The following is taken from Elikya Ngoma’s presentation at the July 12, 2021 webinar, titled “Haiti: Global Black Revolution,” hosted by the African People’s Socialist Party.
HAITI—On Wednesday, July 7, 2021, at approximately 1:00am Haiti President, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated at his residency, and his wife Martine Moïse was left in critical condition.
The news came as a shock to the world and especially to the people of Ayiti (Haiti).
There immediately began to be a lot of questions raised about this assassination: who did it and why? Who would have access to his house? Where was security? Was security in on it? How did anybody find out? Who took Martine to the hospital?
Perhaps, the biggest question of them all was: given that in October 2019 Moïse began to rule by decree and on January 13, 2020, Moïse announced his dissolvement of the Parliament of Haiti; also, given that Moïse previously fired the Prime Minister and two days before his assassination he appointed a new Prime Minister, who had not officially taken office; who now runs the country?
Lastly, there were also questions raised about the day itself: how will the people react? What about the “gangs?” What is Port-au-Prince, in particular, like right now? “What’s next for Haiti?”
We started to receive a bunch of inconsistent “details” about the assassination. Over the next few days, different lies were being said, including lies about there being “chaos” in the country—when that had not been true.
The country was pretty much still and quiet, even the streets of Port-au-Prince, which normally is full of a lot of resistance and protests.
There were also lies about the “need for the United States and the United Nations’ ‘Peacekeepers’ to come into the country to keep ‘stability.’”
Jovenel Moïse’s presidency was one of neocolonialism, lies and deceit
Former Haiti president Jovenel Moïse was the presidential candidate of the Parti Haitien Tèt Kale (PHTK) [Haitian “Bald Headed” Party], whose campaign included promoting him as “the Banana Man” who was going to do good for Haiti by reigniting our economy via agriculture and other production that previously sustained us, as well as promises of things the people of Ayiti should already have, such as, decent roads and 24-hour electricity.
His presidency was protested against by the people of Ayiti from the very beginning. Long-story-short, Jovenel Moïse was a neocolonial leader and a representative of white power in black face.
He was not a martyr nor did he “die for the country,” as some petty bourgeois forces in and out of Haiti are beginning to characterize him.
There has been much speculation as to why Jovenel Moïse would be assassinated, including alleged internal problems within the PHTK.
It has been generally assumed by most people that the United States was involved in the assassination.
It could be for a number of reasons, including that sometimes the imperialists use you and once you’re not useful anymore, they just do what they have to do with you.
In struggle against oppression, there is no sympathy for the oppressors
There has been a mixed response, at least after the first day of shock, about how we should “feel” about the assassination of Jovenel Moïse and that as “Haitians,” we should still be mourning, because he was “still our president.”
“He was someone’s husband; he was somebody’s father—three kids now have no father, so we should be ‘humane’ and feel sorry” about his assassination.
On the plantation, colonial enslavers were also people’s husbands, and they were also people’s fathers, but the way they function in our communities, in our countries, so many [other] “husbands” and “fathers,” are victim to their regime.
It’s not in our interests to feel any kind of sympathy when a colonizer or neocolonizer or any kind of puppet dies, because they are here to keep us in oppression. They are here to keep us colonized. They are the extension of white power in our communities and in our countries.
If you are going to be feeling sorry because this one died, or that one died, you might as well give up the struggle against oppression as well as the struggle for revolution.
There are those who wanted to see him out of power saying they would’ve just preferred if he was not arrested but taken to court and tried: “all the money that he has stolen, all the lies that he has told the people, that he be tried the ‘just’ and ‘principled’ way.”
You’re talking about Haiti, where you have hundreds of thousands of African people who are in prisons, who have never seen a judge or trial at all, because they’ve stolen somebody’s chickens, or goats or cows. This is the same kind of judicial system you are expecting to give Jovenel Moïse or any of these neocolonial puppets a trial that’s right by the people.
In addition to that, Jovenel was making a move to rewrite the constitution and one of the things he was proposing is that a president cannot be tried for something he did while he was in office. We just would’ve never seen any kind of results.
There was no question of him being brought to justice, there also is no question of “Justice for Jovenel” now that he is murdered.
I have seen some organizations who were on the ground, not revolutionary organizations, during different struggles of the past few years in Haiti writing statements sympathizing with Jovenel and his family; it’s just very confusing.
I always end every single article that I write for The Burning Spear with “Koupe Tèt! Boule Kay!” “Cut Heads! Burn Houses!” This is the slogan that Jean-Jacques Dessalines introduced to the Revolution that was being waged in Haiti between 1791 and 1803.
All of the oppressors and anybody who sides with them have to go.
When Evelyne Sincère was kidnapped, raped and murdered as a result of the “gangs” that Jovenel Moïse himself sponsored to terrorize the country and to try to shut down the resistance of the people that has been going on, Jovenel tweeted “the police have only one job, which is to keep the ‘bandits’ out of harm’s way.”
This is the person people are trying to champion as someone we need to feel sorry for, but we say there won’t be any of those kinds of emotions over here.
White media continues to slander Haiti
Ever since I was young, any article I have ever read about Haiti begins with “Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere” or “Haiti, the poorest country in the ‘Americas.’”
White media never tells you that Haiti has been robbed and looted ever since the Revolution. Haiti has been made to pay, literally, for having the Revolution.
The white world united against Haiti and forced Haiti to pay France reparations for the loss of “property” they lost during the Revolution and the “property” they were referring to was African people—ourselves.
Haiti has paid over $90 billion, in today’s gold price, to France.
They also don’t talk about the United States that came into Haiti and stole every piece of gold that was in the Haitian treasury and brought it to New York City—so when you’re talking about Haiti being the “poorest country in the ‘Americas’,” or “in the Western H e m i – sphere,” that is a part of the propaganda. That is just a part of how they want you to understand Haiti and ‘Haitians.’
Even us, who are from Haiti, when we read this, that is information on how they want us to understand ourselves.
Long Live the African Revolution of Ayiti!
Before there was the Vietnamese Revolution; the Russian Revolution; before there was Cuba, there was Haiti; There was Ayiti. There were African people.
African people made the first Workers’ Revolution in the world in Ayiti. This was a twelve-year process of relentless struggle; extremely organized struggle; revolutionary struggle; and at the end, Ayiti defeated three European superpowers, which included the British, the Spanish and finally the French.
After the Revolution, Jean-Jacques Dessalines said, “any African, anywhere in the world, if you make it to Haiti, you will be free.” He understood the question of the African Nation.
He also sent Africans from Ayiti into other parts of the world; the U.S.; other islands, other places in the Caribbean and what they call “Latin America” and “South America” to wage struggles; to train people and bring an organized process to the revolutions they were trying to make there. This is Ayiti!
This is the real Ayiti that the media does not want to talk about, because when you talk about Ayiti that way, it informs black people of not only what we really are and what we’re capable of, but what we need to do today and what our solutions are.
Our struggle is one international African struggle and that is what we have to be forging today. We have to be making this revolution!
Before I came to the African People’s Socialist Party, I was a “Haitian Nationalist.” I was very serious and passionate about Haiti, coming from a family from Haiti, speaking Kreyòl (Haitian Creole), everything I knew about Haiti, etc.
I was glad I was eventually introduced to the theory of African Internationalism that taught me that if I want to see victory for Haiti, I have to see victory for all of Africa. Haiti’s victory is not going to be separate from any other [African] place in the world.
As significant, great and wonderful as what Ayiti did the first time in 1804, we’re not going to be able to do it again by ourselves this time. We have to tie our struggles.
Other African people have to stand in unity with the Africans of Ayiti. We have to shut down all kinds of U.S. intervention; shut down all of the slander and the disrespect, even the way Africans from Ayiti ourselves are treated. All of that has to be rejected.
We have to recognize [all of] that as white power, and if we’re going to say we’re standing up for “Black Power” then we have to stand up for Africans in Ayiti too.
I’m making a call for African people, everywhere, to join the African People’s Socialist Party. Adopt the theory of African Internationalism as your own. Join the African People’s Socialist Party at APSPUhuru.org!
Koupe Tèt! Boule Kay! Uhuru!
