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Archives for May 2023

Kenya Palestine Solidarity Movement ALD 2023 Solidarity Message

2023-05-24 by NIDAMU KHUTHAZA Leave a Comment

The Kenya Palestine Solidarity Movement (KPSM) in coalition with organizations supporting Pan-African solidarity, recommits itself to this cherished value as we commemorate African Liberation Day on 25 May 2023. On this Day we gather yearly to take broad lessons of the struggles that our nation states undergo to grapple with the dangers that Imperialism poses in continent’s struggle for dignity and honour. Today we see brothers in arms in Sudan killing each other, as our enemy imposes its nefarious will, tearing away at Mother Africa. This dangerous enemy looms. Though the Imperialist enemy plots and plans to keep us down but we are confident that Africa shall rise with that torch lit by our earliest legendaries on to the Pan-African path of true freedom.

The Secretariat. Kenya Palestine Solidarity Movement (KPSM)

Filed Under: Solidarity Statements 2023 Tagged With: #AfricanLiberationDay, #AfricanLiberationDay2021, African Liberation Day, ALD, International Republican Socialist Network, Irish Republican Socialist Movement

Kongamano la Mapinduzi ALD 2023 Solidarity Message

2023-05-24 by A-APRP Editor Leave a Comment

Kongamano la Mapinduzi (KLM) sends revolutionary greetings to all African people and progressive organisations on the continent and its diaspora on this 60th commemoration of African Liberation Day. KLM  – a coalition of diverse Kenyan individuals, organisations, initiatives and movements, generally identifiable as progressive within struggles for civil, political, social, cultural, economic and ecological justice and freedoms – also sends its fraternal greetings to all organisations and movements gathered here today, and especially those organising this event.

But as we wish you a progressive commemoration of this African Liberation Day, we concurrently ask that you all pause for a moment and think about the millions of African people facing repression, depression, war, ecological disaster, economic terrorism and the stripping of their dignity in whatever form it takes. We ask all Africans to stand with our brothers and sisters facing untold suffering and hardship on the continent – especially those affected this year by tropical storm Freddy which hit Malawi in March 2023, and most recently, those affected by the ongoing war in Sudan which began in April 2023. We additionally ask all African people, wherever they may be, to show solidarity to our brothers and sisters in the African diaspora who everyday face racism, including its systemic manifestations.

We arrive at this juncture with our people still bound by politics dictated from Washington and Brussels, as Patrice Lumumba, that beloved son of Africa, eloquently stated decades ago. We arrive at this moment with colonial patterns of economics still intact and prevalent across the continent – anchored majorly by a comprador class of sell-outs and their masters across the seas and oceans. We arrive at this moment facing ecological devastation. We arrive at this moment with the African liberation struggle still unfinished. 

We however also arrive at this moment with a re-awakening, a Mwamko. Our young people are meeting again – and they are telling stories of resistance. Stories of African unity, stories of justice, peace and dignity. Our organisation is today, here at the Kenya National Theatre, proud to join other organisations in calling for land, food and freedom. We however also remember that this national theatre was officially opened in 1952 – the same year that the state of emergency was declared – as a means of enabling British settlers escape the reality of Africans in revolt and resistance. History calls upon us to once again make it a theatre of the people.

Our movements are today calling for a borderless Africa. Our environmentalists are calling for ecological sovereignty. Our feminists are calling for gender equality. KLM reiterates that these calls are all important, and that they must be treated with the respect they deserve both within and without our organisations -in whatever spaces we find ourselves in.

Like floods of revolt, we arrive at this critical juncture of the unfinished African liberation struggle demanding for reparations and restitution of stolen lands. In essence, we demand for full political and economic independence. We also recognize that the only viable pathway to that which we demand is organisation and mass work. That is why KLM continues to organise the masses of our people.

Our immediate ask, however, is that all comrades should engage in continuous political education and action. For as Cabral reminds us, “no matter how hot the water in your well is, it cannot cook rice”. That rice needs fire to cook, and we at KLM re-affirm political education as the fire that fuels our resistance – and our revolution by extension.

 

A Luta Continua!

KLM Central Committee – Nairobi, 25 May 2023

Filed Under: Solidarity Statements 2023 Tagged With: #AfricanLiberationDay, #AfricanLiberationDay2021, African Liberation Day, ALD, International Republican Socialist Network, Irish Republican Socialist Movement

Socialist Movement of Ghana ALD 2023 Solidarity Message

2023-05-24 by A-APRP Editor Leave a Comment

Africa must UNITE!!!

On Africa Liberation Day, 2023 the Socialist Movement of Ghana (SMG) salutes the peoples of Africa.
Foreign exploitation, underdevelopment, and oppression of Africa continues to intensify in the 21st century. Africans in the Chagos Islands, in Western Sahara and in Ceuta still suffer colonial rule. We suffer an unjust and unpayable debt imposed by Western Banks and our traitorous spendthrift Neo-colonial political leaderships. We suffer the cruellest consequences of climate change even though we have not contributed to or benefited from the reckless capitalist industrialisation that has thrown the climate out of balance. Our continent is literally cut in half by warfare and conflict imposed by Imperialist armies and their client local militias. We suffer deficits in nutrition, healthcare and meaningful education leaving us uniquely vulnerable to scourges like Covid-19 while a tiny global elite continues to extract and expatriate the fruits of our collective labour for its own narrow, and bloated opulence.

Because exploitation and oppression continue, Africa’s centuries-long struggle for self determination, development, equality, and dignity also continues unabated. This struggle cannot be suppressed or hidden – no matter how much imperialism and its global corporate media seek to distort and demoralise.

The fight against disinformation is a key fight for Africans. Corporate and social media insist subtly that “Africans are our own worst enemies”, that “Africans are essentially and immutably tribal”, that “Africans lack the civic consciousness and fortitude to unite”. They tell us that African leaders are so hopelessly corrupt that we cannot change our landscape. They urge us to limit our aspirations and continue to seek outcomes consistent with continued subordination to the West. We must reject these and the many other imperialist stereotypes used to weaken our ambitions.

SMG believes that continental unity must be placed at the centre of Africa’s struggle for transformation.

Africa needs unity so we can together build the continental economic and political institutions that allow us to plan our continental development rationally and in our own interest.

Africa needs unity so we can sustainably and collectively own and deploy our vast natural resources (soils, waters, minerals, forests, oil and gas, biodiversity). Our resources cannot remain under the control of hereditary neo-feudal institutions that pull us backward into petty tribal political identities.

Africa needs unity so we can develop our immense human resource (soon to be the largest workforce in the world) to tackle our nutrition, healthcare, housing, education, and culture free from the domination of foreign profit or geopolitical interests.

Africa needs unity so we can defend every inch of our territory and expel foreign armies that are turning our lush lands into killing fields. Africa needs unity so we can participate in global affairs from a position of respect and non-aligned self-interest and not as surrogates for external interests.

As President Nkrumah declared famously on 24 May 1963 “So many blessings flow from our unity; so many disasters must follow on our continued disunity.”

Amid the darkness of our long struggle there are important signs that an anti-imperialist, pan-Africanist, and even socialist struggle is raging across our continent. For example, SMG applauds the foundation in December 2022 of a West Africa People Organisation (WAPO) comprising key actors in the Labour, Gender, Youth, Cultural, and political movements in our subregion.

WAPO is committed to remobilising West Africa’s masses into the fight for anti-imperialist Pan-Africanism. SMG also notes with pride the growing pushback in West and Central Africa against pernicious and anachronistic French Neo-colonialism. We hail the increasing tendency of militant leaders notably in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Guinea towards national political unification as a key solution to the terrible problems of underdevelopment, instability and geopolitical conflict imposed on our people in these states. We have no illusions that this is a tremendously difficult challenge and that it will be opposed by the Imperialist world and by the Neo-colonial elites of the Region and their forum, ECOWAS. But it is a development that deserves and will receive the full support of Africans across the continent.

SMG calls on all Africans and especially Africa’s Youth to escalate the fight for an anti-imperialist revolution in Africa and to focus unwaveringly on continental unification. SMG stands with the all those fighting for a unified, anti-imperialist, and socialist Africa.

www.smghana.org
P.O. Box NT 272, Accra – Newtown Accra

 

Kwesi Pratt jnr
General Secretary
Accra

Filed Under: Solidarity Statements 2023 Tagged With: #AfricanLiberationDay, #AfricanLiberationDay2021, African Liberation Day, ALD, International Republican Socialist Network, Irish Republican Socialist Movement

The Meaning of African Liberation Day – Walter Rodney

2023-05-18 by A-APRP Editor Leave a Comment

The Meaning of African Liberation Day: A Speech Delivered May 27, 1972 in San Francisco, California by Dr. Walter Rodney

I was born in a place that used to be called British Guyana. I happened to have been educated in Jamaica, to have lived among Black people in England and on the Continent. I have met brothers and sisters who say that their mother-tongue is, quote-un-quote, “French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese,” as well as English which we speak. And because of this, we have a problem of identification: we do not know who we are! And that is why this gathering is of great symbolic importance, because it is an act of identification.

We are saying that we identify with the African people of the African continent. We are saying that we are an African people. And when we make this identification, we have no illusions about the fact that this is a very revolutionary initiative; it is a rejection of every other form of identification which the white society has asked us to accept.

Let me draw your attention to something which white universities and white libraries practice; and this is a university community; numerous universities lie around this land (Bay Area): go into their libraries and check the Library of Congress cards under Europe or European, you will find all entries listed concerning the Continent of Europe; you will also find entries listed about Europeans in East Africa; Europeans in Asia and Australia.

Look under the Chinese, you will find entries listed not only for Mainland China, but for Chinese in Malaysia, and for Chinese North America, but look under Africa and Africans — the only entry under Africans relates to the Continent itself — there are not entries under Africans overseas — there is no such category. Africans who have been raped from the Continent mysteriously disappear and become “Negroes”!

“We are saying that we are an African people.”

So when we reject the very term “negro,” it is not playing with words; negro is a conception — when we reject the term negro it is a rejection of a whole historical interpretation because (get it very clear) negro is a thing! a negro is not a person!

Historically, when we were taken as slaves, we were dehumanized, we were converted from people into things! In the literature of slavery, a slave is referred to, an African is referred to as apiece. The Portuguese will say, “We have thousands of pieces, hundreds of pieces” — those are Africans to whom they referred.

We were brought to this section of the world and we were auctioned; and auction is something reserved for antique furniture. We were brought to this section of the world and in Washington and in Virginia and in Maryland (my God, in Maryland a cracker was shot the other day); in places like that, we were bred as slaves, they were slave breeding grounds. Now breeding of that sort is reserved for stud animals, so the negro was a thing — at best and animate object in the category of cattle, horses and sheep. So when we break with that and say we are an African people, that is a revolutionary identification.

“Negro is a thing! A negro is not a person!”

I do not say to understand who we are is the be all and end all — on the contrary, it is merely a very short step forward in the struggle, because freedom is a long road — freedom is the road which the Vietnamese people travel on the Ho Chi Minh trail; each man and woman carrying 60 pounds weight. Freedom is the long road which the Brothers from Angola, in which the Movement of the Popular Liberation of Angola, that is the road which they take week after week, crossing Eastern Angola, indeed, crossing Zambia, crossing the plains, crossing the flooded rivers, crossing the swamps, to engage with the enemy — that is the road of freedom.

Freedom is the road which carried in Guinea (Bissau), along the creeks and the rivers, the Brothers take the canoes to engage the enemy. Therefore, I am not saying that the identification is all — it is a process of struggle — and when we support Africa today, let no one have the impression that we are supporting a passive people. Because the news media has either been silent or deliberately mis-informative as is their want. They have not told you the level which the struggle has reached in Southern Africa. They have not told you the amount of territory which has been liberated from the Portuguese in Angola, Guinea (Bissau), and Mozambique.

“Let no one have the impression that we are supporting a passive people.”

They have not told you that in 1970 there was a massive campaign by the Portuguese, a campaign to end all campaigns in Mozambique. It was designed to eliminate the liberated zones. It had a massive array of armaments, 50,000 troops, American advisers; they went to the United States and had one of their generals trained on the assumption that the United States are the world experts on counter-guerilla warfare. But even if I had to fight the counter-guerilla war, I would be reluctant to ask the advice of the Americans, because they are only experts in losing! It turned out that they lost that struggle — the people of the Mozambique today have a greater liberated area, have produced an intensification, not only of their military program, but of their socio-economic and political program.

The same applies in Angola, the same in Guinea (Bissau). And, furthermore, when we look at Southern Africa, although it is true that there are certain areas when the armed struggle, the highest level of struggle, has not yet been reached, we must not, for a movement deprecate the energies, the courage, and the activities of our Brothers and Sisters in that part of the world.

Let me say a brief word about South Africa. The people of South Africa are not cheap as some would have you believe. The people of South Africa have a long history of struggle, longer than in many other parts of the African continent. In the period after the first World War, there was in South Africa the strongest Black trade union on the Continent and in most parts of the world. The trade union known as the I.C.U., led by an African giant, Clement Sdale, was one of the greatest trade unions of its time. It failed! Why did it fail? Let me tell you a secret, it failed because it was betrayed by the white working class of South Africa.

“In the period after the first World War, there was in South Africa the strongest Black trade union on the Continent.”

Nevertheless, the struggle continues in South Africa. What happens in Southwest Africa (Namibia)? Few people know of Namibia. Namibia is the diamond mine of the world, that is where the Oppenheimers, the Goldfingers, the later Englehart, that is where the Rockefellers draft gem diamonds and industrial diamonds out of the ground by the tons every year.

And in Namibia, the people have had to face the brutality of the Germans in the last part of the 19th century and in the present century. Germany learned to practice fascism in Africa before it practiced it in Germany. It was against the heroic people of Namibia that the Germans unleashed a policy of genocide. Nevertheless, enough of the people, and this is a constant wonder — that we have managed to survive — to survive and to multiply — which amazed them (white people).

The people of Namibia last year staged a tremendous strike against the mining companies — out of the blue — no one expected it — the people of Namibia said to the mining companies, the white race’s international monopoly capitalist — they said, “We are still here! We are still here! And we will strike when the hour comes.” And this is true throughout Southern Africa.

In Zimbabwe, the whites thought they had a good thing going; they have banned Z.A.N.U., they banned Z.A.P.U. They have some in prison, the rest are exiled. They brought in the South African police and military. They have the support of the British government, they have the support of international monopoly capital, and they said, “We are going to stage a mock referendum which will draw the wool over the eyes of the world because we have intimidated the African sufficiently that we will get them to accept our domination by means of a referendum,” and then they attempted to count this referendum, they sent the British commission, and what happened? The people of Zimbabwe came out unarmed, unarmed mind you, to face the guns and they said, “no! no!” in a very loud voice; it was heard everywhere, it was unmistakable that they would not accept white minority rule in Zimbabwe.

“The people of Zimbabwe came out unarmed to face the guns and they said, ‘no! no!”’

And when you talk about struggle, furthermore, again it is to be remembered that there are governments in Africa today, who are putting their integrity, putting their existence out on the limb in order to support the struggle in South Africa. Governments like Tanzania, Zambia, Guinea, Algeria, and even the U.A.R., although it is fighting a war against the Zionists, they all have the time and resources to devote to the struggle of African unity and African liberation.

These are things to bear in mind when we say we are giving our support, because the world is full of many people who are claiming their rights but doing nothing else about it. We will support those who are claiming their rights and backing it up with what is necessary to demand and grasp one’s rights.

There is another illusion which must be squashed, and that is that when we support Africa, we are supporting a foreign entity, we are escaping from the struggle here, but the support of Africa is merely an extension from the struggle here.

The struggle is universal because the system of oppression is universal.

The struggle is international — and black unity must be international because we are the world’s most authentic international people. We live on every continent, through no choice of our own. But when the enemy has created a system of production and a system of exploitation which rests upon our physical presence in the Americas, in Europe, and in Africa, we will use that dispersed presence to mount a tremendous international campaign to liquidate the struggle that has reduced us to the position which we are in now.

“There are governments in Africa today who are putting their existence out on the limb in order to support the struggle in South Africa.”

Let me move toward a conclusion, Brothers and Sister, a conclusion which asks you to bear in mind what this gathering symbolizes. It symbolizes a “no” to Nixon, a “no” to the murderous policies in Vietnam, a “no” to the United States companies which are investing and exploiting on the African continent; a “no” to N.A.T.O. which provides Portugal with the wherewithal to bomb and blast our African Brother who are struggling for their rights in their own land. That must be an explicit “no”! It is also a “yes” — it is an affirmation, we are saying yes to the line which was developed by people like Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. DuBois, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Frantz Fanon.

We are saying “yes” to the struggle in Africa today which is led by such giants as Ahmed Sekou Toure, Julius Nyerere … And we are saying “yes” to people like the Soledad Brothers and the martyrs of Attica.

This time is a symbolic act of coming together. This is also a time for self analysis and self-criticism and rededication. So we will go from here with a new strength. We will reconsider the nature of the domestic struggle and its relation to the international struggle, moving toward the realization that the system must fall — it all must fall! Have no illusions about it, the system that was created within this country as it extends throughout the world is so immoral, so vicious that there is no compromise, there is no remedying — except to banish it!

So, we will move out, to contemplate in our various ways how to arrive at its destruction. As we move out, bear in mind a slogan which the Brothers in Southern Africa use. They say, “Victory or Death! Victory is Certain.” Victory or death because they are placing their lives on the line — the highest form of struggle! But they are saying “Victory is Certain” because we are the future, we are the repositories of the truth, we are the most exploited and the most oppressed _ and must, of necessity, by the repository of freedom. So let us join and reiterate that slogan of Southern Africa, “Victory or Death — Victory is Certain!”

(Crowd repeats: “Victory or Death — Victory is Certain!”). Power!

Walter Rodney, “The Meaning of African Liberation Day (a speech delivered May 27, 1972 in San Francisco, California),” transcribed and edited by Marvin X , Journal of Black Poetry

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