QUO VADIS – WHERE TO PAN-AFRICANISM?
THE CASE FOR A UNITED SOCIALIST STATES OF AFRICA!
By Comrade Mainda Simataa
General Secretary Economic Liberation Association – Zambia
It was the venerable tireless advocate of the Pan-African dream of
unity, Kwame Nkrumah, who once said, “seek ye first the political
Kingdom, and everything shall be added onto you”. It has been many decades since Kwame was interred, and with him the African fervor of a united African Super Power – the United Socialist States of Africa! Indeed, we Africans have one more mountain to climb before our people can say we have arrived in the promised land that flows with milk honey – a land of peace and prosperity that was promised to us by our freedom fighters and founding fathers in the 1950’s and 60’s and late into the early 90’s for Namibia and South Africa.
The foresight and bravery of our forefathers brought us through and over the treacherous colonial mountains of oppression as they delivered political freedom to us; but today, Political freedom – that first step of seizing the kingdom of freedom, has yielded little. Political freedom has not yielded the freedom we dreamed of and hoped for; Africa needs a new direction! A new revolutionary class!
It is therefore the great task of this African generation, to keep the
dream of Pan-Africanism alive, to keep the revolutionary fires burning, and mobilize and organize ourselves once again, to climb the last opposing mountain before us – the mountain of neo-colonialism and its latter day indirect rule through economic capture of the African resources the old and new imperialist powers have always coveted, wanted, and do not want to pay for! Let us make no mistake, let us be under no illusions; the western colonialists still want our natural resources and cheap slave labour, and to regain that, they have thrown in another stumbling block in our road to freedom, a stumbling block which is calculated to make us fall in our climb. That stumbling block is what is obstructing our path to the mountaintop where we can finally see the completion of the journey that was started by our forefathers. But like every freedom fighter and mountain climber knows, there is no easy road to freedom, there is no short cut to the mountaintop. The short cuts and fast-track routes to so called development plotted for us by the Capitalist states and their think-tanks are usually the most dangerous because they are fraught with unknown dangers were one slip-up, and one mistake, can be fatal. Therefore, in our climb to the summit of the economic mountain before
us, we need several things: we need to begin with, a road-map – an
economic road map. A road map will lead us to our destiny envisioned
for us by our ancestors and predecessors. Aside from the economic
roadmap, the only other thing we need is courage. And as we all know,
courage is the one thing we can’t buy or borrow; it must be cultivated
from within us through repeated acts of bravery however little or far
between they may be. Once we have the map and we muster the courage to follow that revolutionary map, we must apply intelligence in reading and readjusting that map without losing sight of our destiny. We may very
well find some obstacle in our path to which there are no ready-made solutions or prescriptions. In such situations we must improvise; but
always, we must question if our new-found solution will lead us to the
Promised Land, and more importantly, if it is in the best interests of our people.
The roadmap of Pan-Africanism is Socialism! We have chosen socialism because Socialism is what Nkrumah and Nyerere and Kaunda and all our greatest statesmen recommended as the true and only path to our destiny! But times have changed, and we too must change without losing our Socialist values. There is talk of modern Socialism nowadays, the so called Social Democracy. But as we adjust the sails of our ship, we
must be careful that we do not erode the core foundations of socialism
– People first before Profits! Anything that puts the interest of the few first is not socialism, its capitalism! We must never make a butchery of our African conscience in the name of modernity! However to carry out the aims of socialism – that is to ensure the wellbeing of society, we need two things: socialism itself which is at once the roadmap and the socio-economic operating system, and more importantly, effective people of knowledge and integrity to manage the Socialist system. Socialism unfortunately is not a self-automated system that will fly itself and regulate itself. Socialism, being a sound and just system as it is, still needs sound people to run it, maintain it and regulate it. A system is only as good as the people who manage it. Give socialism to a capitalist, and soon he will make a butchery of it! We have all heard of how Stalin made a butchery of ‘Socialism’ in Russia. Let us learn the lessons of history.
Quo Vadis? Whereto Pan-Africanism? We must all answer affirmatively
and resolutely and say: towards Unity, Economic progress and freedom
for all Africans under the Socialist banner of freedom!
Freedom for a United Socialist States Africa (USSA), a Super power that is slowly awakening and coming into its own, to take its rightful place in the world.
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