Daily Times

“It is not the strength but the duration of great sentiments that makes great men.” This axiomatic quote of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), the German philosopher-poet underlines the overwhelming importance of consistency and persistence in any honourable struggle. Persistence and constancy eventually succeed.

Black Africans suffered immeasurably in an apartheid era South Africa, and there must have been many who vowed to undo that abhorrent system of injustice and struggled against it, but it was Nelson Mandela and his comrades who succeeded. The secret of his success was persistence of great sentiments; others failed because their sentiments, though intense, lacked the consistency that accompanied Mandela’s struggle. Mandela remained incarcerated for 27 years, 18 of which he spent in the notorious Robben Island prison. Classified as a D-group prisoner, he was allowed a single visitor and one letter every six months. He could walk the length of his cell in three paces and when he lay down his feet touched the wall, while his head grazed the opposite wall. In February 1985, President P W Botha offered Mandela his freedom on condition that he ‘unconditionally rejected violence as a political weapon’. He refused saying, “What freedom am I being offered while the organisation of the people remains banned? Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts.” He persisted as did the brave people of South Africa and eventually, the racists were defeated.

Mumia Abu-Jamal was born as Wesley Cook on April 24, 1954. Now aged 58, he is presently incarcerated; he was sentenced to death on December 9, 1982 for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He survived two execution dates, in August 1995 and December 1999. After umpteenth retrials, in December last year, he was sentenced to life without parole.

Abu-Jamal had formed the Black Panther Party’s Philadelphia branch after ‘white racists’ and a policeman beat him up for disrupting a George Wallace for President rally in 1968. He says this experience forced him into the Black Panther Party and he assumed responsibility for authoring information and news communications but left it in October 1970, yet remained under the FBI surveillance until 1974. By 1975, he was pursuing a vocation in radio news casting and was known as ‘the voice of the voiceless’. Before his arrest, he was a member of the Black Panther Party, an activist, part-time cab driver, journalist, radio personality, news commentator and broadcaster. At the June 1982 trial, Jamal initially represented himself but this facility was withdrawn as Judge Albert Sabo, who reportedly during a conversation regarding his case said, “Yeah, and I’m going to help them fry the nigger,” declared that he was intentionally disruptive. He was gagged, so to say. The jury after three hours of deliberations unanimously awarded him the death sentence. The biased jury and judge of this flawed trial meted out ‘white man’s’ justice.

In Balochistan, the Pakistani state has now dropped even the pretence of justice and extra-judicial killings are the order of the day. On May 28, tortured bodies of seven abducted Baloch including Mohammad Khan Marri and his brother, sons of Baazi Pirdadani, whom I knew well as a refugee in Afghanistan, were found.

Abu-Jamal’s spirit, in spite of three decades of imprisonment and with a death threat hanging over him until recently, is unbroken and he continues to resist injustices. His determination and struggle are truly inspiring. The lesson being that submission to the oppressor enemy is disgraceful while resisting him is the most honourable course for those who struggle for their rights.

Mumia’s defiance is apparent when he says, “I spend my days preparing for life, not preparing for death…They haven’t stopped me from doing what I want every day. I believe in life, I believe in freedom, so my mind is not consumed with death. It’s with love, life and those things. In many ways, on many days, only my body is here, because I am thinking about what’s happening around the world.” This means if you allow the enemy to dictate the way you think and react to his oppression and allow him to control your thought processes then oppression becomes doubly destructive as it paralyses your mind.

Mumia demonstrates his fighting spirit in his writings. He says, “When a cause comes along and you know in your bones that it is just, yet refuse to defend it — at that moment, you begin to die. And I have never seen so many corpses walking around talking about justice.” Those silently watching injustices become living corpses and this is the most disgraceful thing to do, especially when oppressed humanity desperately needs supporters. Almost thirty years of prison and imminent death did not deter him nor did he allow his mind to stray from its goal. He believes that resisting the system is the most rational act. He says, “Do you see law and order? There is nothing but disorder, and instead of law, there is the illusion of security. It is an illusion because it is built on a long history of injustices: racism, criminality, and the genocide of millions. Many people say it is insane to resist the system, but actually, it is insane not to.”

Verily, it is insane not to oppose oppressive systems that deny people their rights. Compromises with the oppressive system only strengthen the shackles of slavery of both mind and body of the oppressed. All those who talk about working for change within the system are purposely misleading the people from the rightful path of struggle. They do a great disservice to the people and need to understand that by serving the oppressors and colonisers’ system, they sell their people for a pittance.

The Baloch struggle has been blessed with consistency and intensity and that has worked in its favour. This insistent persistence and consistency of the Baloch struggle has unnerved the ‘establishment’ in Pakistan and its reprisals against the Baloch people have reached unprecedented levels. Here the brave determined Baloch do not have the luck that Nelson Mandela or Mumia Abu Jamal have had, though they eventually will have. For the moment, they end up as a tally on the ‘missing and killed persons’ unending list. We should remember that it is people like them who have always been the determining factor for success of struggles everywhere. These brave souls refuse to be living corpses and refuse to give in to oppression and torture that the state employs to break their will.

The writer has an association with the Baloch rights movement going back to the early 1970s. He tweets at mmatalpur and can be contacted at mmatalpur@gmail.com