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The Current Transcript for October 23, 2017

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

BARACK OBAMA: Sasha and Malia I love you both more than you can imagine and you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the White House.

[Sound: Cheers]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Barack Obama's easy way of talking to his kids, even from a podium, even on that historic election night, made him seem like any dad. And it was that ease, that ordinariness that many argue made him so very electable to a wide swath of Americans. But Ta-Nehisi Coates argues that it is that same seeming ordinariness that made the first black president of the United States seem like such a threat to so many others, and that he says, underscores America's problem with white supremacy. Ta-Nehisi Coates joins me in just a moment. And after him: The grandmothers, women from African nations, struggling with their dying children and their orphaned grandchildren fighting superstition with fact.

SOUNDCLIP

And I was trying to unscrew, to unscrew their minds so that they could go for testing, because I knew for a fact that it was HIV AIDS that was killing people.

AMT: It's been more than a decade since the Stephen Lewis Foundation connected grandmothers in Africa with Canadian grandmothers. And in that time many African women have taken on leadership roles to change politics and policies in their communities and their countries. In half an hour, the journey from invisible to Invincible. And follow the money.

SOUNDCLIP

Behind the rise of all of these Islamist groups, there is a very clear business logic that explains why the business community in these environments would end up in this strange marriage.

AMT: While most others who study Jihad focus on ideology, Aisha Ahmed took another look at the bazaars of war torn nations to track how Islamist groups use the local economy to rise up and take control. She says that only by understanding their ties to business, can we begin to unravel their power. Hear her in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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How white supremacy during Obama era helped Trump become president: Ta-Nehisi Coates

Guest: Ta-Nehisi Coates

SOUNDCLIP

If there is anyone out there who's still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, [cheers] who still wonders. If the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer [cheers].

AMT: November 4th of 2008, it was easy to believe that night, after the election of Barack Obama as America's first black president, that the country had turned a momentous page in its history. Mr. Obama's election seemed to represent the country's arrival at a new stage in its fraught and violent history of race. Nine years on, Donald Trump is president and with every week of his presidency he chips further away at the Obama legacy. The author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates has taken a hard look at the U.S. during the Obama years and dissected American politics in the age of Trump. His new book is Called We Were Eight Years in Power, An American Tragedy. And Ta-Nehisi Coates joins me from New York City, hello.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Hello. Thanks for having me.

AMT: What goes through your mind when you hear that and think back to that night when America elected its first African-American president?

TA-NEHISI COATES: Tremendous emotion I guess. I remain, despite everything that's happened, proud of that particular moment. I do believe it was a step forward; it just wasn't the end of history.

AMT: Before Obama's election, how likely did you think it was that America would elect a black president?

TA-NEHISI COATES: In my lifetime?

AMT: Yes.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Slim to none, or none to none. I did not think it was possible.

AMT: And what did it mean for young black Americans to see a black man in the White House?

TA-NEHISI COATES: I mean a minute possibility. You know I think what was true and what remains true is if you're black in America, and you're extremely intelligent, and you work really really hard, and you're fortunate enough to matriculate from some of the most elite institutions in the world, and you know walking down the path of life you are tremendously tremendously lucky, and if the country's falling apart there's a possibility that you could be president. That sounds like I'm minimizing something. But 30 years ago I don't think that was true. So it's a moment. It means something.

AMT: Well possibility means a lot right. To think something is possible is the way it starts to become possible.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Yes. Very true.

AMT: Well you may not remember this but we spoke the morning after that 2008 election. And here is what you had to say about what the election of President Obama would mean for America.

SOUNDCLIP

Gonna be pretty big for white people because I think there are a lot of white people, given that we still live in a segregated country. We don't see African-Americans going about their ordinary business, taking care of their kids, going to Little League games going to PTA meetings etc. It's just the way we live in this country. And I think one of the great things about Barack Obama and his family is the shocking ordinariness of it all, you know his daughter being on the stage waving and saying I love you daddy. Those small things are really really important because I think the key, if we're going to move forward, you know we're talking about integration in a multicultural America, is being able to see each other as human beings. So I think they're very lived humanity, the ordinariness of Barack Obama I think is just going to do big things in terms of race relations.

AMT: Ta-Nehisi Coates, what do you think about that prediction now as you hear that?

TA-NEHISI COATES: I was a different person then. I was a different person. I think you know it might be true that it did do a lot. Ultimately you know there are young people who grew up and the only president they knew - young white people - the only president they knew was a black man. And so maybe it did do a lot but I think what I probably was not accounting for in that moment was the fact that, you know, as I actually write in the book, that there were people who would see that and actually go the other way. That it would be in some sense repellent to them to see that humanity on display. I think I was assuming that there was a large, rather a critical mass of people in the white community who were open. And that's not to say that you know there aren't some, that there are in fact many. But I think the critical mass was clearly on the other side. I mean I think that is the evidence of the election.

AMT: Well essentially you're saying it was that very ordinariness, that was that thing that so many people thought was great but that was the very thing that made other people wary. Can you explain that?

TA-NEHISI COATES: This is a rather complicated answer so forgive me.

AMT: No go ahead.

TA-NEHISI COATES: There is a belief, and I guess you know in this country among black and white people that what white people in this country most fear is the kind of stereotypical, thuggish, angry, you know, black male archetype that is the sense. But throughout history it's been relatively proven that if this country, if certain segments of the white community fear anything, the racist segments, it's the ordinariness of black people. I will be in the book, you know, with Congressman Thomas Miller in 1895 who's arguing against disenfranchisement of black people in the state of South Carolina. He begins his appeal by saying: “We were eight years in power. You know in that time we you know reconstructed the state. We build schools, penal institutions, build institutions for the mentally ill. We created the state by which I mean the actual functions, the governing functions of [unintelligible]. Why would you strip us of the vote?” And W.B. Dubois observing this says: “What Miller did not understand is that if there was one thing white South Carolinians feared more than bad negro government - the idea of a corrupt stereotypical negro government - it was good negro government. It was the very fact that they had done the right thing. They have been so good that actually was the assault on the assumptions of white supremacy. And if you assume you know as I do that white supremacy is core to the country, then it only makes sense then that that ordinariness of Barack Obama, that I was speaking of in that clip, would actually in some quarters not be received with relief, with welcome surprise but in fact it would be received with anger and rejection.

AMT: In other words if white people see black people as just like us, they can't be othered.

TA-NEHISI COATES: That's exactly it. That's exactly it. And I want to be very very clear. I think that there are or apportions you know of white America in this country did see that. You know I mean and were in fact very much in enlightened and changed. I don't want to slight that. It just wasn't enough as it turned out, at least this time it wasn't enough.

AMT: Okay, so when Donald Trump announced he was going to run for president, keeping in line with what you're just talking about, what did you think?

TA-NEHISI COATES: I thought he was running one on the other ray of Barack… I thought he was running on that force, on that idea of that fear of good negro government. And that was fairly clear from the moment that you know he began commenting on Barack Obama's campaign, assaulting the idea that the president was a citizen, assaulting he I did it that he was a Christian and you know buying into this notion that he was Muslim. And there's nothing wrong with being Muslim at all. But in this country you know it'd assume these kind of overtones. You know he's sort of sinister overtones. So you know attacking Barack Obama in that way, and this was not a small belief within the opposition party. You know you could have taken a survey at any point the eight years of Barack Obama's presidency and you would have found majorities pluralities of Republicans that believed the sitting president of the United States was not actually a legitimate citizen. And then after Barack Obama produced his birth certificate he went on to the fact that he didn't actually go to Harvard, that he had done that what he wanted to see is great attacking that ordinariness, attacking you know the American story that Barack Obama was trying to tell. That's in large part, not in the total part, but in large part how he became president running on that reaction.

AMT: In his campaign Donald Trump asked black voters to support him. We have a clip of that. Here he is addressing an audience in Michigan in August of 2016.

SOUNDCLIP

Tonight I'm asking for the vote of every single African American citizen in this country who wants to see a better future. What do you have to lose? You're living in poverty. Your schools are no good. You have no jobs. 58% of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose? [Cheers]

AMT: How do you react to that?

TA-NEHISI COATES: And that's the story I mean, [laughs] that's it right there. That's it right there. That's the stereotype. That's the stereotype. That's bad negro government. You know what I mean? That's what he's invoking. That is not an appeal to for black people to vote. That's an appeal you know to folks that have a difficult time seeing black people as complicated, conflicted, you know beautiful sometimes, ugly human beings. That's it right there. That's it right there.

AMT: So what did the African-American community have to lose by electing Donald Trump?

TA-NEHISI COATES: Oh quite a bit, quite a bit. I mean you can start with the fact of Jeff Sessions as attorney general. During Barack Obama's ten year you know you had Eric Holder and you had Loretta Lynch. You had people who were willing to deal very aggressively with the police departments in America, and how they dealt in terms of policing black people. That's gone. You had you know folks that were very very concerned about the attempt throughout certain states in this country to basically restrict voting. That's gone. You have you now have the very people who bought into myths like voter fraud heading up commission you know under Donald Trump. We lost a lot but the country is going to lose more. That becomes clearer every day.

AMT: Talk to me more about that.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Well we stand on the precipice of you know an existential conflict. We have a president of the United States who thinks it's okay to conduct diplomacy with a rogue nuclear state via Twitter, repeatedly threatening these folks. And that doesn't make them good people either, make a [unintelligible] good person at all. But the notion that you can sort of just bumble your way through foreign policy through these huge questions. We are playing with fire here you know. And it's not just black people who are going to suffer from this one. This is going to be across the board.

AMT: And you make the point that the election of America's first African-American president led to the election of Donald Trump.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Well I would clarify that and say the reaction to the election, because I want to be clear. I don't think Barack Obama did anything. You know I don't think that people have voted for Barack Obama did anything. In other words it wasn't his fault that folks went that way when anything that he necessarily did a subbie you know a black human being occupying the Oval Office. What it was that was the reaction to it. It was the inability to tolerate. It was all the questions that his presence raise. You have to understand like before Barack Obama we had a string of white male presidents and that offer that along with - you know other iconography across the culture – offer you know this idea to white men that any of them could be president, no matter born how low. Whether you were Abraham Lincoln born in a log cabin, whether you were you know the signn of immigrants like John F. Kennedy. No matter where you were from, whether you liked the Bushes you know whether you like Andrew Jackson, whether you are a military man like Eisenhower, the broad panoply the broad Aspra of white American maledom, had access to the Oval Office. And Barack Obama said no you didn't just by the fact of him being there. That broad access wasn't just built on the idea that anybody who you know is like me could be president. It was also built on the idea that certain other people can't be president. There's a negative aspect to identity and the election of Barack Obama threatened that.

AMT: That those other people would have to move over and make room.

TA-NEHISI COATES: He'd have to compete now. Now you have to compete. That really is what the deal is. Now you have to compete you know and that's always been like the goal of white supremacy to reduce competition, to ensure that just by dint of you know certain features and certain ancestry you have access to certain aspects society and other people do not. There's always a class below you. There is always a permanent class of service and peasants, and that it shows you a kind of confidence.

AMT: You have said that Donald Trump's ideology is white supremacy. Take me through that.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Well Donald Trump first really appears in the public record when the Justice Department under Nixon by the way - not Johnson or Kennedy - under Nixon under Richard Nixon sues him and basically finds that he's been discriminating against black people in housing when we had our infamous Central Park jogger case, here in New York where you know five young black and brown were accused of raping a white jogger and it turned out later they hadn't done it. They were completely set up during that trial. Donald Trump called for the death penalty for those young men and continued that call. And continue to believe that they were guilty all through running for president by the way. He's been quoted in biographies saying he doesn't want black people counting his money. He doesn't want black employees out on the casino floor. Workers at his casinos have testified to this. He began his political career in racist birtherism, that was how he started. You don't have Donald Trump without birtherism. It led directly to his election. It was not the only feature but it was one of the main ones during the campaign. A judge hearing this case, he dismissed the judge who was born in American born in America as somebody who couldn't adjudicate a case dealing with him because in Donald Trump's words he was a quote unquote Mexican. And the list goes on. I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out but I don't know what you have to do short of lynching somebody [chuckles] right in front of the White House, before we begin to conclude certain things. The Ku Klux Klan literally marched on Charlottesville. Donald Trump's response to that was there were some good people among those folks. And it is worth understanding what Trump was defending. He was defending a statue of a Confederate General Robert E. Lee. A man who led an army whose sole purpose was to raise a republic based on the enslavement of black people.

AMT: It's interesting because you're making the point that white supremacy is more ordinary or belongs to ordinary individuals. It's not solely people who've signed up to the KKK. That's the point. It's how they conduct themselves daily. It's how they see…

TA-NEHISI COATES: It never has been. It never has been. George Wallace who stood in front of the doors to bar black students from getting into the University of Alabama, he wasn't a member of the KKK. If you know if you read us segregation now speech what you see it was again as him you know... In fact in more decent ways than Donald Trump did in the speech you just played you know opening his arms to black people, telling him he wants both races to be successful. The phrase was passed by the Supreme Court. Separate but equal. That was the phrase. I mean these were not you know Klansmen you know sitting in those robes and so you know the notion that white supremacy only belongs to the Ku Klux Klan, is belied by the historical record.

AMT: So what do you make of that argument that continues and we see it all the time that most people who voted for Donald Trump are not racist. They were hurting economically and they felt Washington was not hearing them.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Well I have no problem believing that most people have voted for Donald Trump we're not racist. I think that's a very very low bar though, because whether or not you personally in your heart was racist- You know we can't say that the majority or everyone or most people have voted for Trump was racist or a white supremacist. But what we can say is just by the nature of how they vote that they had no problem electing one. And I guess I should take comfort in that. I guess I should take comfort in the fact that you're hurting economic - and your answer is not just to elect a racist but to elect a sexist who has been on tape bragging about sexual assaults. I don't know where we are where that's okay. I know the standards of the country hold it up for the black men. That's never been okay. So I have no problem believing that there are people in the world you know who are hurting economically. I think it takes quite a leap to say because I'm hurting economically, suddenly it becomes okay for me to vote for a white supremacist.

AMT: And it's a quiet and peaceful protest yet there's been so much pushback. Why do you think that is?

TA-NEHISI COATES: Because people claim that there's a kind of protest that they would support and they're lying [laughs]. It's never been the case. There is never… There is no black protest… there's no record of successful black protests in this country that was popular among white people, ever, ever. You know people will say well why can't you be more like King or be more like the civil rights movement. Well this actually is done very much in that spirit because as you say it's nonviolent. It's quiet not this disruptive. It is not like you know folks are disrupting the singing of the national anthem or anything. And beyond that we have poll numbers of what people thought of the Civil Rights Movement at the time. It was not popular. Freedom righters were not popular. Martin Luther King was not popular in his lifetime.

AMT: If everyone agreed with that they wouldn't have had to protest.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Exactly [laughs]. Exactly. Exactly.

AMT: Well you also make the point that we look at this point in time. You say an entire political party was organized around the explicit aim of negating the first black president and that's what we're seeing now in the United States.

TA-NEHISI COATES: I think it is the end result of it. I think it is the end result of it. I think that was the polls that the Republican Party after Obama was elected. And I don't think it's a mistake that that process, that folks who wink and nodded at that birtherism, folks who would call the president of the United States a food stamp president, folks that would say the president the United States had never had a real job. Folks that would stand out what the president is addressing a joint session of Congress. And yell “you lie” you know in a way that we'd never seen in terms of disrespect to the office. But I don't think it's a mistake that that process ends in Donald Trump.

AMT: Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama have spoken out against Mr. Trump. How are you interpreting what you're hearing right now?

TA-NEHISI COATES: Well I suspect they will be both speaking out because they see the existential danger. It's clear to them. It's very very very clear to them. And you know obviously I had a huge disagreement with George W. Bush so let's not sanitize that at all. But I think they recognize you know the kind of ignorance that is now in the White House and now setting policy for the country.

AMT: It's interesting because you're talking about an extent existential danger that affects all Americans. You're making the point that essentially a white vote decided a guy with no experience, a guy who's bombastic and completely mercurial is better than that black guy. So we'll do that. And now America's facing the results of that.

TA-NEHISI COATES: To complicated even more is better than a woman, better than a woman who would have continued that black guys legacy. A woman who was clearly prepared and learned and knew more about the workings of the government, because in some respects some of this you know electing the office of the president has to some extent always been a tribal affair. It's not just policy. It's not just you know who has the best policy. This is now endangered us all.

AMT: On that note I want to ask you to take us through something else. You have suggested that too many of us have a static definition of whiteness and this really matters when it comes to who gets to choose.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Well I think what most people think is that there's a pure notion of race, that to be white simply means that you know you have direct European ancestry and to be black is to mean you simply have direct African ancestry. Now we know it's more complicated than that. For instance African-Americans you know effectively are a mixed class of people, not being any choice of their own but are. I mean that's just what our genetic size as a result of being enslaved in this country and mass rape that that occurred during that period of hundreds a of years. The line for being white has always shifted. You know there was a time in this country when to be Irish was not to be accepted within whiteness, to be Italian was not to be accepted within the range of whiteness. It shifts as it needs to shift. It is not a feature simply of biology. It's a feature of what the society decides it needs and what it wants.

AMT: And the politics that Trevor Noah makes the point in his memoir about the fact that in South Africa they would put a pencil in people's hair and if it fell out they weren't black. \ TA-NEHISI COATES: Right.

AMT: It's that kind of construct… To what end?

TA-NEHISI COATES: Well I think to the reification of power. I mean this began as an excuse for why I should be able to enslave people. And now we can’t, even though we don't have enslavement in that sense anymore, we can't let it go. You know we can't let it go. It became the way the society was ordered and certain assumptions came with that beyond the right to own other people. And releasing those assumptions prove it really really really difficult, for instance the assumption of white supremacy, that whites should you know occupy hegemonic positions in this society. It's very hard to let that go.

AMT: Ta-Nehisi Coates, thank you for speaking with me. You make us think.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Thank you so much for having me.

AMT: Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine. His new book is called We Were Eight Years In Power, an American Tragedy. He joined us from New York City. You're listening to the current on CBC Radio One. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti.

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Grandmother movement in Africa fight for AIDS-free future

Guests: Eunice Mangwane, Mariam Mulindwa, Jo-Anne Page

SOUNDCLIP

I lost my daughter of HIV and AIDS leaving me with three children. That time it was very hard for me. I was just weak and deciding why am I living. So by talking to other grannies, I get a spirit of why me? Thinking of dying. And they say we must come together.

AMT: That's just what they did come together. It was a simple idea connecting grandmothers with grandmothers. As AIDS ravaged many African countries a generation was cut down leaving grandmothers to raise their orphaned grandchildren as they grieved for their own children. In 2006 the Stephen Lewis Foundation launched a powerful campaign. It created support groups of grandmothers in Canada and Africa. And grandmothers here made a promise we will not rest until they can rest. Today AIDS infection rates in Africa are down and anti-retroviral therapy has saved many many lives. But grandmothers still cannot rest. There are an estimated 25 million people who are HIV positive in Africa. Many people are still dying of AIDS. The Stephen Lewis Foundation is honoring the incredible grandmothers in a new book Powered by Love: A Grandmothers Movement to End AIDS in Africa. We brought three of those grandmothers together. Eunice Mangwana is from South Africa. Miriam Melinda is from Uganda and Joanne page is from Toronto. Here are their stories.

SOUNDCLIP

[Singing]

EUNICE MANGWANE: It was a very bad time. Because when HIV hit it, their communities, it was like a wild fire that got spread through our communities. Many of the grandmothers, they lost they [unintelligible] many of them lost their only children that they have. Many of them lost their husbands, as well as their daughters, and wives.

VOICE 2: AIDS continues to take a horrendous toll in Africa.

VOICE 3: As we declared global war on AIDS, we will need a war chest to fight it. We need to mobilize an additional seven to 10 million dollars a year to fight this disease worldwide.

EUNICE MANGWANE: People within the communities did not know what was going on. All they knew is that they are children husbands and wives were being punished by their ancestors. They were being punished because they were not doing the rituals in their right manner. Nobody knew in the community that it was AIDS. If there was somebody that knew, whom myself because I was coming from Cape Town. But aides to me also myself. It was something that was at a very far distance. I heard about AIDS very vaguely about AIDS. And when I came to the community. I knew that these people were dying off rituals and their insist and because they are not slaughtering their goats and slaughtering the cows. People need to go for testing and I was emphasizing that as an educator because I knew for a fact that it was HIV and AIDS that was killing people. [Background music starts] I was going through my own loss. There was my daughter, who was HIV also, but luckily for her she was put on to antiretrovirals as well as my grandson. They were lucky they did not die at that time. But family members of mine died.

MARIAM MULINDWA: Everybody was worried about the situation and nobody had the courage. One, the next one is in your house. Two, the second one, the third one is in your house. It was horrible. How can’t you touch your real, your daughter, a dying daughter, a dying son with your hands. Why can't you do that? So they also felt bad. My biological children, who were six and with so many orphans, because I cared orphans from my home where I was born. The twin sisters of my sister all passed on because of HIV.

VOICE 4: It has left more than a million children orphaned. Many of them end up on the streets.

[Children singing in indistinct language]

VOICE 5: The children at this orphanage in Kampala give all their visitors a very special welcome. Like 60 other orphanages in Uganda, this one never has an empty bed or slowdown in the number of children showing up.

MARIAM MULINDWA: I was picked up by an organization to say “can you come, be trained to train others?” So I was like, okay. Instead of mourning instead of crying down at night, they were like “please can you go and save the lives of others?” We said okay. We cannot wait. We've lost our people. We have the bedridden. But still we have to go. At least to stop something, to do something for our fellow group members. That was the day I feel that I had hope.

EUNICE MANGWANE: 2004 we were just recently out of the apartheid era. And there was debates that was going on that they should not be antiretrovirals. And late in 2000, it was then on the shelves the antiretroviral.

VOICE 4: Modern day treatment which stop the HIV virus from multiply as was keeping positive patients alive longer without developing full blown AIDS. This treatment is known as anti-retroviral therapy or art.

EUNICE MANGWANE: But even though the antiretrovirals was there, but the stigma was still there. For instance I have got a daughter and a grandson who is HIV and I'm a leading person. I am the one that is doing it to at clinics and churches, at whatever activity or community meetings that there are. I am the one that was doing the education. Then when HIV knocked on my door, that's when I started carrying the stigma within my community because the question was “How can a child be HIV and she is the one that goes around talking, preaching and teaching people on that go for testing so that you can be put on treatment?”

JO-ANNE PAGE: At first I questioned how could I be of any assistance. I have a lot of learning to do. But when I started hearing about the millions of grandmothers and grandchildren and the loss of family members that it's time to see what I can do. And can I get other people involved? How do I learn about it? And went to the first gathering in Toronto in 2006, listened to stories like Eunice and Miriam are telling us.

VOICE 5: Good morning everybody, thanks to join me now from Cape. I'm 66 years old. I'm a mother of eight but unfortunately I've got four now. 2000 I lost my granddaughter. She was four months old. Oh, in 1999, it was all bad to me. I lost my daughter of HIV and AIDS, leaving me with three children.

JO-ANNE PAGE: The pain, the pain that I was hearing, the suffering, the stigma, the anger. And I think something in me said something has to be done. You have to start small and see where we can grow. And we brought together grandmothers and grand others to work with our sister groups in solidarity across Canada and our sisters in sub-Saharan Africa. Our grannies tell us what they need. I don't know what's needed in their community. Am I going to go in and build a well that they don't need or is going to break down and I'm not there to do anything about it? Their stories is what really got us happening. And we thought okay, we need to raise awareness we need to raise funds and we need to have solidarity with us.

MARIAM MULINDWA: Right now I'm happy to say that I'm not the other Mariam who used to cry, who used to do nothing, who used to go through the struggle, through hoping, through looking for what will come next. I was identified by some people together with our organizations that really about us. I frequent some hospitals. So when they like “Who can do this?” and the other say “Mariam was there is there she can do that.” They give me that role. I said okay. I will do it. Then when I looked for our [unintelligible] because the [unintelligible] under water. It is too much in our countries. So we're like, what can we do we are ever, if they ever see one, the local council, where we stay? People are just corrupt. So those people say “this woman is just with a knowledge. She can do something.” So when there is a post they say “okay, Mariam you come.”

[Music]

MARIAM MULINDWA: These women are looking after their grandchildren. These women they want to get food for the orphans. They are the women who have been left out away. The husbands have died. They are voiceless. So we have to make them have a voice. We are just small. And for us who have the voices we are few. It needs more money to train. It needs more money and organizations to see that more groups are formed. We need our freedom. We needed our rights. So we are like that.

JO-ANNE PAGE: Each time we meet and I hear what they're doing and hear how their voices are being raised and hoping that they're being heard. It's always - and we need more. We need more voices, said to Miriam yesterday: “You're a very strong woman and your voice is there and you're speaking out. And what a change just in that short time since the Ugandan gathering that now this council is happening. And Miriam has a voice.” I said: “What were you like pre 1982? Were you strong? Did you have a voice then?” She said as a young one. Yes. But from 1982 until she became part of her group she didn't. She was crushed. And those are the kinds of things we keep hearing, that women who are wise they've got so much experience they're really phenomenal bright women, who have raised children who are now raising grandchildren. And now to have a voice is something that we want more and more.

MARIAM MULINDWA: Grandmothers in Africa, they gained hope after seeing that solidarity, that when we go to the Canadian grandmothers coming for their first ever grandmothers gathering in Uganda, grandmothers were like [unintelligible] we have a [unintelligible] in front of us.

VOICE 6: We stand here today as the guardians of our country’s future. For years we have struggled to raise our grandchildren and hold together our families and communities. We came together in groups…

MARIAM MULINDWA: So as the grandmothers, Canadian grandmothers came Together with us, it is the power because we're normal. And now are like, okay, we have people who are backing us.

JO-ANNE PAGE: We also know that yes, the ARVs are in many locations. People always say “well they have the medications why aren't things getting better?” Medication doesn't work all by itself. We need water, clean water. We need food. We need shelter.

EUNICE MANGWANE: The antiretroviral can be there. But you don't only the antiretroviral. You go back. You look at the family holistically. What is that? Because it can be there, but if you've got no food, if you've got no clean water, if you've got no shelter, if you haven't got that warmth then to writers won't work. Then they will always say the nurses at the clinic “you are defaulting.” You are not defaulting but you are taking treatment in an empty stomach. You're taking treatment and wondering when the child goes out to school you start wondering what is this child going to eat when she comes back. You know I've got a grandmother within our community that always say to me “you know [unintelligible] what I do when my child goes out to school, or my grandchildren? I’ll start making the fire. And I'll put my three legged pot on the fire and it will cook and cook and I'll just continue putting in water. And when the children comes back from school and they opened the port they've got to hope that there is food in the pot and they'll ask me: “Makulu, that water has been boiling since we came back from school. What is your intention? What are you going to put in?” Then she says that “I take my ropes and I take my scarf and I go to the forest, and I go and pray at the forest, please God, just… just even if somebody can just come past and give me a cup of millet mill, me so that I can put in that pot and give these children.” So it's true what my sister is saying that antiretroviral can be there, but whilst poverty is hitting us, then the medicine will never work. And we as grandmothers that the rest of the grandmothers are looking at it. And you yourself you've got nothing to give them. You keep on promising. You make empty promises for these poor makulus that with all these children. So it sometimes it can be very difficult. It can be very emotional, when you think about the situation of some of the grandmothers because myself and my dear sister we might be okay. What about the thousands of grandmothers that is not okay.

[Singing in indistinct language]

AMT: Three grandmothers and community activists brought together by the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Eunice Mangwane from South Africa, Mariam Mulindwa from Uganda, Jo-Anne Page from Toronto. They are featured in the book Powered by Love: Grandmothers Movement to End AIDS in Africa, will post photos of the grandmothers gatherings, over the years at cbc.ca/thecurrent. Stay with us. Coming up in our next half hour money makes the world go round, an author Aisha Ahmed says that's as true for jihadist groups as it is for anyone else. Hear what she has to say about following the money trail from the market stalls of the bazaars and cities in conflict zones around the world, to the jihadist groups who rise up. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio 1, Sirius XM, online on cbc.ca/thecurrent, on your podcast and on your radio app.

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Follow the money to understand why Islamist groups succeed, says Jihad & Co author

Guest: Aisha Ahmad

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. You're listening to The Current.

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[Sound: Gun fires]

NEWS CASTER 1: American backed Syrian fighters say they liberated the city of Raqqa from ISIS.

REPORTER 1: We witnessed them celebrating on the streets of Raqqa. They were in a victorious mood after a four month long battle.

[Sound: gun fires]

NEWSCASTER 2:The stupidity and the evil at the Haqqani Network's kidnapping of a pilgrim and his heavily pregnant wife engaged in helping ordinary villagers in Taliban controlled regions of Afghanistan…

[Sound: Shouting in indistinct language]

NEWSCASTER 3: It bears all the whole box of the terror organization Al-Shabab. They haven't claimed responsibility, I must stress that, but it is by far the deadliest bomb attack in Somalia's history.

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AMT: Well from the defeat of ISIS Raqqa, Syria to the release of the Canadian hostage Joshua Boyle and his family from the Taliban linked Haqqani network, based in Afghanistan, to the bombing in Somalia that filled the streets with protests against al Shabaab, these various militant Islamist groups and jihadist organizations across a wide geographical region may be connected by extremist ideological ties. But there's another important thread running through them as well, according to Aisha Ahmed. And that threat is the money that funds the groups. And it begins in the market stall. Aisha Ahmed is an assistant professor of political science she is director of the Islam and global affairs Initiative at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. She's also the author of Jihad and Co.: Black Markets and Islamist Power. And Aisha Ahmed is with me in Toronto, hello.

AISHA AHMAD: Thanks so much for having me on Anna Maria.

AMT: I've been to markets in conflict areas in different parts of the world, but where I might see a cacophony of colorful fabrics and spices, you pick out the beginnings of a trail of funding for Islamist organizations. How does that trail start in a bazaar?

AISHA AHMAD: You know when you walk through that bazaar Yeah it's absolutely it's the silk fabrics and the spices and what not but there's more to it. At this point in my life I can tell you I can see the price of war on every single one of the price tags in the bazaar. I can see the costs of war. because you also know that in a conflict zone that means that there are multiple armed groups that are controlling territory. And so imagine yourself as a businessperson. You're trying to move things from point A to Point B to point C. That means that you have to pass through multiple different types of protection rackets. That means that as you enter into warlord A's territory, you're entering into that protection racket and that means that you know what as a business person, how are you going to secure your goods? You're going to be paying at checkpoints. You're going to be paying taxes directly to those warlords. And what I've tracked over the course of my career is the cost of doing business in these conflict zones. And so right now the whole world is looking at places like Somalia and Afghanistan and Iraq as ISIS are being pushed back. But the truth is that the rise of all of these groups in these conflict zones has a very clear business logic behind it. And so the cost of doing business in conflict zones actually drives these hidden business elites in these environments to build a relationship with Islamists that helps finance their rise to power.

AMT: And they have to build this relationship in order to continue to be business people, in order to continue to make money to feed their families.

AISHA AHMAD: So let's imagine that you and I are trying to do business in two different areas. Let's imagine that I'm in Kabul and you're in Kandahar and I've got goods that I'd like to sell to you, but in order for me to get my goods to you I have to pass through three or four different warlords ethnic warlords, in order to get my goods to you. That means not only am I paying protection money to the guy who's running the turf that I live in but in order to get it through the next one I have to make a partnership with that person. And then you'll have to pay taxes to your warlord. And then that level of ethnic and tribal fragmentation in a context of civil war, gets really expensive for us because that just means we just paid three times the amount of taxation. Now here is where Islamists can do something that other types of armed groups can't. And that is that they can come to you and me and say “look you are in Kandahar I'm in Kabul but we both have in common Islamic identity. And so therefore buy into our protection racket” and they can charge us a lower rate across the board. And why is that. It's because they appeal to a larger identity group than the narrowly defined ethnic and tribal factions that predominantly govern in these types of conflict zones. And I can tell you that speaking to businesspeople in Mogadishu what they said was for every $100 we were paying to the warlords, we could pay $35 to the Islamic Courts Union to remove them. That was back in 2006. And so behind the rise of all of these Islamist groups there is a very clear business logic that explains why the business community in these environments would end up in this strange marriage with Islamists that seem to have very different types of interests.

AMT: And you make the point that that we are not only talking about guns and bullets we're talking about rolls of fabric and bags of sugar.

AISHA AHMAD: It's kind of ridge to talk about legality and illegality in places where there's no rule of law. And so the same folks who are you know trading in sugar and in rolls of fabric might at some point find themselves transporting a convoy of medication. Maybe some of that medication is counterfeit medication. So there's a whole spectrum of commercial activities from what we would consider to be licit to in the gray zone to the complete black market. So I mean we look at conflict zones and we imagine that it's all poverty and destitution, people living in refugee camps and you know you and I've probably been to a lot of those refugee camps. And so yes there is poverty and there is destitution. But you know for a savvy business person when the state fails there are huge opportunities to make money, in both licit and illicit trade because the regulations are gone. There is no rule of law. But what you have to do in order to succeed in this game is you've got to be able to move your goods, and that's where navigating the roads and navigating the security environment becomes the primary consideration. And that's where Islamists can really do well. You have deep knowledge of these markets particularly of a gun market near Peshawar in the tribal regions of Pakistan. When did you first go to that market?

AISHA AHMAD: Oh dear. Well I was actually a little girl. I mean that sounds totally inappropriate. But the truth is that you know this story has been something I've been living with for my entire life. My family are from Peshawar Pakistan, border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. And you know the war started in Afghanistan before I was born and my family were part of the merchant class. When I was a little girl my grandfather who was a kingpin of the business community in Peshawar, and that business community was primarily a trading community all the way back to the Silk Road. You know my ancestors were involved in the camel caravans that pass through those mountains. And then when the state emerged that became complicated and that those business communities were not interested in paying taxes. And so a nascent smuggling industry started to emerge in which they were selling things, like tea and clothes in sacks of sugar, but avoiding customs duties. And the Pakistani state allowed that just in order to maintain peace with the unruly border region. But then after the Soviets entered into Afghanistan, we have all heard that story from Charlie Wilson's War, about to have the United States and the Pakistanis made a covert deal that they were going to back the Mujahedeen to you know stand off against communism. And how were they going to do it. The Americans were not going to drop military convoys and weapons directly into Afghanistan. They needed a way to smuggle them in. They made a secret deal with the Pakistani intelligence community that what they would do is supply the weapons and then the Pakistanis would take them over that unruly border region. Now who in that unruly border region knew how to smuggle goods? It was that same business community.

AMT: It was your grandfather and all his business associate.

AISHA AHMAD: Absolutely. I grew up watching men with their suitcases of cash, crates of guns. My grandfather's stately manor in Peshawar was across the street from an Army base. And I remember the big commanders would come to the door and how very polite and respectable business meetings with my grandfather about moving supplies. And there was also adjacent to Peshawar, a town called Darra Adam Khel, which yes I very inappropriately played and when I was a child and that was an arms manufacturing town.

AMT: They would do knock offs essentially.

AISHA AHMAD: Absolutely.

AMT: A total little factory town.

AISHA AHMAD: And what a Mujahed could do is kill a Soviet fighter, take his gun, give that weapon over and then they'd study it, examine it, and then create a replica. And then you could come back with not only the Soviet weapon but also 10 replicas. So absolutely I grew up sort of bearing witness to things that were defining in the war. The intersection between the violent conflict and the economic environment.

AMT: Well let's look at some specifics then. So first of all the emergence of the Taliban under the very kind of thing you're talking about. Remind us then the situation in Afghanistan at the time that the Taliban emerged.

AISHA AHMAD: Well you know that was one of the bloodiest periods in Afghan history. We just had 10 years of brutal Soviet occupation and a resistance that had been funded by the United States. And the nature of that resistance had been organized in a decentralized way. Now after they defeated the communists and the Soviet Union collapsed then everybody forgot about Afghanistan, and those different warlord groups started to fight over Afghanistan in what became a very brutal civil war. And so we see an extreme level of fragmentation along ethnic and tribal lines.

AMT: So the very thing that you're talking about being able to move goods from point A to point C has to go through all of those factions.

AISHA AHMAD: And it's stalled trade all the way back to Karachi port. No one could move because think about it; if I've got to pay 40 checkpoints between Jalalabad and Kabul, by the time my goods get to Kabul, I have to offload those taxes onto the price and then no one is going to buy. And so therefore you don't sell. And so the business community was incredibly frustrated with the rate of taxation that it was paying. And this is the point where they started to make a strategic decision in which they needed to get themselves out. And it happened…

AMT: This is the business elite essentially making a strategic decision.

AISHA AHMAD: This is the trading community, the smugglers and the traders, the business class that we're moving goods across borders and that includes both licit and illicit goods. That's sugar and that's heroin. That community that was overpaying along the roads was getting fed up. And in 1994 there was this this moment, and there is the true story and then there's the story that everybody believed. And the story that everybody believed was that there was a young girl who had been kidnapped by one of the local commanders in Kandahar and was being gang raped off the side of the road. The community then went to a local mullah named Mullah Omar. And so Mullah Omar who became the leader of the Taliban got together a handful of his students or Talebs and then stormed the base, freed the girl and hung the commander from a barrel of a tank, and then paraded him through the streets saying this is what will happen if you molest Afghan girls again. Now I've talked to members of the Taliban. The reality was much more mundane than the story and tragic. But you can imagine how much people wanted the heroic rescue story to be real.

AMT: So the heroic story of Mullah Omar it becomes emblematic of his respect and how his religion is something you can trust that he becomes a trustworthy person as the leader of this new group the Taliban.

AISHA AHMAD: Absolutely.

AMT: And so the business elite does what?

AISHA AHMAD: So all of a sudden you have a new player on the ground that is held to a higher standard, a higher spiritual standard than all of these rapacious militias. They started to clear checkpoints in the areas that they held. This won the support of the business class very quickly. So in areas that the Taliban held control they made sure that they did not impose any checkpoints and that they accepted at that point only voluntary donations rather than direct extortion.

AMT: So, suddenly the business community can save money.

AISHA AHMAD: Oh my Goodness.

AMT: And be safe. But they're dealing with Islamists. Drug and gun smuggling businesses aren't particularly Islamic.

AISHA AHMAD: Well you know nobody said anything about the drugs until much later. So if the Taliban and the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia all of these groups, when they're first rising to power they don't say “oh by the way part of our campaign platform is that we're going to make your businesses illegal.”

AMT: But the businesses then, they embrace that religiosity because it speaks to being a person of faith, but they start to become more Islamic as well, do they not? In order to do business with these Islamist groups.

AISHA AHMAD: Actually that relationship of being more Islamic happens far before the Islamists even show up to power. The business community already needs Islam in these environments. So I remember when I said that you know, if I'm in one territory and you're in another and we want to do business we still have to pay multiple taxes. Well how would I even come to a point where I think I can do business with you. I mean imagine. I'm Tajik and you're Uzbek and our groups are fighting. How can I trust that you're not going to run off with the loot.

AMT: If you think I believe the same things you do. If you think I answer to the same God, then you might be willing to trust me.

AISHA AHMAD: Absolutely in fact I was talking to a professor of economics from Mogadishu University and he said, imagine you're at the market and there's one person who's chewing khat. He's high and he's got smoke in a cigarette and he looks like he hasn't prayed in 100 years, and there's another guy in a different stall and he has a long beard and got prayer beads out and he looks very pious. Who are you going to trust isn't going to swindle you? And so these are information shortcuts to fill what is an extreme trust deficit. And Islam is not just about piety. There are a set of rules and norms about economic transactions.

AMT: So let's move from the Taliban to the rise of Al Shabab in Somalia. The latest bombing just killed more than 300 people.

AISHA AHMAD: Yes.

AMT: Hundreds more hurt. What does that, first of all, tell you about Islamist militants in the country?

AISHA AHMAD: We've been talking about how business has helped Islamists rise to power and gain a certain type of political capability. And that story tells us about how they can build order. Now that is not the story of what has just taken place in Mogadishu. In fact it's the opposite. So what we've seen in Somalia is a systematic loss of power for al-Shabab. They've lost tens of millions of dollars in taxation revenue from Kismayo port because they were pushed out of that territory. And they've been in decline ever since.

AMT: That's when groups like that fall.

AISHA AHMAD: Absolutely because, think about it, once you lose that kind of money you can no longer pay for your foot soldiers. And so how do you stay relevant on the battlefield? When groups lose territory and revenue, they actually engage in more terrorist style attacks that are cheap, brutal but it's a sign of their weakness.

AMT: So the Islamic Courts Union, which is a religious Islamist organization, rose up in Somalia again under the scenario you describe in Afghanistan. In Somalia they were the ones that brought stability.

AISHA AHMAD: Absolutely. And in fact I would like to point out the Islamic Courts Union is not synonymous with Al-Shabab. It was a very very much, a grassroots and much more inclusive Islamic movement that aimed at reversing what had been over a decade of nonstop clan warfare and fragmentation. You know you had a thriving business community that had grown from both licit and illicit trade and were frustrated with the fact that they couldn't move goods. And so the Islamic Courts came in as a movement to bring together what were literally Islamic Sharia courts that had been providing pockets of governance across Mogadishu, and said “okay, let us create a unified movement.” And what they were able to do is get the buy in of the business class. So they were able to provide better security for less of a cost. 70% of the business community yank their funding from their warlord protection racket that represented their clan group and put it into the Islamist protection racket that they believed could overthrow them. And in six months they took 90% of the countryside.

AMT: It's extraordinary because if you look at - if you look at when ISIS moved into Raqqa and made it their de facto capital of their caliphate. I remember the stories coming out at the time of business people who said “you know quite frankly we can do business again.”

AISHA AHMAD: Yes.

AMT: And they said “we're now we're getting electricity. We're getting water, because when ISIS moved in there the Islamic State Daesh, you know those many names for that organization - they created a facto government. I have actually got a quote here you say “across the Muslim world the Proto state acts as a practical 21st century political alternative to the contemporary failures of nationalism and tribalism.”

AISHA AHMAD: Uhmm.

AMT: So this was a way for people to actually live their lives under that. That's how it begins.

AISHA AHMAD: Absolutely and in the Iraqi and Syrian context, like we're looking at a period of fragmentation and corruption on the part of the government. I mean ISIS got its start in Mosul in Iraq. And the people of Mosul they were fed up. They were forced to pay to different groups that were both non-state armed groups and also the Maliki government's armed forces that were extorting themselves. And so that creates an incentive for buy in - the idea that you could pay taxation to one group as opposed to 10 different groups - absolutely fueled the rise of Daesh. Now that said, they have really really lost favor with people now because they have taxed the heck out of everybody.

AMT: And they're very brutal.

AISHA AHMAD: Yes. I mean no one is sad to see them leave.

AMT: But this raises the other question. At some point, what looks like a safe way to live and a way to operate can all turn again.

AISHA AHMAD: I think about it myself because I I've spent time in in a number of conflict zones and I can say that there is a moment in which you fear in your body that any rules are better than no rules. If you have a complete anarchy and no one is constrained in any way then there's nothing I can really do to protect myself. But there a there's a system of rules even if I don't like the rules that at least I can think “okay how do I play by them so I can keep myself alive?”

AMT: So I can survive and feed my children.

AISHA AHMAD: Absolutely. But very quickly across the board you see that there is discontent. The Islamic courts weren't in power for very long, but the business community themselves as soon as they realized “oh you're banning khat and cigarettes. Wow that sucks.” But what happens is once they've pushed out their warlord competitors, the ethnic and tribal factions and have established a monopoly on force created a pro-state, you don't have an exit option anymore.

AMT: To what extent then do people blame business elites? They will hold them responsible for the rise of Islamist groups.

AISHA AHMAD: You know what's remarkable about these business elites is that they're pragmatists not ideologues. And so they're pretty much going to vote with their dollar where they have the opportunity to do so, in such a way that helps advance their economic interests rather than their any particular ideology.

AMT: So that suggests that should another kind of thing come in, like when ISIS is routed or when something comes in that is seen as fair and not corrupt, the bulk of the elite population or the population that controls the commerce will be happy to go along with it. That it's not such a big lift on that end.

AISHA AHMAD: Well actually I think that's the great hope of the story in my book. And that is that because these elites are pragmatists, there's a huge opportunity for peace building that we don't currently think about. And so why is it business elites find themselves in bed with Islamists. It's because the alternatives are really corrupt and are not efficient. We tend to think of corruption as sort of a side effect of political intervention. Okay well let's try to put a Band-Aid on it as opposed to a fundamental factor in the conflict dynamic itself. And so if you have a heavily corrupt government that isn't controlling its armed forces you are creating the conditions for jihadists to succeed. Whereas if we invest heavily in ensuring that governments are functioning, those are the sorts of interventions that can be made that have a huge effect. In fact we see it in Somalia. In the past year Somalia has been undergoing a remarkable resurgence. And that's because President Farmajo, as his nickname is, has taken certain efforts. For example, paying the armed forces centrally and on time so that they don't have to loot, so that you don't have that kind of corruption.

AMT: If we're talking about the revenue and supply and demand. With the rise of Islamist groups, we have to talk about kidnapping and hostage taking and the flow of human beings.

AISHA AHMAD: Absolutely.

AMT: But I want to ask something really specific because the Haqqani Network just released The Boyles, after holding them for five years. How does Haqqani fit into what you're talking about?

AISHA AHMAD: This is a long standing Taliban affiliated jihadist group, and it is not only involved in kidnapping for ransom - which it absolutely is - and also kidnapping for political leverage, which is really what the Boyle family story was about. But also you know other types of illicit activities as well. And so you know they tax and participate in cross-border illicit activities. But absolutely we can see that the Haqqani network, which has been responsible for attacks across Afghanistan, is a group that the Pakistanis had sort of kept in a back pocket.

AMT: Well it's interesting because the other takeaway I have from your book is that that no one operates in a vacuum. And in the case of Haqqani we see these Pakistani forces come in and free The Boyles, and there's business and then there's geopolitics and business and how they collide. And so there's a geopolitical angle to this as well.

AISHA AHMAD: Absolutely. I mean we can't look at the release of The Boyles in a geopolitical vacuum. I mean let's take a look at how Donald Trump has been speaking about the Pakistanis leading up until this incident. And think about the fact that Pakistan has very long needed a U.S. alliance to maintain its balancing interests in the region. And so when Donald Trump turned around and said “well we're going to be very tough on Pakistan, and Pakistan's not you know reliable” I can guarantee to you that there were people in Islamabad who were taking that very seriously thinking about how such a shift could affect their geostrategic interests. Now that said President Trump has needed a win so badly that the Pakistanis saw this as an opportunity to give him one. So releasing Boyle, even under pressure, you know this was an opportunity to give Trump exactly what he needed. And the Pakistanis got what they wanted out of it, which is to say “we're out of the dog house We're back in the good books.”

AMT: So you are trying to help us understand that if you follow the money if you look at the black markets and the regular markets, we will understand more about how Islamists come to power.

AISHA AHMAD: Absolutely in fact what you need to understand from the ground level is that you know on the outside everybody's talking about ideology and identity politics, on the ground level everyone is talking about money. And so the whole conflict dynamic, the rise of Islamist groups, the fragmentation of those groups is about the market dynamics at ground level. And that means that we need to understand, not only how corruption factors into those market dynamics, how when we show up with large sums of money to save a country that we're actually fueling and creating new war economies, and that as smuggling communities that are well entrenched are evaluating their interests. They're going to vote with their dollars too. And so understanding the war economy is crucial to understanding these sorts of conflict dynamics.

AMT: Thank you for your work. Thank you for taking us through this.

AISHA AHMAD: Thank you so much for having me on.

AMT: Aisha Ahmed. She's an assistant professor of political science and the director of the Islam and global affairs Initiative at the monk school of Global Affairs at the U of T. Her book is called Jihad and Co.: Black Markets and Islamist Power. She joined me in our Toronto studio. That's our program for today. Stay with Radio 1 for Q. Tom power will be joined by Nova Scotia rock musician Matt Mays. Remember you can always take the current with you to go on the CBC Radio app, free from the App Store or Google Play. Now after hearing the African grandmothers earlier on our program we'll leave you with a song by South African singer-songwriter Vusi Mahlasela. He dedicates his song "Thula Mama" to all women - and his grandmother especially. This was performed live in Tanzania. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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[Indistict language]

Through the mist of tears in your eyes

On my childhood memory

I know the truth in your smile

I know the truth in your smile

Piercing through the gloom of my ignorance

There is mama lying down sleeping

Very ill and heart crying

Wondering wondering wondering

What is this world coming to

Is it right

That such small children must feed for themselves

Is it right

Mothers struggling in this uncertain world

Is it right

Heaping trouble on an old lady’s head

Is it right?

Thula mama thula mama

Thula mama thula mama

[Indistict language]

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