Saul, I think some of the time we miss our bearings even when we think we are awake. If you think "Dr" Ayitteh is giving the facts as it is, then I do not see why you should agree with any of what I wrote, because what i wrote is diametrically opposed to his claim. And you know very well that you cannot have two opposing facts. Truth is unity, that is truth is one and NOT TWO!!! Secondly if you think what "Dr" Ayitteh said is the fact then you need to answer the questions I raised about every tom, dick and harry Tanzanian crying his or her heart out for a man said to have forced them out of their homes in the name of villagization!!! Thirdly whatever "Dr" Ayitteh has been writing is not the issue. I am not saying he is a good or bad writer of anything, I am just saying that he is an "intellectual" who has shown thru his article about Nyerere and Nkrumah that he is yet to be educated about Afrika and the world. If he wrote wonderfully on any other matter, why not let him, but that is not the issue, and those writings cannot be used to defend him anyway!!! I have never said that Nyerere or Nkrumah and for that matter any of our leaders have never made any mistake. If you think I ever believed such then you are grossly under-rating me as a human being and a Muslim, for I believe that the only unmistakable being is the ALMIGHTY GOD. If you have been following my writings you would have realised that I always start by alerting us to always self-examine ourselves in order to understand ourselves, understand what we want, understand how to get it, and what are the obstacles in getting what we want, and to understand why up to this time we have been unable to get what we want. If you follow this reasoning then you would detect that I am making a claim that then mistakes must have been committed to have caused us the lack of ability to attain our objective, and then of course those mistakes must have been committed by former leaders. Nkrumah did admit his mistakes as well as Nyerere, then who the hell am I to say they never committed a mistake!!! Fourthly, and I definitely do not want to say this one, but you see any time Afrikans want to stand up and speak their mind and the truth, you have someone get up somewhere and claim: they are racist, subjective, extreme, emotional, communist, seditious, radicals, and they over glorify Afrika, etc etc. These things do not move me. In fact I love them, because I know they called Nyerere and Nkrumah similar names, and they called Malcolm X a racist while they do not call the KKK a racist but a WHITE EXTREMIST GROUP. These are the strategies they use to distract us, but as I said earlier a new youth is emerging in Afrika and no one can beat him down. It is not possible, for we have taken over, and moving towards victory and success!!! Fifthly, only reactionaries and detractors of Afrikan progress take the platform and shout that everything is caused by the colonialist and the imperialist, which people like you say, look they are blaming the whites. We, Pan-Afrikanists do not blame colonialism and imperialism, we expose it. Nkrumah is our first leader to detect that in fact colonialism is not over yet, it has just changed cover, but the structure is in tact. He thus coined the term NEO-COLONIALISM. This new witchcraft works thru multi-national corporations, UN and similar Western-created bodies like the IMF, World bank etc etc , and thru ideologies like globalisation and world trade and democracy, cultural and religious bodies, technical assistance and foreign aid etc etc. I would recommend that you read Nkrumah's books especially: Neo-colonialism: the last stage of imperialism, Towards colonial freedom, Consciencism, Revolutionary Path, etc etc!!! This is my response to you, but I will promise you that we will never allow any "Dr" to infest us will backward thinking, no matter how well he can write. That is his business. When I analyse our struggle today I realise that the fight now is in fact not necessary against the West or anybody, but against the mentality of our people. Now neo-colonialism and imperialism are sitting right in the middle of the Afrikan's brain, directing him to get up and sit down just like that. So the fight is against the mind of the Afrikan. It is a mental battle, and tho' I might abhore the misleading thinking of "Dr" Ayitteh and Ludovich Shirima, but am glad they did think so that we can know the level of our thinking and its direction so as to know how to attack such mentality and quicken its total and final demise for good. It all forms part of the self-examination exercise. So let us think, brothers, so that bad thinking can be weeded out quickly. By the way thanx a' million times for the advice. Thanx madi ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------