The second liberation struggle in Africa

United we stand, devided we fall

  B. CHANGO MACHYO W'OBANDA

Introduction

Comrades, Greetings!

I bring you fraternal cordial greetings from the progressive revolutionary conscious comrades of Uganda who have rallied behind the struggle of the National Resistance Movement (MRM) to carry out a national democratic revolution in Uganda since 1981, when the armed struggle to oust neo-colonial dictatorial regimes which dominated our country since independence in 1962 to 1986 when the NRM/A defeated them and took over the state power on 26th January, 1986 after a five years' protracted bush war under the command and leadership of comrade Yoweri Kaguta Musseveni.

I have come to attend this important seminar with the full blessings of President Museveni who kindly facilitated my transit allowance to enable me to reach here conveniently. Otherwise I would have been stranded at London airport as I missed the flight to Brussels on the evening of 30th April, 1997 and had to stay for a night in London.

I wish to express my deep-felt gratitude to the Workers' Party of Belgium and particulary to Comrade Ludo Martens whom I have no doubt was the moving spirit behind my invitation.

About myself

I accepted the invitation to attend this international seminar not as a person versed in theory and practice of Marxist-Leninism, Mao Zedongism or Kim Il Sungism, but as a self-educated product of colonial education and a qualified surveyor in capitalist profession of real property or Estate Management, who became committed unwaveringly to the cause of the need for African revolutionary transformation from neo-colonialism to socialism as the only way out to assure and guarantee Africa's independence, sovereignity and genuine development. I am fully convinced that despite the setbacks and the rough road ahead of us, the only way to genuine independence, sovereignty, development and progress, to end Africa's underdevelopment and backwardness imposed on us by imperilaism, is a socialist revolution. There is no short cut.

Africa's Obstacles to progress

The primary obstacle to Africa's development and progress is imperialism; the secondary obstacle is the black dependent bourgeois class which serves the interests of imperialists in Africa, in search of personal selfish benefits at the expense of the African popular masses whose plight in socio-ecionomic terms and human dignity has become worse than under formal colonial rule.

Independence proved meaningless

Neo-colonialism

The fact is that the independence achieved by African colonies all over the continent has proved meaningless and mere sham for all intents and purposes to the people of Africa. Formal independence merely gave way to neo-colonial domination with aid - economic and technical - as the means. Under neocolonial domination African governments merely served as a conduit tube for neocolonial domination and exploitation by the former colonial powers and the United Staees, through aid, unfair terms of trade etc.

Neocolonial domination succeeded in replacing formal colonial rule because African nationalist leaders, who went through colonial brainwashing called education and a civilizing mission, were anti-imperialists, but not anti-imperialism. They saw their mission as that of replacing and inheriting white officials, and occupying and enjoying their seats of political power and privileges. They were not against the system with its ideological, technical and cultural structures. These African nationalists who took over power, wanted to preserve and adhere to as a means of "keeping international standards".

In order to maintain and run the colonial system without colonial officials, economic and technical aid was a must. All African post-colonial leaders regarded foreign aid as the only means to what they called development. The role of the popular masses in the genuine development process was ignored; development was seen and regarded as growth generating things, not the development by the people for the people. So foreign assistance was seen as indispensible. But for the imperialists aid was a necessary weapon of the success of neocolonial domination by continued control of Africa's economies and direction of development. Accordingly, foreign aid proved to be a weapon of imperialism and a debt-trap. African leaders were turned into mere governors who administered their countries on behalf of the capitalist ruling class in the West. Aid ended up benefiting the donors more than us, the recipients. Instead we grew poorer and more miserable with every increase in aid which became a debt burden!

Recolonization

SAPs

The faiture of the consecutive UN development decades (1960-1980) despite increased aid, merely witnessed deepening dependence on aid for survival by all African governments as the prices of primary export commodities declined. To support a superficial life-style in the name of 'keeping international standards' for the black elites, the governments dominated by them had to resort to heavy borrowing from the capitalist world. This havy borrowing was done on the basis of mortgaging their countries and people to the doner agencies and the Group of Seven Paris Club.

The deepening indebtedness - the debt burden - gave a chance to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) to take over the managment of African economies in the interest of the Western donors and the Transnational Corporations (TNCs). To affect this the Breton Woods Institutions imposed what they called Structural Adjustment Programms (SAP's) as conditionalities for granting more loans to the poverty trapped African governments, to enable them to support a make-belief image of success.

SAP's and recolonization

Among the important conditionalities of SAPs are retrenchment, devaluation, liberalization and divestiture or privatization of the public sector.

But SAPs lead to a state worse than the debt. And that a country under SAPs cannot simultaneously satisfy the IMF, WB and the G7 - the donor community - and the basic interests of its people. The aim of SAPs is to recolonize Africa with IMF and WB as the new masters. The end result of SAPs is to turn African Governments into mere caretaker government to administer the interests of the TNCs who take over the commanding heights of the economies of African countries. And since the economy is the base and politics is the concentrated expression of the economy, African independence and sovereignity end and real power is taken over by Washington - the seat of IMF and WB who monopolise the power to dictate not only politics, but what the African governments must do behave like. It becomes a state worse than the debt. Independence and sovereignity come to an end, as African governments are deprived of the economic base to assert their independence and sovereignity in matter or international affair.

The struggle fot the second liberation

Need for revolutionary ideas

There is no doubt that the formel independence Africa achieved from the 1958 culminating into independence of South Africa in 1990s has a direct link with the october revolution in Russia.

The fact is that until after 1945, African petty bourgeois nationalists brainwashed through the education system of the European imperial powers, only demanded to be allowed to take part in the governing of their countries. This demand - this begging - ended with the 5th Pan African Congress which was held at Manchester in Britain in 1945. At that famous congress, Africans demanded to be free. They demanded for Black autonomy and independency. The language of the Congress was a revolutionary language -uncompromisingly anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist. Definitely Marxist-Leninist ideas played a key-role.

The end of the war had expanded the socialist anti-imperialist world; it produced anti-imperialist African nationalists like Kwame Nkrumah; it liberated Africans who served as soldiers to fight on the side of their white colonial masters, from racial inferiority complex. And not least it unleashed the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist movement in Africa and Asia. This culminated in the Afro-Asian Solidarity Movement which was guided by progressive revolutionary ideas greatly influenced by Mao Zedong thought.

African armed victory over France, Portugal and the white racists in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa, owes its success to progressive revolutionary ideas rooted in Marxist-Leninist, Mao Zedong Thought and Kim Il Sungism. It is the AK 47 which brought African military victory over fascist colonial regimes and racist white rulers in Africa. The need for revolutionary ideas in the struggle for the Second Liberation is therefore obvious. It is not necessary to overemphazise it.

Need for African Unity

The 7th Pan African Congress held in Kampala Uganda in 1994, called for a struggle for the second Liberation in order to defeat recolonization. This struggle calls for a strong and solid African unity of all progressive anti-imperialist forces that can be united accross the colonially imposed borders. It has to be based on the unity of the grassroot popular masses accross the artificial borders. That is why the guiding call on African revolutionaries accross the continent by the 7th Pan African Congress was "Don't agonize, Organize!"

Let us note that European powers were able to conquest and colonize vast regions of African territories during the 19th century, because our people lacked revolutionary unity. Today the imperialist forces are succeeding in dominating neo-colonial African States because of their practice of divide and rule. Everything possible is done to keep Africans divided: Anglophone versus Francophone; Christians versus Moslems; Protestants versus Catholics; Ethnic and cultural differencies are fully exploited to divide us. So are regional differencies, not to mention Africans versus Arabs in Africa. Then there is ideological penetration through NGO, religious sects and intelligence organizations, not to mention Rotary and Lions Clubs, Y.W.C.A.s and Y.M.C.Ac etc.

Education continues to be used to alienate the so-called western educated -the evolué or elites, the civilized- from the so-called natives.

Revolutionary Africans must struggle against these various divisive imperialist tactics, go to the masses, live with them, eat and drink with them,learn from them and unite them in the struggle for the second Liberation.

The role of international fraternal assistance

Africans second liberation is entirely the work of Africans themselves, indeed as was the struggle for formel independence. But just as the revolutionary socialist states played a key-role in the anti-colonial struggles, the revoltuionary Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations will have to do the same. For our victory over imperialism and capitalist dictatorship, is also the victory of the working class liberation struggles all over the world. The struggle continues!

LONG LIVE THE OCTOBER REVOLTUION!

LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM!

LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SECOND LIBERATION IN AFRICA!

Delivered on May 4th 1997