Kwame Nkrumah and Reparations

[Im The Truth]

Kwame Nkrumah and Reparations

A favorite slogan of Kwame Ture was "No reparations without repatriation". This is a slogan that aptly captures the link between the relationship of the people and the land in essence it says that African people cannot be repaired, compensated, fully reconstituted without reestablishing the proper link to the land. Kwame and others who use this slogan intended / intend that it be used to help our people understand that the restitution of the state of the African woman and man cannot be achieved without the capacity to reintegrate into the African society, culture and the proper association with the source of African life, the land of Africa itself. Hence any scheme that fails to grasp the fact that the Africans dispersed physically through the slave trade, and Africans still at home who have been alienated from the land by force of arms and associated methods, can only be made whole again by correcting these crimes against humanity, whichmeans that the land of Africa must return to the control and use of the African peoples. To recover the land Africans must wage a war against those who have placed us in this abysmal position, wemust combat and overcome the enemies of human progress, who while primarily of European stock, also includes many African collaborators, Asian fellow travelers and even a minority segment of Native Americans who have betrayed the interest of their people / ancestors and whole heartedly thrown their lot in with the oppressors and exploiters. To put it bluntly we Africans must engage in an uncompromising class struggle that uses every political means (including the force of arms) if we want a life suited for human beings. In effect reparations, true reparations is identical with Pan-Africanism. There can be no reparations without the establishment of Pan-Africanism.

So in this very real sense Osagyefo was always talking about reparation, although to my knowledge he never used the word reparations in any major work of his, he has obviously clearly defined the relationship of the global African population and the African land mass; he has specified the need to recover the land and the attachments thereto, to wit: Dr. Nkrumah wrote,

“We must have every inch of our land and every one of our mines and industries.�
Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare, p 80

and he has speficied the material value of the land in many of his works.

He did write about restitution of the society we would need for a quality of life befitting human beings, a life that can only be made possible by the proper ideological (and hence organizational ) approach: As we understand reparations it is the restitution of the African existence…this restitution can only be achieved through ideological development and organizational proficiency. He wrote:


"Our attitude to the Western, and the Islamic experience must be purposeful. It must also be guided by thought, for practice without thought is blind. What is called for as a first step is a body of connected thought which will determine the general nature of our action in unifying the society which we have inherited, this unification to take account, at all times, of the elevated ideals underlying the traditional African society. Social revolution must therefore have, standing firmly behind it, an intellectual revolution, a revolution in which our thinking and philosophy are directed towards the redemption of our society. Our philosophy must find its weapon in the environment and living conditions of African people. It is from those conditions that the intellectual content of our ideology must be created.The emancipation of the African continent is the emancipation of man. This requires two aims: first, the recognition of the egalitarianism of human society, and second, the logistic mobilization of all our resources toward the attainment of that restitution."

.p 78
Consciencism

When he spoke of our resources he was clearly speaking of both human and inanimate capital such as the minerals in the ground, and we know from his definition of the African nation being inclusive of African people/black people across the world (See the last chapter Class Struggle in Africa); and in his inclusion of the Africans diaspora as part of the forces that were part of Africa's revolutionary politico-military struggle. (See Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare his discussion on the resources for the AAPRA, specifically the section on revolutionary outsiders.)

So, I think if you develop your theme in this general way you will be able to illustrate Osagyefo's position on the question of reparation with great clarity, even though he never used the word reparations. I am here for you if you feel the need to discuss this more.


Roy