THE AFRICANIST MOVEMENT WILL BE HOLDING ITS 3rd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LEADERSHIP ON JANUARY 7-9, 2008 AT MARY KINGSLY AUDITORIUM, FOURAH BAY COLLEGE.
THEME: TOWARDS A NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION IN SIERRA LEONE
FEATURING PARTICIPANTS FROM AFRICA, EUROPE & NORTH AMERICA
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
New Venezuelan Education exposes capitalist myth and propaganda
Under the proposals students will start learning Marxist ideology at 11 years of age, plus history showing the evils of colonialism and capitalism. The aim of the Bolivarian Educative System will be"the construction of a new socialist Venezuelan conscience and the formation of new generations as standard bearers for it," said President Chavez.
He said it must "transform capitalist values into human ones and transcend Euro-centric colonialism. " Outlines of the new curriculum, due to come into forcein 2010, show that as well as the unflattering depiction of Columbus, emphasis will be placed on teaching indigenous Indian history and culture, as well as that of the African slaves whose descendants now make up a significant percentage of the population. Much of the teaching profession appears less than enthusiastic about the proposed changes.
"The Bolivarian system wants to ensure that all education in Venezuela is based on the political ideology of President Chavez," said Olga Ramos, the president of the Civil Association Assembly of Education.
The reforms will be ushered in by the education minister, Adan Chavez, the President's elder brother and a long time Marxist. The changes to the education system are part of a radical overhaul of the Venezuelan political system as Mr. Chavez proposes a new constitution to usher in his"Socialism of the 21st Century" doctrine.
Kwame Nkrumah Chair in African Studies launched
The Kwame Nkrumah Chair of Learning was on Friday launched at the Institute of African Studies (IAS), University of Ghana, Legon inrecognition of the Ghana First President's foresight, personal interest and commitment to academic excellence in Ghana. The Chair, which was the outcome of an appeal made by the Institute to the Government, was funded by Anglo Gold Ashanti to the tune of 400,000 dollars with the Kwame Nkrumah Foundation donating 25million cedis.
A Chair is the highest position given to scholarsbased on their spectacular performances in aparticular field as a motivation for both theoccupants and others in the same discipline. Professor Takyiwaa Manuh, Director of IAS, said the occasion marked a historic turn in the future of the Institute, the University and the nation,She said, "as we celebrate Dr Nkrumah as a foremost intellectual of Africa, and through this Chair, thosemen and women, who work to bring dignity to Africa,and a better life and future for the teeming populations of our Continent and its Diasporas". She said the Institute appealed to the Government torecognise Dr Kwame Nkrumah in this jubilee year, notonly as a statesman and prime architect of Ghana's independence, but most especially for his intellectual contributions and commitment to African liberation and development by donating funds to establish the Chair.
She said the establishment of the Chair reciprocated the historic occasion, almost 44 years ago, when President Kwame Nkrumah formally opened the IAS in1963.
"The Chair recognises Dr Nkrumah's foresight, personal interest and commitment to academic excellence in Ghana and Africa through the establishment of the IAS; the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences; the National Research Council and its associate institutes and the Encyclopaedia Africana Project," she said. Prof. Manuh said for Dr Nkrumah, all these formed partof the crucial task of African self-assertion, knowledge and confidence to be harnessed in theinterests of African people. She said the Institute had faced many challenges such as funding cuts, aquestioning of the very existence of university asnecessary in the African environment, inadequate research funding of basic research, intense scrutiny and debates over the relevance of African Studies, particularly in an age of ICTs and globalisation."But secure in mind our understanding and mission, wehave faced these challenges undaunted. While there isa lot that we have still not managed to achieve, the Institute proudly stands today as one of the flagships of the University of Ghana, and we pledge to do evenmore," she said. Mr Bobby Godsell, Outgoing Chief Executive Officer of Anglo Gold Ashanti, speaking on - "Business and Sustainable Development in Africa: The Experience of Anglo Gold Ashanti" - said the vision of African economic integration provided a vital bridge from politics to business. He said it was time for African leaders to cometogether and plan how to build the physical infrastructure of the Continent instead of waiting for international agencies or well-intentioned non-African politician to do that for them.
He said if governments could take the initiative inconstructing an inventory of infrastructure development, there would be private sector companies willing and able to undertake the projects. He expressed the hope that those who would occupy the Chair would strive for the high ideals of African intellectual independence and excellence consistent with its name and those students who would benefit from its teachings create a cadre of national and continental leaders that would allow the Continent to take the full and equal role in the global village of the new millennium. Mr Joseph Henry Mensah, Chairman, National Development Planning Commission, commended Anglo Gold for committing its resources to a Chair of learning in memory of an illustrious son of Ghana and Africa.
Professor Clifford Nii Boi Tagoe, Vice Chancellor, University of Ghana, said the University had drawngreat inspiration from the Chair and gave theassurance that the University would look for a worthyperson to occupy the Chair to propagate the ideas of Dr Nkrumah.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Mark It On Your Calender
Africanist Leaders and representatives of African revolutionary movements around the world will be meeting in Labe on the far north of Guinea-Conakry to discuss the effects of multinational corporate exploitation, cross boarder extortions and the ongoing economic and political crisis situations in West Africa. The Conference also aims at adopting a blue print for the speedy liberation and unification of Africa and African people worldwide.
Details about participation can be obtained through the following contacts:
Phone: 232-76-757924 / 232-77-898550 (Sierra Leone)
224-60-295210 (Guinea-Conakry)
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Apologise And Pay Up - Bunyoro Tells Britain
From: The Monitor (Kampala, Uganda)
This is the second part of a series in which AngeloIzama writes about the Bunyoro Kingdom's demands fromthe United Kingdom over "war crimes" it inflicted against the Banyoro
Queen Elizabeth II , the head of the Commonwealth, aclub of former colonies and properties of imperial andcolonial Britain, is facing a fresh lawsuit thismonth, a $4trillion lawsuit reportedly filed on behalfof Indians who were brought into Malaysia as labourersby colonial Britain. Lawyers who filed the suit said their clients sufferedindignity and loss as virtual slaves and continued tosuffer discrimination, abandoned by the British afterMalaysia got its independence. Britain's newly appointed Foreign Secretary David Miliband is named as a defendant in the case. It isexpected that Britain which will attend theCommonwealth, a summit of heads of state of its formercolonies, in Kampala this year, will face anotherlawsuit- by the Bunyoro Kingdom. Bunyoro says it has sufficient evidence to convincecourt that Britain is guilty of gross crimes in thecase it plans to file later this month. Ugandan andBritish lawyers will argue the case. There is a smallbut growing club of organizations, religious andpolitical leaders that are calling on reluctantcountries like Britain to right the wrongs theycommitted as slave traders and later as colonialpowers. Britain however is one of the most unwilling toacknowledge its actions led to the modern day problemsof underdevelopment in far flung places such asMalaysia and Bunyoro. During the United NationsAnti-Racism conference in Durban, South Africa in2001, Britain's delegation worked hard to preventEuropean Union countries from "apologising" for slavetrade, afraid that it would mean acknowledging itsactions, and opening the door for reparation lawsuitslike the one Bunyoro is planning to file later thismonth. The historical suit Bunyoro's case is based on the recorded testimony ofBritish soldiers, actions that confirm to some extentthe wanton actions that led, in this case, to thedepopulation and subsequent marginalisation ofBunyoro. In 1893, Col. Henry Colville invaded Bunyoro,reputed to be in "a stubborn outpost of the proud KingKabalega who had made an unfavourable impression onofficers like Sir Frederick Lugard and Sir SamuelBaker." The invasion, which Kabalega resisted for five years,laid to waste the once healthy Bunyoro Kingdom becauseof a policy of destruction of crops, grazing areas andthe killing, kidnap and enslavement of Banyoro by theBritish imperial troops helped by their allies, theKingdom of Buganda. "I have this month and will in the future burn theirhouses, destroy their crops and cut down their bananaplantations" wrote one Capt. Thruston on his workduring the campaign, one of several accounts in hiswar diary. The campaign also "popularised" the looting ofBunyoro's known wealth, not just cattle and goats, butdestruction of salt mines and the shut down of trade.Cattle were either killed or raided. "Next inimportance to the Queen Mother being in our hands, isthe loss sustained by Kabalega of nearly the whole ofhis cattle - the greater part were captured by theflying column under the command of Lt. H. Maddocks, ofthe Royal Fusiliers, and Lt. G.F.S Vandeleur, ScotsGuards" one dispatch in 1895, just two years after thecampaign begun, said. The Queen Mother and several members of Kabalega'sroyal family were captured as a way to lure him andbreak his spirit. One of the officers, Maj. TrevarTernan, wrote that as "much harm as possible" shouldbe inflicted on Bunyoro arguing that "the Wanyororichly deserve all they get". The British condoned a policy of killingnon-combatants as recorded by soldiers andmissionaries in the war areas. It is Ternan who alsowrote that Banyoro who were found carrying guns wereimmediately executed on sight. Ternan also killed tosend a message, apparently recording the execution ofsix people after the death of a British collaborator. A year into the campaign, Capt. Thruston wrote that inbattle "no quarter was given, though it was frequentlyasked for" meaning even prisoners were executed evenwhere they asked for pardon. The British records alsoindicate routine torture including flogging wasinflicted on prisoners of war. Also popular wasbastinadoing, Bunyoro argues. Bastinado is a torture method where the feet arebeaten until sores develop and the victim is unable towalk. While it was a war and casualties were on bothsides, Bunyoro argues that the British officers actedoutside of the known humanitarian principles ofconducting a war even one involving natives. At theend of the campaign, one observer noted when passingBunyoro that it was "a barren waste". "The little gardens and plantations were rank withweeds and completely deserted, and the few wanderingnatives we met looked half starved," the observerwrote. However, the defeat of Kabalega and the war ofconquest were only the beginning of Bunyoro'sproblems. With war came disease and famine, and what somescholars argue was the continual hatred for theBanyoro, reflected in the colonial government'spolicies to which we will return next week. Bunyoro,the area where most of Uganda's oil has beendiscovered (Ironically by British-owned companies) isasking for more than #3trillion.
Forward Ever (by any means necessary)!
Karen C. Aboiralor
Sierra Leone: Elections deepen crisis among the middle class
By Chernoh Alpha M. Bah
Sierra Leone’s president, Ahmed Tejan Kabbah has threatened to declare a state of emergency ahead of an election run-off to be held this week if violence between supporters of contending parties persists. Already there have been continuous reports of violent clashes during the last few days in several towns and villages in the south and east of the country among supporters of rival political parties forcing the police to declare a dawn to dusk curfew in most areas across the country.
The run-off presidential elections is going to be held between the opposition All Peoples Congress (APC) leader Ernest Koroma and incumbent ruling party candidate Solomon Ekuma Berewa. Berewa is also Kabbah’s vice president.
The APC won 44% of the votes during the first round, the SLPP 38% and PMDC 14%. To win a candidate is required to pool 55% of all votes before he can form a new government.
Already the opposition APC has won a majority of the parliamentary seats during the first round of voting with the incumbent trailing behind a wider margin. So much is at stake in these elections. The incumbent Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP), which has been in power since 1996 with Kabbah as its leader, cannot afford to loose the elections. As a matter of fact, Kabbah and his cronies in the SLPP are neither determined to relinquish political power to the APC nor are they prepared for an opposition victory in the presidential race.
The APC leadership, having lost political power in 1992 due to a military coup, sees the current elections as the best opportunity to assume leadership of the country and is exploiting the desperate genuine aspiration of the masses for political and economic transformation to accomplish its selfish power objective.
In reality, the current success of the APC in the ongoing electoral process is neither based on the conviction that it offers hope for the aspirations of the poor and exploited masses of African people in Sierra Leone nor is it because it provides a political programme that differs with that of the incumbent party it seeks to replace. But partly because it appears to be, within the context of the current state of affairs, the only available alternative of two proportionate evils and more so in the seemingly absence of a genuine political alternative people are naturally compelled under such circumstances to chose a perceived lesser evil. But historically the APC has never been such an alternative and will never be - just like any of the current existing political parties.
We in the Africanist Movement have maintained and we still maintain that there is no fundamental difference between the SLPP and APC or any of the existing political parties participating in the current political process. Presently, there are several political parties participating in the ongoing electoral process - all of which originates from and represents various sectors of a corrupt middle class that sees political power as the license for personal aggrandizement and wealth accumulation. Since the so-called independence, the dominant of these middle class factions have always being the SLPP and APC save for the inception of the Peoples Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC) in 2005.
But the circumstances that gave rise to the formation and existence of these political groupings and their objectives have always remained the same. The PMDC, formed and led by Charles Margai, had increased the crisis within the ruling elite. Margai, a former SLPP Internal Affairs Minister in the current regime, broke ranks with the SLPP after he was denied the party leadership in the 2005 delegates conference in which Berewa was elected presidential candidate of the party for the 2007 elections. Berewa was never a suitable and popular candidate within the rank and file of the SLPP but his nomination is said to have been influenced by Kabbah who desires to have his vice president succeeds him. Berewa appears to be a Kabbah loyalist and one that is likely to defend and maintain his current policies. It is this desire to have a loyalist succeeds him that led Kabbah to impose Berewa as his successor first within the SLPP and later on the country. It is this situation that resulted into the current split within the SLPP and ultimately led to the formation of the PMDC. Margai, a son of Sierra Leone’s former prime minister, claimed that his resignation from the Kabbah government and the SLPP is based on widespread corruption and lack of transparency within the party and government.
The unfortunate aspect of Sierra Leone’s political system, just as it is in most African countries, is that formation of political parties after or during the so-called independence period took an ethnic-regional divide. This in itself is a colonial construct arising out of the British constitutional arrangement of 1947 originally designed to create a divide between the “Creole” of the colony and the so-called “natives” of the protectorate but later resulted into the current north-west alliance versus south-east. It is this colonial strategy, designed by the British to further weaken the anti-colonial movement and militant agitations that had developed among certain sections of the “Creole” community of the colony, that gave rise to the formation of the SLPP in 1952 under the leadership of Milton Margai. Historically, the SLPP is an offspring of the general imperialist strategy after 1945 that ensured the transfer of political power to neocolonialist conservatives following the destruction of the anti-colonial movement led by Wallace Johnson.
It was the inter-party struggles and leadership acrimony that developed within the SLPP prior to the 1957 elections and during the 1960 constitutional conference in London that resulted first into the formation of the Peoples National Party (PNP) led by Albert Margai (father of PMDC leader Charles Margai) and then the Election Before Independence Movement (EBIM) which later became the APC under the leadership of Siaka Stevens. Present political parties in Sierra Leone have arisen out of these similar splits and power struggles among different sectors of the petty bourgeoisie for control of the state.
The division within the ruling class elite has had serious negative impacts on the broader mass of the country. In part it has fragmented national unity and reinforced false ethnic patriotism and regional consciousness among the masses. Traditionally, the SLPP had long relied on the south and east – mostly inhabited by mendes- for support. The mendes constitute the largest ethnic group in the country. The APC on the other hand relies on the north and west predominantly inhabited by Temnes and Limba for its support. Where as other political parties had emerged from among the northern ethnic groups, the south and east had always remained SLPP strongholds. This is why the formation of the PMDC has had significant effects on the chances of the SLPP in the current elections. Split within the SLPP has meant a split of the votes from the traditional strongholds of the party. Of the 122 contested seats in parliament the APC had won 59, the SLPP 43 and PMDC 10 during the first round of voting. And with a run-off scheduled between the SLPP and APC, PMDC leader Charles Margai has thrown his support to the APC ultimately reducing Berewa’s chances of victory in the run-off.
But the central questions are: why should Kabbah and his SLPP cronies not afford to loose the presidential elections? And more importantly, what will an APC victory mean to the aspirations of the masses?
The truth of the matter is that the current SLPP leadership is jittery in part because its policies have not translated into any form of development in the country. They completely ignored the welfare and interest of the masses that voted them into power. Although Kabbah came to power in 1996 following the national campaign for democracy, his eleven years in office has meant increased imperialist and multinational build-ups in the country. In his quest to maintain power, Kabbah gave out strategic mining concessions to several multinational British and American mining corporations in exchange for military services and protection. A British mercenary firm, Sandline International was contracted under an agreement signed between Kabbah and the British government to provide military equipments and training for the Civil Defense Forces, a militia group established by the SLPP, to fight for the restoration of Kabbah’s government after he was overthrown in a military coup in 1997. This agreement allowed the use of an international military intervention force that claimed the lives of thousands of innocent people to restore the SLPP government then exiled in Guinea Conakry.
Today, Branch Energy - a British corporation tied to Sandline International - mines the most lucrative diamond concession in West Africa as part of that arrangement. Other corporations like Mile Stone, Africa Gold and Diamonds Ltd, Petrograd Mines, Koidu Holdings, Sandoh Minerals, Sierra Leone Diamond Company (SLDC) and Bridge Resources are among some ninety multinational corporations currently exploiting resources from Kono in eastern Sierra Leone. It is estimated that about 10 million carats of diamonds is being taken out of Kono every month through the activities of these corporations. Sadly, while the corporations make huge resources, people in Sierra Leone live on less than a dollar a day with no electricity, no good roads, no proper health care system, no pipe borne water and other social services and the economic infrastructure necessary for growth and development.
The period of Kabbah’s term as president has also necessitated the introduction of a sophisticated counterinsurgency programme in the country that include a policy of massive police recruitment, deployment of imperialist troops and intelligence agencies and programme of structural adjustment influenced by imperialist nations. For instance, the British maintain a military base and huge military presence in the country and the FBI now has an outpost in Freetown. The British through the International Military Advisory Training Team (IMATT) are now in charge of training and restructuring the military and defense policy of the country. There is an Office of National Security – similar to the British MI6 – and it is predominantly made up of British military and police officers mostly commanders of the British troops in Sierra Leone – that is in charge of national intelligence and security. The British Department for International Development (DFID) – the equivalent of USAID – regulates the economic programme of the country. The justice sector reform programme has necessitated the appointment of British judges into the justice department.
Low life expectancy, high infant and maternal mortality rates, a rapidly declining economy and a vastly hungry population are the products of Kabbah’s policies and eleven years of office. These are polices he intends to continue and sustain through the imposition of Berewa as president of the country.
The imperialist strategy did not only offer protection for the neocolonial Kabbah regime, but it had helped to provide cover for the regime by dissuading the attention of the masses to the basis of the contradictions. Corruption and flagrant misuse of public resources have always been used by imperialist agencies as a blind to explain the causes of poverty and underdevelopment in most African countries where as neocolonial state exploitation and oppression are the actual causes of misery of the masses. In Sierra Leone a British funded anti-corruption strategy necessitated the establishment of an anti-corruption commission but it has become an addition to the problem rather than a solution. The SLPP government of Kabbah is one of the most corrupt neocolonial regimes on the continent and it has used these imperialist funded strategies and programmes to suppress would be contending opposition elements even within the middle class.
For instance, the United Nations backed Special Court for Sierra Leone – established under an arrangement between the SLPP government and United Nations for the trail of individuals believed to bear the greatest responsibility for crimes committed during the ten years war – is being used by the SLPP and the imperialists to silence perceived threats to their interests in the region. Among those indicted by the Special Court include former leaders of the CDF, the militia organization trained and armed by the British through the Sandline arrangement to restore the government of Kabbah after the military coup of 1997. The CDF leader, Sam Hinga Norman was Kabbah’s Defense Minister during the period of the conflict and later Internal Affairs Minister at the time of his arrest by the Special Court. CDF members have argued that Kabbah should equally be indicted because he was the head of the CDF War Council and Defense Minister simultaneously under whose directives Hinga Norman headed the operations of the CDF. PMDC leader Charles Margai, a professional lawyer, has functioned as one of the defense lawyers for the CDF leaders indicted by the Special Court.
However, Norman died early this year, under controversial circumstances, as a detainee of the Special Court. But before his death, Norman and other CDF detainees at the Special Court purportedly wrote a statement requesting their members and supporters to vote the PMDC. Margai had used this disgruntlement to garner support from former CDF members and supporters of the late Hinga Norman in the run-up to the elections. It is this CDF membership within the PMDC, mostly ex-militia fighters, that have engaged the SLPP into open battles in the south and east of the country resulting into burning of houses. The APC itself appears to have utilized the same tactic by incorporating renegades of the RUF and disbanded soldiers of the old army into its rank and file.
Consequently, with an opposition majority in the parliament and an APC-PMDC alliance ahead of the presidential run-off, Kabbah and his SLPP stalwarts have become extremely worried. Apart from fear of loosing vested interests in the multinational corporate exploitation of the resources, Kabbah risks being taken to the Special Court and most SLPP ministers as well would have to face tribunals and commissions of enquiry that will be established through the influence of the APC-PMDC merger. This may also have implications for the large multinational interests in the country and represents a threat to the corrupt patronage networks that has developed between the current ruling class elite and mercantile class predominantly Lebanese, Asiatic, individual Fulani and other indigenous business magnates who have become prosperous during the last few years due to rogue relations with this political mafia.
Regardless of the outcome of the current elections, the situation of the masses will still remain worst. Endemic, institutionalized corruption over the years have resulted into the development of a rogue middle class that has grown extremely wealthy in the midst of massive poverty and wretchedness among the majority of poor people in the country. The statistics on growth and development have remained abysmal for the last forty-six years of neocolonial state terror much of it perpetrated during the more than two decades of APC rule. So regardless of whoever wins the current political contests, there will be no significant changes in policies that will reverse the current trend of affairs. Perhaps any significant change will be an increase in the poverty and backwardness caused by increased corruption and organized state exploitation.
Perhaps the encouraging aspect of this situation is the growth of political consciousness among the masses. This seemingly unending power struggles among the petty bourgeoisie – the use of political power to selfishly accumulate wealth, political corruption, state oppression and neocolonial exploitation – have not only resulted into severe crisis within the middle class, but it has equally increased the aspirations of the masses for revolutionary change. It has stimulated political agitation among the people and fueled their desire for change in their material conditions. People are rapidly becoming conscious that decades of organized state oppression and exploitation have denied them access to state resources and social services necessary to change their conditions of existence. They are coming to terms with the necessity of building a working class revolutionary movement that will fight to overturn the existing status quo.
This growing political consciousness is undoubtedly the result of ongoing political education and campaigns of the Africanist Movement. We believe that freedom from this situation of exploitation and oppression will only come through organized efforts of the workers and peasants. The workers and peasants need a programme that addresses their needs and aspirations and one that helps them realize their selfish interests as a class. And this should be the responsibility of African revolutionaries and progressives around the world.
Smash Neocolonialism! Smash Imperialism! Build the African Socialist International!
By Chernoh Alpha M. Bah
Sierra Leone’s president, Ahmed Tejan Kabbah has threatened to declare a state of emergency ahead of an election run-off to be held this week if violence between supporters of contending parties persists. Already there have been continuous reports of violent clashes during the last few days in several towns and villages in the south and east of the country among supporters of rival political parties forcing the police to declare a dawn to dusk curfew in most areas across the country.
The run-off presidential elections is going to be held between the opposition All Peoples Congress (APC) leader Ernest Koroma and incumbent ruling party candidate Solomon Ekuma Berewa. Berewa is also Kabbah’s vice president.
The APC won 44% of the votes during the first round, the SLPP 38% and PMDC 14%. To win a candidate is required to pool 55% of all votes before he can form a new government.
Already the opposition APC has won a majority of the parliamentary seats during the first round of voting with the incumbent trailing behind a wider margin. So much is at stake in these elections. The incumbent Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP), which has been in power since 1996 with Kabbah as its leader, cannot afford to loose the elections. As a matter of fact, Kabbah and his cronies in the SLPP are neither determined to relinquish political power to the APC nor are they prepared for an opposition victory in the presidential race.
The APC leadership, having lost political power in 1992 due to a military coup, sees the current elections as the best opportunity to assume leadership of the country and is exploiting the desperate genuine aspiration of the masses for political and economic transformation to accomplish its selfish power objective.
In reality, the current success of the APC in the ongoing electoral process is neither based on the conviction that it offers hope for the aspirations of the poor and exploited masses of African people in Sierra Leone nor is it because it provides a political programme that differs with that of the incumbent party it seeks to replace. But partly because it appears to be, within the context of the current state of affairs, the only available alternative of two proportionate evils and more so in the seemingly absence of a genuine political alternative people are naturally compelled under such circumstances to chose a perceived lesser evil. But historically the APC has never been such an alternative and will never be - just like any of the current existing political parties.
We in the Africanist Movement have maintained and we still maintain that there is no fundamental difference between the SLPP and APC or any of the existing political parties participating in the current political process. Presently, there are several political parties participating in the ongoing electoral process - all of which originates from and represents various sectors of a corrupt middle class that sees political power as the license for personal aggrandizement and wealth accumulation. Since the so-called independence, the dominant of these middle class factions have always being the SLPP and APC save for the inception of the Peoples Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC) in 2005.
But the circumstances that gave rise to the formation and existence of these political groupings and their objectives have always remained the same. The PMDC, formed and led by Charles Margai, had increased the crisis within the ruling elite. Margai, a former SLPP Internal Affairs Minister in the current regime, broke ranks with the SLPP after he was denied the party leadership in the 2005 delegates conference in which Berewa was elected presidential candidate of the party for the 2007 elections. Berewa was never a suitable and popular candidate within the rank and file of the SLPP but his nomination is said to have been influenced by Kabbah who desires to have his vice president succeeds him. Berewa appears to be a Kabbah loyalist and one that is likely to defend and maintain his current policies. It is this desire to have a loyalist succeeds him that led Kabbah to impose Berewa as his successor first within the SLPP and later on the country. It is this situation that resulted into the current split within the SLPP and ultimately led to the formation of the PMDC. Margai, a son of Sierra Leone’s former prime minister, claimed that his resignation from the Kabbah government and the SLPP is based on widespread corruption and lack of transparency within the party and government.
The unfortunate aspect of Sierra Leone’s political system, just as it is in most African countries, is that formation of political parties after or during the so-called independence period took an ethnic-regional divide. This in itself is a colonial construct arising out of the British constitutional arrangement of 1947 originally designed to create a divide between the “Creole” of the colony and the so-called “natives” of the protectorate but later resulted into the current north-west alliance versus south-east. It is this colonial strategy, designed by the British to further weaken the anti-colonial movement and militant agitations that had developed among certain sections of the “Creole” community of the colony, that gave rise to the formation of the SLPP in 1952 under the leadership of Milton Margai. Historically, the SLPP is an offspring of the general imperialist strategy after 1945 that ensured the transfer of political power to neocolonialist conservatives following the destruction of the anti-colonial movement led by Wallace Johnson.
It was the inter-party struggles and leadership acrimony that developed within the SLPP prior to the 1957 elections and during the 1960 constitutional conference in London that resulted first into the formation of the Peoples National Party (PNP) led by Albert Margai (father of PMDC leader Charles Margai) and then the Election Before Independence Movement (EBIM) which later became the APC under the leadership of Siaka Stevens. Present political parties in Sierra Leone have arisen out of these similar splits and power struggles among different sectors of the petty bourgeoisie for control of the state.
The division within the ruling class elite has had serious negative impacts on the broader mass of the country. In part it has fragmented national unity and reinforced false ethnic patriotism and regional consciousness among the masses. Traditionally, the SLPP had long relied on the south and east – mostly inhabited by mendes- for support. The mendes constitute the largest ethnic group in the country. The APC on the other hand relies on the north and west predominantly inhabited by Temnes and Limba for its support. Where as other political parties had emerged from among the northern ethnic groups, the south and east had always remained SLPP strongholds. This is why the formation of the PMDC has had significant effects on the chances of the SLPP in the current elections. Split within the SLPP has meant a split of the votes from the traditional strongholds of the party. Of the 122 contested seats in parliament the APC had won 59, the SLPP 43 and PMDC 10 during the first round of voting. And with a run-off scheduled between the SLPP and APC, PMDC leader Charles Margai has thrown his support to the APC ultimately reducing Berewa’s chances of victory in the run-off.
But the central questions are: why should Kabbah and his SLPP cronies not afford to loose the presidential elections? And more importantly, what will an APC victory mean to the aspirations of the masses?
The truth of the matter is that the current SLPP leadership is jittery in part because its policies have not translated into any form of development in the country. They completely ignored the welfare and interest of the masses that voted them into power. Although Kabbah came to power in 1996 following the national campaign for democracy, his eleven years in office has meant increased imperialist and multinational build-ups in the country. In his quest to maintain power, Kabbah gave out strategic mining concessions to several multinational British and American mining corporations in exchange for military services and protection. A British mercenary firm, Sandline International was contracted under an agreement signed between Kabbah and the British government to provide military equipments and training for the Civil Defense Forces, a militia group established by the SLPP, to fight for the restoration of Kabbah’s government after he was overthrown in a military coup in 1997. This agreement allowed the use of an international military intervention force that claimed the lives of thousands of innocent people to restore the SLPP government then exiled in Guinea Conakry.
Today, Branch Energy - a British corporation tied to Sandline International - mines the most lucrative diamond concession in West Africa as part of that arrangement. Other corporations like Mile Stone, Africa Gold and Diamonds Ltd, Petrograd Mines, Koidu Holdings, Sandoh Minerals, Sierra Leone Diamond Company (SLDC) and Bridge Resources are among some ninety multinational corporations currently exploiting resources from Kono in eastern Sierra Leone. It is estimated that about 10 million carats of diamonds is being taken out of Kono every month through the activities of these corporations. Sadly, while the corporations make huge resources, people in Sierra Leone live on less than a dollar a day with no electricity, no good roads, no proper health care system, no pipe borne water and other social services and the economic infrastructure necessary for growth and development.
The period of Kabbah’s term as president has also necessitated the introduction of a sophisticated counterinsurgency programme in the country that include a policy of massive police recruitment, deployment of imperialist troops and intelligence agencies and programme of structural adjustment influenced by imperialist nations. For instance, the British maintain a military base and huge military presence in the country and the FBI now has an outpost in Freetown. The British through the International Military Advisory Training Team (IMATT) are now in charge of training and restructuring the military and defense policy of the country. There is an Office of National Security – similar to the British MI6 – and it is predominantly made up of British military and police officers mostly commanders of the British troops in Sierra Leone – that is in charge of national intelligence and security. The British Department for International Development (DFID) – the equivalent of USAID – regulates the economic programme of the country. The justice sector reform programme has necessitated the appointment of British judges into the justice department.
Low life expectancy, high infant and maternal mortality rates, a rapidly declining economy and a vastly hungry population are the products of Kabbah’s policies and eleven years of office. These are polices he intends to continue and sustain through the imposition of Berewa as president of the country.
The imperialist strategy did not only offer protection for the neocolonial Kabbah regime, but it had helped to provide cover for the regime by dissuading the attention of the masses to the basis of the contradictions. Corruption and flagrant misuse of public resources have always been used by imperialist agencies as a blind to explain the causes of poverty and underdevelopment in most African countries where as neocolonial state exploitation and oppression are the actual causes of misery of the masses. In Sierra Leone a British funded anti-corruption strategy necessitated the establishment of an anti-corruption commission but it has become an addition to the problem rather than a solution. The SLPP government of Kabbah is one of the most corrupt neocolonial regimes on the continent and it has used these imperialist funded strategies and programmes to suppress would be contending opposition elements even within the middle class.
For instance, the United Nations backed Special Court for Sierra Leone – established under an arrangement between the SLPP government and United Nations for the trail of individuals believed to bear the greatest responsibility for crimes committed during the ten years war – is being used by the SLPP and the imperialists to silence perceived threats to their interests in the region. Among those indicted by the Special Court include former leaders of the CDF, the militia organization trained and armed by the British through the Sandline arrangement to restore the government of Kabbah after the military coup of 1997. The CDF leader, Sam Hinga Norman was Kabbah’s Defense Minister during the period of the conflict and later Internal Affairs Minister at the time of his arrest by the Special Court. CDF members have argued that Kabbah should equally be indicted because he was the head of the CDF War Council and Defense Minister simultaneously under whose directives Hinga Norman headed the operations of the CDF. PMDC leader Charles Margai, a professional lawyer, has functioned as one of the defense lawyers for the CDF leaders indicted by the Special Court.
However, Norman died early this year, under controversial circumstances, as a detainee of the Special Court. But before his death, Norman and other CDF detainees at the Special Court purportedly wrote a statement requesting their members and supporters to vote the PMDC. Margai had used this disgruntlement to garner support from former CDF members and supporters of the late Hinga Norman in the run-up to the elections. It is this CDF membership within the PMDC, mostly ex-militia fighters, that have engaged the SLPP into open battles in the south and east of the country resulting into burning of houses. The APC itself appears to have utilized the same tactic by incorporating renegades of the RUF and disbanded soldiers of the old army into its rank and file.
Consequently, with an opposition majority in the parliament and an APC-PMDC alliance ahead of the presidential run-off, Kabbah and his SLPP stalwarts have become extremely worried. Apart from fear of loosing vested interests in the multinational corporate exploitation of the resources, Kabbah risks being taken to the Special Court and most SLPP ministers as well would have to face tribunals and commissions of enquiry that will be established through the influence of the APC-PMDC merger. This may also have implications for the large multinational interests in the country and represents a threat to the corrupt patronage networks that has developed between the current ruling class elite and mercantile class predominantly Lebanese, Asiatic, individual Fulani and other indigenous business magnates who have become prosperous during the last few years due to rogue relations with this political mafia.
Regardless of the outcome of the current elections, the situation of the masses will still remain worst. Endemic, institutionalized corruption over the years have resulted into the development of a rogue middle class that has grown extremely wealthy in the midst of massive poverty and wretchedness among the majority of poor people in the country. The statistics on growth and development have remained abysmal for the last forty-six years of neocolonial state terror much of it perpetrated during the more than two decades of APC rule. So regardless of whoever wins the current political contests, there will be no significant changes in policies that will reverse the current trend of affairs. Perhaps any significant change will be an increase in the poverty and backwardness caused by increased corruption and organized state exploitation.
Perhaps the encouraging aspect of this situation is the growth of political consciousness among the masses. This seemingly unending power struggles among the petty bourgeoisie – the use of political power to selfishly accumulate wealth, political corruption, state oppression and neocolonial exploitation – have not only resulted into severe crisis within the middle class, but it has equally increased the aspirations of the masses for revolutionary change. It has stimulated political agitation among the people and fueled their desire for change in their material conditions. People are rapidly becoming conscious that decades of organized state oppression and exploitation have denied them access to state resources and social services necessary to change their conditions of existence. They are coming to terms with the necessity of building a working class revolutionary movement that will fight to overturn the existing status quo.
This growing political consciousness is undoubtedly the result of ongoing political education and campaigns of the Africanist Movement. We believe that freedom from this situation of exploitation and oppression will only come through organized efforts of the workers and peasants. The workers and peasants need a programme that addresses their needs and aspirations and one that helps them realize their selfish interests as a class. And this should be the responsibility of African revolutionaries and progressives around the world.
Smash Neocolonialism! Smash Imperialism! Build the African Socialist International!
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
West Africa:
AFRICANIST LEADERS SET TO TACKLE
MULTINATIONAL CORPORATE EXPLOITATION
PRESS RELEASE ISSUED BY THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE -SEPTEMBER 5, 2007.
The Africanist Movement is pleased to announce that the 2007 International Conference on Leadership will be held in Labe, Guinea from December 28-30, 2007.
The conference will discuss the effects of multinational corporate exploitation on the African continent, the political and economic crisis situations in West Africa, cross-boarder extortions and the way forward to a free, united socialist Africa.
The Africanist International leadership conference is a grassroots initiative designed to involve African workers and poor peasants in the unification and liberation process of the continent from neocolonialism and imperialism.
It is also an annual event aimed at bringing together Africanist leaders and representatives of other African revolutionaries and progressives to discuss key issues and problems associated with Africa’s liberation and unification process.
The decision to hold this year’s international leadership conference in Guinea came out of recommendations from the emergency leadership meeting of the Africanist Movement held from August 26-27, 2007.
A follow-up meeting to further discuss the details of this year’s international leadership conference and other issues relating to the work of the movement has been scheduled for September 21-22, 2007 in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
In 2005 and 2006, Africans from Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Gambia, Senegal, Burkina Fasso, Guinea Bissau, the United States, England, Belgium and Holland have attended the international leadership conferences held in Makeni, Sierra Leone and Dalaba, Guinea respectively.
This year, the international leadership conference will coincide with the 5th Anniversary of Africanist Movement.
For more information Contact:
The conference will discuss the effects of multinational corporate exploitation on the African continent, the political and economic crisis situations in West Africa, cross-boarder extortions and the way forward to a free, united socialist Africa.
The Africanist International leadership conference is a grassroots initiative designed to involve African workers and poor peasants in the unification and liberation process of the continent from neocolonialism and imperialism.
It is also an annual event aimed at bringing together Africanist leaders and representatives of other African revolutionaries and progressives to discuss key issues and problems associated with Africa’s liberation and unification process.
The decision to hold this year’s international leadership conference in Guinea came out of recommendations from the emergency leadership meeting of the Africanist Movement held from August 26-27, 2007.
A follow-up meeting to further discuss the details of this year’s international leadership conference and other issues relating to the work of the movement has been scheduled for September 21-22, 2007 in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
In 2005 and 2006, Africans from Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Gambia, Senegal, Burkina Fasso, Guinea Bissau, the United States, England, Belgium and Holland have attended the international leadership conferences held in Makeni, Sierra Leone and Dalaba, Guinea respectively.
This year, the international leadership conference will coincide with the 5th Anniversary of Africanist Movement.
For more information Contact:
Tel: 232 76 757924/ 232 77 898550 (Sierra Leone)
224 60 295210/ 224 64 537987 (Guinea)
*Courtesy of Kabietulai Byllor Jalloh, Communications Secretary to the Director
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