Saturday, September 29, 2012

Remembering Thomas Sankara and the Burkina Faso Revolutionl



Remembering Steve Biko

Remembering Steve Biko

Commemorate the life of Stephen Bantu Biko; resist internalized oppression and economic exploitation

Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity

2012-09-20, Issue 598

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/84222

Bookmark and Share

Printer friendly version

'We will gather to engage in critical discussion and commemorate the life and work of Steve Biko, while we commit and re-commit ourselves to the ongoing work of Pan-Afrikan solidarity and liberation.'
Media Release

September 19, 2012

Toronto, ON - The Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (NPAS) has organized a forum to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the martyrdom of Steve Biko. This event will be on Thursday, September 20 at 7pm in Room 5-280 at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (252 Bloor Street West, at St. George station).

Steve Biko was a revolutionary, educator, and founder of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in Azania (South Afrika). He recognized that the emancipation of Afrikan people must be led by Afrikan people, and his work as a student organizer in solidarity with the Afrikan working class is especially relevant for those of us interested in or dedicated to radical organization-building strategies and community mobilization. Black Consciousness, as Gussai Sheikheldin says, "channels our emotions and intelligence towards action for social transformation, and also towards building genuine solidarity among our peoples and other oppressed peoples around the world, to fight common ideological enemies that we can only fight better together."

Central to Biko's stance on self-determined, self-sufficient, organized liberatory struggle was the recognition that Afrikan liberation in Azania could not occur unless Afrikan people develop the critical consciousness necessary to understand the social, economic, and political roots of their oppression by the former apartheid state. Biko recognized the importance of public education for liberation struggles, and this is part of the reason for this public education initiative. While Black consciousness provided an oppositional education to the normative and racist education that the majority of Afrikan people received under apartheid, it is crucial that we continue to engage in public education in our Pan-Afrikan struggles that strengthen our capacities to resist white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist oppression in our organizations and communities.

Responses to the recent massacre of mineworkers at the Marikana mine in Azania by state agents reveals state cooptation of ideas that revolutionary forces must reclaim. As Yolisa Dalamba states, "Given the condition of Afrikans in Azania and around the world the relevance of Black Consciousness is striking. At Marikana and around the country the majority of the people remain oppressed both by apartheid's brutal legacy and Afrikans who now preside over the post-apartheid state. The latter have abandoned the liberation struggle for capitalism that regards Afrikans as little more than slaves." We must work to expose political opportunists that parasitically profit from the national wealth of Azania, while claiming the legacy of genuine revolutionary struggle. Steve Biko was brutally tortured and killed by the apartheid regime because his contribution to the work of Afrikan liberation genuinely threatened the oppressive status quo. There is no space in our work for conciliation with the exploitative forces Biko and countless freedom fighters died resisting.

So, we will gather to engage in critical discussion and commemorate the life and work of Steve Biko, while we commit and re-commit ourselves to the ongoing work of Pan-Afrikan solidarity and liberation. We will show a documentary film about Biko’s life and work, and we will have a panel discussion featuring: Dr. Rozena Maart, professor at the University of Kwa Zulu Natal in Durban, Azania ("Black Consciousness and the Possibility of a Gender Analysis”); Gussai Sheikheldin, organizer with NPAS and graduate student at the University of Guelph (“Racial but Not Racial: Being Black to Biko and Rodney”); and Yolisa Dalamba, community activist & educator who was active in the anti-apartheid movement in Canada and Azania (“Black Consciousness and its Relevance for Afrikan Activism in Canada”).

For information please contact: network4panafrikansolidarity@gmail.com

Forward to emancipation-from-below in the Caribbean

Forward to emancipation-from-below in the Caribbean

by the Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity

2012-09-27, Issue 599

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/84368

Bookmark and Share

Printer friendly version

‘In our struggle to give concrete form to Pan-Afrikanism, it is clear that we must continue and advance our anti-oppressive struggles with an understanding that the union of Afrikan people worldwide is an emancipation-from-below project.’
Today we gather to commemorate the 50th anniversaries of Jamaica's and Trinidad and Tobago's independence. In our commemorations of the work of countless revolutionary ancestors whose active resistance to the British colonial regime led to national independence for Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago in August 1962, we insist that we must have absolutely no illusions that the struggle of Afrikan people for liberation from all forms of oppression ends with national independence.

National independence is not liberation, and we will not promote narrow nationalistic perspectives on what liberation means for Afrikan people. While we have called this gathering in the name of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, our promotion of a Pan-Afrikan outlook necessarily entails that our discussions about national independence involve consideration of the connections among Afrikan people's liberation struggles in the Caribbean, the whole of the Afrikan Diaspora and on the Afrikan continent.

As Kwame Ture wrote in his 1992 reflections on Black Power, ‘Africans have known slavery and colonialism for centuries. These struggles are one and the same for the African Revolution and cannot be separated although they are geographically dispersed. The task of imperialism is to divide and rule, isolate and dominate. The aim of capitalism is not only to isolate the African Revolution to its divided ‘countries’ on our motherland and to the ‘countries’ of our dispersion, but also to destroy the continuity of struggle in these areas.’

Indeed, at no time during enslavement, colonialism and post-independence has any empire or state facilitated sustained self-determination of the masses of Afrikans and other oppressed peoples. Their objective condition in the areas of economics, social development, politics and cultural assertion and expression has been defined by oppression. It should be noted that as dominated peoples, we have also consistently resisted exploitation. In our struggle to give concrete form to Pan-Afrikanism, it is clear that we must continue and advance our anti-oppressive struggles with an understanding that the union of Afrikan people worldwide is an emancipation-from-below project.

The Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (NPAS) would like to share a number of points regarding this emancipatory project:

1. Recognizing that we seek emancipation of the masses by the masses, we also recognize that the progressive Caribbean Diaspora is a source of resources and allyship for emancipation-from-below with respect to civil society and progressive social movement organizations. We ought to prioritize work among the people that deals with immediate concerns while ideologically preparing them for the long-term task of social emancipation. As Amilcar Cabral famously said, ‘Keep always in mind that the people are not [merely] fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children....’

2. While basing our visions, goals, plans and strategies on our material needs and realities, we ought to be uncompromising in our struggles against all forms of oppression - narrow nationalisms and chauvinisms are not compatible with an inclusive understanding and practice of anti-oppression. We need to understand and fight patriarchy and to ensure that women, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender/transsexual, Queer (LGBTQ) members of society, people with disabilities, and young people access all roles in the Caribbean movement for emancipation.

3. The current and conventional models and conceptualizations of development imposed on and employed in the Caribbean are unworkable. They perpetuate dependency on Europe, North America (former enslavers and colonizers) and other imperialist states. We would do well to reject development discourses or ideas, based on Eurocentric, capitalist and sexist notions of progress, modernity, and technology. We encourage Frantz Fanon’s “wretched of the earth” to favour and continue to develop models of development based on criteria of truth, reciprocity, participation, beauty, justice, and so on, that advance the health and wellbeing of Afrikan people.

4. The question of reparations for Europe's exploitation of the land, resources and labour of Afrikans in the Caribbean must be on the table. While reparations in the amount of £20 million was given to the enslavers of Afrikan labour by the British imperial state following emancipation, the debt owed to the descendents of enslaved Afrikans in the Caribbean has not been paid. This is a mockery of our ancestors, and as we and our parents and our children struggle with the ongoing legacy of 500 years of exploitation in the Afrikan Diaspora, we must fight for redress.

5. It is clear that Afrikans in the Caribbean excel when we have the opportunity. If we survey the recently-concluded London Olympic Games and the performance of our athletes as well as our contributions in the culinary arts, culture, and scholarship, it is clear that the only barrier facing us is the limited opportunities available for the full realization of our potentiality. We will continue to fight for equality of outcome or condition, and we reject the liberal idea of equality of opportunity, which is a recipe for maintaining the status quo.

As always, today is a day to honour our revolutionary ancestors and their struggles, to celebrate our victories, and to strengthen our commitments and re-commitments to the struggle for liberation from all forms of oppression and toward a world based on peace and justice. We stand in solidarity with the late Toni Cade Bambara and her assertion, ‘The responsibility of an artist [progressive organizers] representing an oppressed people is to make revolution irresistible.’

Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to our work, together in solidarity, for Afrikan liberation.

* Presented at an August 17th public education forum on Caribbean independence at the University of Toronto, Canada.