Welcome to the Ota Benga Alliance!

Sat, 04/07/2007 - 08:35 |


(c) Mumia Abu Jamal
Find out more about Ota Benga

Welcome! We are the Ota Benga Alliance for Peace, Healing and Dignity in the D.R. Congo and beyond, located in Berkeley, California and Kinshasa, D.R. Congo.

Who was Ota Benga? A Congolese man, brought to the United States to be exhibited at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. He was an Mbuti (a pygmy), about 4 feet 8 inches tall, put on display at the Fair’s Hall of Man along with an exotic collection of indigenous peoples from all over the world. Ota Benga was exhibited next to a group of Native Americans that included Geronimo.  read more »

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Latest from the DRC

And now they have decided that DRCongo could be, just like property, written off [1]

Sun, 04/26/2009 - 05:16 |

Jacques Depelchin is CAPES Fellow (2007-9) (Brasil) and Co-founder of Ota Benga Alliance for Peace, Healing and Dignity (www.otabenga.org). This is a response to an article in the March 2009 issue of Foreign Policy, “There Is No Congo,” written by Jeffrey Herbst (Provost of Miami University in Ohio) and Greg Mills (Director of the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation).[2]  read more »

Á propos du débat autour de la différence entre la véracité et la verité-processus-cum-verité-procédure générique.

Fri, 01/30/2009 - 00:59 |

1. En fin de compte le débat porte sur les modèles conceptuels pour réussir la réconciliation avec vérité. L’espoir est que cette réussite ouvre la voie à la solution durable de la crise congolaise.  read more »

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Recent Posts at Ota Benga Alliance

Approaching Brecht, by Way of Africa

Fri, 01/30/2009 - 00:42 |

I have not seen the play. I don't like the title, but I do like what is being attempted and the idea that what women have gone through in Africa can be brought into a play. It is a step.

The next one, I think, will happen when plays are written straight from the lives or the stories (as Prof. Micere Githae Mugo once told me--see Silences in African History, p. 9) which "refuse to be written" because the young girl who could not do the assignment (of talking to a MauMau veteran) had been raped by the very person she was supposed to go and talk to. He had raped her after he came back from one of the concentration camps set up by the British under the MauMau. There, he had been tortured and, as a consequence, lost his mind.--Jacques Depelchin  read more »

En cette fin d'année

Thu, 01/29/2009 - 18:55 |

Pour celles et ceux qui, envers et contre tout
Luttent dans un temps immortel que
Vivent les immortelles pulsions de l’humanité
Libérée des amarres séculaires visiblement
Et invisiblement ancrées dans l’esclavage
Dans une abolition avortée par la colonisation
Sous les couleurs de la civilisation
Préparant, le savions-nous,
Une triomphante globalisation  read more »

Case of the Zoo Pygmy Exhibited a Familiar Face of Human Nature

Thu, 01/15/2009 - 05:37 |

Basest Instinct
Case of the Zoo Pygmy Exhibited a Familiar Face of Human Nature

By Ann Hornaday
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 3, 2009; C01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/02/AR200901...

It's not unusual for a minor, obscure historical figure suddenly to bubble up into the zeitgeist. (Remember the year of two Truman Capote movies?) But the inspiration for what might be the most arcane cultural reference of 2008 turned out to have particular, grievous resonance for me. His name is Ota Benga.  read more »

Back and Forth - From Africa to Haiti to Gaza - Fidelity to Humanity

Wed, 01/14/2009 - 06:44 |

BACK AND FORTH
FROM AFRICA TO HAITI TO GAZA:
FIDELITY TO HUMANITY

Jacques Depelchin

First , not quite, but we have to start somewhere,
There were the Arawaks, the Caribs and the Amerindians
Then their land became known as Hispaniola,
As Saint Domingue, as the economic jewel
Of French overseas possessions
Thanks to Africans kidnapped, chained, shipped
Processed, codified, stamped as property
While always knowing they belonged
To no one but humanity
And through fidelity to humanity
Turned Saint Domingue into Haiti
Fraternity, equality and liberty
Their only motto  read more »

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