|
AFRICA IS ON THE ROAD TO VICTORY OVER HER ENEMIES: A DIASPORAN AFRICAN VIEW OF THE AFRICAN UNION, NEPAD AND PAN AFRICANISM
A Lecture by Lester Lewis given at 49 Gabajahumpa Road, Bakau New Town, Serrakunda, Gambia on Wednesday, 31st July 2002.
Introduction
Da ma bu ga Jamu, Yalla bur bu ma ga bi che kuw suff sunyu borrom bi si Adina bi Ak si Ala hi lal. Ma gi girim yalla bur bu mage bi gan chi mbi naff. Yalla bur bu ma ga bi ne chi ja ma bi,Bar ki bi nu yalla juh pul mu taw chi att you baree baree.
I would like to offer Honour, Glory, Praises and Thanks to the Most High God, the Lesser Gods and the Ancestors for all the Blessings they have showered upon us over the Ages of the world; for all the people who are here today and for the organisers of this event; and for never allowing Africa and the Africans to be finally conquered by our enemies.
No matter how you look at it, we have never been a conquered people. We have always resisted those who have tried to conquer us by waging WAR AGAINST THE AFRICANS. And if we have never been conquered, we will never be a conquered people. By following the philosophy of Pan Africanism, Africa will become united and free and once again, AFRICAN CULTURE WILL RULE AFRICA. The situation we have today is that Africans rule Africa but African culture does not rule Africa.
When we review the War Against the Africans, we find that this is not something new. We have to go as far back as 700 BC to find the start of this War Against the Africans when Senacharib, the Assyrian king OF Babylon defeated the Pharaoh Taharqa. This defeat is recorded in the Christian Bible at 2 Kings 24:7. It reads: "And the king of Egypt came not again anymore out of his land: for the king of Babylon had taken from the river of Egypt unto the river Euphrates all that pertained to the king of Egypt." This was a crucial event in the history of the African peoples of the world but very few of us know about it. Africa’s decline started then until the Honourable Marcus Garvey came and put us back on the upward path of our development.
The African Origin of Civilisation
Africa is the mother of civilisation. Most Africans do not know that civilisation is a gift that Africans gave to the world. In his book Ruins of Empires, Count C. F. Volney wrote in 1790, "Those piles of ruins which you see in that narrow valley watered by the Nile, are the remains of opulent cities, the pride of the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia. Behold the wrecks of her Metropolis of Thebes with her hundred palaces, the parent of cities and monument to the caprice (change) of destiny. There, a people now forgotten, discovered while others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A race of men now rejected from society for their burned skin and woolly hair, founded on the study of the laws on nature, those civil and religious systems which still govern the universe." You can also check this out in Cheik Anta Diop’s book The African Origin of civilisation: Myth or Reality.
Getting back to the War Against the Africans, the defeat of Taharqa opened the door to foreign invasions of Africa. First, the Persians came under Cambyses. They invaded and conquered Egypt. Followng the Persians, the Greeks came under Alexander the Great. They also invaded and conquered Egypt. Then came the Romans who had already destroyed the city state of Carthagena. Following the Romans, the Arab s came and conquered the whole of North Africa. They were stopped from invading southwards by a Mauritanian Queen named Dahia al Kahina. And finally came the white peril. The European, diseased and hungry; greedy and rapacious came raping, pillaging and looting. They enslaved us, colonised us, neo-colonised us, imposed poverty causing structural adjustment programmes on us. The Europeans grew rich from the enforced genocidal slave labour of Africans and the looting and plunder of Africa’s resources.
Slavery is a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY.
This was recognised last year at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism. For Crimes Against Humanity, there is no statute of limitation. So we have a claim for Reparations against all those who were involved in all aspects of the forced enslavement of Africans.
Pan Africanism
Even before the Berlin Conference of 1884/85 when the Europeans divided African land and people amongst themselves, the Africans enslaved in the Caribbean had worked out the solution to solve Aafrica’s problems. It was Edward Wilmot Blyden, born in the Virgin Islands in 2 the Caribbean In 1832 who first said that "WE MUST HAVE AN AFRICAN NATIONALIY." My fellow Africans, when we have an African nationality, we will have Pan Africanism and when we have Pan Africanism, we will have an African nationality.
At the beginning of the last century, there were only three independent African states. These were Ethiopia and Liberia on this continent and Haiti in the Caribbean. At the end of the century, all the African countries were nominally independent. This is the legacy of Pan Africanism. So we must review the Pan African Congresses in order to chart the way towards the final triumph of Pan Africanism.
It was the Caribbean African, Henry Sylvester Williams, born in Trinidad, who organised the first Pan African Conference in 1900. We commemorated this event two years ago at the Centenary Pan African conference. The resolution of that conference called on Africans every where to "intensify the struggle for Pan Africanism – a democratic, egalitarian, socialist Pan African Union ruled by African culture in which Africa produces what it consumes and consumes what it produces."
When Africa begins to produce what it consumes and consume what it produces, we will begin to solve many of the problems that afflict Africa. We will begin to solve the problem of under development. Problems of mass unemployment will begin to be solved for we will be creating jobs in Africa rather than creating jobs in Europe, America and Japan by importing their manufactured products. All the money saved can then be used for further economic and social development. So while this resolution of the Centenary Pan African Conference points the way towards African economic development, NEPAD does not.
The North American African, W.E. B. Du BOIS, was involved in organising the first four Pan African Congresses. Many patriotic Africans from the continent and the Diaspora were involved in those conferences which basically appealed to the European colonisers to set their Africaan colonies free. In other words, they were begging for independence. But Frantz Fanon told us in The Wretched of the Earth, "You do not beg for Independence, you take it."
The Role of the Honourable Marcus Garvey
The man who did most to set Africa on its path to independence is the Honourable Marcus Garvey, an African born in Jamaica in the Caribbean. When we needed a leader to set us on the road to freedom and independence, God sent us Marcus Garvey. 3 He travelled around the Caribbean and Central America and saw the extremely harsh conditions under which Africans had to survive. In Panama, he saw Africans being worked to death building the Panama Canal. He posed the question: "Where is the Black man’s Government?"
You ask yourself this question today, "Where is the Black man’s Government?" I recognise only one "Black man’s Government" in the world today. Some of you may disagree, but for me,this is the Government of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe has stood up like a man and said "This is our land. It was forcibly stolen from our people. We are taking it back and giving it back to our people." That is why he is under attack by Britain, the European Union and America. Then he used his army to defeat the American proxy war being fought by Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda to seize the vast mineral wealth of the Congo for United States imperialism. That is why they vilify and demonise him. Recently, the British Ambassador in Kenya told Kenyans that they must forget that the British stole their land. But how can a people forget their history? A people who forget their history is a dead people.
However, when Marcus Garvey found that there was no Black man’s Government, he set out to unite Africa into one economic and social entity, thereby creating the African nation. With Amy Jaques Garvey, he set up the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League for that purpose. Then, there were no telephones, faxes, emails etc, but within a very short period of time, the UNIA had become a mass organisation with members in North and South America, throughout the Caribbean, in East, West and Southern Africa.
Some people think that Marcus Garvey failed in his mission. I think that he was brilliantly successful. It is my view, that of all the men and women of all races and nations in the world, Marcus Garvey was the most succcessful of all in the twentieth century. It was Garvey who set the African agenda for the twentieth century. All the great African Leaders who came after him like Kenyatta in Kenya, Azikiwe in Nigeria, Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, Robert Sobukwe in South Africa and Amilcar Cabral in Guinea- Bissau; all of them were profoundly influenced by the work and the Pan African philosophy of the Honourable Marcus Garvey.
We won many victories in the past century. All of them can be put down to the teachings of Marcus Garvey. Indeed, some people like Du Bois and George Padmore who initially opposed Garvey came around to his way of thinking.
George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah and the Legacy of 5PAC
We can now look at the fifth Pan African Congress and its organiser whom we know as George Padmore. He was born in Trinidad in the Caribbean. His grandfather had been born into slavery in Barbados. He was born in 1902 so this is his centenary year and it is fitting that the African Union is created in the centenary year of George Padmore. If you ever get the opportunity, read J. R. Hooker’s book: AFRICAN REVOLUTIONARY – GEORGE PADMORE’S PATH FROM COMMUNISM TO PAN AFRICANISM.
I summarised this book in the June edition of New African magazine.
The main influence on Padmore’s life was Edward Wilmot Blyden. Before his one and only child was born, he was in the United States while his wife was in Trinidad. He left instructions that whether the child was a boy or girl, the child must be named Blyden. We were very pleased that his daughter Blyden Cowart attended the Centenary Pan African Conference in London at the age of seventy four.
Padmore had been recruited by the Third Communist International, called the Commintern. He was made Head of its Black Section. He had power and influence but he broke with the Commintern when he was instructed to go easy on Britain France and America on the basis that they were democratic imperialists while Germany, Italy and Japan were fascist imperialists. He pointed out that neither Germany or Japan had colonies in Africa, and that the United States was the most race prejudiced country in the world. The United Snakes of America is still the most race prejudiced country .
It was Padmore who politically educated and trained Kwame Nkrumah. They were joint secretaries of the fifth Pan African Congress (5PAC) held in 1945. It was that congress that decided on confrontation with imperialism to free Africa from the ravages of colonial domination. When Kwame Nkrumah went back to Ghana, he created the Convention Peoples Party as an instrument to transform Ghana from being a British colony into a free and independent country. When Ghana became independent, Nkrumah put Padmore in charge of African Affairs. As such, he organised the first conference of African Heads of States and he organised the first All African Peoples Conference, then he died. But his student Kwame Nkrumah had set the continent alight with the flames of the African revolution.
When Nkrumah called for the setting up of a Union Government, he was supported by Sekou Toure, Modibo Keita, Gamal Abdul Nasser and King Muhammad V of Morroco. The majority of African governments opposed him so we had a compromise in the Organisation of African Unity. Mwalimu Julius Nyere was graceful enough to say that it was a mistake to oppose the setting up of a Union Government as advocated by Nkrumah.
It was the American Central Intelligence Agency that organised the coup which toppled Nkrumah from power. His party, the Convention Peoples Party was banned for thirty-four years from 1966-2000. Yet, Africans on the continent voted Kwame Nkrumah as the African Man of the Millenium. In so doing, they are saying that what Nkrumah stood for is what we want. In the drive towards African unity, we must make Kwame Nkrumah’s birthday an African institution by making bit an African holiday and the history of the life and work of Kwame Nkrumah must be taught to all children in all the schools in Africa. This will begin to bind us together as an African nation.
The Sixth Pan African Congress
Moving quickly to 6PAC, this was called for by another Caribbean African, C. L. R. James. He had worked very closely with both Padmore and Nkrumah. He was excluded from 6PAC which became a Congress of African Heads of States with participation from the Liberation Movements and representatives of some of the Diasporan African Communities.
Some people argue that 6PAC was a waste of time. I disagree. There were many positive outcomes. For example, the call by Somalia that Pan Africanists must fight racism and imperialism. The Tanzanians called for Africa to be self reliant in its economic development. The advocates of NEPAD have ignored this. I heard that call echoed here last week. Then, there was the decision to set up a Pan African Institute of Science and Technology. That decision was not implemented but there is a pressing need to establish this Pan African Institute of Science and Technology for African students to master all areas of science and technology.
If we give our children the vision and set them the task of transforming Africa scientifically, they will do so within a relatively short period of time. Take for example, nine years old Amie Faal living in Latrikunda. She got 96 per cent in mathematics and 84 per cent in Science. If you orient students like Amie towards a career in science and technology, these are the children who will transform Africa. Those of you who are aware of the writings of Cheikh Anta Diop will recall that he told us in Civilisation or Barbarism that "many of the ideas that Africans consider to be foreign, 6 are often the modified, turned over and perfected images that were the creations of our Ancestors." He lists some of these as being Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the dialectics, the theory of being, arithmetics, geometry, astronomy, medicine, literature, architecture. Arts etc." So since science and technology were the creations of our ancestors, we must come to master them and use them for our benefit and for the benefit of humanity.
The Deception of 7PAC
Now we come to 7PAC. I must tell you a little of how it came about. Some of you may remember a Russian leader named Mikhail Gorbachev. He abandoned communism and dismantled the Soviet Union. He talked about Europe stressing "Our common European Home." Since Europe is the common home of all Europeans, there was no reason for them to be planning nuclear war against each other to destroy one another.
This abandonment of communism caused a problem for the African Marxists. They had been cut loose by their Soviet backers so they were in a dilemma. They had no where to go so they turned to Pan Africanism. They decided there was a need for 7PAC. But CLR James had called for 7PAC in a lecture he gave in Dakar in 1982. Check his book At The Rendezvous of Victory. The organisers of 7PAC coalesced around the Marxist Journal Africa World Review and Abdul Rahman Mohamad Babu, a former Minister of Economics in the Tanzania Government. I was a member of the UK 7PAC organising committee. I withdrew when I discovered that the Dar es Salaam school of Marxism was trying to hijack the Pan African Movement.
The Conference convenor was Colonel Kahinda Otafiire, a Minister in the Ugandan government. The Patron was Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. They had persuaded Muamar al Ghadafi to put up US$300,000 to pay for the Congress. It was due to be held in Kampala in December 1993. Delegates were on their way to Kampala when it was postponed by Otafiire on the basis that there were not enough celebrities. So they organised for a number of celebrities to be flown to Kampala when the Congress was finally held in 1994. I was not there but a resolution from my organisation calling for a democratic non-exclusive 8PAC to be held in 1997 around the 110th birthday of the Honour Marcus Garvey was agreed at the Congress. They set up a secretariat but it implemented none of the decisions of the Congress. The Secretariat in Kampala serves as paid propagandists for Museveni in his attempt to build a Tutsi Hema Empire.
Indeed, that Congress was a cover for the launchinng of Museveni’s plan to build a Tutsi Hema Empire. One of the members of the Secretariat had been recruiting in London for the Hema empire project. Not soon after the Congress, Museveni’s security man, Paul Kagame, given military training by the United States, who had the plane carrying the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi shot down, killing both Presidents. It was this event and the previous invasion of Rwanda by Rwanda that led to the mass slaughter of over half a million people in Rwanda. But they achieved their objective of capturing Rwanda for the Tutsi Hema Empire. The over half a million Africans killed in the process were expendable.
The next stage was the incorporation of the DRC, then called Zaire, into this Tutsi Hema Empire. They got rid of Mobutu and installed Laurent Kabila as President of the DRC. But Kabila was a Lumumbist and would not go along with what was an American plan to grab the vast mineral resources of the DRC. So Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda launched an invasion of the DRC in 1999. This was a proxy war being fought on behalf of United States imperialism. It was the intervention of SADEC forces from Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe that prevented the plan from succeeding. It may surprise you to learn that South Africa was in on the invasion plan. Nelson Mandela was waiting on a ship off Kinshasha waiting to install Wamba Dia Wamba as President of the DRC. The so-called rebel movements came three weeks into the invasion.
This invasion has led to a SILENT GENOCIDE IN THE DRC. Since 1999, over four and a half million Congolese have been killed in this Silent Genocide. The invading forces have systematically looted the mineral wealth of the DRC. Looting is the only reason that Rwanda has its forces in the DRC. Amnesty International claims that the numbers killed number 2,500,000. The 2800 killed in the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York is nothing compared to the numbers killed in the DRC. So why are Africans silent about this Silent Genocide in the DRC? African leaders made a lot of noise when Americans were killed. So why have these African leaders been silent? Is the life of an African not equally as sacred as the life of an American? Our African culture teaches us that we must be our brother’s keeper. So why are we not our brother’s keeper as far as our sisters and brothers in the DRC are concerned? Why? Why? Why?
We held a Pan African Forum in London two weeks ago where we discussed this Silent Genocide in the DRC. The Forum passed the following resolution: The forum adopted the following resolution:
"This Pan African Forum,
1. Calls for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Burundian, Rwandan and Ugandan troops from the territory of the Democratic Reopublic of Congo;
2. Condemns the SILENT GENOCIDE IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO which has resulted in the death of between 3.5 - 5 Congolese people; and calls for the authors of the genocide, Yoweri Museveni, Paul kagami, Jeane Pierre Bemba (Mobutu's son-in-law), Wamba dia Wamba, Emile Ilunga, Adolphe Onosumba, Bizima Kahara, Azarias Rubera, Mbusa Nyamwisi, Thomas Lubunga, Etienne Tsisekedi, Katebe Katoto, John Tibasima and others to be arrested and tried for 'crimes against humanity'.
3. Calls on the African Union (a) for rapid implementation of its interventionist policy to expel Burundian, Rwandan and Ugandan military forces from the DRC and to immediately suspend those three countries from membership of the African Union until all their troops leave the DRC and (b), to demand compensation for the DRc from the United states of America and Britain for the genocidecarried out on their behalf by their proxies in Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda;
4. Condemns South African complicity in THE SILENT GENOCIDE IN THE DRC, AND CALLS ON South Africa to (a) respect the integrity of the DRC, (b) stop selling arms to Uganda, (c) stop interfering in the internal affairs of the DRC and (d) to siding with the genocidists and United States and British imperialism in the DRC;
5. Calls on African peoples world-wide to join an internalionalCongolese Solidarity Campaign in support of the above demands and to give material support to the suffering Congolese people;
6. Congratulates the Mai Mai warriors for their valiant resistance against United States British Imperialism and their vassals in Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda;
7. Calls on the Congolese people to relearn the lessons of their history, develop a strong army and build the military capacity to repel all future invaders, conquerors and empire builders;
8. Calls on the people of Uganda to remove Museveni from power since he is a proxy of United states Imperialism and has been responsible for the deaths of over five million people in the Lakes region and the death of at least four African Presidents;
9. Calls on progressive people world-wide to actively support the campaign to expel Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda from the DRC and thus bring an end to THE SILENT GENOCIDE in the DRC;
10. Pledges our Solidarity with the Palestinian people and calls for a boycott of American and Israeli goods."
How can we have men who commit genocide as leaders of African countries? We can forget the deal signed in South Africa last week. Any deal which involves South Africa is suspect. South Africa has been pushing for young President Joseph Kabila to hand over power to the people who have been involved in carrying out the genocide. South Africa has never demanded the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the invading forces from the DRC. It has sold arms to Uganda to perpetrate this heinous crime. Indeed, I was in South Africa two years ago when South African television was interviewing the rebels and wishing them well. Joseph Kabila did a deal with Jean Pierre Bemba, one of the rebel leaders for Bemba to become Prime Minister under Kabila. Bemba has not taken up his post. He is asking for protection from the people in Kinshasha. We are calling on you, the people of Gambia and we are calling on the people of Africa to do your duty to the people of the DRC. We are asking you to support all the demands of the Congo Solidarity Campaign and to set up active branches of the CSC. The silent genocide in the DRC is a stain on the conscience of Africa. We can not stand back and do nothing. We must become our brother’s keepers.
The African Union
All of you will recall the special meeting of the OAU held in Sirte in 1999 when it was decided to set up the African Union in 2001. I was travelling in Ghana at the time and decided to write this, my OPEN LETTER TO THE AFRICAN PEOPLES OF THE WORLD calling for A DEMOCRATIC, EGALITARIAN, SOCIALIST PAN AFRICAN UNION where I put forward my views on the kind of African Union I would like to see. The African masses were never consulted about their views on what they want the African Union to be. Diasporan Africans were not consulted. Africa is our home. We are Africans too.
We did not leave Africa voluntarily. We were forcibly shipped into slavery in the Caribbean and the Americas. It is our right as Africans to be consulted on these major changes and it is our right to be able to repatriate to our homes in Africa whenever we choose to do so. While I have been here in 9 Serrekunda my friend Dr. Vince Hines sent me an email, which reads: "Greet Mama Africa with our glowing love and longing to come home. Ask her to prepare for her children’s return. We have been away much too long, in foreign and sometimes hostile lands."
A survey was carried out in London was published in a newspaper calle The VOICE on September 4 2000. This survey found that two-thirds of all the Black people living in London would return to their home in Africa if the economic and social situation improves. So it is the same bad economic and social conditions that is forcing Africans to travel to work under racial oppression in Europe and America that is stopping the mass repatriation of Diasporan Africans to their home in Africa.
The African Union does not deal with the rights of Diasporan Africans to repatriate to their home in Africa. South African President Thabo Mbeki was asked why Diasporan Africans were not consulted about the AU and NEPAD. His reply was that the AU is an organisation of African Presidents. If Mbeki thinks that he can make the AU a neo-colonial appendage of Western imperialism, he is sadly mistaken.
I attended an Mathaba Conference in Sirte in August 2000. A number of African Presidents spoke at that conference. These were Presidents Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Museveni of Uganda, Campoaare of Burkina Fasso, Nujomaa of Namibia, Idris Derby of Chad, Konare of Mali, Yahya Jamma of Gambia, Kumba Yala of Guinea-Bissau, Abdoulaai Wade of Senegal and Prime Minister Rosie Douglas of Dominica in the Caribbean. Abdoulai Wade promised that he would organise a conference of 500 African intellectuals in Dakar to discuss how they view African Unity and development. We wrote to them saying that we would like to participate in this conference. We heard nothing. We were surprised when just before the United Nations World Conference against Racism last year, Abdoulai Wade came out against Reparations for Slavery and Colonialism. This was after the OAU had decided to support the demand for Reparations.
When America was attacked, Abdoulai Wade organised an African response to the attack on America. Yet he has been silent on the Silent Genocide in the DRC. Why? Is it because the whole project is an American plan to grab the vast mineral resources of the DRC? Wade is now one of the darlings of the West. He is feted and eulogised by leading imperialist papers like the New York Times. He should be aware that once they have finished using him, they will dump him. Does Wade have any compassion for his fellow Africans in the DRC? Why is he organising to defend the lives of Americans but not the lives of his fellow Africans in the DRC? When ever any of you get the opportunity, please ask him why.
As Pan Africanists, we welcome the launching of the AU. We see this as a stepping stone on the road to Pan Africanism. Our North American African sister Grace Walker has shown how the structures of the African Union can be used to rapidly transform Africa. She argues that effective continent wide institutions are needed for defence, economics, diplomacy, education, health, the judiciary, legislative, commerce, monetary policy and so forth. In other words, the need for a Union Government. In the current struggle inside the African Union in which Muamar al Ghadafi has called for a continental government and is opposed by South African President Thabo Mbeki and his allies in the National Party which ran the apartheid regime.
It is a shame and a disgrace that the ANC government in South Africa should form an alliance with the National Party. It is a shame and a disgrace the way the ANC is harassing and trying to humiliate the African Queen, Winnie Mandela. She is loved by the masses, that is why those with lower status are jealous and hate her. Besides, Winnie Said, "We are not fighting against apartheid, we are fighting to get control of our land back." A document written by Thami Ka Plaatjie called for an alliance of all the Black Parties to change the constitution so that the land forcibly taken by the white colonialists settlers before 1913 could be given back to the indigenous Africa owners. Forming an alliance with the National Party was the ANC's response. But as one Pedi woman told me, "All the land in the North belong to the Pedi people. The whites came and stole our land and we want our land back."
In this struggle for or against a continental Union Government, I wonder which side Abdoulai would be on. At the Mathaba conference, he described Senegal as a province of Africa. He said that "in future, we must have one flag, one hym. We can not develop within the present borders……Kwame Nkrumah was never understood….We need a political Union in which we think of Africa….We must have a continental government." We agree. Not only that, we demand that the issue be put to all the African peoples so that they can give their consent to the setting up of the Union Government. This is not a decision for the leaders. It is a decision for the people.
NEPAD: The New Partnership for African Development.
There is a titanic struggle going on within the AU for the heart and soul of the AU. It seems to me that Mbeki, Wade and Obasanjo want to make the AU a neo-colonial appendage of western imperialism, that they wantt to lead Africa up a dead end. On the other hand, Ghadafi, Mugabe, Moi, Jammeh and I am sure Sam Nujoma of Namibia want Africa to be self reliant in its economic development. I remind you that at 6PAC, Mwalimu Julius Nyere said that Africa must be self reliant in its economic development. I can not understand why the Obasanjo-Mbeki-Wade axis thinks that Africa needs a partnership with imperialism for its economic development.
In a speech in Blantyre, Malawi earlier this year, President Moi said that Africa was doomed to perpetual poverty and backwardness unless African leaders free themselves of egocentricity. He said that no country in the West had an obligation to baby-sit and spoon-feed independent African nations. He said, "African leaders must accept this fact, however unsettling, and rethink about their development strategies." This is his response to NEPAD.
Last week, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh described NEPAD as a charter for beggars. He bluntly declared that NEPAD will never work. In a blistering attack on the advocates of NEPAD, he said, "We Africans with all the natural resources we have even up to today, Africa is the richest continent in terms of mineral resources, but because of ignorance, Africa, in economic terms, is the poorest continent and we Africans are the laughing stock of humanity.
"Africa’s socio-economic development must come from us. NEPAD (The New Partnership for African Development) will never work. You come up with a Programme and depend on nothing but begging. I Yahya Jammeh will not kneel down before any man and beg. I will only kneel before God. Yes. "I am not criticising NEPAD, but the way it is conceived to be dependent on begging, people are sick and tired of African beggars.
"Nobody will ever develop your country for you. What we want is an African Development Trust Fund where we put our resources and give loans to African countries to develop. But if you want to develop Africa by begging, you must train so that you have strong knees and that is why they call it Kneepad. If you rely on NEPAD, buy more pads for you knees because you will die kneeling down and you will never get anything.
"The type of people we depend on to develop out countries, we don’t know that these people have been here as colonial masters for four hundred years." One caller to BBC Network Africa described NEPAD as being like "a welfare programme for mice with cats in charge."
Yahya Jammeh is consistent. At the Mathaba Conference, he said, "We are revolutionaries to liberate Africa from Bondage. We fail because some of us are agents of the same people we are supposed to fight against……We produce the bulk of the world's raw materials so why are we still poor? Some of us are fighting proxy wars in Africa for the benefit of others. Africa has never colonised anyone. Some people who prolonged apartheid are now waving the flag of democracy and freedom. The African debt burden is not globalised. It is Africanised."
No one can convince me that the people who enslaved us, colonised us, neo-colonised us and imposed poverty causing Structural Adjustment Programmes on us give a damn about Africans. They do not care for the poor and the old in their own countries so they certainly do not care about Africans. In my view, their only concern is how to continue to rape and plunder Africa’s vast natural resources; to make Africa a dumping ground for their manufactured products and their subsidised agricultural products while they oppose giving subsidies to African farmers.
Last year, Sam Nujoma, the Namibian President said that America brought AIDS to Africa. The Americans did not respond. I am old enough to remember that AIDS started among the homosexual community in California in America. Then, it was said to be "a gay plague." It has gone from being a gay plague to devastate African communities and its spread is within the heterosexual community. A colleague at one of the universities in North America calculate that AIDS is spreading so rapidly in Africa that it can not be a natural phenomena. It is my view that AIDS is part of the War Against the Africans. Nepad is part of the War against the Africans.
Nepad emphasise liberalism – capitalist development in Africa. Compare this to President Chavez of Venezuela who tells us that liberalism i.e. capitalism causes poverty. Venezuela is one of the richest oil producing countries. Yet, eighty per cent of its population lived in poverty. Almost forty per cent of the Venezuelan population are Africans and these include members of my extended African family. If Chavez recognises that liberalism causes poverty, how come the advocates of NEPAD are blind to this reality.
In Venezuela, Chavez introduced a poverty reduction programme which upset the Americans. That is why they organised a coup that ousted him from power. But tthey did not reckon on the mighty Venezuelan masses. When over 1,000,000 Venezuelans took to the streets to demand the return of Chavez to power, they were supported by the majority of soldiers in the Venezuelan army. Together , they inflicted a crushing defeat on United States imperialism.
This must be a lesson for the leaders of the AU. African intellectuals whom they did not consult have widely rejected NEPAD. Civil society groups who were not consulted have rejected NEPAD. There slogan is AFRICA IS NOT FOR SALE. It is a neo-colonial construct that depends on handouts from Europe and America. Africa’s economic development can not be based on begging for charity. Ngugi Wa Thiongo said it, AFRICA DOES NOT NEED CHARITY! AFRICA NEEDS LIBEREATION! TheMbeki-Obasanjo-Wade clique begged for $64 billions, they got £6. NEPAD is still born. It died even before it was born, but its advocates on the continent are still trying to foist it on Africa despite the overwhelming opposition.
Africa does not need Europe and America. Europe and America need Africa. That is why they are talking about globalisation and inter dependency. Their mouth pieces on the continent, parrot fashion, repeat this globalisation and interdependency falsehood like a mantra. Europe and America became rich on the genocidal slave labour of Africans and the rape and plunder of Africa’s natural God given resources. Africans were worked to death digging the two big holes in the ground, the diamond mines in Kimberly, South Africa and the Panama Canal in Central America. They depend on Africa to stay rich.
Africa is a net exporter of finance capital. A very small proportion of the capital that Africa exports is given back in the form of aid and loans that have crippled Africa. Africa must repudiate the debt and stop exporting capital. Africa has the moral authority to do so. When Africa stops exporting its capital in the form of debt repayment and interest charges, Africa will have enough capital for its economic and social development and it won't have to be anybody for one single dollar.. It is as simple as that. Africa can repudiate the debt because Europe and America owes us Reparations for slavery and colonialism. But there can be no Reparations without Repatriation. Then Africa can ask for Reparations to help to resettle those Diasporan Africans who repatriate to their homes in Africa. Europe and America owes us and they must pay.
In the coming period, we must intensify the struggle for a continental African government, a single African nation with an African nationality and an African passport available to Diasporan Africans. These are some of the objectives that Pan Africanists and Patriotic Africans must work for. Africa must implement a Pan African programme so that Africa can regain its lost power and restore its past glory. Pan Africanists have such a Programme.
My fellow Africans, Africa is on the road to victory over her enemies. This victory is so close, I can almost reach out and touch it. But until then, the struggle continues.
I thank you.
Back to top |
