Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2001 7:58 AM
Subject: AN INVITE TO AFRICAN LIBERATION DAY - PLEASE FORWARD
AFRICAN LIBERATION DAY TO BE COMMEMORATED
IN HARLEM ON OFFICIAL MAY 25TH DATE
by
Elombe Brath
A Pan-African Coalition for African Liberation Day 2001 has been formed to
commemorate African Liberation Day this year on its official designated date
is extending special invitations to the African community to join them this
Friday, May 25th at one of the most important celebrations of the founding
of
the Organization of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and its
subsequent declaring May 25th to be thereafter known as "African Liberation
Day."
Tuesday, May 22, 2001 was the 38th anniversary of the convening of the
Summit
Meeting of the then-32 independent African states that founded the OAU.
Three
days later at the conclusion of their summit, the OAU encouraged all of
those committed to the total liberation of Africa to use May 25th as the
symbolic date to assemble annually to review and plan the best ways and
means to advance the redemption of the African continent and the peoples of
Africa scattered throughout the world.
The Pan-African Coalition is extending a special invitation for those
seriously interested in the current events in Africa to join them this
Friday, May 25th at this historic African town hall meeting to commemorate
the founding of the OAU and its subsequent declaring May 25th as "African
Liberation Day." The program will take place this Friday, May 25th at the
Harriet Tubman Learning School, located on 127th Street, between Adam
Clayton
Powell, Jr. and Frederick Douglass Boulevards in Harlem. The Harriet Tubman
Learning School has become internationally renowned as the foremost venue
for meetings where the historical, present and future politics, economic
and
social conditions in Africa has been objectively discussed for decades.
Friday's "African Liberation Day 2001" will begin at 6PM and last until 9PM,
and its theme is "Towards the Unity of African States and Peoples -
Consolidating Regional Solidarity: The Case of SADC." It will update the
current situation in Africa, particularly the western attack against
countries in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and how this
will affect the future of Africans throughout the world - especially those
in
the United States and the Caribbean who are in an excellent position to
advance the cause of African liberation worldwide. And representatives from
Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, Cuba, Libya and the OAU have been
invited to brief those attending on the on the ground situation and what we
can do to assist our Sisters and Brothers still struggling to unify the
African continent and its people and bring about a state of Pax Africana in
our historic Motherland.
Solidarity statements will be offered by Elombe Brath of the Patrice Lumumba
Coalition; Viola Plummer, December 12th Movement International Secretariat;
Dr. Arthur Lewis, Africans Helping Africans; Omowale Clay, Friends of
Zimbabwe; Morris Powell of the African Nationalist Pioneer Movement and New
Black Panther Party; along with Congolese author Prof. Yaa-Lengi Ngemi and
Prof. James Small of City College. Politicultural inner-attainment will be
presented by the African nationalist poet laureate George Edward Tait, the
magnificent Ghanaian guitarist Kwame Nkrumah, among others.
Speakers will share their views in a synopsis of a forty year retrospect of
developments in Africa since the decolonization movement erupted in 1960 and
how these events led to the formation of the OAU. It should be remembered
that the historic summit meeting held in 1963 was called in order to find a
way to stop the growing divide among those states that had achieved their
independence but were soon impacted by the Cold War which pitted progressive
states against so-called "moderate" or "conservative" (in reality,
neocolonialist) countries. This divide sharpeed when the radicals who had
supported Patrice Lumumba as the legitimate prime minister of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo in June of 1960, opposed those who supported President
Joseph Kasavubu and then-Col. Joseph Desire Mobutu. This fundamental
contradiction caused Lumumba's government to be overthrown by U.S.
counterintelligence operatives and their western Europen allies within two
and a half months of the Congolese Pan-Africanist leader assuming state
power
and subsequently assassinated six months later, on January 1961.
Thus the African continent was riven by the antagonism between the
"Casablanca Group", represented by Presidents Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of
Ghana, Ahmed Seku Ture of Guinea, Modibo Keita of Mali, Gamal Abdel Nasser
of
Egypt and King Mohammed V of Morocco (although the leader of a kingdom,
considered a progressive thinking member of Moroccan royalty, so much so
that the other members of the group all who saw themselves as both socialist
and Pan-Africanist agreed that their alliance be named after Morocco's
largest city), and the "Monrovia Group", identified with Liberia's
president,
William V.S. Tubman and Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, along with the
leaders of Africa's two oldest independent nations, and the former French
colonies who, after rejecting indpendence from France in the referendum of
1958, had accepted a neocolonial quasi-independence in 1960 - just in time
to
support the western axis against Lumumba, along with the newly independent
former British colonies, etc.
When Togo's President Sylvanius Olympio, who had been leaning towards
African unity, was assassinated in a military coup on January 13, 1963 - two
years after (and four days short) of Lumumba's assassination, African
leadersns felt the need to sit down together and resolve some of their
outstanding differences before they found themselves engaged in plots and
counter-plots to aid and abet foreign intrigues to depose each other. The
result was the Summit Meeting of the Presidents and Heads of States in Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia which met four months later, between May 22-25 in 1963.
In light of the recent events that have taken place during the last seven
years, e.g. one million people killed in a fratricidal/genocidal campaign
during 98 days in Rwanda; and the final overthrow of the 37 year despotic
misrule of Mobutu's reign in the Congo saw that beseiged country have its
chances to emerge from over three decades of exploitation undermined by a
war
imposed on it by two of its U.S.-supported neighbors, along with some
opportunists members of the disgruntled indigenous opposition as their
proxies. Since August 1998 this counterrevolutionary war has added another
two million deaths in Central Africa and the Great Lakes region. And the
assassination of President Laurent Kabila of the Democratic Republic of
Congo
in January of this year - just a day short of the assassination his mentor,
Lumumba, forty years earlier - was another ominous factor we must take into
account.
The ongoing calamity of internecine war, civil strife and the perpetuation
of
slavery in Africa are other destabilizing factors attributed to natural
disasters, foremost among which is the pandemic of AIDS, which in my view is
actually an Acquired Imperialist Dependency Syndrome) of suspicious origins.
Following AIDS as ostensible catastrophic life-threatening diseases are
drought, floods malnutrition and other such plagues that continue to haunt
the African continent and its people. And now there is another negative
force
that grassroots African activists also have to contend with: Secretary of
State Colin Powell left Tuesday for Africa to carry out George W. Bush's
plans to concretize the Clinton-Rangel-Crane-Royce so-called "African Growth
and Opportunity Act", claiming that the U.S. intends to also help Africa
catch up with the rest of the world in bridging its intellectual technology
and internet access gap.
And finally, since some Pan-Africanists first noticed that whenever Afican
Liberation Day's commemoration falls near the weekend it comes five days
before Memorial Day, this ALD commemorative program will also pay its
respects to all of Africa's sons and daughters who gallantly paid the
supreme sacrifice in service of the African national liberation struggle.
All of these are reasons that the Pan-African Coalition is calling upon all
of those who are seriously interested in what Marcus Garvey called the
'upliftment" and "redemption" of Africa 70 years ago, to come out this
Friday, May 25th in what is intended to become an African people's summit
for
activists to recommit themselves to do the work that must be done - and only
they can do -to bring about the total liberation of Africa and all of its
people - those at home and those abroad.
A luta continua, vitoria e certa. (The struggle continues, victory is
certain.)
Admission is free and any further information can be obtained by calling
(718) 398-1766 or emailing to [log in to unmask] or D12M @aol.com.
The program that we are inviting you to attend will take place this Friday,
May 25th at the Harriet Tubman Learning School, located on 127th Street,
between Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and Frederick Douglass Boulevards in
Harlem.
The Harriet Tubman Learning School has been internationally renowned as the
foremost venue for meetings where the historical, present and future
politics, economic and social conditions in Africa has been objectively
discussed for decades.
Friday's "African Liberation Day 2001" will begin at 6PM and last until 9PM,
and its theme is "Towards the Unity of African States and Peoples -
Consolidating Regional Solidarity: The Case of SADC." It will update the
current situation in Africa, particularly the western attack against
countries in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and how this
will affect the future of Africans throughout the world - especially those
in
the United States and the Caribbean who are in an excellent position to
advance the cause of African liberation worldwide. And representatives from
Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, Cuba, Libya and the OAU have been
invited to brief those attending on the on the ground situation and what we
can do to assist our Sisters and Brothers still struggling to unify the
African continent and its people and bring about a state of Pax Africana in
our historic Motherland.
Solidarity statements will be offered by Elombe Brath of the Patrice Lumumba
Coalition; Viola Plummer, December 12th Movement International Secretariat;
Dr. Arthur Lewis, Africans Helping Africans; Omowale Clay, Friends of
Zimbabwe; Morris Powell of the African Nationalist Pioneer Movement and New
Black Panther Party; along with Congolese author Prof. Yaa-Lengi Ngemi and
Prof. James Small of City College. Politicultural inner-attainment will be
presented by the African nationalist poet laureate George Edward Tait, the
magnificent Ghanaian guitarist Kwame Nkrumah, among others.
These are some of those who have been invited to participate in a forty year
retrospect of developments in Africa since the decolonization movement
erupted in 1960 and how these events led to the formation of the OAU. It
should be remembered that the historic summit meeting held in 1963 was
called
in order to find a way to stop the growing divide among those states that
had
achieved their independence but had began to feel the impact of the Cold War
which pitted progressive states against so-called "moderate" or
"conservative" (in reality, neocolonialist) countries. This divide sharpeed
when the radicals who had supported Patrice Lumumba as the legitimate prime
minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in June of 1960, opposed
those which supported President Joseph Kasavubu and then-Col. Joseph Desire
Mobutu. This fundamental contradiction caused Lumumba's government to be
overthrown by U.S. counterintelligence operatives and the western Europen
allies within two and a half months of the Congolese leader assuming state
power and subsequently assassinated six months later, on January 1961.
Thus the African continent was riven by the antagonism between the
"Casablanca Group", represented by Presidents Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of
Ghana, Ahmed Seku Ture of Guinea, Modibo Keita of Mali, Gamal Abdel Nasser
of
Egypt and King Mohammed V of Morocco (although the leader of a kingdom,
considered a progressive thinking member of Moroccan royalty, so much so
that the other members of the group all who saw themselves as both socialist
and Pan-Africanist agreed that their alliance be named after Morocco's
largest city), and the "Monrovia Group", identified with Liberia's
president,
William V.S. Tubman, and Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, the leaders of
Africa's two oldest independent nations, along with the former French
colonies who after rejecting indpendence from France in the referendum of
1958, accepted a neocolonial quasi-independence in 1960 just in time to
support the western axis against Lumumba, along with the newly independent
former British colonies, etc.
When Togo's president Sylvanius Olympio, who began to lean towards African
unity, was assassinated in a military coup on January 13, 1963 - two years
after (and four days short) of Lumumba's assassination, Africans felt the
need to sit down before they found themselves engaged in plots to aid and
abet foreign intrigues to depose each other. The result was the Summit
Meeting of the Presidents and Heads of States in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia which
met four months later, between May 22-25 in 1963.
In light of the recent events that have taken place during the last seven
years, i.e. one million people killed in a fratricidal/genocidal campaign
during 98 days in Rwanda; the final overthrow of the 37 year long despotic
misrule of Mobutu's reign in the Congo, only to have the chances for that
beseiged country which was emerging from three decades of exploitation
undermined by a war imposed on it by two of its U.S.-supported neighbors,
and
some opportunists members of the disgruntled indigenous opposition, adding
another two million deaths in Central Africa and the Great Lakes region
since
August 1998. The assassination of President Laurent Kabila of the Democratic
Republic of Congo in January of this year, just a day short of Lumumba's
murder forty years earlier, was another ominous factor we must take into
account.
Add to the calamity of internecine war, civil stripe and the perpetuation of
slavery, there are other destabilizing factors attributed to natural
disasters, foremost among which is the pandemic of AIDS (an Acquired
Imperialist Dependency Syndrome) of suspicious origins. Following AIDS as an
alleged and/or ostensible catastrophic life-threatening diseases are
drought,
floods malnutrition and other such plagues that continue to haunt the
African
continent and its people. And then there is another negative force we also
have to contend with: Secretary of State Colin Powell will leave today for
Africa to carry out George W. Bush's plans to concretize the
Clinton-Rangel-Crane-Royce so-called "African Growth and Opportunity Act",
claiming that the U.S. intends to also help Africa catch up with the rest of
the world in bridging its intellectual technology and internet access gap.
All of these are reasons we are inviting all of you who are seriously
interested in what Marcus Garvey called 70 years ago the 'upliftment" and
"redemption" of Africa to join us on Friday, May 25th in what we hope will
become an African people's summit for activists to recommit themselves to do
the work that must be done - and only we can do -to bring about the total
liberation of Africa and all of its people - those at home and those abroad.
A luta continua, vitoria e certa. (The struggle continues, victory is
certain.)
Admission is free and any further information can be obtained by calling
(718) 398-1766 or emailing to [log in to unmask] or D12M @aol.com.
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