ZIPAYA Proposal to ZANU PF Women's League

[XXPANTHAXX]

Information Regarding a Proposal to ZANU PF Women’s League to host a
Women’s Conference in Zimbabwe for March 2010, honoring International
Women’s Day

We would like the theme of the conference to be, “The Unification of
Africa Characterized by the Emancipation of Women.”
One of the main reasons that Africa is in the shape that it is in is
because we did not follow the directions of the leader of the African
Revolution, Kwame Nkrumah. The instructions are on the last paragraph
in the book, Class Struggle in Africa.
“The total liberation and the unification of Africa under an
All-African socialist government must be the primary objective of all
Black revolutionaries throughout the world. It is an objective which,
when achieved, will bring about the fulfillment of the aspirations of
Africans and people of African descent everywhere. It will at the same
time advance the triumph of the international socialist revolution, and
the onward progress towards world communism, under which, every society
is ordered on the principle of—from each according to his ability, to
each according to his needs.”
On Independence Day for Ghana, March 6, 1957 President Nkrumah declared
that the independence of Ghana was meaningless unless it was connected
to the unification of Africa. From Nkrumah’s book, Africa Must Unite,
“Ghana has declared her stand in no uncertain terms. We have provid
ed
in our republican constitution for the surrender of our sovereignty, in
whole or in part, in the wider interests of African unity. Guinea has
made the same provision. So have Mali, Tunisia and the United Arab
Republic. Every African must judge for himself which view is the more
progressive and realistic; which is dedicated fully to the practical
needs and interests of Africa, unrestrained by fear of external
pressures; and which reflects the true voice of Africa.”
“The unity of the countries of Africa is an indispensable pre-condition
for the speediest and fullest development, not only of the totality of
the continent but of the individual countries linked together in the
union.
Advancing science, the new technologies, the constant improvements in
modes of production and techniques of management, the economic
realities of this second half of the twentieth century demand large
expanses of land, with their variegated natural resources, and massive
populations, to obtain the greatest benefits from them and thereby
sustain their profitability. Today, those powers embracing large
aggregates of population and earth surface are more capable of full
industrialization….
The greatest danger at present facing Africa is neo-colonialism and its
major instrument, balkanization. The latter term is particularly
appropriate to describe the breaking up of Africa into small, weak
states, since it arose from the action of the great powers wh
en they
divided up the European part of the old Turkish Empire, and created a
number of dependent and competing states in the Balkan Peninsula.”
From Class Struggle in Africa, “Under communalism, for example, all
land and means of production belonged to the community. There was
people’s ownership. Labor was the need and habit of all…
There have been five major types of production relationships known to
man----communalism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism and socialism. With
the establishment of the socialist state, man has embarked on the road
to communism. It was when private property relationships emerged, and
as communalism gave way to slavery and feudalism, that the class
struggle began.
In general at the opening of the colonial period, the peoples of Africa
were passing through the higher stage of communalism characterized by
the disintegration of tribal democracy and the emergence of feudal
relationships, hereditary tribal chieftaincies and monarchical systems.
With the impact of imperialism and colonialism, communalist
socio-economic patterns began to collapse as a result of the
introduction of export crops such as cocoa and coffee. The economies of
the colonies became interconnected with world capitalist markets.
Capitalism, individualism, and tendencies to private ownership grew.
Gradually, primitive communalism disintegrated and the collective
spirit declined. There was an expansion of private farming and the
method o
f small commodity production….
But on the credit side, a new grass roots political leadership emerged
during the independence struggle. This was based on worker and peasant
support, and committed not only to the winning of political freedom but
to a complete transformation of society. This revolutionary leadership,
although of necessity associated with the national bourgeoisie in the
independence struggle was quite separate from it, and proceeded to
break away after independence to pursue its class socialist objectives.
This struggle still continues.”
Neo-colonialism in Africa is the enemy of African people. As President
Toure of Guinea says in his book, Strategy and tactics of the
Revolution, “wherever the CFA, the currency of the French colonies in
Africa is still in use, …wherever the expatriate banks are still
assuming sovereign issuing power, the power of control of the currency,
wherever diplomacy is subjected to the interests of the foreign powers,
wherever education is still not decolonized, wherever Africa has not
yet been Africanized in the ideological sense, and not in the
superficial sense, wherever justice is still governed by values that
are alien to the Nation by the use of codes that are absolutely alien
to the habits, customs and values of the society, wherever women are
still arbitrarily held in an inferior position and prevented from
participating in the evolution of their country in an active and s
trong
manner, wherever the youth are held in an irresponsible position,
wherever lies are still practiced, wherever what is said remains
undone, wherever corruption becomes a rule of authority, wherever
confusion sets in order to always render obscure the options that have
to be materialized, wherever the popular forces are demobilized by the
arbitrariness of the authorities, wherever toxic, counter-revolutionary
and demobilizing films are shown to deduce the People into errors, to
get them into the habit of degrading manners, debauchery, alcoholism,
wherever laziness and absenteeism are encouraged, wherever capitalism
is advocated and praised while socialism is being run down, there is no
doubt that counter-revolution is in power, while Revolution is lacking.
Thus, we must radicalize the Revolution!...The conscious practice of
class struggle has taught us that when the objective conditions of
starting or radicalizing the Revolution present, any combative
organization that does not engage in this combat is exposed to a grave
peril: that of lagging behind the exigencies of the masses that are
ever prepared, and allows thus the recuperation of the defeatist, and
opportunists and falls victim of an enemy offensive…Any organization
that aims to be revolutionary after having created all the objective
and subjective conditions of the radicalization of the Revolution,
ceases to be a revolutionary organization and becomes an erratic
movement doomed to a
bitter failure as such, unless it carries the
determining action at the appropriate time.”
Nkrumah said that staying in these small, weak states is the greatest
danger facing Africa. While in Guinea President Nkrumah said that the
only way that he believed that the unification of Africa would come is
if it was organized from the ground up as opposed to the top down like
the Organization of African Unity or the African Union of today.
President Sekou Toure in the book, “Women in Society” wrote, “Just as
the struggle of African women cannot be waged and pursued outside the
context of the struggle of our Peoples for the liberation and
emancipation of our continent, so the freedom of African cannot be
effective if it does not lead, concretely, to the liberation of the
women of Africa.”
“The liberation of women is the fundamental necessity for the
revolution, a guarantee of its continuity and a precondition for
victory.” (Samora Machel at the Founding Conference of the Organization
of the Mozambican Women (OMM) in 1973).
President Toure, “therefore, conscious of the fact that her social
liberation necessarily came about through the liquidation of foreign
domination, the African woman has participated everywhere in Africa in
a conscious, constant and often decisive manner, in the
anti-colonialist struggle and in the fight for national liberation.
Today, she can proudly lay claim therefore,
to part of this victory of
the people of Africa over the forces of domination, oppression, and
exploitation. By engaging herself actively and courageously in the
recapturing of national sovereignty, the African woman acquired the
impregnable right of participating fully in the functioning of the
sovereign state, the building of the new National as well as the
rehabilitation and expansion of the People’s culture. Together with
women, we have been able to fight and overthrow the colonial regime. At
one time in its history, the Party was called a Party of women. This
zeal shown by Guinean women in the struggle had no sex; it marked the
high degree of incarnation of the ideals of a mass revolutionary
movement against foreign domination.
The capitalist countries of Europe: France, England, Germany, Portugal,
Italy, Belgium, and the United States met November 1884-February 1885
in Berlin, Germany and carved up Africa among themselves into the
present borders, the more than fifty so-called countries that make up
the map of Africa.
Fifteen years later in London, England July 23-25, 1900 our people held
the first Pan-African Conference. The Fifth Pan-African Congress in
Manchester, England intensified the battle for the liberation of Africa
in the postwar period in 1945. This congress called for the
organization of mass political parties to struggle for a socialist
United States of Africa and said we will use force (armed struggle) i
f
necessary. From this congress came the call for every African of
goodwill to join an organization what is working for the liberation of
African people. If in 2009 you are an African and you are not in an
organization then you are 63 years late and if you want to be a
responsible African you must get into an organization because even bad
organization is better than no organization. Any African outside of
organization is being irresponsible and is letting down the African
nation.
Our people used the Fifth Pan-African Congress as a springboard to wage
one of the most relentless struggles against colonialism that the world
has ever witnessed. From 1957 to present we put out the French,
British, Italians, Portuguese, Germans, and the Belgium, etc. In some
cases such as Algeria, Guinea Bissau, Angola, Namibia, Mozambique,
Zimbabwe, and Azania (South Africa), African people took political
independence through armed struggle. The rebellions in the U.S. in 1965
& 1992 in Los Angeles, CA, the rebellion in Detroit, MI in 1967, the
210 cities that were burned between April and July in 1968 after Martin
Luther King was murdered and also the rebellions that took place in
England were all part of the armed struggle for African independence.
When African countries became independent in the 1960’s they became
part of the UN and began to put pressure on the U.S. government about
the ill treatment of African people living in=2
0the U.S. It was in this
atmosphere along with African people in the streets of the U.S.
fighting in the civil rights movement that forced the U.S. government
to make some concessions in the 1960s and 70s.
In Brazil, African people could not even have a political meeting
before our people in Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, and Angola defeated the
Portuguese in Africa through armed struggle. This is a perfect example
of how what happens in Africa affects African people all over the
world.
President Toure,” we often say that it is easier to fight against
colonialism to conquer the freedom of the People, than to fight within
the ranks of the People to re-establish social equality. Indeed, in the
struggle for social equality we are at once the fighter and the
adversary….the exploitation of women by men is so natural that to
eliminate it, the regime of exploitation itself will have to be
attacked up at its very roots. Therefore, there cannot be any true
emancipation of the woman in a bourgeois regime as long as the
foundations of exploitation itself are not liquidated. This is equally
true, obviously, for the colonial regime….In addition to this general
enslavement of our Peoples through colonialism, there were other
practices of domination, exploitation, and oppression to which the men,
in turn, subjected their women. Thus, the woman apart from all the
suffering created or accentuated by imperialist domination, e
xperienced
forced marriage, permanent insecurity at home, repudiation, arbitrary
divorce and premature old age without an guarantee whatsoever…This
makes us believe that the human condition of the woman under colonial
domination, was one of the slave’s slave….”
It must become clear that the Women’s Emancipation movement is not a
movement of women against men, but it is a struggle against capitalism
and exploitation. A quote by the late President Sekou Toure from the
article, Women in Society, underscores this point. “If the women’s
condition as compared to the man’s is the one of the exploited, it is
normal that, representing the most dejected class, she makes the
problems of the revolutionary organization her own problems when she
becomes aware of them.”
To organize African society from the bottom up means to organize the
women of Africa. Organization is the weapon of the oppressed. Every
person must join an organization and the strategy must the organizing
of organizations. It is our goal to become so organized that we can do
in one day what previously took 20 years. The radicalization of the
revolution is the unification of Africa characterized by the
emancipation of women.
It was stated at the African Women and Youth conference in Guinea in
May of 2008 that the biggest problem in Zimbabwe is that there is not a
unified socialist Africa.
The panels that we are sugge
sting are as follows: “The Importance of
Women’s Leadership in the Unification of Africa,” “The Necessity of
Organization for the Unification of Africa,” “Education and
Self-Reliance for the Unification of Africa,” “Solidarity with Women of
the World and World Unity.” May also include a panel on “The Role of
Youth in the Unification of Africa.”

Basic Format of past Conferences
The Conferences last for one or two days at the most.
Everyone is invited who agrees with the objective of the conference.
All speakers are representatives of organizations. Their organizations
should pay for their costs. (transportation, lodging etc.)
The whole Conference will take place in one large room. Panels will
consist of 5-6 panelists (representatives of organizations).
Each panelist will take 10 minutes to speak about their organization’s
work, how it benefits women and youth, the community, society and /or
our nation, Africa in relationship to the panel topic.
We generally have about three panels if the conference is for one day,
about 4-5 if for two days.
We want to allow some time for discussion (audience participation),
questions and answers.
We request that everyone bring literature about your organization to
share with those interested. This will help because we may not have
enough time to say everything you may want to say about your
organization. We also always encourage everyone=2
0attending to be an
active member in an organization that is working for the people because
organization decides everything.
We intentionally have no fee for the conferences because we do not want
the lack of money to be the reason for anyone not to attend.
All organizers are volunteers. No one is getting paid; the Charity
organization is a grass roots organization that has very little funds
and we will not be able to pay anyone’s expenses. The success of the
conferences is based on the people’s participation. We encourage
everyone to be an active part of the worldwide African women’s and
youth movements to struggle for true independence and self-reliance and
become an active member of the African Women’s Charity Organization. We
encourage everyone who becomes involved in the movement to produce more
than you consume in the spirit of self-reliance. We also encourage and
appreciate everyone’s interest, support, and participation.
We start by securing a place for the conference; generally a room that
holds about 150 people. Something very inexpensive and is assessable to
those everyone. We have never paid over $200 for a room and we have
many times gotten the room free of charge. This is one way that we have
kept our costs to a minimum.
After securing the room we make of flyers and get the message of the
conference out as far and wide as possible. It is important for us that
on the=2
0invitation/flyers we give not only the logistics, but
information about why this conference. This is so that the masses can
be politically educated even if they cannot attend. This is why we
consider the conferences a part of a process towards the unification
and independence of Africa, not an end in themselves but a means to an
even greater end.
So you see, the conferences are specifically directed to the
grassroots, primarily consisting women and to those in leadership who
agree with the total liberation and unification of Africa of which
women can come to play the major role.

Looking forward to a new year of struggle,
Rwanda Saleem
AFRICAN WOMEN'S CHARITY ORGANIZATION