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#AfricanLiberationDay2021

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

What’s So Frightening About Revolution?

2021-05-21 by A-APRP Editor Leave a Comment

Some years ago, a member of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party spoke to university students about the thousands of years of African history that preceded slavery, explaining that the length and breadth of that rich history and culture meant descendants of enslaved Africans are not simply emancipated slaves, but they have been and remain “Africans.”  The lecturer recalls: “A student came up to me after the presentation and said she understood and agreed that she should have an allegiance to Africa, but she also suggested: ‘you would attract more people if you didn’t call yourselves revolutionary. Revolution scares people away.’”

What’s so frightening about the word revolution? The capitalists always use that word to advertise their products. The pictures below are three examples.

So why do capitalists train us to become frightened when socialists use the word revolution? The reason is simple. Socialist revolution requires the destruction of capitalism. This would mean the elimination of a system where a few own and control the factories, banks, farms, mines, and oil fields across the planet.  The wealthy don’t want this to happen, so their media outlets make people think fighting for revolutionary social and economic change is harmful and dangerous and buying more and more of their “revolutionary” junk is good.

It has been this way for a very long time. Years ago, students were taught that the invention of the transistor was a “revolutionary” advance in technology. Transistors replaced vacuum tubes. When it comes to technology, revolutionary change is applauded. Integrated circuits replaced transistors, then computers on a chip replaced circuit boards of integrated circuits. We are taught that the industrial revolution was a great thing. Now there is much discussion of how Africa must embrace the fourth industrial “revolution.”

Each year individuals are awarded Nobel prizes in a range of disciplines. We are told that it is for their “revolutionary” contributions in physics, chemistry and even peace-making. An award-winning physicist once spoke of the days and hours of running experiments. After a breakthrough, he was so excited he ran from his lab into the hallway to share his excitement, only to find the building empty. He then realized it was 3 a.m. on a holiday weekend. It was evidence of the fact that revolutionary change of any kind, including scientific change, requires hard work, determination, sacrifice, and discipline. Organizing to bring an end to neo-colonialism and capitalism is no exception.

Although capitalists imply socialist revolutionaries are dangerous or criminal, socialists are actually fighting for a better world. Capitalism is based on a few people owning and controlling all production and distribution and operating to make personal profits. The so-called free market system involves cutthroat competition and a drive to increase profits to survive. Where do these profits come from?  They come from the labor of workers and the cheap extraction of natural resources. Capitalism increases the wealth of a few while increasing the toil, work, and exploitation of the many. That toil, work and exploitation are the basis for capitalist profits. It is only natural that well-meaning people – good socialist people – want an end to this system of exploitation. The elimination of capitalism and its replacement with a system that asks people to contribute according to their abilities and to receive according to their needs is the revolutionary change capitalism demonizes. However, it is in the best interest of humanity for us to struggle for this revolutionary change. In fact, our collective conscience demands that we do all we can to support and improve humanity and our world. This is the essence of being human. Therefore, the highest expression of humanity is to struggle for revolution!

Are you ready for revolution?

“Forward Ever to World-Wide Pan-African Unity”

Filed Under: ALD Tabloid 2021 Tagged With: #AfricanLiberationDay, #AfricanLiberationDay2021, A#ALD, ALD, ALD2021, All-African People's Revolutionary Party

Revolutionary African Culture And an End to Gender-Based Violence And Border Wars Are Critical to Establishing African Unity

2021-05-21 by A-APRP Editor Leave a Comment

The key to worldwide Pan-African unity is found in Africa’s history. African civilizations once developed their own societies based on their needs and visions for the future. These societies had social, political, and economic foundations grounded in an African way of life. However, colonial intrusion caused disorder and confusion as well as the adoption of beliefs and practices that opposed matriarchal culture.  This had a significant impact on gender, class, and clan, and led to the abandonment of the social and communal principles that guaranteed African unity and prosperity. It was an abandonment of principles intrinsic to African culture.

Value systems adopted from colonizers conflict with the value systems of African societies that align life and nature. Africans’ instinct is to support others, but capitalist individualism promotes antagonism, disrespect, and abandonment of others. These foreign values create obstacles to unity and cause Africans to question their identity and transform gender respect and community cooperation into disruptive, divisive, and destructive relationships. The ultimate consequence is war. War in Africa has caused people to flee conflict and poverty by attempting to reach Europe by way of the Mediterranean Sea. In recent years, an average of 1,800 migrants from Africa and surrounding regions may have drowned each year attempting to make this journey.  War has destabilized millions of women and children, with more Africans living outside their country of birth than any other continent.

Gender-Based Violence

There are fifteen civil or border wars occurring in Africa today. Women and men of revolutionary African organizations like MPLA, PAIGC, TANU, PDG, FRELIMO, PAC/ANC, ZANU and others fought valiantly for unity and true liberation. They did not make sacrifices so that Africans might engage in the internecine conflict we witness today.

We are creating instability within our nations and a worker and brain drain in Africa which is feeding the labor base in capitalist, elitist and racist countries in Europe, Asia, and America. As they did during periods of enslavement and colonialism, capitalists benefit from our misery. When Africans internalize capitalist values, adopt capitalist governmental systems, military strategies and ways of life, Africans’ lives become meaningless.

In Ethiopia, Sudan, Congo, Nigeria, and throughout the African continent, children – especially women and girls are kidnapped and murdered by Africans at an alarming rate. During the current pandemic, the numbers have increased. The fight over mineral resources has made the weakest of the society pawns of corporate bloodsuckers.  This is not African!

Women and youth make up most of the African World’s population, and they have become the primary victims of war, migration, and poverty. In 2019 and 2020, there were 53,300 incidents of sexual violence reported in South Africa. Police report an average of 146 such incidents each day. Violence has escalated throughout Africa and Africa’s diaspora. These crimes include an increase in forced child marriages, domestic violence, honor killings, rape, political and sexual assassination, female genital mutilation, sex trafficking or slavery, and physical punishment – especially against gay and lesbian citizens. Such violence can only be addressed by revolutionary principles and a recommitment to revolutionary culture.

Our focus must be on ideological and political development of the masses. The enemies of our people are in our midst and only mass, revolutionary African culture and organization can combat this reactionary behavior. We must collectively reconstruct not only the ethical and political foundation for a new African society but also reinvigorate revolutionary and principled people willing to build an ethical and principled society for the future of Africa and all our African communities.

We must have a plan that guides development from youth to leader. We must build revolutionary collectives, be they community, political, cultural, social, and educational for the reconstruction of our ethics and principles. The contradictions throughout the diaspora are our contradictions and they must be honestly addressed so we can elevate our individual and collective consciousness and behavior.

A social/cultural revolution can cause a resurgence of revolutionary love, a commitment to principles that will bind us to a common foundation that will live beyond our years into the next generation, creating the revolutionary cultural foundation for Africa and the world.

Unity is one of the cardinal principles of revolution. The PAIGC of Guinea Bissau made “Unity, Struggle, Unity” their motto. In their struggle, there were the Fula, the Pepel, the Mandinka, and the varied classes but stronger than any ethnic or social division was a unity amongst those who wanted to free Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. So, our differences cannot be allowed to prevent us from achieving our Pan-African objective. It is the critical key for African Unity, stability, development and prosperity for all!

 

Filed Under: ALD Tabloid 2021 Tagged With: #AfricanLiberationDay, #AfricanLiberationDay2021, A#ALD, African Unity, ALD, ALD2021, Border Wars, Gender Based Violence

Imperialist Meddlers Keep Out! Conflict Resolution and the Military Defense of Africa are Africa’s Business

2021-05-21 by A-APRP Editor Leave a Comment

The longstanding strategy of ‘divide and rule’ was used to perfection throughout much of Africa, which now has more borders than any other continent. The scheme was simple: fossilize Africa’s various ethnic groups, many of which were historical rivals, then force them under one geopolitical roof with preferences given, in some instances, to one group over another. Independence, then, would be fraught with so many ethnic (and religious) hostilities and antagonisms that national integration and political stability would be practically impossible. As a result, Africa is replete with intrastate and interstate conflicts, many of which, over the years, have blossomed into full scale civil wars.

No to u.s. military!

Only the might of an All-African Military High Command, under the centralized authority of an African Union Government, will be able to resolve these conflicts and end these devastating wars, including the various forms of violence resulting from religious extremism. The UN, NATO, EU, USA, or any other entity outside of Africa can never, and will never, solve Africa’s internal problems. None of them have the genuine interest, will, means, or mandate to do so. Instead, if left in the hands of outside forces (many operating with anti-African agendas) they are more likely to make matters worse.

Given what we know, it makes no sense to count on non-African forces to solve our problems. Who, after all, maneuvered the great Pan-Africanist, Patrice Lumumba, out of office in the Congo and into the murderous clutches of the CIA, the Belgians, and their puppet soldier, Mobutu Sese Seko?  Who pulled their troops out of Rwanda and failed to protect the lives of over 800,000 victims of genocide?  And who orchestrated and sponsored the civil war in Libya that resulted in the assassination of Muammar Gadhafi, one of Africa’s most serious Pan-Africanists?  Even now, consider the inability of the UN to prevent the war-torn southeast Democratic Republic of Congo from becoming the ‘Rape Capital of the World.’  Is there any wonder, then, why UN ‘Peacekeepers’ in Mozambique, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Haiti have been found guilty of fathering hundreds of children with local women and girls, in some cases subjecting them to the most virulent forms of sexual violence and exploitation?

As quiet as it has been kept, Africa itself, has an outstanding record of resolving its own conflicts, and it has done so for generations. Throughout the continent, there were many traditional systems and institutions that were strikingly similar, and that were designed to resolve inter and intra ethnic and regional conflicts long before the European invasion of Africa. Unfortunately, as with many indigenous African cultural patterns, these arbitration customs were either jettisoned or marginalized in favor of Eurocentric models.

Nonetheless, the tools for ending conflicts and building peace throughout Africa still lie essentially in Africa among Africans. More recently, this has been evidenced by the indispensable role played by African women in helping to resolve conflicts and build peace throughout the continent. Indeed, their success record, especially in countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone in West Africa, and Rwanda in East Africa, has been far better than the intervention experiences and mediating efforts of some of the regional (male dominated) ad hoc military formations. In this regard, the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) readily comes to mind. A weak resolve, inadequate funding, poor planning, flawed logistics, and uncertain objectives—all of which could have been remedied with an All-African Military High command—were the main factors that contributed to the blunders ECOMOG made in West Africa. Unfortunately, many of these same criticisms can be leveled at the African Union’s Standby Force (ASF), which has been plagued by poorly trained soldiers, ill-equipped armies, underfunded operations, and lack of centralized control.

Assata Shakur

Although the ASF and the various regional ad hoc groupings have not experienced complete failure, clearly the primary victims of war and conflict in Africa, women (and children), need to be at the forefront of any attempt to end conflicts and build peace in Africa. Who has a greater reason for this to happen than African women, whose lives have been ruined by ethnic conflicts, tribal wars, political violence, and sexual exploitation by peacekeeping soldiers?  And who is better equipped to make this happen than African women, who find it much easier than men to cross the explosive boundaries of religion, ethnicity, and party affiliation?  Their socialization, along with their vested interest in peace, renders them the greatest stakeholders for peace that we have. A Bureau of Women’s Affairs, then, as an integral part of an All-African Union Government, must be charged with the responsibility of institutionalizing a pivotal role for women in conflict resolution and peace building in Africa. With proper training, a steadfast commitment to Pan-Africanism, and the backing of an All-African Union Government, African women, especially women from the grassroots, can be deployed throughout the continent, alongside their male counterparts, as Africa’s primary arbitrators, negotiators, conciliators, and mediators.

On the international front, an effective defense against foreign espionage and aggression must be one of Africa’s top priorities. Without it, whatever gains made towards a unified and socialist Africa will be seriously threatened. Who begrudges China for acquiring the military capacity to protect the Chinese homeland, including building an arsenal of inter-continental ballistic missiles capable of reaching anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes?  Had they not, how safe, how secure, would their standing be as a growing industrial giant and formidable global power?  Global peace, with justice, including universal nuclear disarmament, must be the ultimate objective of all peoples around the world. However, until we get there, nay, in order to get there, Africa will have to be in a position to repel or dissuade any other country, or groups of countries, from establishing military bases on its soil, using Africa’s armed forces to fight proxy wars in pursuit of foreign interests, and bullying Africa into economic and political submission. This can only be achieved by the power derived from of an All-African Union Government.

A balkanized Africa will have billions of dollars it spends on military hardware, and millions of its uniformed soldiers stretched across the continent, dissipated into ineffectiveness—the existence of regional ad hoc military groups and the ASF notwithstanding. Into this void slipped NATO, EU, and single country interlopers, each committed to maintaining geo-political dominance in Africa while protecting the financial interests of the global north (vis a vis its adversaries, e.g., China, Russia, and others). While France has become a perfectionist in this regard, one of the more recent and most troubling examples of this, because of its continental reach, is U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). With very little transparency, AFRICOM has carried out thousands of military missions in Africa since its inception in 2008, including a growing number of airstrikes. This has been carried out with thousands of U.S. troops, weaponized drone bases, and the connivance of various African governments scattered across the continent. Only an All-African Union Socialist Government will be able to put an end to foreign interference and establish an effective military defense, intelligence-gathering agency, surveillance operations, and reconnaissance missions. What is at stake is the peace and prosperity that Africa so urgently needs.

With the attainment of a free, economically and militarily strong Africa, African people the world over will have a real defense against vicious racist and neo-colonial exploitation. Africa, as projected by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, will then be a powerful force for world peace.

Filed Under: ALD Tabloid 2021 Tagged With: #AfricanLiberationDay, #AfricanLiberationDay2021, A#ALD, ALD, ALD2021, All-African People's Revolutionary Party

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