Kwame Ture was quite fond of saying that our enemies will never highlight our victories for us. Although his statement should be as obvious as the air we breathe and the water we drink, there are still far too many of us who consciously or unconsciously base our assessment of current movements on analysis and evidence that is provided by the very people who are doing everything they can to prevent our movements from being successful. Having been a revolutionary Pan-Africanist my entire adult life, I can say modestly that I've learned quite a bit about the movement that occupies my life. As a result, I love having the opportunity to talk about the quality of our movement. Our strengths. Our weaknesses. And, the current assessment of the work we are doing. Despite the obvious need for African people to have successful movements. Despite the clear necessity for us to develop clear understandings of what those movements are or aren't. I find that I am continually dismayed by how difficult it is to find someone, anyone, outside of a few trusted comrades, who can provide even a modicum of understanding of what is actually happening within our movement. And, this is true regardless of the fact there is never any shortage of people, African people, who have plenty of opinions about the state of Pan-Africanism today. I say African people because Europeans have always had their share of racist opinions about the work our people do to advance our struggle. So, forgive us if we give absolutely no credibility to anything the so-called European left has to say about anything. They have a great deal of work to do in making a sincere effort to properly understand Pan-Africanism before we would even consider wasting our valuable time talking to them.
Back to African people. There are Africans everywhere who have suddenly, like a bolt of lightening falling from the sky, become absolute experts on the failings of Pan-Africanism. The unfortunate element to this is that we live in a space and time where truth and justice are completely and uncompromisingly divorced from material reality. That means that these people can basically make up whatever they want to suit their bias against Pan-Africanism. They use the same tired and discredited arguments over and over again. Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture's governments were authoritarian. Democratic Centralism is an authoritarian tool from the Bolshevik uprising of 1917, Russia. Pan-Africanism is petti-bourgeois. Even that we as African people have no connection to Africa? The fact we are the people who have studied and have direct links to the Convention People's Party (Ghana - Nkrumah), Democratic Party of Guinea (Guinea - Ture), etc, and we have authored and practiced Democratic Centralism for decades is of no consequence to these people. This is true despite the fact they have read nothing on Ghana, Guinea, or Democratic Centralism and they certainly have not practiced it in their organizational structures, if they even have any (often they don't). These are indeed frustrating times. Clear logic and historical facts mean nothing today. The only thing that seems to matter to so many people is their own strangely developed individualistic perspective of what is taking place in the world. And, anything that doesn't fit their individualistic narrative is not to be trusted and is to be discredited. Whatever happened to having an open mind and being willing to change it? Or, as a bumper sticker I saw once said; "if you can't change your mind, how do you know you have one?"
We are of course dialectical materialists so we are not dismayed by these unfortunate attacks against our movement. We know that Ture was correct when he said "truth crushed to Earth will rise a 1000 times!" So, as revolutionary propagandists, we do what must be done. We continue to propagate the truth. And, as it relates to our revolutionary Pan-Africanism, the victories are impressive and overwhelming. Since 2018 is the 50th year since Kwame Nkrumah released the "Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare" we start there. The handbook (HB) was written as Nkrumah's strategic response to the previous decade of imperialist sabotage of sincere efforts at Pan-Africanism. Nkrumah did his best to rally the genuine Pan-Africanist forces together to support the democratically elected government of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo in 1960. He saw with great anguish the evil methods imperialism employed to destroy Lumumba's government. Six years later he was able to observe the equally sinister efforts our enemies made to lie on and then topple his democratic government in Ghana. He was able to see on a daily basis the wickedness of imperialism in attacking Sekou Ture's government in Guinea. The illegal sabotage against Indonesia, Cuba, Mali, and every progressive and revolutionary movement and government in the world. It was within this context that Nkrumah penned the HB in 1968. His conclusion? Revolutionary Pan-Africanism would require a grassroots movement of revolutionary Pan-Africanist forces. For Nkrumah, this meant a concerted and consistent effort to unite the struggling Pan-African forces around the African continent and the world. He asked Amilcar Cabral to build his African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC) as a revolutionary Pan-Africanist party with a political education foundation. He asked Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) to lay the groundwork for the All African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) Nkrumah called for in the HB in the African disapora (outside of Africa). Today these efforts are manifested in the reality that there is barely any area of the African world e.g. 120 countries, that the A-APRP hasn't at least touched. And, Nkrumah's thesis in the HB is that those grassroots efforts at unity culminate in the creation of the All African Committee for Political Coordination (A-ACPC) which would be the consolidation of all revolutionary Pan-African parties and formations into one political party.
Today, a significant portion of Nkrumah's call is reality. The A-APRP that was initiated primarily through the efforts of Kwame Ture and others has managed to create strong on the ground relationships between the A-APRP and on the ground revolutionary Pan-African forces like the PAIGC and Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania-South Africa. Our work continues to be that of struggling with those political formations to advance their revolutionary Pan-Africanist ideologies e..g Cabralism, Sobukweism, etc., with the tenets expressed in Nkrumahism/Tureism. Our work continues to be to further unite our efforts on the ground to build the A-ACPC and the A-APRP throughout the African world.
Further evidence of our success is in the fact that in 1991 when I went to Ghana for the first time, the only presence of the A-APRP there then were some developing contacts and sporadic work. Today? There is a growing and active A-APRP chapter there. And, in a couple of weeks. that chapter will host a revolutionary Pan-African student conference that revolutionary Pan-Africanists inside and outside of the A-APRP will participate in from throughout North America, Europe, and all over of Africa. This is a gigantic achievement all by itself. Its something many of the critics of Pan-Africanism claimed was not possible just a few short years ago. That a poor party with no financial support could bring Africans together from several different countries in Africa to be on the same page planning how we make what Nkrumah talked about in the HB further reality. Something like this was not even something we could fantasize about when I first joined the A-APRP yet here we are, here I am, about to participate in this historic event 50 years after Nkrumah asked his people to bring this to fruition. And, flying directly in the face of those insane critiques that our party isn't democratic, we will sit at this conference and operate with complete openness, honesty, and humility, to hear any and all voices, in any and all languages, to ensure we continue to build sturdy girders to support the political work we are doing. And, finally, blasting open the absurd accusations that Pan-Africansim is petti-bourgeois, we will sit at home in Africa with students, peasants, and workers, the three elements that make revolution, to advance our struggle.
Sekou Ture said that if the enemy isn't doing anything against you, its because you aren't doing anything. We make no critiques of those critiquing us. Honestly? I would be hard pressed to tell you what they are doing besides whispering about our work. I guess that under that basis, they should continue doing what they are doing. We are a propaganda party and it is true that bad attention is better than none. Meanwhile, they can continue doing whatever they are doing while we continue racking up victories for our glorious fight!
Back to African people. There are Africans everywhere who have suddenly, like a bolt of lightening falling from the sky, become absolute experts on the failings of Pan-Africanism. The unfortunate element to this is that we live in a space and time where truth and justice are completely and uncompromisingly divorced from material reality. That means that these people can basically make up whatever they want to suit their bias against Pan-Africanism. They use the same tired and discredited arguments over and over again. Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture's governments were authoritarian. Democratic Centralism is an authoritarian tool from the Bolshevik uprising of 1917, Russia. Pan-Africanism is petti-bourgeois. Even that we as African people have no connection to Africa? The fact we are the people who have studied and have direct links to the Convention People's Party (Ghana - Nkrumah), Democratic Party of Guinea (Guinea - Ture), etc, and we have authored and practiced Democratic Centralism for decades is of no consequence to these people. This is true despite the fact they have read nothing on Ghana, Guinea, or Democratic Centralism and they certainly have not practiced it in their organizational structures, if they even have any (often they don't). These are indeed frustrating times. Clear logic and historical facts mean nothing today. The only thing that seems to matter to so many people is their own strangely developed individualistic perspective of what is taking place in the world. And, anything that doesn't fit their individualistic narrative is not to be trusted and is to be discredited. Whatever happened to having an open mind and being willing to change it? Or, as a bumper sticker I saw once said; "if you can't change your mind, how do you know you have one?"
We are of course dialectical materialists so we are not dismayed by these unfortunate attacks against our movement. We know that Ture was correct when he said "truth crushed to Earth will rise a 1000 times!" So, as revolutionary propagandists, we do what must be done. We continue to propagate the truth. And, as it relates to our revolutionary Pan-Africanism, the victories are impressive and overwhelming. Since 2018 is the 50th year since Kwame Nkrumah released the "Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare" we start there. The handbook (HB) was written as Nkrumah's strategic response to the previous decade of imperialist sabotage of sincere efforts at Pan-Africanism. Nkrumah did his best to rally the genuine Pan-Africanist forces together to support the democratically elected government of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo in 1960. He saw with great anguish the evil methods imperialism employed to destroy Lumumba's government. Six years later he was able to observe the equally sinister efforts our enemies made to lie on and then topple his democratic government in Ghana. He was able to see on a daily basis the wickedness of imperialism in attacking Sekou Ture's government in Guinea. The illegal sabotage against Indonesia, Cuba, Mali, and every progressive and revolutionary movement and government in the world. It was within this context that Nkrumah penned the HB in 1968. His conclusion? Revolutionary Pan-Africanism would require a grassroots movement of revolutionary Pan-Africanist forces. For Nkrumah, this meant a concerted and consistent effort to unite the struggling Pan-African forces around the African continent and the world. He asked Amilcar Cabral to build his African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC) as a revolutionary Pan-Africanist party with a political education foundation. He asked Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) to lay the groundwork for the All African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) Nkrumah called for in the HB in the African disapora (outside of Africa). Today these efforts are manifested in the reality that there is barely any area of the African world e.g. 120 countries, that the A-APRP hasn't at least touched. And, Nkrumah's thesis in the HB is that those grassroots efforts at unity culminate in the creation of the All African Committee for Political Coordination (A-ACPC) which would be the consolidation of all revolutionary Pan-African parties and formations into one political party.
Today, a significant portion of Nkrumah's call is reality. The A-APRP that was initiated primarily through the efforts of Kwame Ture and others has managed to create strong on the ground relationships between the A-APRP and on the ground revolutionary Pan-African forces like the PAIGC and Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania-South Africa. Our work continues to be that of struggling with those political formations to advance their revolutionary Pan-Africanist ideologies e..g Cabralism, Sobukweism, etc., with the tenets expressed in Nkrumahism/Tureism. Our work continues to be to further unite our efforts on the ground to build the A-ACPC and the A-APRP throughout the African world.
Further evidence of our success is in the fact that in 1991 when I went to Ghana for the first time, the only presence of the A-APRP there then were some developing contacts and sporadic work. Today? There is a growing and active A-APRP chapter there. And, in a couple of weeks. that chapter will host a revolutionary Pan-African student conference that revolutionary Pan-Africanists inside and outside of the A-APRP will participate in from throughout North America, Europe, and all over of Africa. This is a gigantic achievement all by itself. Its something many of the critics of Pan-Africanism claimed was not possible just a few short years ago. That a poor party with no financial support could bring Africans together from several different countries in Africa to be on the same page planning how we make what Nkrumah talked about in the HB further reality. Something like this was not even something we could fantasize about when I first joined the A-APRP yet here we are, here I am, about to participate in this historic event 50 years after Nkrumah asked his people to bring this to fruition. And, flying directly in the face of those insane critiques that our party isn't democratic, we will sit at this conference and operate with complete openness, honesty, and humility, to hear any and all voices, in any and all languages, to ensure we continue to build sturdy girders to support the political work we are doing. And, finally, blasting open the absurd accusations that Pan-Africansim is petti-bourgeois, we will sit at home in Africa with students, peasants, and workers, the three elements that make revolution, to advance our struggle.
Sekou Ture said that if the enemy isn't doing anything against you, its because you aren't doing anything. We make no critiques of those critiquing us. Honestly? I would be hard pressed to tell you what they are doing besides whispering about our work. I guess that under that basis, they should continue doing what they are doing. We are a propaganda party and it is true that bad attention is better than none. Meanwhile, they can continue doing whatever they are doing while we continue racking up victories for our glorious fight!
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