, “Africans are good at winning the war but losing the peace,” which is largely accurate within the context of decades of armed conflicts in many African countries, a perpetual leadership crisis, and the continued foothold of authoritarianism. They cite Africans’ uneasy relationship with the political class and the military, and how coups are sometimes supported under the idea of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Coups almost always end up as conquests, with a new vanguard simply taking over to lord its will over the people. “We lose so much that we don’t know what victory looks like, so we find saviors or messiahs — or point to internal conflicts of the elites and think we have a stake,” Bro. Diallo says.

Similar to the previous episode, Burkina Faso’s head of state, Ibrahim Traore, is under the microscope due to comparisons with the iconic Burkinabe revolutionary Thomas Sankara. While Sankara was a devout socialist with a consistently stated commitment to the people, Kuti and Bro. Diallo take aim at what they see as Traore’s conquest-driven actions — like constantly postponing elections — despite earning adulation for his opposition to Western powers.

The relationship of the Alliance of Sahel States — comprising Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali — with Russia is also scrutinized, taking into account Russia’s strongman Vladimir Putin, who has been in power since 2000, and is known for quashing dissent and persecuting groups.

Kuti leads this week’s ‘All Praises Due’ mini-lecture on Lumumba, tracing the path of his spirited efforts to end Belgian colonialism in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He touches on key points in Lumumba’s life, from attending the All African People’s Congress in 1958 to leading conversations that culminated in Congo’s independence in June 1960. There’s the customary dig at the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who played a key role in not just ousting Lumumba from office, but also in his assassination barely seven months after independence.

Seko was one of the defining African leaders following the wave of African independence, a definitive example of how African elites plunged (and continue to plunge) the commonwealth of their countries. Kuti and Bro. Diallo tie the idea of black excellence to the African elites of the 1970s, again underlining the commonalities of the issues of the global black community across decades.

Watch episode 3 of Bird’s Eye View here.