Cynthia the Great; The former US Congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney, took Paris by storm during the ommemoration of the Rwandan genocide in early April. Her message: "those committed to truth and justice should speak out about things that matter.".

"I was invited to be in Paris at this very special time by people who know more of the truth about the tragedies that have engulfed the Great Lakes region of Africa, and indeed, all of Africa, than is known by the general public," Cynthia McKinney told participants at a packed conference at the French National Assembly organised by Club Afrique, an association of African intellectuals in Paris.

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Speaking on the theme, "Plunder and Armed Conflicts in Africa: From Bill Clinton to George W. Bush", the blunt-speaking McKinney urged Africans and other concerned citizens of the world "committed to truth and justice to speak out about things that matter, to ensure that the crisis situation in Africa and the continuing plunder of the continent's resources by Western corporate and financial interests and their nefarious African collaborators, are exposed".

According to her, "genocide in Rwanda matters, state sponsored terrorism against the African people matters, private profits at the public's expense matters".

She echoed Martin Luther King's sentiments when she observed that the US was blessed with power beyond belief but had used (and still using) that power to make others powerless. And nowhere was that powerlessness more poignant than on the African continent where, she said, the "created situations of crises" perpetuated poverty and enriched multinational companies and their African cliques.

Citing a BBC report in 2003, Mckinney said "there was one gun for every 20 Africans on the continent and that the European Union and the United States were the number one and two small arms exporters to Africa".

She then asked: "Don't Europe and America have more to give Africa than weapons of death and destruction? I know we can do better for the African people and the global community, I know my country can do better and am working to make it so."

For her, striving to achieve this aim, means taking a stand for truth and justice. "Those of us who love Africa," she said, "grapple everyday with the fact that justice delayed is justice denied, and there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right. Truth is our cause, we will not be quiet and we are right."

The former Congresswoman who is seeking a comeback in the November 2004 elections, said she had come to Paris specifically to join hands and minds with Europe and Africa to form a triangle for truth: which comprised America, Europe and Africa.

"We are truth seekers, we belong to no race, we belong to no country, we belong to no clan or tribe. We belong to the community of man that refuses to be silenced when the truth is inconvenient," she said.

She promised to join Club Afrique, and said if elected to Congress again in November, she would lobby for like-minded "folks" in Congress to join the club in order to form a powerful force for positive change in Africa and the world, and particularly in US policy.

She lamented the fact that "the black civil society in the US which should have been the vanguard in putting pressure for positive change in US-Africa policy, has been beaten out and bought out".

In response to questions from participants on whether Africa would ever be respected by the world community, the outspoken Mckinney gave a flat "No".

"Until such a time that Africans act, until Africans demand it, because where there is no demand, power concedes nothing. Africans demanded a free South Africa and it happened, a free Rhodesia, Angola, Mozambique ... and it happened."

She urged Africans to seek to know, to inform themselves widely in order to fully grasp the magnitude of the geopolitical interests at stake in a fast changing world.

She, however, warned that it was not simply enough to know the truth and be informed, but to act in positive ways to help change Africa's situation for the better. "The actions that Africans undertake will determine Africa's future and destiny," she added.

According to her, no one should have the right to determine the destiny of others. "If people have no right to determine for themselves who they are, who their leaders are, their policies, their destiny, to me that is genocide," she said to thunderous applause.