By Lucius Gantt

Atlanta Journal Black columnist Cynthia Tucker’s column criticizing Robert Mugabe is a perfect example of why so called major American newspapers need alternative writers. Tucker has gone overboard in trying please her supervisors and publishers so much that she has distorted the current and past African history.

Tucker knows or should know that oftentimes, proper limits have to be exceeded in order to right a wrong. Where would Black Americans be today if Nat Turner and other slaves didn’t revolt and violate slave laws? Where would Blacks be if Rosa Parks didn’t violate customary practices and refuse to give up her seat on the bus?

Where would Cynthia Tucker be if the first Blacks, like myself, who were writers for The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution, didn’t risk their jobs and careers to complain about the lack of Black employees at the once separate newspapers.

In 1983, Zimbabwe, as far as the way the country was ran, was still Rhodesia. Power, money and resources were still in the hands and bank accounts of the African colonizers. Whites in Africa took the land from Africans via the use of violence. Mugabe has attempted to return some of the best Zimbabwe land to the original African owners in a far less violent way.

I visited Zimbabwe not too long ago, and more recently than Tucker, and I didn’t see any white people being beaten and jailed for wrongful reasons as Blacks were in white ruled Rhodesia. The resorts where I stayed were all white owned and the golf courses where I played all had white golfers enjoying themselves.

Mugabe’s redistribution of land ideas may not be the best way to correct past wrongs and two wrongs don’t make a right.

However, the leaders of African nations can’t go to sleep and dream about Cynthia Tucker writing a column urging all white folks and their ancestors in Africa who stole land from Blacks to voluntarily give it back to them.

The Zimbabwe people ran their white oppressors out of office. If Mugabe does not work in the interest of the people, perhaps they will also get rid of Mugabe. Maybe, Mugabe can be replaced with a modern day neocolonialist puppet that will treat Black Africans like former Zimbabwe rulers want Blacks to be treated.

Tucker’s column to me was "eerily reminisent" (Tucker’s words) of how Aunt Jemima would have written about Harriet Tubman and Winnie Mandela!

Cynthia Tucker is entitled to her neocolonialist opinions about how Black leaders now run Africa but it is clear to her readers why she refuses to help or acknowledge Black editorial columnists who have a different perspective than hers. Not all of us desire to parrot the views and opinions of the children and other descendants of slave masters and African colonizers.

Is it possible the colonial chickens have come home to roost at the AJC newspaper? (Contact Lucius at theganttreport@comcast.net)