Adonis Diaries

Part 3. Pan-Africanism: A reaction to colonialism program in Africa…

You may first read the previous Part 2 https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/part-2-connecting-a-few-dots-colonialism-and-blood-money-in-africa/

It was against the background of genocide in the name of “European civilisation” that Africans in the Diaspora who had been shipped from Africa and enslaved in the West Indies and in the Americas realised that the solution to Africa’s people both at home and abroad was Pan-Africanism.

Pan-Africanism is a political philosophy that was conceived in the womb of Africa and formally organized in 1900 by Sylvester Henry Williams.

Pan-Africanism is relevant to Africa’s people as a solution to their problems.

1. Its effectiveness and prowess were demonstrated at the 5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester in 1945. It is Pan Africanism that won present political freedom for Africa and reversed the African tragedy and humiliation that was orchestrated at the Berlin Conference.

2. It is Pan Africanism that brought about the Organisation of African Unity, the African Union, the Pan-African Parliament and Africa Liberation Day that Africa’s people throughout the world are commemorating each year.

3. It is Pan Africa’s spirit that led to assisting African Liberation Movements of Southern Africa against colonialism.

4. Pan Africanist pioneers, including a few in the Diaspora such as Henry Sylvester Williams, Marcus Garvey, W.E. B. Du Bois, George Padmore, C.L.R. James, Frantz Fanon, Yosef Makonen, Malcom X, John Hendrik Clarke, Edward Wilmot Blyden, Binito Sylvania and Martin Delany, worked so hard to bring Africans to where they are today.

In fact, Marcus Garvey was the first to organise Africans globally on the principles of Black Consciousness and Pan Africanism.

The pioneers of liberation in Africa such as Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Julius Nyerere, Ahmed Ben Bella, Abdel Nasser, Modibo Keita, Ahmed Sekou Toure fought, the first stage of African liberation with distinction. That is political freedom.

The pioneers are now reminding this generation that there is much to be done.

True sons and daughters of Africa must tighten their belts for a more fierce war.

That is a war against neo-colonialism – the last stage of imperialism. The battle cry is now for economic liberation of Africa and her technological advancement.

A glaring example of the riches of Africa is the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country of Patrice Lumumba. Economic experts have pronounced that, when developed, Congo alone can feed and provide electricity for the whole of Africa. During the Second World War, the Nazi forces of Hitler over-ran Belgium.

The Belgians established their government-in-exile in London. How did Belgium manage financially? Well, Congo was their colony. Let this come from the horse’s mouth. Godding was the Colonial Secretary of the Belgian government-in- exile.

Godding boasted:
“During the War, the Congo was able to finance expenditure of the Belgian Government-in-exile in London, including the diplomatic service as well as the cost of armed forces in Europe and America. The Belgian gold reserve could be left intact.”

To this minute, Africa’s riches are fuelling the economies of imperialist countries. Africans remain the poorest people in the world amidst their own riches in their own African Continent.

As the late President Kwame Nkrumah put it:

“If Africa’s resources were used in her own development they would place Africa among the most modernised continents of the world. But Africa’s wealth is used for the development of overseas interests.”

Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, the Pan-Africanist giant that was banned “this side of eternity”, as John B. Vorster put it.

Sobukwe had declared:

“The potential wealth of Africa in minerals, oil, hydro-electric power, and so on, is immense.” Sobukwe envisioned that by the end of the 20th century, “the standard of living of the African masses will undoubtedly have arisen dramatically.” Lo! This has not happened.

Perhaps, venerated Martyr Steve Biko was being prophetic of the African condition, when he said:

“At the end of it all, the Blacks have nothing to lean on, nothing to cheer them up at the present moment, and very much to be afraid of the future.”

Whenever an African country is about to be liberated, imperialists have always divided liberation movements into radicals, extremists and militants and so-called moderates.

Colonialists have often called these so-called moderates to the “negotiating table” and offered them the flag and parliament – things Africans never made the fundamental objective of their liberation struggle.

From day one of the arrival of colonial invaders in Africa, the primary objective of Africans’ struggle was repossession of their land and its riches taken from Africans at gunpoint. Anyone one who doubts this historic fact must consult Kings Sekhukhene, Makado, Hintsa, Cetshwayo, Moshoeshoe, Makana and Bambatha, even Mzilikazi for that matter.

Land is what African people have died for, for over three hundred years of their existence, in their case in Azania.

A Kenyan political activist and former presidential candidate, Koigi Mamwere, captured this truism accurately in April 2000 when he proclaimed:

“Today, Europeans own almost all the land in the Americas, almost all the good land in Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania and most of the best land in African countries like South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Kenya. To acquire this land outside Europe, Europeans did not use law, justice or money. They took the land and its riches with the gun….Europeans continue to own millions and millions of hectares of the best land in Africa….Whatever Robert Mugabe’s past mistakes, we must agree that on this one question of finally redistributing land to African people, he is 100% right…”

“Regime change” is the new name coined by imperialists to continue with colonialism in a new form.

The political situation in “post independent” Africa demonstrates that any true leaders, who the imperialists perceive as a threat to their economic interests, are targeted through aggressive campaigns such as “regime change.” Some of these leaders were Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Chief Moshodi Abiola and recently Moammar Gaddafi.

So far, imperialists have found President Robert Mugabe a hard nut to crack. Two British Prime Ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and President George Bush of America have become despicable casualties in the battle field of “regime change” in Zimbabwe against President Robert Mugabe.

The imperialist European leaders have gone down the political drain, on the shores of Africa. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France who enthusiastically created a “New Libya” in the imperialist war for “regime change” ia already the political dustbin of history.

Mugabe is still standing. He is still in command. Africa needs more African leaders like President Mugabe. Otherwise, Africa’s authentic liberation will never arrive.

Under America’s Bill Clinton’s government, Chief Moshodi Abiola, a democratically elected Presidential candidate was prevented from taking power in Nigeria. Abiola was a staunch defender of Africa’s economic liberation. In 1993, he convened the First Pan-African Conference on Reparations.

Moshodi Abiola said:

“Our demand for reparations is based on the tripod of moral, historical and legal argument….Who knows what path Africa’s social development would have taken if great centres of African civilisation had not been destroyed in search of human cargo by Europeans? Who knows how our economics would have developed? It is international law which compels Nigeria to pay its debts to Western banks. It is international law that must now demand Western nations to pay us what they have owed us for nearly six centuries.”

There are two main things that Africans must do to advance Africa’s authentic liberation.

1. African rulers must exercise sovereignty over African lands and riches and use them for the benefit of their people. This is true national independence from colonialism and imperialism. Secondly, education is the key to the development of Africa, wise control of her raw materials and use of her human resources.

2. Quality education is the key to creating, owning and controlling Africa’s wealth and mentally decolonising her people’s captured minds.

Africa needs a diverse education that is tailored to the economic needs of her people. That education must be free for the poor. No African child must be without education, merely because of his or her condition of poverty. And these African children must be taught the true history of Africa, not the colonial history of Africa’s invaders that is full of perfidy to protect their colonial interests.

All African countries must prioritize the study of science, technology, economics and finance and of course International Law. Africa’s children must be equipped with skills and professions that arm their countries with technological capacity to process Africa’s raw materials and export them to the outside world as finished goods.

An African nation that exports its raw materials unprocessed will remain a perpetual pauper.

Where there is urgent need or desperate lack of high technology to process raw materials rapidly, African countries must exchange Africa’s raw materials for high technology; not for cash or foreign goods. Countries that enrich themselves from Africa’s raw materials are secretive and refuse to transfer technology to Africa. Knowledge is power.

Africans both on the continent and in the Diaspora must have the agenda for economic liberation of Africa and technological advancement.

Pan-Africanism is more relevant to the African world today than when it was formalised over one hundred and twenty years ago.

Africans may be Jamaicans, Tanzanians, Trinidadians, Kenyans, Zimbabweans, Angolans, Nigerians, Ghanaians, Basotho, Zambians, Namibians, South Africans, Azanians, African-Americans, Afro- Brazilians etc. But the train that will take all Africans to their destination and give them power to take their destiny into their hands is the Pan-African train.

It is not ethnicity, regionalism, sectarian politics or flirtation with the forces of neo-colonialism and imperialism. Forces that are determined to make Africans their perpetual slaves work together against Africans.

A divided Africa cannot defeat these plunderers and thieves.

Africans need to ignite their Pan-African Nationalism.

Pan-African Nationalism is the privilege of all Africans wherever they may be to love themselves and to give their way of life preference. Pan-African Nationalism views the personhood and humanity of the African people and of the people of African descent as equal to any other human beings on this planet.

Pan-African Nationalism rejects with contempt any philosophy that holds that Africa’s people are destined to exist in servitude to other human beings. Pan-African Nationalism does not look down on other members of the human race.

But it demands justice for African people. Africa’s riches belong to Africans. They are there for the benefit of the African people. They are not there to fuel foreign economies and perpetuate economic exploitation and poverty of African people.

The ultimate goal of African political struggle was to regain African lands and economic power, and rapidly advance Africa’s people technologically.

The question is not whether economic liberation for Africa is winnable. The critical question is whether African can afford not to win such a life and death struggle and therefore, continue to be the wretched of the earth in their own country and continent.

The economic freedom of Africa is winnable. But it starts with the recognition that the greatest damage colonialism did was on African minds. Africans must decolonise their minds.

Only mentally liberated Black people with a vision for their country and continent can win Africa’s authentic liberation for themselves and their children.