Chapter 4: Leadership of Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah is and will be ever living
Since Africa, to him grateful
Is also living and will live forever.

Fighters of all races and colors
Demanding Independence and progress for Peoples,
Equality and solidarity among nations of the world
Keep living and we shall continue endeavoring
To follow the path shown by Kwame Nkrumah.

President Ahmed Seku Ture
From his poem dedicated to Osagyefo

Dr. Nkrumah warned the world about the imperialist nature of the USA — that is a society which due to its predatory history had amassed great military, scientific, technological, economic and commercial-industrial strength enough so that it can dominate the peoples of the globe — for a time. For as the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte remarked, "all empires come to an end."

Nkrumah pointed out that the US had amassed sufficient technology and resources that it could create a totally classless society. But as he also pointed out the amoral and immoral nature of the society, the backwards, anti-human political system that accompanied its exploitative and oppressive economic system creates what is in effect a fascist social-political reality internally, one which is the very citadel of neo-colonialism.

Now that Africa has begun to fully realize that the current global financial collapse is a systemic function of capitalism in its imperialist form (called globalism to deceive those who wish to be deceived or who just really don't know any better), now that African leaders have no choice but to recognize and acknowledge that the worse is yet to come, some of the them are beginning to make noises...for example South Africa, Kenya and various other states' financial and economic spokespeople have roundly criticized the US, and also the Bretton Woods institutions, particularly the IMF, as the source, the very genesis of the crisis. Their most egregious error, however, is that they do not want to accept the reality that this is nothing more than one of the forms of the new kind of violence we suffer at the hands of neocolonialism and general imperialism in its other forms.

Yet these states and the African Union (AU) as a whole, have done nothing of substance to properly respond to this crisis. They seem to be paralyzed by an awe of the mighty imperialists. There are some bright signs, however, mostly coming from the states allied with Libya, which are pushing independent political and economic, financial and monetary, foreign and military policies and actions that would be part and parcel of a United States of Africa. They must be supported in this, and they do seem to be growing stronger, albeit by increments.

First of all we must recognize that this is not a fluke, but a consistent characteristic of capitalism, it even has a well know name, the boom and bust cycle. One source said that there was a crisis every ten years or so in Marx's time.

One contemporary European institution, puts the frequency of recessions in the US alone as about once every five years. So far from abating, the boom and bust cycle has picked up momentum. Once we as a culture comes to grip with this reality, we can make the intelligent decision and rid ourselves of the neo-colonialist, imperialist system imposed on us by monopoly capitalism.

Neocolonialist violence continues unabated

This systemic problem emanating from the US is in point of fact another attack on the world at large. One that is particularly devastating on an impoverished Africa, which has never gotten out from under the effect of the slave trade's depopulation and colonialism, and is now locked into the neocolonialist system. This neo-colonialism, is the genesis of the violence and other problems, from low mortality rates to malnutrition, unemployment to bad sanitation, lack of health services to lack of electricity everywhere, whether in the Great Lakes, Southern and East Africa, Central and West Africa, the Horn, the Northern shelf, in short this has negative effect on the whole of the continent, if not directly, indirectly.

This violence also stalks the diaspora in a mirror reflection of the violence perpetrated against Africans at home by the same, identical world forces.

And the stakes grower higher each day.

These sinister world forces, led by the US, are now using the Democratic party liberal face of fascism (with the added potency of the face being "black") to pursue its global war and exploitative policies. If you recall the current Administration has made it clear that it is 100 percent behind the AFRICOM occupation of the African continent and that it intends to continue to support settler colonialist Israel.

What is the solution?

Nkrumah provided a clear solution to this new form of violence and domination...an All-African political-military agency to take on imperialism in all necessary dimensions, all scales and scope of contention between us.

It includes a diplomatic offensive to create and consolidate the solidarity of Africa and the peoples of Latin America, Asia, the states practicing socialism in the world, and all the people of the world who oppose imperialism wherever they may reside. It includes the economic rejuvenation of the African world....and generally speaking the cultural rebirth of our people.

This is the only answer to the capitalist global crises that periodically rock the entire world. That is why the role of Nkrumah is so important in modern human history. That is why he was named by the people of Ghana, and still called that to this day by many in the world, the Osagyefo, the Redeemer. In a very real sense, all who struggle against injustice are following in the Redeemer's footsteps.

It is as if all the great spirits of Africa gathered together one day and agreed to create a being that would be the consummate, principled leader for Africa and the world. Upon unveiling their collective creation, the great spirits said, we shall call him the Osagyefo, the Redeemer.

In reality, it was the work of mortal human beings just like you and I that realized that Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was, and is, Africa's and the world's Redeemer. He is our Redeemer because he gave all of us a message, and an example, of the arts and sciences needed to free ourselves from modern day bondage.

So what is Nkrumah's essential message? A simple straightforward one, to wit, the world is wracked with injustice and suffering; and humanity must rise to the occasion and throw off the yoke imposed on us by modern day Roman empire. He further teaches us that modern empire is no more invincible than historical or Biblical Babylon or Rome.

Nkrumah's general views can be summed up in a few paragraphs. Let us start with his view of the state of the war between international capital and the African diaspora.

Think about the killing of our people in Haiti. Think about the situation in Guadeloupe and Martinique. The attacks and killing of our people in Britain, France,Germany, Spain and Italy. In each of these countries there has been both official and nonstate racist killings of African people. But, our people have resisted valiantly. For example the French state was severely rocked by the resistance of the African immigrant population, especially the youth, in response to the state's attempt to launch a program of liquidation of the African population in that country.

And of course the US is certainly not a haven or sanctuary of security for our people, as nearly every day you read of some new murder or murders perpetrated against us.

Africans resistance in the seat of the Empire

Nkrumah says in his book the Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare, p. 39, that the leading power of the capitalist imperialist world, the United States, faced a "grave domestic situation is aggravated by the massive counter-attacks of the African-American revolutionaries…"

Does this hold true for today? Is it accurate to say that there are massive counterattacks? Yes, it is.

Let us be frank, it is well known that the mass anger of Africans in the US continues to simmer just below the surface of the rancid society, which, of course, means that the placid social veneer is frequently blown asunder by violent resistance to daily repression and exploitation. These counterattacks are not as numerous as those in the sixties, they do not occur as frequently as those of the sixties and the scale and scope of the counterattacks certainly do not correspond to the nationwide counter-offensives and related actions of reprisals following the assassination of Dr. King. But, nevertheless, they do exist and there is no doubt that they will continue.

This is demonstrated by the anti-police repression revolts that have hit several major cities in the latter half of the 20th century. During that period, particularly between the 1980s and the mid-90s, there were numerous major explosions against the internal expressions of US imperialism.

Most notably of these was the series of rebellions in Miami in the 1980s against police murders of Africans, and the outright insurrection that was instigated by a California court's exoneration of the gang of LA police who brutally beat an unarmed and non-resisting Rodney King. A beating, mind you that was video taped and shown all over the world. This rebellion shook the US and demonstrated conclusively to the world at large that the circumstances of the African people living in the US were still captives of a fascist Nazi regime.

The authorities in the US were alarmed at the fact that the youth organizations in Los Angeles' African community put aside their internecine feud in an effort to strike back at their mutual antagonists. This revolt was replicated in other parts of the country as well, but in no other municipality did it reach the level of the Los Angeles rebellion. The city officials were deadly afraid that the African popular insurrection forces would make it to the neighborhoods of the elites and burn down their homes. But that did not actually come to pass. Some US media pundits, such as Brian Lamb of CSPAN, believed that some of the tactics used by the African youth of the city were the direct result of their dialogs with Kwame Ture of the A-APRP.

Another significant point of the rebellion was the fact that the Mexicano-Chicano community joined in the assault. They obviously recognized it as a strategic opportunity to strike back as a common enemy and tormentor.

Since then there have been other instances of such resistance, although none of the scale of the response to the travesty of a trial in California. I will mention a couple as representation.

The Cincinnati rebellion of 2001, in response to the continued and deliberate killing of Africans, which shook the country because it demonstrated the hypocrisy of the American system at a time when the UN was talking about racism and the US was desperately trying to convince the world that this was a thing of the past in American social structures.

In 2003, there was a similar explosion in Benton Harbor, Michigan again because of the killings of Africans from deliberate, criminal and in every sense of the phrase, absolutely unwarranted deadly police violence. This too blemished America's image, as Benton Harbor is a retreat for the powerful Daley family that runs Democratic Party affairs in Chicago, Cook County and much of the rest of the state. In effect they run much of the state as the other capitalist party, the Republicans, has very little influence in most of Illinois.

There were other forms of police repression directed against the African people that lead to counterattacks. For example in the Ohio city of Toledo there was a rebellion against the police role in support of the Nazi party efforts to intimidate the Toledo African community in 2005 by marching through the community. This blatant support of racism and fascism was repeated in Bowling Green Ohio except it was the Ku Klux Klan marching rather than the Nazis. The Africans in Toledo were rightfully and justifiably angered by the police protection afforded to the Nazi march particularly since the community had pleaded with the city officials to prevent the Nazis from invading their community, to no avail. When the police became abusive and intimidating towards the African people, the residents of the community mind you, there was a righteous explosion. There were many local ordinances that could have been used to prevent the Nazi provocation, not to mention federal laws such as hate speech prohibition (which covers speech in all its forms including demonstrating and carrying of placards and other symbols), just to name one statute.

We can safely conclude that Nkrumah's assertion about the proclivity of armed resistance among the of Africans in America in the period, in which he wrote these words, continues to exist in contemporary times. Because the conditions under which the Africans in the US must live has not changed.

Large segments of the African demographic in America are so frustrated and fed-up with the nature of capitalist imperialism in the US, that they have deduced (correctly we hasten to add) that the only logical communal recourse, the only practical option, is armed resistance.

However, we must keep in mind that this is no recent phenomenon. This tradition of militant response to oppression by the Africans in America is not in any sense a new factor in our struggle in America or in the western hemisphere as a whole. It is in no way or manner a creation of our struggles of the 20th and 21st century. From the era of chattel slavery to this moment, significant elements of African people in the US have been committed to liberation and freedom "by any means necessary" and demonstrated that they had no intention of embracing theories that encourage us to "suffer peacefully", to use a couple of well-known truisms from Brother Malcolm X (Omowale), in the face of systemic racist violence and other forms of imperialist repression.

On that same page of Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare, p. 39, Nkrumah tells us that the US,. the vanguard of the capitalist imperialism of the current era, was even then suffering terrible social, economic and financial problems, with dire political, and thus military implications for the maintenance of the empire. This is as true today as it was at the time of the book's publication.

Which brings us back to the question of the crises imposed on the world by capitalism.

The answer is and always was and always will be, we must organize ourselves to alter the political equation in the world so that our interests take precedence over those of the imperialists. This requires Africa and the Africans of the world to create sufficient politico-military structures, that is structures that can fight all over the continent, anywhere on the continent, on any terrain, and in a multitude of battle configurations and win. This in turn will require the proper political leadership and administration. Which can only come about by the creation of an All-African Union Government committed unreservedly to scientific socialism.

We must be guided by our understanding of the world, an understanding that will be more accurate if we consistently employ a focused, organized way of perceiving and conceiving phenomena. What is generally called the Scientific Method.

The scientific method is nothing more than the use of our observation capacity, via our five senses, standard investigating methods: that is our observation is first formulated into a hypothesis, then our hypothesis is tested by experimentation, so that we can analyze the results of the experiment, that is, have we developed a tool, a method, to help us solve our problems and then verify its reproducibility and the validity of the conclusion drawn from the initial experimentation by communicating our results and methods to others, who in turn will experiment to verify the results. Then we can develop alternative ways of approaching the problem we face based on the basic conclusions derived from our process.

 

 

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