On ZANU-PF...

[rebelAfrika]

What the Party's position re: ZANU-PF?

We say that ZANU-PF remains to be the genuine vehicle of the African liberation struggle in Zimbabwe. But keep in mind...not all Parties remain Parties "of the PEOPLE." The A-APRP has not fully assessed the current state of affairs with the Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG), which was at one time our NUMBER ONE B/SO (brother/sister organization) so we do not say that the PDG "CURRENTLY" represents the African liberation struggle. It's nothing personal against the PDG, it's just the way it is. Same with ZANU-PF. We don't say that they are the "real deal" JUST BECAUSE WE LIKE THEM. It's not personal...it's just the way it is. We say that the situation with Zimbabwe is not only misrepresented by the zionist controlled media, but even the so-called "white left" are confused on Zimbabwe and misrepresent Zimbabwe in their publications. The Black Radical Congress is against Mugabe and ZANU-PF. As much as I respect the BRC, I think they have taken the wrong position on this matter. Could they be getting their information from the so-called "white left?" Don't ask me. The Patrice Lumumba Coalition sent a delegation as a "fact finding" team to Zimbabwe in order to establish an OBJECTIVE report about the situation in Zimbabwe. The report came back in favor of Mugabe and ZANU-PF. Was the Patrice Lumumba Coalition "payed off?" Don't ask me. The primary opponent of Mugabe and ZANU-PF is amerikkka, britain and their lackeys of the MDC. What else can I say? Don't ask me. But according to the information that we in the A-APRP have, and the analysis that we in the A-APRP have made...we support ZANU-PF and Mugabe.

[Tehuti-4]

We say that ZANU-PF remains to be the genuine vehicle of the African liberation struggle in Zimbabwe. But keep in mind...not all Parties remain Parties "of the PEOPLE." The A-APRP has not fully assessed the current state of affairs with the Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG), which was at one time our NUMBER ONE B/SO (brother/sister organization) so we do not say that the PDG "CURRENTLY" represents the African liberation struggle. It's nothing personal against the PDG, it's just the way it is. Same with ZANU-PF. We don't say that they are the "real deal" JUST BECAUSE WE LIKE THEM. It's not personal...it's just the way it is. We say that the situation with Zimbabwe is not only misrepresented by the zionist controlled media, but even the so-called "white left" are confused on Zimbabwe and misrepresent Zimbabwe in their publications. The Black Radical Congress is against Mugabe and ZANU-PF. As much as I respect the BRC, I think they have taken the wrong position on this matter. Could they be getting their information from the so-called "white left?" Don't ask me. The Patrice Lumumba Coalition sent a delegation as a "fact finding" team to Zimbabwe in order to establish an OBJECTIVE report about the situation in Zimbabwe. The report came back in favor of Mugabe and ZANU-PF. Was the Patrice Lumumba Coalition "payed off?" Don't ask me. The primary opponent of Mugabe and ZANU-PF is amerikkka, britain and their lackeys of the MDC. What else can I say? Don't ask me. But according to the information that we in the A-APRP have, and the analysis that we in the A-APRP have made...we support ZANU-PF and Mugabe.

The conditions in Zimbabwe with respect to revolutionary organizations make it obvious that ZANU is the only legitimate vehicle at this time for the liberation of the country. I wonder if people understand just how difficult it is to RUN A COUNTRY. The fact that Zimbabwe struggled for 10yrs under the "willing buyer. Willing seller" referendum to their constitution is perhaps a clue to just how difficult it is. What I mean is that there is clearly legitimate criticisms that can be made of ZANU in Zimbabwe, the ANC is Anzania and indeed even of the great Osageyfo in Ghana. And we, as part and parcel of the African revolution have a duty and responsibility to discuss and become well versed in the achievements and shortcomings of the organizations fighting for the liberation of Africa. "TELL NO LIES. CLAIM NO EASY VICTORIES". I know you know the author of that quote Rebel. The enemy’s attacks are relentless. It is easy to become bogged down defending these attacks that we are unable to still make legitimate criticism of the tactics and positions that we take in order to move forward to liberation.

FORWARD!

[OKULAJA]

I posted this before but I think its pertinent here as well:

http://burningspearuhuru.com/0603_point.htm

POINT OF THE SPEAR
Chairman Omali Yeshitela speaks on the International African Revolution
The following presentation was made on July 25 in London on the first day of the Conference to build the African Socialist International.

Uhuru. I really want to express my appreciation to those of you who have been able to get out today, and to Chairman Luwezi who leads our international work and who is a member of the Central Committee of our Party.

I want to express my appreciation to Comrade Thami Ka Plaatjie, who is the former Secretary General of the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) of Azania, and who is directly responsible for the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) re-establishing a relationship with the PAC after some many years and who is also responsible for allowing us to come back home to Azania. I’ve been there twice in the last six months.

I had an opportunity to speak to the 8th Congress of the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania, and to experience on the ground the terrible betrayal of the African workers and peasants by the African National Congress (ANC). Increasingly I think we’re going to see that there are other formations that will prove equally as bad in terms of betraying our revolution, though they may not currently be in power.

Also I want to express appreciation to Comrade Penny Hess from the African People's Solidarity Committee (APSC) and the comrades who were able to make that trip from the U.S. to come here. We felt it was important to have these comrades participate in this discussion concretely. They represent an aspect of the strategy of our Party to take the African Revolution itself into the territory of the imperial colonial powers inside America.

These are crucial times that we are confronted with as Africans and as people in the world today. A page in history has clearly been turned. We in the African People’s Socialist Party characterize this as the "era of the final offensive." We mean this in historical terms. There’s not going to be one great battle fought on any particular front that’s going to bring imperialism down. But in historical terms, imperialism is in serious crisis, and the masses of people around the world are in a process right now that can destroy imperialism once and for all.

As Africans, we are confronted with serious contradictions. There is a kind of African Exceptionalism that we are often confronted with that is dangerous. This African Exceptionalism often attempts to disregard the experiences of revolutionary struggles of oppressed peoples around the world, to liquidate them and to assume that there is something rather special and different about Africans that makes it unnecessary for us to go through revolutionary processes that other people around the world have had to go through to win their freedom.

It’s an historical problem. We do not live in an era of communal society. We live in an era of capitalism, which was created as a world system. It dominates the entire world. It is the system that conditions all of the struggles that we are involved in everywhere.

We are going to have to deal with this question of class contradictions inside our own communities. I believe this is one of the paralyzing contradictions that we look at in occupied Azania today.

Even in the ‘60s and ‘70s, we could not find comrades from the PAC, who we worked with very closely, who were willing to criticize the African National Congress or Nelson Mandela. Even today we’ve seen leaders in the PAC of Azania who refuse to criticize Nelson Mandela, because somehow it disregards or frustrates some kind of historical, traditional kind of relationship we have as a people. But the traditions of African people today are being affected by the colonial class structures that have been imposed on the whole world, including Africa.

ANC responsible for oppression
Nelson Mandela, should he live long enough, is going to have to be struggled against. The ANC is going to have to be struggled against. They are responsible for terrible oppression of African people. How can we be united with the masses of African people throughout the world and be united with the petty bourgeoisie force that sits on our heads at the same time? They aren’t united with us, they are united with imperialism. They are white power in black faces.

Do we have to wait until these forces betray us, before we know who they are? No, we say that there are ways that we know now. There are social forces at work here. We are convinced of that. That informs our practice.

We believe also that the African Liberation Movement has run into its limitations, whether in Africa, in England, in the U.S. or any other place in the world. There is not going to be an African-British revolution. There is not going to be an African-American revolution. There is not going to be a Kenyan revolution that will liberate the people of Kenya. The fact is that imperialism has a stranglehold on all of us.

All you have to do is look at Africa itself, where all these so-called independence revolutions have led to what? Greater emiseration for the masses of African people than we’ve ever seen in the history of Africa.

So what we need is to unite the revolutionary process around the world. We need a worldwide revolutionary movement, and that is what we’re in the process of doing by building the African Socialist International.

The African petty bourgeoisie cannot do it. I don’t care how much they talk about Pan-Africanism. They cannot do it. Why can’t they do it? Because the colonial borders of imperialism benefit them. They have a material interest in those borders. That’s why Nkrumah couldn’t get these Pan-Africanists to come together.

They said, "Nkrumah wants to be the president of all of Africa." That meant "I can’t be president of Kenya," and "I can’t be president of Liberia," and "I can’t be president of Nigeria," and "I can’t have this little political economy." The only force in Africa that has an objective interest in destroying the colonial borders is the peasants and the working class. That’s the objective basis there.

Africa cannot even have a national economy, the way it is split up now. It cannot even have access to its own resources through these imposed borders. The only way these borders will come down is if the working class aligned with the poor peasantry is in power.

These illegitimate neocolonial governments are going to have to be overthrown, and the African internationalists are going to have to put revolutionary forces down on the ground, in Kenya, in South Africa, in Nigeria, in all of those places where Africans are in the world.

In the process of defeating imperialism, we’re going to have to defeat the petty bourgeoisie. You can’t unite with them. The petty bourgeoisie is a dying social force in historical terms. It has no future. It is only the African working class that has a future.

So we say, "Unite with the future." Someone says, "Well, that is a foreign concept when you deal with issues of the working-class and therefore we shouldn’t use it." The reality is that the working class produces value and wealth. All wealth comes from the consequences of human beings laying our hands and impacting on nature. That’s just an objective reality. So we identify what social forces are in motion.

What are the critical social forces necessary for social transformation? It’s the working class. That’s where the future is. That’s the only social force that can reconcile the contradictions in human society — the fundamental contradiction being the contradiction between social production and private ownership. Anyone ever see a banker in the trenches? It’s the workers who produce, not the Nelson Mandelas and the Thabo Mbekis?

Only seven percent of the formal trade in Africa happens among Africans, which means 93 percent of what passes as trade is simply the looting of Africa. Our resources go to North America, Europe, and increasingly to Japan.

Eighty-three percent of the gross domestic product of Africa goes to pay "debt." That leaves only 17 percent of what Africans produce at the disposal of Africa, and once the petty bourgeoisie takes off its part, the masses of Africans will be lucky if we get five percent. That is the incredible reality that we are confronted with.

International African revolutionary organization necessary
Our movement has to build a revolutionary organization. It is not enough simply to recognize that black people should be together, that we should create institutions that will educate and do all these other wonderful things that I’ve seen talked about at some of these global Pan-Africanist meetings.

The reality is that Africa suffers because of imperialism, and we will only be free as a consequence of defeating imperialism. It is going to have to be taken to the grave by the conscious masses in arms. Imperialism is going to have to be destroyed, and Africa cannot be free independent of that.

We are going to have to fight these guys to get out of here. I don’t care how many other kinds of solutions that you look for. In the final analysis we are going to have to fight. It was the point of a gun that created the conditions for African peoples around the world. We’re going to have to fight our way out of here, and Africans are going to have to come to that conclusion.

We also have to go beyond this situation of seeing ourselves as being involved in some kind of solidarity movement. That’s another striking thing that I found in certain places where Africans do political work. They say, "I’m doing solidarity work with Africans in Zimbabwe" or "solidarity work with South Africans" or something like that.

Che Guevara once said, "It is not a matter of well-wishing, but of sharing the same fate, whether in victory or in death." I think that in the final analysis that’s how we have to understand this issue of what we are involved in as Africans, as African internationalists.

We are part and parcel of the liberation of Africa. We have to understand this in a very clear way.

In the U.S., Africans are talking about wanting reparations. I think that’s a just struggle. They say "we want reparations for slavery." Slavery isn’t something that happens to Africans in America, or Africans in Europe. Slavery is what happened to Africa. Slavery happened to Africa! We have to understand that we are part of the African revolution, not just some section out here that’s supporting the struggle in Africa.

Nkrumah stated quite clearly that our task, wherever we are, has to be to fight for the liberation of Africa. We believe that imperialism, not just U.S. imperialism, will be destroyed as a consequence of the liberation of Africa.

U.S. is the strategic enemy of the world’s peoples
We also believe that it’s necessary to recognize, in building this process, that the U.S. is the strategic enemy of African people and the world’s peoples.

Even as we are fighting against imperialism any other place in the world, the truth is that U.S. imperialism is the headquarters of all imperialism. We have to develop a strategy that talks about making liberation that targets and isolates U.S. imperialism, because that’s the primary enemy we are confronted with.

We think this is a very critical time. Given its preferences, the U.S. and the imperial powers altogether would re-impose direct colonial rule over the world. George Bush has said as much. It’s clear they don’t even pretend anymore that they believe the peoples of the world have a right to be free. They even write about themselves as "imperialists" today.

This is a critical time. Brothers and Sisters, we’re committed to moving forward in the revolutionary process, and our struggle is to identify and win as many other Africans on earth to participate in this revolutionary process as we can. We recognize clearly that there are folks who have differences with us. That’s alright. But this is the trajectory that we are on, and as many people that can move with us, we say, "Right on, let’s do it."

There cannot be unity that disregards the contradictions in our own house, in our own community. If we’ve got people in our community who are selling us out, they’re selling us out! If there are people who are tied to imperialism, they’re tied to imperialism. I’m not going to unite with them. I don’t care what kind of friendly smile they have, or firm handshake. They won’t get unity here.

My objective is to bring them down, and I shall do everything possible to bring down the neo-colonial sellouts, the petty bourgeois forces who have led Africa to ruin in unity with imperialism around the world. There can be no unity with the lackeys of imperialism no matter what color they are. Neo-colonialism not only must be destroyed as a system — the neo-colonialists themselves are going to have to be physically destroyed before Africa can be liberated.

We have a lot of reports that folks are going to be making throughout today from different places throughout the African world. That’s going to be extremely important. We get an opportunity to know what’s happening to us in the African world because we’re with each other. That’s part of what this process is about. It is to let us know what our brothers and sisters are confronted with wherever they’re located.

I want to express my appreciation for everyone who was able to come out. I hope that we can continue to have a really serious discussion. I just want to restate that we see Pan-Africanism as something extremely limited. I think just the discussion that we’ve had here revealed exactly what we’re talking about. It is something that, as almost everybody has said, allows anybody — whether reactionary or revolutionary — to be a Pan-Africanist.

We’re trying to distinguish ourselves from that. Pan-Africanism was extremely significant during the era of struggle against direct white colonial rule. As it emerged, it did not have a class content. At the juncture that colonial rule retreated and then put forth white power in black faces, which is what we’re confronted with all over the world, then Pan-Africanism was no longer able to help us make the move.

Some people call themselves Pan-Africanists because they want to be able to make a revolutionary process that recognizes the need to unite all of Africa. We’re saying, "That is correct. We have to have that kind of struggle." But, we have to distinguish ourselves from those folks who are not able to make the distinction of what social force is going to lead this revolutionary movement. It can’t be led by just any social force. It must be led by the African working class and poor peasants.

In the ‘60s, there was so much hope for Africa. There was incredible struggle all over the African continent. African masses, the peasants essentially, were in armed motion.

The problem was that these struggles were led by the petty bourgeoisie. In the ‘60s, all of imperialism was lined up against Africa. All of Africa was essentially under direct colonial white power. The African revolutionary movements against imperialism turned to the Soviet Union for support.

In order to get help from the Soviet Union, which had its own struggle with U.S. imperialism and imperialism in general, it was necessary for these revolutionary forces to declare themselves socialist. So they called themselves socialists.

The Soviet Union decided that there were six authentic revolutionary organizations in all of Africa. It funded those organizations. It trained those organizations. It brought them to the Soviet Union. It hooked them up with all of the liberal organizations that were connected to the Communist Party all over the world. Those forces supported by the Soviet Union became the predominant forces.

In South Africa, the ANC was one of those organizations supported by the Soviet Union.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) were organizations supported by the Soviet Union. In South Africa, and at one time even in Namibia, there were revolutionary organizations that had much better politics than the ANC, and they attempted to make the struggle on the ground that would unite Africa.

The Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) said that it was the kind of organization that wanted to unite Africa. So along with the PAC they were supported by China. China’s a poor country. It could not give the kind of support to these organizations that the Soviet Union was giving to the so-called "authentic six."

Virtually every one of these came into power. But there was no socialism, no revolutionary content. It had been the petty bourgeoisie that called itself socialist in order to get support from the Soviet Union and from China.

Now the masses are worse off in Africa than they were before. What happened to the Pan-Africanism of ZANU? What happened to the Pan-Africanism even of the PAC? Once segregation fell in South Africa, PAC went back into the country. It was hard to find them.

What happened to Museveni, who has been hailed as a great Pan-Africanist?

But what does Pan-Africanism mean for any part of Africa? Nothing. It has brought us nothing except more misery for masses of the people. That’s because the petty bourgeoisie was in leadership. That’s because we were not even able to articulate who the leading social forces should be during that era.

Now, we do have that ability, and it is our responsibility to say that the leadership has to go to the African workers in line with the poor peasantry.

We’ve seen the other social forces come into power, and it’s been nothing but more misery. So the way that the workers and peasants will know that the future belongs to them, is because the power will be in their hands.

That’s the struggle to which we are committed. Hopefully there are other people who will be able to unite with this process.

In the final analysis it is the test of practice. It is practice that will make the determination of who you are and where you’re going. So, that is why we are involved in this discussion. Now we want to move toward the practice, building the African People’s Socialist Party.

Uhuru!

[OKULAJA]

In the 80's the African People's Socialist Party, Parent Org of the Uhuru Movement, raised support and solidarity with and for ZANU-PF by touring them throughout the U.S. However, currently the leadership of ZANU-PF has proven itself to be of the ranks of the African Petty Bourgeiosie. Yes, we commend Mugabe for his defiance against the U.S.-Euro Imperialist, however that does not excuse an unprincipled relationship with the People. And at the same time it does not mean that support should go to the MDC either.

Mugabe is allied with the ANC which is responsible for selling out the Azanian(South African) Front of the African Liberation Movement. Since the ANC took power the crackas have gotten richer while the masses have gotten poorer. These Petty Bourgeosie forces are Neo-Colonialists. The only way to insure genuine Liberation for African People is for leadership to be of the African Working Class and Poor Peasantry. Organize from the bottom up.

If you saw the movie 'Braveheart', you see how the Nobles (not really the social force of the Petty Bourgesie but fit this analogy) fought with the People but sold them out for their own selfish class interests. This is the same type of scenario.

[OKULAJA]

This why the APSP has developed the theory of African Internationalism. We feel that African Internationalism is Pan-Africanism in a more evolved form. Pan-Africanism being -total unification of Africa under Scientific Socialism- is apart of African Internationalism and is the basis of it. However we feel that it is too broad and outdated to lead us to genuine Liberation. It does not properly identify the enemies among our own People.

Pan-Africanism was developed at a time when the line was clearly drawn between Black and White. Before there were any victorious African Independent Movements. All Social Forces of Africa united against the Cracka. But this is a new era. The era of Neo-Colonialism, which is Colonialism, or direct white rule, evolved. After the African People won certain Movements, the leadership, African Petty Bourgeosie, sold out the interests of the Masses, the African Working Class and poor Peasantry, to the former Colonizers for their own selfish interests.

So as the conditions of our struggle evolved so must our ideology, our analysis of the situation, thus is the advent of African Internationalism. This is where we distinguish between the Social Forces, Classes, among our People and what role they play, ie the African Petty Bourgeosie, African Working Class, Poor Peasantry.

We feel that the African Working Class aligned with the Poor Peasantry must lead and that Nkrumah's idea of having Africa United under scientific socialism will not come to fruition as long as the Petty Bourgeosie is in leadership. We cannot align ourselves with these petty bourgeosie forces. They are the reason why our People still suffer in these countries that have supposedly attained independence. The Petty Bourgeosie in Africa are the same as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Barack Obama, etc, except that the ones in Africa will pick up the gun.

[rebelAfrika]

I've said it before and I'll say it again...I don't mind the fact that people are against Mugabe or ZANU-PF or Pan-Africanism...as long as you understand what you are against.

[Tehuti-4]

Is APSP the faction of the A-APRP that broke off? Ricks & co?

[rebelAfrika]

Is APSP the faction of the A-APRP that broke off? Ricks & co?

Nah. The APSP is not a "faction" or a "fraction" of the A-APRP.

[Erzulie Danto]

peace all.


i am thankful that finally i have read on this board an articulate critique of Mugabe and ZANU PF. thank you Okulaja for sharing Chairman Omali's words. now more than ever we must not be afraid to discuss these contradictions. as i have noted on another post i have visited Zimbabwe, and while i am certainly no expert, i found many poor peoples, especially women, struggling to survive. many of those soldiers who fought against colonialism feel betrayed and disillusioned. many continue to be beaten, silenced, vilified for their desire to speak out against poverty. ZANU PF is not doing enough for the people and it could be argued that the party is in fact standing in the way of the peoples true empowerment. white supremacy is not the only enemy. thus we should not confuse anti imperialist rhetoric with pro poor peoples mandates. many of these leaders have already offered the best of their spirits to the movement but we should not stand complictly while they sour with greed and/or egomania in their sunset. we must be committed to the everyday African people who still struggle for economic and political liberty. yes, the MDC is wack as well. and the ANC at best has been slow in fulfilling its original platform. thus, we should find ways to support other grassroots movements in Zim, South Africa, Nigeria,(not to forget Haiti), so that they won't be vulnerable to Western co-optation and infiltration. concurrently we outside Zimbabwe should demand that Mugabe and his party be made accountable to the rights and freedoms of his people that his works decry.

yes : organize and liberate from the bottom up! as toni morrison wrote in her novel Sula, land in the "Bottoms," where the Blacks lived, was fertile, beautiful and crucial. and so we must for the sake of our beautiful and complex continent, continue to be fearless, compassionate and wise as we work for panAfricanism.

p.s. i am not, as of yet, strictly anti-Mugabe. i am merely more concerned the lives of African people over individual African demigods.

p.s.s. Duvalier used a "pro-Black" talk to cloak his brutal desire for absolute power. all that is history now. a stretch? i hope so.

give thanks for a good and important discussion. i consider myself an anti-capitalist and while i have read some literature from the APSP and heard general statements, i look forward to learning more about this organization and its history and its platform.

for the love of Africa,
Danto's daughter

[rebelAfrika]

peace all.


i am thankful that finally i have read on this board an articulate critique of Mugabe and ZANU PF. thank you Okulaja for sharing Chairman Omali's words. now more than ever we must not be afraid to discuss these contradictions. as i have noted on another post i have visited Zimbabwe, and while i am certainly no expert, i found many poor peoples, especially women, struggling to survive. many of those soldiers who fought against colonialism feel betrayed and disillusioned. many continue to be beaten, silenced, vilified for their desire to speak out against poverty. ZANU PF is not doing enough for the people and it could be argued that the party is in fact standing in the way of the peoples true empowerment. white supremacy is not the only enemy. thus we should not confuse anti imperialist rhetoric with pro poor peoples mandates. many of these leaders have already offered the best of their spirits to the movement but we should not stand complictly while they sour with greed and/or egomania in their sunset. we must be committed to the everyday African people who still struggle for economic and political liberty. yes, the MDC is wack as well. and the ANC at best has been slow in fulfilling its original platform. thus, we should find ways to support other grassroots movements in Zim, South Africa, Nigeria,(not to forget Haiti), so that they won't be vulnerable to Western co-optation and infiltration. concurrently we outside Zimbabwe should demand that Mugabe and his party be made accountable to the rights and freedoms of his people that his works decry.

yes : organize and liberate from the bottom up! as toni morrison wrote in her novel Sula, land in the "Bottoms," where the Blacks lived, was fertile, beautiful and crucial. and so we must for the sake of our beautiful and complex continent, continue to be fearless, compassionate and wise as we work for panAfricanism.

p.s. i am not, as of yet, strictly anti-Mugabe. i am merely more concerned the lives of African people over individual African demigods.

p.s.s. Duvalier used a "pro-Black" talk to cloak his brutal desire for absolute power. all that is history now. a stretch? i hope so.

give thanks for a good and important discussion. i consider myself an anti-capitalist and while i have read some literature from the APSP and heard general statements, i look forward to learning more about this organization and its history and its platform.

for the love of Africa,
Danto's daughter

So what is your position on the recent elections? Do you think there was voter fraud? Do you think Mugabe is being like Duvalier? Also, do you think it is ZANU-PF's and Mugabe's fault that there are many poor people (especially women) struggling to survive in Zimbabwe? Or maybe could that be colonialism's fault? Or could it be the united snakkkes and british imperialism's fault? Also, what do you think of Nkrumah's call for a continental government in Africa (a United States of Africa)? In other words, do you think that there is any state (not country) in Africa that can (or should) maintain by itself? Do you think Zimbabwe would have the kind of economic problems she is having if Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Azania, Morocco, Sudan, Ghana, Guinea, The Congo, The Gambia, and etc. was all sharing each others resources with her and her with them?

[rebelAfrika]

http://www.info-ghana.com/zimbabwe's_truth.htm
Land - the Key to Zimbabwe’s Economic Growth

Article and photos by Kwame Brathwaite, International Photofeatures Syndicate

Dateline: Harare, Zimbabwe

If you read the headlines of recent weeks, you would swear that African demons, using brute force have stolen white people’s land and evicted them from the only country that they have ever known. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it is just the reverse. The situation in Zimbabwe is one that pits the legitimate aspirations of the indigenous African masses against foreign settlers who for generations have stolen land with the help of their kith and kin in Europe, who turned a blind eye on the racist apartheid policies of the colonialist regime that governed the area known as Southern Rhodesia. Since the day that Cecil John Rhodes set foot on the African continent and set forth to claim all the land from Cape to Cairo, a genocidal pogrom has been launched against the people of Africa.

Like their allies in South Africa, the whites in Rhodesia practiced cruel and inhumane policies that made the indigenous African population less than second-class citizens in their own land. They stole all of the best farmland and left the people with areas useless for farming, either for their families or for commercial purposes. Africans could not even vote in their own land. In 1965, the European settlers, led by Ian Smith, declared a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), from Britain their colonial master in an attempt to create a white racist independent republic to match the then racist regime of South Africa. At the time, Smith vowed that Africans would never rule that country, not even in “a thousand years”. Smith’s UDI was patterned after the American declaration of independence, both which was done without any concern or input from the original inhabitants. That was before the revolution.

As other areas of Africa trying to free itself from colonial rule, the valiant people of Zimbabwe, under the banner of the Patriotic Front, comprised of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) waged a war of liberation that forced Smith and company to the table at Lancaster House in England, which brought forth independence in 1980, but at a tremendous price.

As President Mugabe stated, on the 20th anniversary of their independence, in 2000, “I remind you today that our Independence followed over ninety years of oppressive settler colonial rule imposed on us in 1890 when the British occupied our country.

Our Independence followed years of bitter and protracted struggle. Ask yourselves how many had to die for this great day to come. Apart from our well-known national heroes of the struggle such as Comrades Leopold Takawira, Herbert Chitepo, Jason Ziyapapa Moyo, Nikita Mangena, Josiah Magama Tongogara, we recall on this day our freedom fighters who perished inside and outside the country. We also cannot forget the refugees and others --men, women and the children who were cut down in cold blood, often tattered book in hand, at Nyadzonia, Chimoio, Tembue, Mkushi, Luangwa, Solwezi, where to this day, they lie buried in mass graves. Even in their death, we could not grant them the dignity of a grave each. How could we, given their severed limbs, their bodies burnt and charred beyond recognition?

The twenty years we have lived as an independent people have, by and large, been years of security and harmony, itself a foremost achievement of our Independence. Against dire predictions, we managed to integrate the hitherto three hostile armies from the war into one cohesive, professional national defence force which is a source of national pride at home and a dependable player in global stabilisation, peace-making and peace-keeping missions: Mozambique, Somalia, Angola and currently in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The conflict which marred the early part of our Independence was overcome by the 1987 Unity Accord which ushered in the peace and sense of national cohesion and belonging which abide in our nation. Today there is no sense of alienation among Zimbabweans who feel free to go and even settle in any part of the country. This is truly remarkable given the history of failed, imploding nations on our continent, and of course given the sad turn of events in the early part of our Independence. This is an achievement we dare not let slip, now and in the eternal future.

The bitterness of our colonial experience could have so easily driven us into a pogrom against the white community most of whom diligently served and sustained UDI. Yet our high level of political consciousness soared above bitterness and had long made us see the Rhodesian problem as inhering is a system of racial injustice, and not in the colour of the skin of those who manned that system..

“What we reject is the persistence of vestigial attitudes from the Rhodesian yester-years, attitudes of a master race, master colour, master owner and master employer. Our whole struggle was a rejection of such imperious attitudes and claims to privilege. That is why we launched the policy of National Transformation alongside that of National Reconciliation. We saw the two operating hand in hand in achieving our goal of reconciling and transforming attitudes for a new nation. We remain sworn to that goal.

The sacrifices we have made for our country and Independence simply mean that as Zimbabweans, we cannot settle for nominal sovereignty. It is not sufficient to have a national flag, a national anthem and a black President. These are mere signifiers and symbolic accoutrements of our Independence and sovereignty as a people. They need content, and content is what we have been struggling to give in the past twenty years. We successfully consolidated people's political power by gaining control and transforming instruments of governance. We also ensured that the majority of our people who had been disenfranchised by colonialism got back and exercised their vote in choosing who governs them. We had free and fair parliamentary elections in 1985, 1990 and 1995. We had presidential elections in 1990 and in 1996. We are set to have both parliamentary and presidential elections next month and in 2002 respectively. The elective principle has also been entrenched in local government politics and even in internal party politics. The democratic ethic has thus been deepened and consolidated and we congratulate none but Zimbabweans for that achievement. All these developments gave political content to our Independence and sovereignty.”



The Lancaster Agreement had guaranteed that Britain would compensate the farmers for the land. Britain and the U.S., pressured the patriotic front to accept a constitution that guaranteed the Europeans a quota of seats in parliament -at a time that the U.S. was arguing against any quota systems in the states. Britain “bugged” the rooms of the African negotiators, who were under pressure from the frontline states (those surrounding states that were giving support and haven to the liberation forces based in their countries), which allowed them to know the bottom line of the nationalist forces. The result was that the Patriotic Front was forced into an agreement to please their fraternal states, which were paying a heavy price in destruction from invading South African and “Rhodesian” forces, and a financial drain that was needed to build their own countries. The liberation forces were winning the struggle, and with a little more time, could have forced a better arrangement, but agreed to the watered down version that could not be changed for ten years. The bitter war of liberation waged by the people of Zimbabwe brought democracy to the former Rhodesia, resulting in the first elections in 1980, where Africans could vote. Mugabe received an overwhelming mandate from the people and has prevailed in subsequent elections.

Twenty-two years after the signing of the agreement, Britain still has not provided the money to compensate the farmers, claiming that it didn’t have the money. (They could have hocked some of the crown jewels to pay their kith and kin).

As Pres. Mugabe further relates, “The issue of land remains both emotive and vexed. It has always been so and many will recall that negotiations for Independence almost got bogged down over this matter. Between 1980 and 1995, we were able to resettle 71 000 families on about 3,3 million hectares excised from the commercial sector. This was a far cry from the 162 000 families we had hoped to settle on 8 million hectares of land. We resumed land reforms under what we have termed the Second Phase and to this day over 2 422 households have been resettled on 66 farms. The Second Phase of Land Reforms envisaged the excision of about 5 million hectares of land from the commercial sector, with a million hectares set to be delivered for resettlement every year. We had hoped that this would start with nearly a thousand farms we had designated for acquisition. Sadly this was not to be as the commercial farmers contested the matter in the courts forcing Government to abandon the acquisition process.

The process of land delivery has been both slow and frustrating. Between 1980 and 1990, we were slowed down by the "willing-seller-willing-buyer" clause in the Lancaster House Constitution. Equally, the resources which the British and the American Governments had pledged to make available at Lancaster House either stopped or were reduced to a trickle. Even after removing the constitutional barriers, we were still faced with the issue of diminishing resources against ever rising prices. After 1997, we also had to content with the reluctance of the new Labour Government which did not want to honour commitments made by previous British Governments on the land issue. We also faced greater commercial farmer resistance whose manifestations included not just the legal challenges I have already referred to, but also resistance to the land clause we had introduced in the rejected draft constitution

The west states that the people are starving in Zimbabwe, and that is because the white farmer’s have been evicted from their farms and production has all but ceased. First of all, it is not the white farmers that do the farming in Zimbabwe; the African people are the farmers, but the whites, which were given title to the land by the international financial community, are the ones that can get financed for the modern equipment that is needed to produce larger harvests. With equal equipment, the African farmers could produce an even greater harvest to that of the whites who mainly supervise farm workers.

Secondly, any lack of produce is because of the drought that has hit the southern African region, and affected Zimbabwe as well neighboring states. The only reported shortage is in the production of maize (corn), used to make mealy-meal, the staple food of the people of Zimbabwe. Although there is much food around, some say “they haven’t eaten if they don’t have their mealy-meal.”

One of the major stumbling blocks that have Britain and the U.S. withholding the funds that they promised is that they are trying to force genetically modified foods on the Zimbabwean people. The U.S. aid, comes with a proviso, that one-third of the produce would come from the states, in the form of these products that do not produce seeds, thereby forcing client states to buy the formulas from the west, and putting a stranglehold on Zimbabwe’s and the world’s food supply. A small group of European and American multi-nationals are trying to patent the food supply, privatize the world’s water supply, monopolize the control of land, and even patent the DNA of ordinary people. As one African put it, “they are trying to play God. They are in competition with God. They must be agents of the Anti-Christ.” Faith-based groups, take note of this.

In order to counter foreign entities continuing to monopolize Zimbabwe’s economy, Zimbabwe has instituted an aggressive “people first” agrarian revolution to ensure food security and to put the land reform program on the fast track. In this regard a Pan-African fact-finding delegation traveled to Zimbabwe to see for themselves the situation “on the ground”. Entitled the “Pamberi Ne Zimbabwe” (Forward with Zimbabwe), fact-finding team visited farms, interviewed war veterans, leaders of the bid for land reclamation and had a two-hour long meeting with President Mugabe and countless meetings with other government ministers.

The group, consisting of journalists, activists and educators from the African Diaspora, paid a surprise visit to a farm of Ian Smith. Smith has been reported to hold property that is eleven times larger than Central Park and central Harlem combined. The farm that we visited was said to be about 6,000 acres. The group, led by Patrice Lumumba Coalition chairman, Elombe Brath, made an unannounced trip to the farm on Saturday, August 17th, the 115th anniversary of the birth of Marcus Garvey whose rallying cry of “Africa for the Africans” was a main inspiration to leaders who eventually brought down the colonialist stranglehold on Africa, and led to the independence of African nations. The delegation consisted of Garvey scholar, Trinidad’s Dr. Tony Martin (professor at Wellesley College in Mass); Professor and photojournalist Ron Wilkins (Los Angeles); Clem Marshall, Guyanese national and commentator on radio station CKLN and columnist for Share newspaper, both in Toronto, Canada; Jamaican born Solomon Goodrich a longtime Garveyite and recently retired director of the Roy Wilkins Family Center & Park in Southeast Queens and current chairman of the board of People of African Ancestry; Genevieve Morales of Westbury Long Island; Cinque Menelik Brath, a Microsoft certified systems engineer and internet technology specialist; Andrew Allimadi, a Ugandan national living in London and contributor to Black Star News of New York; and myself, Kwame Brathwaite, director of International Photofeatures Syndicate.

Other members of the delegation that had to depart from Zimbabwe to attend the Reparations Rally in Washington, D.C., were Dr. Adelaide Sanford, Vice-Chancellor, New York State Board of Regents; Betty Dopson, Co-Chair of the Committee to Eliminate Media Offensive to African People (CEMOTAP); Dr. Georgina Falu from Puerto Rico, director of the Falu Foundation, a specialist in Education, finances, community development and computer technology and the translator of three major contemporary African historical works into Spanish, ( James’ Stolen Legacy, Dr. Yosef Ben Jochannan’s “Black Man of the Nile” and his soon to be released, “Africa, Mother of Western Civilization”); and Klytus Smith, veteran activist and photojournalist.

The fact-finders were there and were eye- witnesses to how the major media lies in reporting news regarding Africa. Case in point was the coverage given to Mugabe’s speeches, such as the one at the Heroes Day Celebration and Funeral for the late Finance Minister Dr. Bernard Thomas Gibson Chidzero, a prime architect of Zimbabwe’s economic policy at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Heroes Acre. In his remarks, President Mugabe made it clear that, “All genuine and well-meaning white farmers who wish to pursue a farming career as loyal citizens of this country have land to do so. To those who want to own this country for Britain, govern it for the British Empire as in the past, we say here on this national shrine that the game is up and it is time for them to go. There is no place for rapacious supremacists here. We shall always welcome and respect loyal citizens or residents who co-operate with Government and respect our policies and decisions. Many farmers have relocated in compliance with our ‘one farmer, one farm’. No farmer has been rendered landless on this principle. Only the greedy are complaining.”

The government policy of land reclamation, which should have taken place 12 years ago, according to the Lancaster Agreement, has not “taken the white man’s farms and left them homeless” as CNN, BBC and other news agencies have reported. The long overdue policy is “one farmer, one farm.” European settlers, mostly from Britain, had stolen the land from the indigenous Africans by force of might using the machine gun to slaughter the population and take the land that they now call theirs. The land was never the property of the Europeans, although they took 90% of the arable land, often bulldozing and displacing entire villages. Zimbabwe’s new law is more than generous. Under “one man, one farm”, the same settlers that the government had defeated, were allowed to keep one farm. One white, Nikki Oppenheimer has a farm the size of the country of Belgium. Those that had four, ten or twenty farms had to select the one that they would keep, and return the others for re-distribution to the rightful owners, the people of Zimbabwe, predominately landless. If you read the papers, or watch TV news, you would think that poor white folks were being thrown out of the country with no place to go.

It’s ironic that this week, it was stated that “the (recent) elections in Zimbabwe were a fraud … would you believe that that statement came from the lips of President-select George Bush. In the statement, he said he is planning to finance the opposition and labor unions to bring down Zimbabwe’s government. Not only is that illegally interfering with the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, it is illegal use of our taxpayer’s money. The people of the United States are not at war with Zimbabwe. If the opposition party or labor union takes money from a foreign government to topple its own, that is treason and / or sedition (in any country). The leader of the opposition, Morgan Tsvangirai was videotaped prior to the elections, in a meeting with foreign nationals plotting the assassination of President Mugabe. Although charged, he was not brought to trial prior to the elections so as not to have the world say that the trial was politically motivated to eliminate the opposition candidate. How democratic can you be?

Britain and the U.S. claim that the elections were unfair, arguing that the opposition was “intimidated” by Mugabe’s supporters. The fact that the government gave an extra day of voting, extending the deadline for those who missed their opportunity to vote. Many lined up and stayed overnight in the dark waiting to vote, and were not driven off or intimidated, speaks a lot for democracy in Zimbabwe. If there were a single incident to point to, the foreign TV crews, who were omni-present, would have looped the tape and shown it repeatedly for the world to see.

I’ll never forget the lessons taught, by the late Ottley Brooks, Minister of Propaganda for the African Nationalist Pioneer Movement and Administrator Carlos A. Cooks, on how to read the news. Explaining how some take what they read at face value.. Brooks used to say “many of our people can’t read, they just call words - no sense of comprhension.” Meanwhile others learn to read between the lines.

At the end of the Bush statement, it said, that Mugabe has the support of the military and the landless Zimbabweans. That’s more than a majority of the people, so how can you then state that he didn’t win the election? Read between the lines. There were no hanging chads, pregnant chads and anything of the sort that marred the fraudulent U.S. elections of 2000.

The truth of the matter is, that agriculture is the base of the Zimbabwean economy. He who has the land, controls the economy, and for the first time, an African government has a chance to get hold of not only the political power (statehouse, a flag and an anthem), but also the economic power that will make them truly independent. Those that oppose Africans being the owners of their own land, are enemies of African economic liberation.

KB

[rebelAfrika]

http://www.sfbayview.com/090402/zimbabwe090402.shtml
Report from Zimbabwe
Western lies and the struggle to return Indigenous land to its rightful owners

by Ron Wilkins

I recently returned to L.A. from Zimbabwe as part of an official fact-finding team. As our mission neared an end, Elombe Brath, chairman of Patrice Lumumba Coalition and the leader of our 14-member delegation, said to a newspaper reporter, “Our conclusion is that the land reform program is justifiable and long overdue.” Brath further echoed the sentiment of our team when he stated, “Although we knew that the Western media was subjective in its interpretation of events in Zimbabwe, we were shocked by the level of bias and unprofessionalism in stories about this country.”

I want it known that my very positive impressions of Zimbabwe, its people and the veracity of statements made by its leaders have been expressed in nearly identical terms by the independent pan-African magazine, New African. I strongly encourage Africans in the U.S. to read New African magazine, for it has consistently provided comprehensive coverage on Zimbabwe and the African continent as a whole. New African’s exclusive 16-page interview with President Mugabe in its May issue is required reading for anyone seriously interested in understanding the challenges facing Zimbabwe.

Our team included journalists, activists, lawyers and educators. We were Africans from Canada, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Uganda and the United States. Among our group of four women and 10 men was Adelaide Sanford, vice chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents; Dr. Tony Martin of the Black Studies Department at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and author of “Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the UNIA”; Dr. Georgina Falu of San Juan, Puerto Rico, translator of key contemporary African historical works from English to Spanish; and Betty Dopson of Queens, N.Y., co-chair of the Committee to Eliminate Media Offensive to African People (CEMOTEP), a leading organization challenging erroneous reporting on Black leadership.

Our mission was to assess the land reform program, brief our respective constituencies and encourage them and us, Africans in the diaspora, to weigh in on what needs to be a public debate on U.S. government policy toward Zimbabwe. Presently, Western governments led by Britain and the United States, and mainstream print and electronic media, are unanimous in their condemnations of Zimbabwe’s land reform program. The U.S. State Department has labeled Zimbabwe’s land redistribution initiatives as “reckless.” CNN, BBC and a host of mainstream tabloids have portrayed Zimbabwe’s white farmers as victims and its president, Robert Mugabe, as the villain.

“A farmer, as she packed to go, said, ‘I can’t cry anymore. I just don’t have any tears left,’” wrote Time Magazine on Aug. 19. Conspicuously absent from media images of distraught and teary-eyed white farmers are the faces of destitute African peasants whose lands were expropriated during colonial rule, or optimistic new farmers who have achieved success.

The carefully orchestrated disinformation campaign to undermine and ultimately take down Zimbabwe’s progressive government is standard fare for U.S. rulers, who have never supported a single liberation movement on the African continent. Late last year, the U.S. government adopted the Zimbabwe Democracy Act, which has imposed stiff sanctions on Zimbabwe. With the noteworthy exception of the courageous Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, whose reelection bid was just defeated, every member of the Congressional Black Caucus supported Bush’s signing of the bill.

Our delegation found itself on a number of occasions in the awkward and embarrassing position of being asked to explain the anti-Africa voting patterns of Black politicians. Our African brothers and sisters point to Jewish and Irish lobby groups, which act as links between their homelands and the U.S. political establishment, and wonder why so many of us are conspicuously silent on issues affecting the motherland.

Since independence, Zimbabwe’s government has constructed hundreds of needed hospitals, nearly doubled the number of primary schools to 4,500, increased secondary schools from 177 to 1,548, teacher training colleges from four to 15, universities from one to eight – Zimbabwe now has the highest literacy rate in Africa at 85 percent - piped water schemes from 26 to 520 and dams from 121 to 2,438. Actually, a considerable amount of information which places Zimbabwe in a much more favorable light is not being disseminated by Western news sources.

Following our discussions with a wide range of Zimbabweans, which included landless peasants, white and black farmers, government officials, media representatives, war veterans and President Mugabe himself, we made the following determinations:

1) The primary two reasons for Western hostility, unfair reporting and sanctions against Zimbabwe are President Mugabe’s determination to return land to Indigenous African peasants, who are its rightful owners, and Zimbabwe’s intervention in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), at the request of its legitimate government, to repel Western-sponsored aggressors. Zimbabwe’s timely dispatching of troops to the DRC, whose numbers rose to 12,000 during the peak of the conflict, helped to prevent the recolonization of the richest country in Africa.

2) Land reform has been ongoing for the past four years and 360,000 families, which include the opposition, have received land. Many white farms are unusually large and range between 3,000 and 20,000 hectares, while an average family-owned farm in the U.S. is between 200 and 250 hectares. Three members of Britain’s House of Lords own land in Zimbabwe. Some white farms are not even listed in Zimbabwe’s national records – and the Opppenheimer Ranch is 300,000 hectares. However, the vast majority of black peasants must eke out an existence in “rural areas” on land that is rocky, poor and arid. Seventy-five percent of Zimbabwe’s food is produced by black farmers, including 60 percent of its maize, or corn, which is the country’s staple crop.

3) The coming food shortages and “famine,” which Zimbabwe’s detractors have connected to the land reform program, have no relationship to each other at all. The anticipated food shortage is being produced by a regional drought that is undermining crop production in a number of countries. In truth, droughts, which are cyclical in the region and occur every 10 years, are a fact of life. While death from starvation has occurred in the neighboring countries of Zambia and Malawi, no Zimbabweans have died. Despite very limited resources, Zimbabwe has gotten itself through food crises quite admirably.

4) White farmers in Zimbabwe are being permitted to keep one farm and are being compensated for all capital improvements on land reclaimed by the government. Exceptions to this rule are farms which are in excess of permissible acreage, idle or under-utilized farms and farms next to communal lands. Some farmers own as many as seven and eight farms. African laborers on white farms are treated poorly and receive inadequate pay. Ian Smith, who led white resistance to the black independence struggle, pays black laborers on his farm $4,300 Zim dollars ($72 US) per month and crowds them into one-room hovels which lack electricity and other necessities. During the current phase of land reform, defiant white farmers have been arrested, but there has been no violence and no farmer has been forced out.

5) Some white farmers, resentful after receiving notices to surrender their farms to the government, are poisoning the soil with herbicides, poisoning livestock, destroying maize crops, blocking boreholes (wells), setting wildfires and committing other forms of sabotage.

6) Zimbabwe’s presidential elections in March, which saw President Mugabe returned to office, were declared “free and fair” by monitors from several African countries and the African Union. Since independence, more than 20 political parties have operated in the country, including the MDC, which is openly supported by white farmers, Britain and others opposed to the present government. Zimbabwe’s election outcome stands in sharp contrast to the U.S. presidential election where thousands of black votes in Florida, which favored Bush’s opponent, were thrown out.

For Zimbabwe’s Indigenous population, the land redistribution struggle represents the “Third Chimurenga.” The first was the courageous yet unsuccessful 1890s resistance against white colonizers, and the second was the liberation struggle, won at a cost of more than 50,000 lives, which led to independence in 1980.

In his book titled “British Betrayal of the Africans: Land, Cattle and Human Rights,” Zimbabwean historian Aeneas Chigwedere writes, “Thousands of Africans were killed, maimed and tortured in 1893, 1896-97, 1900-1904 and between 1970 and 1980; the Africans were impoverished and starved by the seizures of their cattle, goats, sheep and crops by an illegal regime; Africans were denied the necessary health facilities and continued to be decimated by the common tropical diseases; the Africans were denied education facilities and toiled as hewers of wood and drawers of water for the white man. ... I have a fair picture of the histories of all the former European colonies in Africa. I cannot find a single colony that was treated as mercilessly and as ruthlessly as Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe).”

And then there is this observation by Chigwedere:” Judging from their performance in Africa, the British are undoubtedly the worst racists that have existed on the face of the earth.”

Perhaps our delegation’s most memorable meeting was with President Robert Mugabe. The meeting lasted nearly two hours as the president outlined the land issue and responded to our questions. Yet another meeting, with Minister of State Dr. Olivia Muchena, who is responsible for monitoring the land reform program, provided us with additional insights into the land question. Dr. Muchena described how Western education contradicts traditional African values: “When white people took the land,” she said, “they disqualified themselves from being human, because they had done an inhuman act. They took what belonged to God – a form of sacrilege if you like.”

Dr. Muchena explained, “The land is not a commodity. It cannot be bought and sold. The land is the sum total of who we are as human beings. This fundamental belief is at the core of our tenacity and the courage that you see in our president.”

The government of Namibia, which firmly supports Zimbabwe, recently announced plans to expropriate 192 farms in its territory. Namibia’s congress noted in a resolution that it was “concerned at the slow pace of land redistribution, which has the potential to cause civil strife.” Namibia and its sprawling next door neighbor South Africa each has land-hungry populations whose patience has worn thin. Namibia’s President Sam Nujoma, responding on one occasion to white claims of land ownership, asked, “So how much land did the white man bring to Africa?”

In an editorial appropriately captioned “The end of Rhodes’ dream,” a European newspaper opposed to Zimbabwe’s land reform program sadly recalled how “Cecil Rhodes’ imperial dream to move north from the Cape into the uncharted interior of Africa, exploiting its mineral wealth and introducing settlement,” had come to an end. Rhodes’ dream to have whites dominate and exploit Africans “from the Cape to Cairo” has been Africa’s long nightmare.

Africa belongs to its people, and not to others whose home is elsewhere! Zimbabwe is on the threshold of restoring stolen land to its rightful Indigenous owners. We must have no illusions about what is at stake here. The principled, defiant and resolute stand taken by President Mugabe and the Zimbabwean nation has shaken the imperialist world at its foundations.

Restoring the land to the people is what Kenya’s Land Freedom Army, disparagingly referred to as the Mau Mau, sought to achieve. Retaking the land has been the cornerstone of the fight for independence in every part of the African continent, if not the world. There are many who can recall how one of our greatest revolutionaries, Malcolm X, during his speech titled “Message to the Grassroots,” said, “Revolution is based on land ... the landless against the landlord. ... Land is the basis of independence.”

Allow me to end this article with words spoken by President Robert Mugabe, words which drew sustained applause, during his historic Aug. 12 Heroes Day Commemoration speech at National Heroes Acre. National Heroes Acre is a shrine and the final resting place for Zimbabwe’s martyrs.

“We are a child that imperialism would never have wanted to see born, one it would have rather scotched and quashed in the belly than see born. We emerge from circumstances of a resolute liberation struggle and thus carry a stamp of stolid, defiant protest. We do not kowtow to erstwhile imperialist forces with avid appetites for the control and manipulation of our lives and destiny and the continued exploitation of our wealth and resources.”

President Mugabe went on to point out that the process of retaking Indigenous land settles “the grievance of all grievances,” that Zimbabweans would “not be deterred on this one question” and that “the land is ours!”

Ron Wilkins currently teaches the history of Africans in Latin America and the Caribbean and African American history at several Los Angeles area colleges and is deputy chairman of the Harlem-based Patrice Lumumba Coalition. Wilkins, who has traveled extensively throughout the African continent, is a veteran ‘60s Black power activist and was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

[rebelAfrika]

and the argument "for" Pan-Africanism...

We Are African People!
Revolutionary Pan-Africanism
The Solution To The Problems Of People Of African Decent!

" We Are African People " are words we hear all over the hood and all over the world. These words have come to answer our search for identity and our search for dignity and respect; a search made necessary due to our forced scattering across the world and the rape and carving of out great Mother land, Africa by the brutal system of capitalism. American capitalism and certainly the American government has confused many of us into thinking that we are something other than Africans. In defiance of our enemy's attempt to redefine us we shout, " We Are African People". When looked on as a slogan related to our struggle against American capitalism this becomes a voice of rebellion defining our liberation struggle to reclaim our legacy and build a liberated, unified and socialist Africa and liberate African people world wide. Revolutionary Pan-Africanism, which can only be correctly defined as the total liberation and unification of Africa under Scientific-Socialism. This definition necessarily includes the
liberation of Africans in the Diaspora, who suffer from the effects of capitalism and racism. This definition implies that Africans outside of Africa are not a nation but part of the developing African nation and are an integral part of the African Revolution and a vital part of the Revolutionary Pan-African strategy. We must make revolution wherever we are, recognizing that the core of the Black revolution is in Africa. We must never view our struggle in isolation to the overall struggle of Africans. THE AFRICAN REVOLUTION IS ONE STRUGGLE.

AFRICA IS OUR NATION

The African revolutionary struggle is a fight for land and a fight to reclaim and develop our culture. Africa is the source of our strength and the key to our liberation. As Malcolm X so prophetically said, " I agree with Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism is the solution to the problems of people of African decent "* The struggle of African people must be internationally coordinated with liberated areas in Africa along with Revolutionary Pan-African organizations in Africa being the basis of this international struggle. Imperialism is an international force and we can only defeat it with an international strategy. Any organization of Africans outside of Africa that does not have organizational and strategic links to the struggle on the African continent as well as the struggles of our peoples in the Diaspora is doomed to failure. Our struggle in America must be organizational and ideologically connected to the struggle in Africa and the world wide African revolutionary struggle. We must understand that our diversity is
an element that is compatible with unity and strength. Africans organized internationally would be s a formidable force that can surround and annihilate imperialism.


"ALL PEOPLE OF AFRICAN DECENT, WHETHER THEY LIVE IN NORTH OR SOUTH AMERICA, THE CARIBBEAN, OR ANY OTHER PART OF THE WORLD ARE AFRICANS AND BELONG TO THE AFRICAN NATION"
Kwame Nkrumah, Class Struggle

PAN - AFRICANISM IS THE SOLUTION!


The long history and culture of African people, is reflected in our courageous quest to make our continent into a nation. Our struggle is a people struggle. Revolutionary Pan-Africanism represents the highest aspirations of our scattered, suffering people. It necessarily goes beyond nationalism and micro-nationalism. Our struggle in America - for example - can never historically or morally be the end results because this land belongs to the indigenous people of the Western hemisphere. Even though Africans may remain in America in the millions after the destruction of American capitalism; we can never claim to be the leaders of this land; that would contradict all that we have fought for. Our struggle is a just struggle and as our great African freedom fighter M.L. King has said, " Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. "


Revolutionary Pan-Africanism is a part of the world socialist movement against capitalism. We enter the international stage from the womb of our great culture and the revolutionary African Personality. We know that the liberation of Africa is the emancipation of humanity.* We are anti-capitalist as well as anti-zionist.* Capitalism has consolidated class divisions within our nation and in our communities, where a small, selfish, corrupt and confused minority helps to exploit their own sisters and brothers - the working, unemployed and peasant masses. Therefore, the people cannot be free without class struggle. We must struggle against negative non-Africans and negative Africans at the same time. We must struggle as a developing nation and struggle against those who are enemies within the nation. We call this a nation-class -struggle. This nation class movement will unify our national aspirations with the revolutionary requirement of our liberation. Our national interest is the people's interest and not
the interest of some backward elite, be it in Africa, America or wherever!


Revolutionary Pan-Africanism clarifies our identity, counteracts our exploitation and gives revolutionary vision to the work that must be done. ANY AFRICAN CAN WORK FOR THE OBJECTIVE OF REVOLUTIONARY PAN-AFRICANISM NO MATTER WHERE WE ARE IN THE WORLD. In the words of Malcolm X, writing from Accra Ghana on May11, 1964 "even though we might remain in America physically while fighting, unity between the African of the West and Africans of the fatherland will well change the course of history we must return to Africa philosophically and culturally and develop a working unity in the framework of Pan-Africanism. "


"AFRICA WILL BE FREE UNIFIED AND SOCIALIST"
Kwame Ture

[rebelAfrika]

http://www.assatashakur.org/forums/u...ead.php?t=1044



OSAGYEFO'S VISION: AN INEVITABLE REALITY

BY KWAME TURE, ORGANIZER FOR THE ALL-AFRICAN PEOPLE'S REVOLUTIONARY PARTY (A-APRP) AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF GUINEA (PDG).




Africa is the richest continent in the world. Africans wherever you find them are among the poorest people in the world. This contradiction can be explained in one word--imperialism. The worldwide poverty of Africans is the result of brutal racist exploitation, slavery, and colonialism. To resolve this contradiction Africa must be totally liberated, unified and socialist.

After twenty-six (26) years of independence, certain truths are undeniable. We must quickly eliminate all confusion on the question of the first step towards progress--economic or political. The problem is an ideological one of proportions, which calls for rigorous struggle. At a minimum level, it demands a clear understanding of what is progress, "buildings" or "human relations." Capitalism does not just seek to plunder our resources and labor, it also seeks to limit our thinking.

Racist imperialism, which everywhere tries to impose inferiority complexes on us would have us think that in order to make progress we must "catch up" with the unplanned monstrosities of London, Paris or New York. Some, so contaminated with this fatal disease, think that unless our village has at least one mini skyscraper we have not made progress. All conscious Africans treat this calumny with the contempt it deserves. Who, having the slightest understanding of history, can question the African's ability to construct, when the pyramids still stand! We cannot understand those who think progress equals western cities and lifestyles.

The course taken by reactionary regimes in Africa has clearly demonstrated that this is not the path to progress. These regimes to "catch up" with "developed world" have pit a burden on future generations; thus demonstrating their total irresponsibility! It is only human nature that each generation seeks to ameliorate conditions for future generations. Since independence we have seen this path is anti-human.

Such terms as "developed", "underdeveloped" and "developing" nations are euphamistically used to cover exploitation. Indeed the term developed nation is one we should never seek to realize. Something developed has reached a final stage. Humanity instinctively seeks limitless progress. Geographical space is limited.

A given country after having arranged it's physical space in a given time in harmony with it's ideology may call itself developed. Our thinking is not limited to space or time; it transcends them! When we speak of progress in a society, it is not just the material aspect of life but more importantly the immaterial aspects, the values for example which demonstrate the true understanding of human nature and the role of woman and man in society to take more than they give or give more than they take.

Those who thought a politically divided Africa could speak of economic developement on any level must admit of Osagyefo's clear sighted vision when the the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank wish to make it appear as if Africa, from whom European capitalist countries have plundered too much human and material resources, owes them anything. This is a tragic joke! It is to Africa's stolen people and wealth that they owe their developement. Osagyefo told us long ago, "seek ye first the political kingdom."

In the first instance, Africa's economic progress is in jeopardy as long as she is politically weak and imperialism exists. Destabilization and invasions into Angola, Botswana, Libya, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia are only a few of imperialism's bloody testimonies. We are aware of the fact that all this terrorism is for economic gain. Some think because of the root of our oppression is economic, the first step to progress must be economic. Osagyefo as early as 1945 stated in Towards Colonial Freedom, "the basis of colonial territorial dependence is economic, but the basis of the solution of the problem is political. Hence, political independence is an indispensable step toward securing economic emancipation." What Africa needs most at this time, is a stable continental political system insured through an eternal Mass, Revolutionary, Pan-African Political Party. Literally speaking, all our energies must be geared to achieving this goal, even if we starve to death in the process.

All political systems must choose between capitalism and socialism. "The two real social-political alternatives facing society are either that one section should produce and another section battern thereon or that all sections should be fulfilled by the value created by labor." (Consciencism, page 75.) There are only two real alternatives--either a capitalist system where a few own and control the wealth of society or a socialist system where all own, a capitalistic system where there is exploitation or a socialist system where there is no exploitation.

Of course, all conscious Africans must be anti-capitalist and even the unconscious Africans must be suspicious of capitalism given its history of wreaking havoc on Africa and the world. Africa's strong past makes capitalism alien in our land. Ownership of land, private ownership of the means of production are example of values in violent conflict with pre-colonial Africa. Africa's pre-colonial past is vital to our future. Our future must take account of our invaded past. "The restitution of Africa's humanist and egalitarian principles of society require socialism" (Consciencism, page 79.) Our masses instinctively understand this as through struggle they force even diehard reactionary heads of states to give lip service to socialism.. We are saying once we understand we must have a scientific socialist economic system. All our energies must be politically directed at this aim. "We must do the economics of our politics, not the politics of our economics"--Seku Ture

Of the three existing political regimes--kingdoms, military and party--political parties represent the highest form. Kingdoms and military regimes in form are exclusive, thus discriminatory, allowing political participation only by small sections of the society. Only Africa's masses can solve her problems; they cannot be solved by any section of the People, irrespective of the very best of intentions. No military regime can construct socialism; only the People can through a Party. Thus, "progressive" military regimes must give way to Parties. Reactionary military regimes will be replaced by Parties. We have seen, throughout the world, many powerful ones fall within the last few years, indicating history's future direction. In Africa, they have no tradition. All our great warriors, Nzinga, Shaka, Samori, etc., were political leaders who engaged in military activities to better resist the enemy. Most of Africa is under the heels of her own military, many of whom fought against her independence; this is only a deepening of struggle making the more conscious aware of the need for thorough class struggle. The results are as clear as history. As the chiefs ran away and left their sandals before Osagyefo, military regimes will run away leaving their arms and uniforms before the masses! The process has already begun in Africa. Reactionary military regimes in Africa only represent last ditch efforts to maintain neo-colonialism.

The political Party is the most democratic in form and in essence even in capitalist societies, thus confirming this law proven by socialist states. Whether multi-party or Party-State (Party-State), vanguard or mass, it is the Party, in this epoch, that meets best the aspiration of the masses for democracy. Africa has made a great contribution to the world socialist movement with the mass Party, though not recognized, either by racism or dogmatism or both. The only form of political regime to reconstruct Mother Africa worthy of her glorious past is the Party.

Ideology is the cohesive force of any society. In speaking of Party in Africa, we must speak of ideology. We must pay particular attention because it is the element most lacking in our political armory. The great Pan-Africanist, Franz Fanon, felt that the absence of conscious ideology was "the great danger that threatens Africa." Osagyefo directed most of his energies towards rectifying our shortcoming.

Of course, every society has ideology covert or overt; whether the People are conscious or unconscious of it. The Ideology of a society is total. It "embraces the whole life of a People, and manifests itself in their class structure, history, literature, art, religion" (Consciencism, page 59.) The ideology decides acceptable behaviors, "seeks to bring a specific order into the total life of its society." To achieve this it needs to employ a number of instruments, "the ideology of a society displays itself in the political theory, social theory and moral behavior such that unless behavior of this sort fall within the established range it would be incompatible with the ideology." Africa has all the material conditions to lead to a stable continent-wide political system; what is lacking is the ideological force.

"The Marxist emphasis on the determining force of the material circumstances of life is correct. But I would like to give great emphasis to the determining power of ideology" (Consciencism, page 34.) in the chapter "Philosophy and Society" in Consciencism. Osagyefo clearly demonstrated the role of ideology in helping to ferment Revolution, giving the French Revolution as an example. "For Africa the path to progress has been laid out, 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 weapons in the environment and living conditions of the African People" (Consciencism.)

Capitalist societies, whose ideologies aim to unite a society while the dominant minority class oppresses the masses, tries to make it appear as if ideology is nonexistent. Some socialists with the very best of intentions think that an ideology like material aid can be given to other gratuitously. We are boldly affirming that each People must have their own ideology. Seku Ture reminds us "to each People their own culture." No one can deny this, yet we are told that with different cultures we can have the same ideology. "To every culture, corresponds an ideology and the nature of culture is but the transposition of the ideology which as a set of the rules of conduct of it for the attainment of certain ideals, follows unintermittingly the developement noted in culture which is the framework of ideology. The latter remaining the content of the former" (Seku Ture, Pan-Africanism, Culture, and Revolution.) Thus Africa needs an ideology which following universal principles and is suited to her history and culture. Only Africans can give Africa her ideology! Osagyefo, who was consumed with no other thought than Africa's total redemption, has already done so!

The immediate fundamental task facing the African Revolution is the transformation of man and woman. "Africa needs a new type of citizen, a dedicated, modest, honest, informed man [and woman] who abhors greed and detests vanity. A new type of man [and woman] whose humility is his [her] strength and whose integrity is his [her] greatness" (Africa Must Unite, page 130.)

We said imperialism seeks to warp our thinking; making the real the unreal, the truth the lie, colonization becomes civilization and slavery is religious obligation. It seeks to make us think immorally with precise logic! Thus, the moral struggle to guide Africa's reconstruction is vital. Our bourgeoisie is the most corrupt in the world! Imbued with inferiority complexes, they do not even dream of oppressing the African masses. Their highest aspiration is to be a paid servant of imperialism. Their lack of national pride makes corruption their only means of aquiring money. Investments in Africa are beyond their wildest imaginations. Travel and a Swiss bank account are the hallmarks of advancement for these bloodsuckers. They are totally alienated from their strong communalist past. They seek individual luxury in the midst of mass suffering.

Too ostentatious, they are sickening, there are more Mercedes in Africa than any other continent! The ideological struggle of the African Revolution must be more vigorous and demanding than other Revolutions.

Africa's evolutionary process towards unification, having been interrupted by forces alien to Humanity, can now only take a Revolutionary path. When we say Africa must take a Revolutionary path, we mean of course ruthless class struggle. That conscious son of Africa, Franz Fanon, gave us explicit directions! "The bourgeoisie should not be allowed to find the conditions necessary for its existence and growth. in other words, the combined efforts of the masses, led by the Party and of intellectuals who are highly conscious and armed with Revolutionary principles ought to bar the way to this useless and harmful middle class."

We must be clear in our scientific prognosis of what Africa needs to control her destiny. Africa lacks only one thing--her people organized into a permanent Revolutionary Political Party. Africa's inevitable to socialist unification since independence clearly demonstrating this. Osagyefo's burning desire for a Unified Socialist Africa organizing all Africans.

One year after independence, in April 1958, he convened the Conference of Independent African States, which of course was the first Head-of-States meeting and led to the Organization of African Unity. Osagyefo knew that Africa's unification could not come from her leaders, only from her masses. The Heads of State Conference would help put leaders in with the aspirations of the masses, at least publicly. Osagyefo had alwways stressed the dire need of organization of the masses. "It is by, the People's effort that colonialism is routed, it is by the sweat of the People's brow that nations are built. The People are the reality of national greatness."

By December 9, 1958, Osagyefo convened the All-African People's Conference, which was attended by over 300 delegates, representing sixty-two (62) political parties and trade unions in Africa and the diaspora. Patrice Lumumba, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Ogginga Odinga, Frantz Fanaon and Paul Robeson were a very few of the African giants in attendence. The All-African People's Conference was the first step to organize our masses in a Pan-African framework. All of Africa's liberation movements will testify to the fact it was the All-African People's Conference which brought Africa's conscious elements together, thus creating the Revolutionary milieu and organizational contacts to speed up independence and the waging of armed struggle.

We had all hoped that the mounting mass pressure and objective conditions could force African leaders to pursue relentlessly the path to African unification. The road from Accra in 1958 to Addis Ababa in 1963 had already shattered many hopes with stark reality. The Organization of African Unity would be Africa's minimum instrument of unification. Osagyefo reminds us that Africa's communalist past, the dominant segment of our society coincided with the whole, but imperialism had eaten deep into the core of the whole moral fabric of the dominant segment. The overwhelming majority of Africa's Heads-of-State has been accumulating money through corruption; like their ideological forebears who sold Africans--they sell Africans! These Heads-of-State have no moral responsibility; they on Seku Ture's "detest of wealth" as a cardinal principle for them. By May 1963, it was clear that imperialism in its neo-colonial form held the dominant position among Africa's Heads-of-State.

The growing assult by imperialism and their neo-colonial agents against the weakly organized Pan-African forces showed the necessity for the strongest Pan-African Organization--the Pan-African Political Party. The CIA coup in Ghana delayed the process. By 1967, as co-president with Seku Ture, Osagyefo completed The Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare; the call was directed--we must have a Revolutionary Socialist Pan-African Party, the All-African People's Revolutionary Party with it's logical objective--Pan-Africanism--the total liberation and unification of Africa under scientific socialism. The All-African People's Conference would be crystallized to the All-African Committee for Political Co-ordination. whose task would be to help in the "formation of a Political Party linking all liberated territories and struggling parties under a common ideology which would smooth the way for eventual continental unity."

The venerable proletarian struggler Karl Marx correctly postulated that ideas become material reality when the masses take hold of them. In Class Struggle in Africa, we see three segments which make Revolution. The worker, the peasent and the Revolutionary intelligentsia. Africa has all of the overt brutal exploitative material conditions for socialist Revolution, all that is lacking in the organized conscious masses is the Revolutionary intelligentsia. Thus, the Revolutionary intelligentsia in the African Revolution plays a role out of proportion to other Revolutions. Our intelligentsia, like our bourgeoisie, is the most corrupt in the world. Our rich humanist past insures us that the only purpose of knowledge is to alleviate the suffering of humanity. Under capitalism humans become commodities. Africans know this. Yet our reactionary intelligentsia thoroughly imbued with the enemy's values aquire knowledge gained through the blood of our masses only to sell their skills to the highest bidder always outside of Africa. Seku Ture correctly points out that in Africa, Revolution must start with cultural Revolution. Here, ideological struggle plays the crucial role. Only through a Party can the masses wage ideological struggle.

Africa is more ripe for Pan-Africanism than ever before. Struggle is prerequisite for consciousness. Following the program of the program of the 5th Pan African Congress of 1945, Africans worldwide have aquired great consciousness through struggle in political Parties. These vary from clandestine Parties to the Africans in the United States of America in the corrupt Democratic Party voting for Jesse Jackson.

There are very few countries in Africa, which have not seen violent confrontation for political power. The Caribbean has seen and continues to see its share of revolts and even in the United States and Britain the African masses explode time to time again in violent confrontation against racist exploitation. Everywhere Africans have demonstrated their willingness to confront imperialism "by any means necessary." The necessity for real political power is persistently demanded everywhere by the masses. The understanding that only a unified Africa can give us our fullest power is an article of political faith with our suffering masses. In spite of all the reactionary propaganda to the contrary--in a simple phrase--the consciousness of the masses is rising even higher. As a result of struggle, African worldwide have aquired through their conscious students all the technical skills to make Africa self-suficient in the immediate future. Even reactionary African countries have aquired skills in nation building.

You get quality by critically organizing quantity. Seku Ture tells us "United States of Africa" shows that Africa can overnight through organizing our present means make qualitative leaps. We cite only two examples:

On a Pan-African Airline: "if each state provided one or two aircraft, the community would be able to form a considerable air fleet. The African Airline which would thus result from a combination of our individual resources would enable us to establish a continental network covering the whole of Africa with uninterrupted and accessible national connections."

On Pan-African broadcasting: "we could therefore better organize our information systems through television programs featuring the lives of our Peoples. This would make our programs profitable to all, diversified and rich in content. But instead we are importing foreign programs which poison the minds of our People!"

The African masses instinctive demand for qualitative progress since independence will be satisfied, just like the demand for independence was attained through any and all means necessary. That demand for independence, though amorphous and spontaneous in the beginning, found its perfect instrument in the mass Party on the micro-national scale. Only a Pan-African Party can channel our present level of consciousness to insure progress for Africans worldwide.

The great V.I. Lenin writing at the turn of the century, clearly analyzed imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism. His analysis and solutions have been proven by history and will be sustained by the future. Osagyefo writing in the 60's with scientific precision told us that neo-colonialism was the last stage of imperialism. The Pan-African Revolution will make it law.

Neo-Colonialism, though perfected in South and Central America by the United States imperialism finds its strongest base in Africa today. Neo-colonialism can only be destroyed through the organized conscious masses, not military coup d'etats. The destruction of neo-colonialism is as inevitable as the destruction of colonialism! The conscious daughters and sons of Africa are already involved in the process of organizing the masses. The inevitable next step of co-ordination will soon come.

V.I. Lenin correctly stated that the Russian Revolution was possible in 1917 because Russia was the weakest link in the capitalist chain. Everyone knows the role of the slave trade in laying the foundation fo capitalism, and sees the crucial role Africa plays vis-a-vis world imperialism. Thus Africa has always been one of the strongest links in the capitalist chain of exploitation. Africa's liberation spells the destruction of world imperialism. Portugal colonized Africa for five hundred years. On the dawn of independence for these African colonies, Portual's political regime was extreme military-fascist. The working class and oppressed masses of Portugal only freed themselves of their dictatorship after Angola, Guinea-Bisau and Mozambique, with arms in hand, gained independence.

Once neo-colonialism is destroyed in Africa world imperialism will crumble. That is why Osagyego is correct in stating "the emancipation of Africa is the emancipation of man." Since independence with the attitude of slave yesterday, Mercedes today, reflecting selfish irresponcibility, the mission of giving Africa her continent wide stable political system has been betrayed by the overwhelming majority of Heads-of-State representing our corrupt bourgeoisie, but they cannot stop the onward march of history!

That only a Revolutionary, Mass, Pan-African Socialist Party can achieve true African unification is an objective fact, not a subjective wish by Osagyefo. A cursory glance at African's centuries-long struggle with rich and diversified experiences and thanks to Osagyefo's work insures the fulfillment of this prerequisite for total liberation.

The "struggle for a unified socialist Africa has been raging though undetected by many. This demand by the masses will soon gush forth the hurricane" that has built up since the "winds of change" of the 1950's.

Osagyefo's vision will be inevitable reality. No force on earth can stop Africa. She will be totally and completely liberated, unified, and socialist.

[OKULAJA]

Is APSP the faction of the A-APRP that broke off? Ricks & co?

In the tradition of Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah and Malcolm X, Omali Yeshitela has stepped forward to assume the role of the leader of the International African Revolution since 1972, when the African People's Socialist Party (APSP) was formed.

BLACK POWER IN THE ‘60s PLANTS SEED FOR UHURU MOVEMENT

Chairman Omali (center, mic) mobilizes crowd during rally in the '60s.

A veteran of the Black Power Movement of the Sixties, Chairman Omali had participated in organizing the first membership-based Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organization in the United States. The fact that it was a membership organization built entirely by local community forces distinguished it from the staff-based volunteer structure used by SNCC everywhere else and gave it a more similar character to the Black Panther Party which was being organized on Oakland, California during the same period.

By 1966, SNCC was under fierce assault by the U.S. government and in December of that year Chairman Omali, then known as Joe Waller, was arrested for tearing down a degrading, racist mural from the wall of the St. Petersburg, Florida city hall during a demonstration. For this courageous act, he won both the respect and admiration of the African community in St. Petersburg, as well as the fear and hatred of the white power State. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

By 1968, SNCC had been effectively destroyed, but the Black Power Movement began to take on a revolutionary character even as it was struggling around organizational form and the various ideological trends that existed within it.

It was in 1968 that Chairman Omali organized the Junta of Militant Organizations (JOMO), a Black Power Organization similar in goals and structure to the Black Panther Party which was growing in influence in California and the northern cities of the U.S. The name reflected a growing awareness of our connection with Africa. The acronym "JOMO" was appropriated from Jomo Kenyatta who was widely and mistakenly believed at that time to be the leader of the Mau Mau, the revolutionary anti-colonial organization in Kenya also known as the Land Freedom Army.

The need to identify with the Mau Mau was also influenced by our growing awareness of the African collaborators within our own domestically colonized community. The Mau Mau was known for the ruthlessness with which it dealt with those who sold out the revolution to the British colonial thugs.
It was also in 1968 that JOMO began to publish The Burning Spear, a mimeographed newsletter that a year later would become The Burning Spear Newspaper in its current form. The Spear is the only remaining African revolutionary publication from that period, making it the oldest such publication today.

It was during this period that the African working class had taken the lead in its own movement articulating our struggle as one for Black Power and control over our own lives as opposed to the petty bourgeois ideology that would claim our solution was in integration with our oppressor. The Black Power Movement had won the hearts and minds of the African population in the U.S. dealing white power an ideological and political defeat. The ideology of white supremacy could not stand against the concept of Black Power, and the white liberal ideology of philosophical non-violence was defeated as Africans in the U.S. began taking up arms to defend themselves.

In the face of this developing African revolution, which would bring U.S. imperialism to its knees and force it to pay for it's centuries of crimes against African people and other oppressed nations, the U.S. government waged a vicious counterinsurgency to militarily crush the Black Revolution that it could no longer contend with ideologically.

One aspect of this counterinsurgency was the Federal Bureau of Investigation's COINTELPRO which targeted "black nationalist groups and leaders" and set as one of its goals the prevention of "the rise of a 'messiah' who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement." The terror and brutality of the counterinsurgency had no limits as our organizations were attacked and countless leaders in our movement were assassinated. Countless more were kidnapped and imprisoned or went into exile.

JOMO, which was based in several cities in Florida and Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky, was no exception in this military assault against our movement. Along with many other leaders, Chairman Omali was constantly being imprisoned, but unlike other organizations, JOMO never entirely went underground. This would prove critical, because JOMO would maintain constant links with the masses of our people and their struggles preventing a break in continuity in our development and the development of our politics.

FOUNDING OF THE AFRICAN PEOPLE'S SOCIALIST PARTY

APSP-led demonstration to free Dessie Woods

In May of 1972, at a time when the Black Liberation Movement had been destroyed as a movement and in a climate of political terror and brutal repression, Chairman Omali Yeshitela founded the African People's Socialist Party (APSP).

The APSP was formed by the merging of three organizations. The dominant organization was JOMO because of its political experience, longer history and its base in the working class base and character. The other two organizations were the Black Rights Fighters from Ft. Myers, Florida and the Black Study Group of Gainsville, Florida. The Black Rights Fighters was an organization of migrant farm workers and organizaers, and the Black Study Group was an organization of community-based students and intellectuals.

JOMO had been making efforts to build a revolutionary party since 1969 but its efforts had been sabotaged by the U.S. counterinsurgency. On January 10, 1973, eight months after the APSP's founding, co-founder, Central Committee member and leader of the Black Rights Fighters was assassinated by car wreck. In May of that same year, Chairman Omali was arrested and reimprisoned for the mural charge from 1966, but the Party fought fiercely and forced the government to release him within two months.

During the 1970's, the Party had made its main goals to keep the Black Power Movement alive, defend the countless Africans locked up by the counterinsurgency, and develop relationships with Africa and Africans worldwide.

It was during this time that, under the leadership of Chairman Omali Yeshitela, the Party took on the successful campaign to free Pitts and Lee, forcing the governor of the state of Florida to releas the two African men who had been framed up and put on death row for something they didn't do.
Through the successful campaign to free Dessie Woods, the Party built an international organization which won worldwide support for this African working class woman who was forced to defend herself against colonial violence by killing with his own gun the white man who tried to rape her.
The Party had also began developing relationships with Africans around the world. The Party built the first Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) support committee in the U.S. touring members of ZANU around the country to raise money when the African masses in Zimbabwe were entrenched in fierce struggle against colonialism. The Party was to later develop a long-standing relationship with the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) which, as opposed the Nelson Mandela's neo-colonial African National Congress (ANC), really led the on-the-ground struggles against the colonial South African State.

In 1976, the Party formed the African People's Solidarity Committee (APSC), which proved to be one of its most significant moves. For the first time in history, a revolutionary African organization was able to win white people away from their historic unity with white power and colonialism by giving them the opportunity to be organized under the leadership of the African working class.
The existence of APSC enabled the Party and the Black Revolution to win back some of our stolen resources and to build a genuinely revolutionary force within the white population which could provide solidarity with the Black Revolution in the U.S. and around the world and help to isolate and encircle the U.S. government.

In September of 1979, the African People's Socialist Party built the African National Prison Organization (ANPO) establishing the potential to have local anti-colonial mass organizations to lead African people's struggles in 15 states and 26 cities in the U.S.

THE PARTY’S MOVE TO OAKLAND RECHARACTERIZES PARTY WORK,

Chairman Omali with Huey Newton at the Oakland Uhuru House

In 1981, the Party moved it's national office to Oakland, California and opened the Uhuru House. This period of Party work was characterized by the constant, relentless work that APSP was involved in. Party-led forces were in the streets everyday organizing and demonstrating against the brutal conditions that African workers were facing. As a result, for the first time since the 60's, the needs of the African working class were back on the political agenda.

The first Party Congress was held in Oakland in 1982. It was in this Congress that the resolution to build the African Socialist International (ASI) was passed.

That same year, the African National Reparations Organization was built and the First World Tribunal on Reparations for African People was held in Brooklyn, New York. Through this work, the African People's Socialist Party gave birth to the modern Reparations Movement.

In 1983, Tent City for the Homeless in Oakland was organized, and in 1984 the Party held the Oakland Summer Project, organized the Community Control of Housing Initiative (Measure O and Measure H), and created the Bobby Hutton Freedom Clinic. In the midst of this whirlwind of struggle in Oakland and around the U.S., Chairman Omali was often traveling to revolutionary Nicaragua or on speaking tours in the U.S.

Chairman Omali had also began touring in Europe to build the African Socialist International (ASI), an international African revolutionary organization to unite Africans fighting worldwide into a single organization critical to defeating colonialism and neo-colonialism and creating aliberated and united Africa under an all-African socialist government. The mandate to build the ASI came out of the first Party Congress of 1982.

In 1987, the popular Uhuru Bakery Cafe opened in Oakland. There was the Party-owned Spear Graphics in Oakland and St. Petersburg, the Uhuru Furniture Etc. in Oakland, and Uhuru Houses were opening in Philly, Baltimore and St. Pete.

It was also the African People's Socialist Party who brought Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party and one of the most significant leaders of the Black Revolution of the Sixties, back into political life and his last speeches were made at the Uhuru House in Oakland. After his assassination in 1989 it was the African People's Socialist Party that held up his memory when the white ruling class media viciously slandered him with the help of even some "retired" Black Panther Party members.

During this period of incredible activity, Chairman Omali also produced his most important body of theoretical work. It was at that time that the Chairman first defined the question of parasitic capitalism -- that capitalism was born of slavery, genocide and theft of resources of the African people and all oppressed peoples and that it remains parasitic today.

The Chairman's theory brought African workers and other colonized peoples to the center stage of history changing the struggle from one against racism, the ideas in white people's heads, to one against colonialism, the actual conditions that the ideology of racism is used to justify.

The Chairman's theory also brought the Party and the African working class to a deeper unity and an active relationship with other colonized peoples struggling for national liberation.


THE NECESSITY FOR A MASS ORGANIZATION BIRTHS InPDUM

Attendees of the 2000 International InPDUM convention

By 1991, the Chairman had called for the founding of a mass organization working under the leadership of the African People's Socialist Party to build as broadly as possible with the central goal of defeating the vicious counterinsurgency against the African community and defending the democratic rights of African people.

The International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM), then called the National People's Democratic Uhuru Movement, has raised up the demand for self-determination for African people, recognizing that self-determination is the highest form of democracy. InPDUM has been a fundamentally important organization in defining and stopping the counterinsurgency against African people.
InPDUM has taken on various campaigns including the successful campaign to free Fred Hampton's son. Fred Hampton was the Chairman of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and was assassinated by the U.S. government at the age of 21 while sleeping in his bed on December 4, 1969. His son, who was born three weeks later, was sentenced to 18 years on false charges and a fierce campaign to free him was waged and won.

THE MASSES RISE UP AND REBEL IN ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA

St. Petersburg, Fl: rebellion erupts after police mureder 19-year old African Man

In 1996, several years after the national office was moved back to St. Petersburg, Florida, the U.S. front of the African Liberation Movement hit a turning point. On October 24, a righteous rebellion of African workers sparked after St. Petersburg police gunned down 18-year-old TyRon Lewis. Lewis had been stopped by police, and while his hands were raised in surrender, policeman James Knight pumped five bullets into his body.

Enraged, young Africans in a community where the Uhuru Movement had been organizing for over 30 years took up bricks, bottles, molotov cocktails, guns and whatever weapons they could get their hands on to drive out the murderous police. Hundreds of Africans battled fiercely against police, reduced sections of the city owned by parasitic merchants to ashes, and strategically targeted police substations for destruction.

The Uhuru Movement organized a tribunal that found the two police officers involved along with the mayor and police chief guilty of the murder of TyRon Lewis on October 30. On November 13, the grand jury exhonorated the two murderous cops and the police began to pre-emptively round up Uhuru Movement members to take the African community's leadership off the ground. Twenty-seven members of St. Petersburg's special weapons team were employed to lock up one member for an expired license tag.

By 6:30pm, an army of over 300 heavily armed troops from various police agencies surrounded the Uhuru House. Inside the more than 100 people attending a regular weekly meeting were trapped as police blocked the doors and shot tear gas cannisters into the building and trees trying to set the building on fire.

The people then rose up in guerilla warfare, armed with anything they could find from bricks and bottles to automatic weapons, driving the police troops out. Two police were shot, a police helicopter was shot out of the sky and 35 more buildings were burned down to the ground that night. Newspapers the next day quoted the police commander screaming over his radio, "Pull the troops back, we're under heavy fire!"

The State had attempted to wipe out the leadership of the Uhuru Movement and the masses of African workers, recognizing their leadership, rose up and defeated the State's attack. This was unlike what had happened with the Black Panther Party and other organizations when there would be confrontations between the Panthers and the police. This time, because we organize recognizing that the people are the makers of history, this confrontation was between the people and the police.
After being militarily defeated, the State then turned to negotiations. It also attempted to use neo-colonialism in the form of an African police chief as a solution, but because of the work that our movement was doing under the leadership of Chairman Omali Yeshitela the police chief had to took up our line. Even the police chief was saying that to solve the problems in the African community there would have to be economic development instead of police containment.

The Uhuru House became an Embassy to the African World, and the police chief ordered that no one would be arrested on the Uhuru House property. This was a significant victory.

In 1999, the APSP organized the first Conference to Build the African Socialist International in London, England inviting various organizations of African people to take part in building the ASI. This was to be the first conference of several that would bring Africans from around the world together in attempt to win organizations and individuals to this effort to build this international African revolutionary party. From these conferences have come resolutions on trade and debt, on our relationship to white people.


GLOBAL SCOPE OF UHURU MOVEMENT BROADENED THROUGH ASI

Chairman Omali and other Party forces with Winnie Mandela in Azania.

In December 2002, after having said that he would never go to Africa without having specific political objectives, Chairman Omali touched African soil for the first time. He was to give the keynote address at the historical 8th Congress of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania in what is called South Africa.

Chairman Omali’s presentation electrified the entire congress sparking rumbling chants of “Uhuru!” Unfortunately, while the membership showed an insatiable will to fight for the organization, the PAC’s petty bourgeois leadership sabotaged the elections that were to happen at this congress abandoning the PAC’s once revolutionary direction and the vision of its founder, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe.This would however open up a series of trips to Azania and a stronger relationship with revolutionary forces on the ground there.

In 2004, Chairman Omali Yeshitela's tireless work to build the ASI reached a turning point when Africans from all over the world descended upon London, England for the Fourth Conference to Build the African Socialist International. Chairman Omali wrote a document summing up the history of the International African Revolution and the need to build a single organization to bring it to fruition.

This document would become the Main Resolution for the ASI. It had become clear that it was the beginning of a new era at this conference as the Africans in attendance — after having voted unanimously, with the exception of two people, to accept the resolution — fought for and defended the resolution against any attempts to discredit it or the effort to build the ASI.

A new corner had been turned. Not since Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) had an international organization of Africans existed for the purpose of creating a unified, liberated Africa. I

The participation of Africans from Haiti, where the U.S. government had just recently kidnapped the elected president; Spain, which has in its Latin American colonies alone 135 million Spanish speaking Africans; the Congo; Equatorial Guinea and various other African microstates was significant.
A secretary to the Spanish speaking African world was appointed and concrete steps toward building for the First Congress of the ASI in 2005 were made.

Another event in London days later featured Albert Onawelo, the brother and personal secretary of assassinated Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba. At this event Onawelo explained that he had been hearing of the work of Chairman Omali Yeshitela and that he was elated to finally meet him in person.

The leadership of Chairman Omali Yeshitela and the work of the African People’s Socialist Party to advance the interests and understandings of the African working class has ushered the International African Revolution to a different place. With the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party, the African working class is now taking history into it’s own hands and forging a united, liberated, socialist Africa!


Izwe Lethu I Afrika!
Forward to the Final Offensive!
Uhuru!
Copyright (C) 2004-2005 African People's Socialist Party

Edited by Jacuma