Police Reportedly Shoot and Abduct Swaziland Communist Amid Protests Against Africa’s ‘Last Absolute Monarchy’

Eric Agnero joined Toward Freedom‘s board on May 14. He is a journalist and political analyst from the Ivory Coast, specializing in U.S.-Africa affairs. At CNN, he covered the 2010-11 Ivorian post-electoral crisis as a West Africa correspondent. He also has reported for Voice of America in Washington, D.C. Having experience in corporate and state-run media outlets has helped Eric understand the gap they leave behind for ordinary people. Aside from his journalistic experience, Eric has worked as communications director at the African Union. Having first moved to Vermont in 2012, he recently returned after several years working for organizations in Africa. Eric now is involved in community media projects with the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, Media Factory, CCTV Center for Media & Democracy, and Vermont Institute of Community and International Involvement.

Here’s what he had to tell Toward Freedom about the role of the media and what’s next to cover in Africa.

What got you interested in joining Toward Freedom’s board of directors?

I started by writing about Africa for TF. Then I realized that my stories could miss authenticity as I am far away from the continent, and could no longer navigate accurately the facts and nuances. I thought it would make more sense for me to be in a position where I can foster a better ownership of the generation of stories about the continent by the journalists on the ground.

You started off working in U.S. corporate and state-run media in the 1990s. How did those experiences develop your understanding of how the media influences public opinion?

Working on that side of the media spectrum has given me the advantage of measuring the impact, as the media in question have a well-defined purpose for which they will constantly re-adjust, especially regarding the subsequent inclination or realignment of the target audience.

What are most media outlets missing when it comes to covering Africa?

When it comes to Africa, most media—especially from the Western world—cannot depart themselves from the Judeo-Christian/Caucasian supremacy philosophy. Africa is always treated by the Western world as the poor infant that needs food, clothes and education. And most Western journalists orient their story with that idea of a plagued continent, where there will always be a dictator who maintains their people in poverty. This might be right, but they fail to report that the former colonial powers and the United States groom most dictators. But, most importantly, that the state of the African continent is in large part the result of Western malign influence and the continuing dwelling of the spirit of the 1884-85 Berlin Conference.

What story should Toward Freedom cover that corporate media has ignored?

The corporate media doesn’t cover the stories of those who are fighting to unroot the colonial and imperialist powers from the continent. The stories of successes in alternative economic, political, and social endeavors that are re-writing history and projecting the so-called “dark continent” of Africa into a bright future. Toward Freedom should therefore hear the stories of journalists from Africa who are part of this movement.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch.

ATLANTA, United States—At least 23 protesters have been charged with domestic terrorism amid a week of action against the construction of “Cop City” in Atlanta, a proposed $90 million police training complex. Atlanta police detained 35 people and arrested 23 on the night of March 5, they claim, for vandalism against the Cop City construction site and violence towards police. Activists dispute this narrative. While video footage shows a small group torching the construction site and throwing fireworks towards police, according to activists, none of the 35 people detained were detained at the construction site itself. Earlier that day, demonstrators marched, and later attended a live music performance, as part of the larger week of action. Atlanta police detained protesters at these two events, activists report, which were both entirely peaceful.

Activists in Atlanta and across the country have for years opposed the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, dubbed “Cop City”, which was deeply unpopular with residents since its first announcement in June 2021. The proposed training ground would cut down part of Atlanta’s South River Forest (also called the Welaunee Forest) to build, in part, a mock city for police across the nation to practice repression tactics. Activists have been occupying parts of the forest for over a year, which is where the live music performance on the night of March 5 took place.

Those fighting Cop City have now directed energy towards dropping charges against the 23 who were arrested and are facing hefty domestic terrorism charges. One of those arrested was a legal observer for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

This is not the first time that Cop City protesters have been charged with domestic terrorism. Police have slapped these massive charges on protesters following unrest as a response to the police killing of anti-Cop City activist Tortuguita, earlier in February. What is the legal basis for this? Georgia’s domestic terrorism law was passed in 2017 in part as a response to a mass shooting against Black churchgoers in South Carolina, carried out by white supremacist Dylann Roof. The law loosened the definition of “domestic terrorism” from an act intended to kill or injure at least ten people to any felony intended to “intimidate the civilian population” or “alter, change, or coerce the policy of the government.” Many at the time warned that this would be turned against left-wing protesters, rather than white supremacists—a prediction which proved accurate.

Georgia officials such as Governor Brian Kemp are doubling down on the domestic terrorism charges. “Domestic terrorism will NOT be tolerated in this state,” Kemp stated on March 6. “We will not rest until those who use violence and intimidation for an extremist end are brought to full justice.”

Activists and sympathetic press have turned their attention towards dispelling many prominent narratives against protesters, promoted by the right-wing and the mainstream media. One is the ever-pervasive “outside agitator” narrative, that has dogged recent and not-so-recent social movements against police violence, including the George Floyd protests in 2020. This narrative alleges that those behind such movements are not from the communities that they are protesting in, and are instead being sent in by shadowy or dangerous groups.

However, although all but two of the 23 charged with domestic terrorism are from outside of Georgia, activists accuse Atlanta police of strategically only arresting those who are from out of state to bolster the narrative. Police detained 35 but only arrested 23, and activists allege that those additional 12 people were weeded out because they were in fact from Atlanta.

“Simply because the police have chosen to systematically arrest people from out of state, doesn’t mean that what they’re saying is the truth,” said Reverend Keyanna Jones at an Atlanta interfaith clergy press conference on March 6, following the mass arrests. “I am a daughter of East Atlanta. I still live in East Atlanta. I don’t want Cop City,” Jones continued. “My granny owns a home that she’s been in for almost 50 years in the heart of East Atlanta Village. She does not want Cop City. My neighbor across the street does not want Cop City. The teachers at my daughter’s school do not want Cop City. And we are all from the community.”

The local organization Defend the Atlanta Forest emphasized, “It is not illegal to travel for a protest. It is not illegal to travel for a music festival.”

The Atlanta Police Department is also claiming that lethal violence came from protesters, not police, stating, “officers exercised restraint and used non-lethal enforcement to conduct arrests.” “The illegal actions of the agitators could have resulted in bodily harm,” APD stated. However, in one clip taken in the Welaunee Forest, an officer is heard announcing, “come forward with your hands up or you are going to get shot. I don’t know how else to put it, you’re going to get hit with a bullet.” Activists also claim to have heard police say, “I swear to God I will f-cking kill you” and claim that a state trooper pointed a gun into a children’s bouncy house.

Accusations against protesters made last week also echo the same accusations made by police against Tortuguita, who was murdered by Georgia state troopers on January 18. Police claim that Tortuguita fired first at officers, injuring one. However, recently revealed body camera footage heavily implies that this injured officer was shot, accidentally, by police themselves. “You f-cked your own officer up,” a police officer is heard mumbling following gunshots. Activists still demand that more footage be released regarding Tortuguita’s murder.

On July 9, the government of Rwanda said that it had deployed 1,000 troops to Mozambique to battle al-Shabaab fighters, who had seized the northern province of Cabo Delgado. A month later, on August 8, Rwandan troops captured the port city of Mocímboa da Praia, where just off the coast sits a massive natural gas concession held by French energy company TotalEnergies SE and U.S. energy company ExxonMobil. These new developments in the region led to the African Development Bank’s President M. Akinwumi Adesina announcing on August 27 that TotalEnergies SE will restart the Cabo Delgado liquefied natural gas project by the end of 2022.

Militants from al-Shabaab (or ISIS-Mozambique, as the U.S. State Department prefers to call it) did not fight to the last man; they disappeared across the border into Tanzania or into their villages in the hinterland. The energy companies will, meanwhile, soon start to recoup their investments and profit handsomely, thanks in large part to the Rwandan military intervention.

Why did Rwanda intervene in Mozambique in July 2021 to defend, essentially, two major energy companies? The answer lies in a very peculiar set of events that took place in the months before the troops left Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda.

 

Billions Stuck Underwater

Al-Shabaab fighters first made their appearance in Cabo Delgado in October 2017. For three years, the group played a cat-and-mouse game with Mozambique’s army before taking control of Mocímboa da Praia in August 2020. At no point did it seem possible for Mozambique’s army to thwart al-Shabaab and allow TotalEnergies SE and ExxonMobil to restart operations in the Rovuma Basin, off the coast of northern Mozambique, where a massive natural gas field was discovered in February 2010.

The Mozambican Ministry of Interior had hired a range of mercenaries such as Dyck Advisory Group (South Africa), Frontier Services Group (Hong Kong), and the Wagner Group (Russia). In late August 2020, TotalEnergies SE and the government of Mozambique signed an agreement to create a joint security force to defend the company’s investments against al-Shabaab. None of these armed groups succeeded. The investments were stuck underwater.

At this point, Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi indicated, as I was told by a source in Maputo, that TotalEnergies SE might ask the French government to send a detachment to assist in securing the area. This discussion went on into 2021. On January 18, 2021, French Defense Minister Florence Parly and her counterpart in Portugal, João Gomes Cravinho, talked on the phone, during which—it is suggested in Maputo—they discussed the possibility of a Western intervention in Cabo Delgado. On that day, TotalEnergies SE CEO Patrick Pouyanné met with President Nyusi and his ministers of defense (Jaime Bessa Neto) and interior (Amade Miquidade) to discuss the joint “action plan to strengthen security of the area.” Nothing came of it. The French government was not interested in a direct intervention.

A senior official in Maputo told me that it is strongly believed in Mozambique that French President Emmanuel Macron suggested the Rwandan force, rather than French forces, be deployed to secure Cabo Delgado. Indeed, Rwanda’s armies—highly trained, well-armed by the Western countries, and given impunity to act outside the bounds of international law—have proved their mettle in the interventions carried out in South Sudan and the Central African Republic.

 

What Kagame Got for the Intervention

Paul Kagame has ruled Rwanda since 1994, first as vice president and minister of defense and then since 2000 as the president. Under Kagame, democratic norms have been flouted within Rwanda, while Rwandan troops have operated ruthlessly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A 2010 UN Mapping Project report on serious human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo showed that the Rwandan troops killed “hundreds of thousands if not millions” of Congolese civilians and Rwandan refugees between 1993 and 2003. Kagame rejected the UN report, suggesting that this “double genocide” theory denied the Rwandan genocide of 1994. He has wanted the French to accept responsibility for the genocide of 1994 and has hoped that the international community will ignore the massacres in the eastern Congo.

On March 26, 2021, historian Vincent Duclert submitted a 992-page report on France’s role in the Rwandan genocide. The report makes it clear that France should accept—as Médecins Sans Frontières put it—“overwhelming responsibility” for the genocide. But the report does not say that the French state was complicit in the violence. Duclert traveled to Kigali on April 9 to deliver the report in person to Kagame, who said that the report’s publication “marks an important step toward a common understanding of what took place.”

On April 19, the Rwandan government released a report that it had commissioned from the U.S. law firm Levy Firestone Muse. This report’s title says it all: “A Foreseeable Genocide: The Role of the French Government in Connection with the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda.” The French did not deny the strong words in this document, which argues that France armed the génocidaires and then hastened to protect them from international scrutiny. Macron, who has been loath to accept France’s brutality in the Algerian liberation war, did not dispute Kagame’s version of history. This was a price he was willing to pay.

 

What France Wants

On April 28, 2021, Mozambique’s President Nyusi visited Kagame in Rwanda. Nyusi told Mozambique’s news broadcasters that he had come to learn about Rwanda’s interventions in the Central African Republic and to ascertain Rwanda’s willingness to assist Mozambique in Cabo Delgado.

On May 18, Macron hosted a summit in Paris, “seeking to boost financing in Africa amid the COVID-19 pandemic,” which was attended by several heads of government, including Kagame and Nyusi, the president of the African Union (Moussa Faki Mahamat), the president of the African Development Bank (Akinwumi Adesina), the president of the West African Development Bank (Serge Ekué), and the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (Kristalina Georgieva). Exit from “financial asphyxiation” was at the top of the agenda, although in private meetings there were discussions about Rwandan intervention in Mozambique.

A week later, Macron left for a visit to Rwanda and South Africa, spending two days (May 26 and 27) in Kigali. He repeated the broad findings of the Duclert report, brought along 100,000 COVID-19 vaccines to Rwanda (where only around 4 percent of the population had received the first dose by the time of his visit), and spent time in private talking to Kagame. On May 28, alongside South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, Macron talked about Mozambique, saying that France was prepared to “take part in operations on the maritime side,” but would otherwise defer to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and to other regional powers. He did not mention Rwanda specifically.

Rwanda entered Mozambique in July, followed by SADC forces, which included South African troops. France got what it wanted: Its energy giant can now recoup its investment.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest book is Washington Bullets, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.