Ikaweba gave his all for progress and human rights for all Africans

Few have lived a life as transformative and bold as Dr Ikaweba Muhajir Bunting (74). Ikaweba died in Arusha, Tanzania after three months of battling cancer in a Nairobi hospital.

He organised some of the most significant moments in recent Pan-African history. As he is laid to rest today, what can we take from his life that can carry Africa forward into the future?

Born in 1949, Ikaweba grew up in Compton, California, and some of the toughest streets in America at the time. Long before the movie “Straight out of Compton” internationally established Compton as one of the hip hop centres of the world, poverty, substance abuse, gang and police violence stalked African American youth like Ikaweba daily.

White racist supremacy permeated all institutions. As a teenager, Ikaweba was forced to choose between cutting his afro and being dropped from the university football team. Like world football icon and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick 20 years before, he chose the latter.

The 1960s and 1970s were also times of revolutionary purpose. Like the African anti-colonial movements, the non-violent civil rights movement and black revolutionary organising grew across American neighbourhoods and universities.

He changed his birth name to Ikaweba (the one who cannot be conquered), founded the first Loyola University Black Student Union and expressed solidarity with African liberation struggles and the US-based Pan-African movement. Heeding Mwalimu Julius Nyerere’s call to the Pan-African diaspora to offer their skills to African socialism, he permanently relocated to Tanzania.

Working with the Danish Volunteers Services and Oxfam, Ikaweba played pivotal roles across East Africa and beyond. The 1980s and 1990s were transformative moments for Africa. New revolutionary armed movements seized state power in Ghana, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, and Uganda among other countries.

One-party and authoritarian states like Kenya were facing intense pressure from citizens to democratise and govern by the will of their people. Tanzania and Mwalimu Nyerere were pivotal to these processes and Ikaweba chose to place himself here.

In the 1980s, he supported the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners in Kenya and a decade later, advised Kenyan civic organisations how to stop the state-instigated clashes in the Rift Valley and beyond.

He rapporteured for Julius Nyerere and then Nelson Mandela in the Burundi peace negotiations that declared a ceasefire and a fresh start for the Burundian people. By the time the accords were signed in 2000, over 300,000 human beings had been killed.

Following Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem’s death in 2009, he was appointed the Global Pan African Movement Secretary General while volunteering for the Nyerere Mwalimu Foundation. From these two institutions, Ikaweba responded to the Rwanda and Burundi genocides, the independence of Namibia and majority rule in South Africa and the 7th Pan African Congress in Kampala.

Today, a new wave of imperialism, global diplomatic double-speak and domestic authoritarianism and endangers the lives of millions in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Gaza, Lebanon and elsewhere in the world.

Like Tajudeen, Ikaweba would remind us to “organise, not agonise”. Paralysis of analysis may write interesting dissertations or articles but will not make the world safer or more dignified.

With the loss of such a leader, grief and a profound sense of Africa’s loss is predictable. Let us remember that the brightest stars are best seen in the darkest of nights. Ikaweba’s agency not those of others, shaped his life’s choices. For us to live, really live, we must chart paths others avoid or dismiss. If we do this, our actions today shall just paint vivid memories that inspire not just our families but current and future generations also.

Let us grieve Ika not only because we miss his wise advice, critical thinking, sense of humour and compassion for human rights and humanity.

Let us grieve for a life well-chosen and choices well lived. Our condolences to four generations of Ikaweba’s international family, friends and fellow activists.