Zimbabwe: A Quest for Common Ground

Abstract

those who champion the administration of President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and those vehemently opposed to his leadership and what they perceive as his orchestration of the violation of human rights. There is nothing new about ideological and political differences among African American activists. From the very beginning of the black Odyssey in America there was a split between those who favored returning to and those who believed we had a larger stake in fighting for a place in this new land. A neat snapshot of this contention is readily seen in the ultimate parting of company between Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm, the founders oi Freedom's Journal, the first African American newspaper, in 1827. Cornish, like Frederick Douglass, opposed the emigrationist or colonization movement, which his co-founder Russwurm, not only endorsed, but actively joined, eventually making his home in Liberia. When Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association announced its Back to Africa policy in the 1920s, there was a vociferous outcry of rejection, much of which anticipated the reaction to Malcolm X's declaration of our need to recognize the importance of in world history and culture some forty years later. Why you left your mind in Africa, was a common retort from Malcolm (El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) when his position was challenged.1