90,508 Abibisika (Black Gold) Points

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Greetings Dr. Kwesi,

I appreciate your email and what is also a revelation to me as I have been led to believe that you and your wife were “surely” offended by a statement that I never made. As mentioned in my response, “The adverb “surely” expresses certainty based on established fact. The report of the fact-finding committee is devoid of any mention of such an interview taking place. If such an interview did not take place, again, the committee recommendations seem to stem from confirmation bias rather than actually establishing facts.”
What you have shared has let me know that indeed assumptions and presumptions were made rather than substantiation based on “fact-finding” via interview with you or your wife. Per my transcription as also available via video evidence, you made four calls for violence and aggression against African people while saying that we “ought to be better than those that colonised us.”

Timestamp: 15:53-16:30
“One of the things that, I mean, your question really struck me was this whole vigilantism that
we are faced with now and I was wondering whether wouldn’t the best response to that be
violence. Right, so, whether the military move in to stop all their activities rather than political
parties ought to go and negotiate and sit down and think about how they can stop vigilantism.
When we have the security agencies, we have the military, you know, why don’t they just move
in and stop all these activities. Maybe, maybe a good response to vigilantism would be
violence rather than negotiation, or discussion or deliberation.”
Timestamp: 17:09-18:18
“Vigilantes are supposed to be vigilant. Not exactly to take the law into your own hands and
then cause violence and mayhem and all that. So, whilst they do that. And then we’re thinking
about solutions to that. So, I’m not looking at it as colonisation but I’m just looking at the way
they use violence in harassing and violence in trying to cower people into not voting and all
that. And I’m thinking well the better response to their violent behaviour is to aggressively
you know stop the issue rather than saying that politicians should go and meet and discuss and
see how they can go and discuss it especially when they don’t have the willpower to really stop
that. I mean what is the military doing? Do you think if 3 or 4 military men are at the police
station do you think these guys would have the nerve to come and cause violence, no. So, it’s
not that they are colonising us. I’m just that because they are using violence in threatening our
democracy, probably the solution to that would be a stronger aggressive, the military moving
in.
Timestamp: 19:53-20:26
“ I’m just saying the principle that where there’s violence, sometimes the only solution to that
is violence right. And, and, I’m saying that in the context that we have where the vigilante
groups are using violence to um threaten our democracy um probably one of the ways in which
we can respond to that is not political negotiation or asking political parties to go and deliberate;
they are the ones creating the vigilante groups. So really, the best result is not to, for them to
just dialogue about it.” (bold emphasis added)
Thus, we have in writing advocacy of violence. On the other hand, when the subject turned to
our violent colonizers, Dr. Richmond Kwesi had this to say:
Timestamp: 30:29-31:49

“I guess not because I’m married to a white person. Um, but I, think there’s another lesson
there, and one lesson was that we ought to be better than those that colonised us. In our
response to or in our bid to decolonise we ought to do better. And one way of being better is
not to also think and treat the other as an enemy. So if you start with the premise that, well, you
can’t be fighting for us and be sleeping with the enemy then then you’re thinking like the other
person who, who was thinking of us as the enemy and you know raping us or doing bad
things to us but we ought to be better. So, loving her, seeing her is not because she’s white.
It’s just because of the love that we have together. So, if the if the African is going to say well
in terms of decolonisation our relationships everything ought to be us then we’re missing the
point and I think that the latter part of the movie was calling us to be better, not to ape them,
right. So if they did that, if they treated us in that way if they saw we are not human it doesn’t
mean that in our bid to decolonise we ought to treat them the same way right, we ought to
have the better attitude towards that and I think that I don’t see anything wrong with fighting
for or asking or arguing for arguing for decolonisation and marrying a white person or having
relationships with a white person.” (bold emphasis added)

Those present at the event who drafted the petition attached to the original email as well as online viewers expressed their distaste for your advocating “violence rather than negotiation, discussion or deliberation” on the one hand but then following a different line where it comes to our colonisers. However, I accept your apology for doing so as clearly advocacy for such violence and double-standards may be seen by many as un-African and anti-African–especially in light of what has been going on in South Africa for quite some time now. Further, I, for one, would like to thank you for your honesty and candour in letting me know that you and your wife are not behind this as, again, actions were taken on the basis of what was supposedly felt rather than what was actually established as fact. As you have mentioned that you have not seen the report, it makes sense that you are unaware that the particular remark that was deemed to be “offensive” was one that from video and written transcript I clearly never made. The letter that I was sent from the Director stated:
“Additionally, the Committee was of the view that Dr. Richmond Kwesi ‘s wife, who was present at the event. would surely have felt offended by your comments that she was ‘the enemy’ on account of her race.”

In fact, my comment was clearly not directed to you or your wife:

Timestamp: 25:13-26:51
“Frantz Fanon is talking about how envious the colonised native is and how he wants the
coloniser’s house and to sleep in the bed hopefully with the wife. And I think about this in terms
of Frantz Fanon himself being married to a white woman as well as many of the other
liberation leaders. Amilcar Cabral before he got married to who he got married to, he was with
a white woman who he ended up leaving. If you look at Kwame Nkrumah married to an Arab.
If you look at Jomo Kenyatta married to a white woman, just about all of them. And it really
just brings the point about, we mentioned violence other than physical violence, like just this
violence in terms of interpersonal relations and things of that nature. And ultimately how can
someone truly be for Black people when there is a vector of compromise? That vector of
compromise being when we’re all talking about what to do for Black people that this person is
meanwhile ‘sleeping with the enemy.’ When we’re all talking about yes let’s do this for Black
people, this person has taken money from the enemy, or is working for the enemy. That there
are all these different levels by which one compromises. So, I wanted to again bring us back
to the documentary and then deal with, you know, that type of issue. If you have someone
who is married to a white person, at what point in time do the interests of Black people now
transition to ‘Oh, but I have to protect the interests of this white wife’ in the case of Frantz
Fanon and all these other, you know, Black leaders.” (bold emphasis added)
The specific part of the actual documentary “Concerning Violence” that we watched being referenced
here is as follows:
Timestamp: 25:07-25:32
The look that the native turns on the settler’s town is a look of lust, a look of envy; it expresses
his dreams of possession—all manner of possession: to sit at the settler’s table, to sleep in the
settler’s bed, with his wife if possible. The colonized man is an envious man. (Also, Fanon, F.
(1963). The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove., p. 39)

If at African Studies African people are not to discuss this page of the book or this section of the documentary in a discussion specifically about past leaders (and not about you and your wife whatsoever), it is unclear where we are going with regard to academic freedom.

Again, I thank you for letting me know that you were not behind this. At the same time actions were taken within IAS on the basis of statements that were never made and offense that was never taken. I also hope that you understand that this was brought to UTAG due to the Director of IAS ignoring the petition of well-meaning Film Show patrons dated 6th May 2019 and my own letter of 9th June 2019. As IAS-internal procedures have left little hope for due process being followed without subjective partiality or double-standards I look forward to UTAG leadership working towards a resolution on this matter.

Thank you,