Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialism Kwame Nkrumah 1965

The mechanisms of neo-colonialism
IN order to halt foreign interference in the affairs of developing 
countries it is necessary to study, understand, expose and actively 
combat neo-colonialism in whatever guise it may appear. For the methods 
of neo-colonialists are subtle and varied. They operate not only in the 
economic field, but also in the political, religious, ideological and 
cultural spheres.

Faced with the militant peoples of the ex-colonial territories in 
Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, imperialism simply 
switches tactics. Without a qualm it dispenses with its flags, and even 
with certain of its more hated expatriate officials. This means, so it 
claims, that it is ?giving? independence to its former subjects, to be 
followed by ?aid? for their development. Under cover of such phrases, 
however, it devises innumerable ways to accomplish objectives formerly 
achieved by naked colonialism. It is this sum total of these modern 
attempts to perpetuate colonialism while at the same time talking about 
?freedom?, which has come to be known as neo-colonialism.

Foremost among the neo-colonialists is the United States, which has 
long exercised its power in Latin America. Fumblingly at first she 
turned towards Europe, and then with more certainty after world war two 
when most countries of that continent were indebted to her. Since then, 
with methodical thoroughness and touching attention to detail, the 
Pentagon set about consolidating its ascendancy, evidence of which can 
be seen all around the world.

Who really rules in such places as Great Britain, West Germany, Japan, 
Spain, Portugal or Italy? If General de Gaulle is ?defecting? from U.S. 
monopoly control, what interpretation can be placed on his 
?experiments? in the Sahara desert, his paratroopers in Gabon, or his 
trips to Cambodia and Latin America?

Lurking behind such questions are the extended tentacles of the Wall 
Street octopus. And its suction cups and muscular strength are provided 
by a phenomenon dubbed ?The Invisible Government?, arising from Wall 
Street?s connection with the Pentagon and various intelligence 
services. I quote:

?The Invisible Government ... is a loose amorphous grouping of 
individuals and agencies drawn from many parts of the visible 
government. It is not limited to the Central Intelligence Agency, 
although the CIA is at its heart. Nor is it confined to the nine other 
agencies which comprise what is known as the intelligence community: 
the National Security Council, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the 
National Security Agency, Army Intelligence, Navy Intelligence and 
Research, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation.

?The Invisible Government includes also many other units and agencies, 
as well as individuals, that appear outwardly to be a normal part of 
the conventional government. It even encompasses business firms and 
institutions that are seemingly private.

?To an extent that is only beginning to be perceived, this shadow 
government is shaping the lives of 190,000,000 Americans. An informed 
citizen might come to suspect that the foreign policy of the United 
States often works publicly in one direction and secretly through the 
Invisible Government in just the opposite direction.

?This Invisible Government is a relatively new institution. It came 
into being as a result of two related factors: the rise of the United 
States after World War II to a position of pre-eminent world power, and 
the challenge to that power by Soviet Communism...

?By 1964 the intelligence network had grown into a massive hidden 
apparatus, secretly employing about 200,000 persons and spending 
billions of dollars a year. [The Invisible Government, David Wise and 
Thomas B. Ross, Random House, New York, 1964.]

Here, from the very citadel of neo-colonialism, is a description of 
the apparatus which now directs all other Western intelligence set-ups 
either by persuasion or by force. Results were achieved in Algeria 
during the April 1961 plot of anti-de Gaulle generals; as also in 
Guatemala, Iraq, Iran, Suez and the famous U-2 spy intrusion of Soviet 
air space which wrecked the approaching Summit, then in West Germany 
and again in East Germany in the riots of 1953, in Hungary?s abortive 
crisis of 1959, Poland?s of September 1956, and in Korea, Burma, 
Formosa, Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam; they are evident in the 
trouble in Congo (Leopoldville) which began with Lumumba?s murder, and 
continues till now; in events in Cuba, Turkey, Cyprus, Greece, and in 
other places too numerous to catalogue completely.

And with what aim have these innumerable incidents occurred? The 
general objective has been mentioned: to achieve colonialism in fact 
while preaching independence.

On the economic front, a strong factor favouring Western monopolies 
and acting against the developing world is inter-national capital?s 
control of the world market, as well as of the prices of commodities 
bought and sold there. From 1951 to 1961, without taking oil into 
consideration, the general level of prices for primary products fell by 
33.l per cent, while prices of manufactured goods rose 3.5 per cent 
(within which, machinery and equipment prices rose 31.3 per cent). In 
that same decade this caused a loss to the Asian, African and Latin 
American countries, using 1951 prices as a basis, of some $41,400 
million. In the same period, while the volume of exports from these 
countries rose, their earnings in foreign exchange from such exports 
decreased.

Another technique of neo-colonialism is the use of high rates of 
interest. Figures from the World Bank for 1962 showed that seventy-one 
Asian, African and Latin American countries owed foreign debts of some 
$27,000 million, on which they paid in interest and service charges 
some $5,000 million. Since then, such foreign debts have been estimated 
as more than £30,000 million in these areas. In 1961, the interest 
rates on almost three-quarters of the loans offered by the major 
imperialist powers amounted to more than five per cent, in some cases 
up to seven or eight per cent, while the call-in periods of such loans 
have been burdensomely short.

While capital worth $30,000 million was exported to some fifty-six 
developing countries between 1956 and 1962, ?it is estimated that 
interest and profit alone extracted on this sum from the debtor 
countries amounted to more than £15,000 million. This method of 
penetration by economic aid recently soared into prominence when a 
number of countries began rejecting it. Ceylon, Indonesia and Cambodia 
are among those who turned it down. Such ?aid? is estimated on the 
annual average to have amounted to $2,600 million between 1951 and 
1955; $4,007 million between 1956 and 1959, and $6,000 million between 
1960 and 1962. But the average sums taken out of the aided countries by 
such donors in a sample year, 1961, are estimated to amount to $5,000 
million in profits, $1,000 million in interest, and $5,800 million from 
non-equivalent exchange, or a total of $11,800 million extracted 
against $6,000 million put in. Thus, ?aid? turns out to be another 
means of exploitation, a modern method of capital export under a more 
cosmetic name.

Still another neo-colonialist trap on the economic front has come to 
be known as ?multilateral aid? through international organisations: the 
International Monetary Fund, the Inter-national Bank for Reconstruction 
and Development (known as the World Bank), the International Finance 
Corporation and the International Development Association are examples, 
all, significantly, having U.S. capital as their major backing. These 
agencies have the habit of forcing would-be borrowers to submit to 
various offensive conditions, such as supplying information about their 
economies, submitting their policy and plans to review by the World 
Bank and accepting agency supervision of their use of loans. As for the 
alleged development, between 1960 and mid-1963 the International 
Development Association promised a total of $500 million to applicants, 
out of which only $70 million were actually received.

In more recent years, as pointed out by Monitor in The Times, 1 July 
1965, there has been a substantial increase in communist technical and 
economic aid activities in developing countries. During 1964 the total 
amount of assistance offered was approximately £600 million. This was 
almost a third of the total communist aid given during the previous 
decade. The Middle East received about 40 per cent of the total, Asia 
36 per cent, Africa 22 per cent and Latin America the rest.

Increased Chinese activity was responsible to some extent for the 
larger amount of aid offered in 1964, though China contributed only a 
quarter of the total aid committed; the Soviet Union provided a half, 
and the East European countries a quarter.

Although aid from socialist countries still falls far short of that 
offered from the west, it is often more impressive, since it is swift 
and flexible, and interest rates on communist loans are only about two 
per cent compared with five to six per cent charged on loans from 
western countries.

Nor is the whole story of ?aid? contained in figures, for there are 
conditions which hedge it around: the conclusion of commerce and 
navigation treaties; agreements for economic co-operation; the right to 
meddle in internal finances, including currency and foreign exchange, 
to lower trade barriers in favour of the donor country?s goods and 
capital; to protect the interests of private investments; determination 
of how the funds are to be used; forcing the recipient to set up 
counterpart funds; to supply raw materials to the donor; and use of 
such funds a majority of it, in fact to buy goods from the donor 
nation. These conditions apply to industry, commerce, agriculture, 
shipping and insurance, apart from others which are political and 
military.

So-called ?invisible trade? furnishes the Western monopolies with yet 
another means of economic penetration. Over 90 per cent of world ocean 
shipping is controlled by me imperialist countries. They control 
shipping rates and, between 1951 and 1961, they increased them some 
five times in a total rise of about 60 per cent, the upward trend 
continuing. Thus, net annual freight expenses incurred by Asia, Africa 
and Latin America amount to no less than an estimated $1,600 million. 
This is over and above all other profits and interest payments. As for 
insurance payments, in 1961 alone these amounted to an unfavourable 
balance in Asia, Africa and Latin America of some additional $370 
million.

Having waded through all this, however, we have begun to understand 
only the basic methods of neo-colonialism. The full extent of its 
inventiveness is far from exhausted.

In the labour field, for example, imperialism operates through labour 
arms like the Social Democratic parties of Europe led by the British 
Labour Party, and through such instruments as the International 
Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), now apparently being 
superseded by the New York Africa-American Labour Centre (AALC) under 
AFL-CIO chief George Meany and the well-known CIA man in labour?s top 
echelons, Irving Brown.

In 1945, out of the euphoria of anti-fascist victory, the World 
Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) had been formed, including all world 
labour except the U.S. American Federation of Labor (AFL). By 1949, 
however, led by the British Trade Union Congress (TUC), a number of pro-
imperialist labour bodies in the West broke away from the WFTU over the 
issue of anti-colonialist liberation, and set up the ICFTU.

For ten years it continued under British TUC leadership. Its record in 
Africa, Asia and Latin America could gratify only the big international 
monopolies which were extracting super-profits from those areas.

In 1959, at Brussels, the United States AFL-CIO union centre fought 
for and won control of the ICFTU Executive Board. From then on a flood 
of typewriters, mimeograph machines, cars, supplies, buildings, 
salaries and, so it is still averred, outright bribes for labour 
leaders in various parts of the developing world rapidly linked ICFTU 
in the minds of the rank and file with the CIA. To such an extent did 
its prestige suffer under these American bosses that, in 1964, the AFL-
CIO brains felt it necessary to establish a fresh outfit. They set up 
the AALC in New York right across the river from the United Nations.

?As a steadfast champion of national independence, democracy and 
social justice?, unblushingly stated the April 1965 Bulletin put out by 
this Centre, ?the AFL-CIO will strengthen its efforts to assist the 
advancement of the economic conditions of the African peoples. Toward 
this end, steps have been taken to expand assistance to the African 
free trade unions by organising the African-American Labour Centre. 
Such assistance will help African labour play a vital role in the 
economic and democratic upbuilding of their countries.'

The March issue of this Bulletin, however, gave the game away: ?In 
mobilising capital resources for investment in Workers Education, 
Vocational Training, Co-operatives, Health Clinics and Housing, the 
Centre will work with both private and public institutions. It will 
also encourage labour-management co-operation to expand American 
capital investment in the African nations.? The italics are mine. Could 
anything be plainer?

Following a pattern previously set by the ICFTU, it has already 
started classes: one for drivers and mechanics in Nigeria, one in 
tailoring in Kenya. Labour scholarships are being offered to Africans 
who want to study trade unionism in of all places-Austria, ostensibly 
by the Austrian unions. Elsewhere, labour, organised into political 
parties of which the British Labour Party is a leading and typical 
example, has shown a similar aptitude for encouraging ?Labour-
management co-operation to expand . . . capital investment in African 
nations.'

But as the struggle sharpens, even these measures of neo-colonialism 
are proving too mild. So Africa, Asia and Latin America have begun to 
experience a round of coups d'etat or would-be coups, together with a 
series of political assassinations which have destroyed in their 
political primes some of the newly emerging nations best leaders. To 
ensure success in these endeavours, the imperialists have made 
widespread and wily use of ideological and cultural weapons in the form 
of intrigues, manoeuvres and slander campaigns.

Some of these methods used by neo-colonialists to slip past our guard 
must now be examined. The first is retention by the departing 
colonialists of various kinds of privileges which infringe on our 
sovereignty: that of setting up military bases or stationing troops in 
former colonies and the supplying of ?advisers? of one sort or another. 
Sometimes a number of ?rights? are demanded: land concessions, 
prospecting rights for minerals and/or oil; the ?right? to collect 
customs, to carry out administration, to issue paper money; to be 
exempt from customs duties and/or taxes for expatriate enterprises; 
and, above all, the ?right? to provide ?aid?. Also demanded and granted 
are privileges in the cultural field; that Western information services 
be exclusive; and that those from socialist countries be excluded.

Even the cinema stories of fabulous Hollywood are loaded. One has only 
to listen to the cheers of an African audience as Hollywood?s heroes 
slaughter red Indians or Asiatics to understand the effectiveness of 
this weapon. For, in the developing continents, where the colonialist 
heritage has left a vast majority still illiterate, even the smallest 
child gets the message contained in the blood and thunder stories 
emanating from California. And along with murder and the Wild West goes 
an incessant barrage of anti-socialist propaganda, in which the trade 
union man, the revolutionary, or the man of dark skin is generally cast 
as the villain, while the policeman, the gum-shoe, the Federal agent ? 
in a word, the CIA ? type spy is ever the hero. Here, truly, is the 
ideological under-belly of those political murders which so often use 
local people as their instruments.

While Hollywood takes care of fiction, the enormous monopoly press, 
together with the outflow of slick, clever, expensive magazines, 
attends to what it chooses to call ?news. Within separate countries, 
one or two news agencies control the news handouts, so that a deadly 
uniformity is achieved, regardless of the number of separate newspapers 
or magazines; while internationally, the financial preponderance of the 
United States is felt more and more through its foreign correspondents 
and offices abroad, as well as through its influence over inter-
national capitalist journalism. Under this guise, a flood of anti-
liberation propaganda emanates from the capital cities of the West, 
directed against China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria, Ghana and all 
countries which hack out their own independent path to freedom. 
Prejudice is rife. For example, wherever there is armed struggle 
against the forces of reaction, the nationalists are referred to as 
rebels, terrorists, or frequently ?communist terrorists'!

Perhaps one of the most insidious methods of the neo-colonialists is 
evangelism. Following the liberation movement there has been a 
veritable riptide of religious sects, the overwhelming majority of them 
American. Typical of these are Jehovah?s Witnesses who recently created 
trouble in certain developing countries by busily teaching their 
citizens not to salute the new national flags. ?Religion? was too thin 
to smother the outcry that arose against this activity, and a temporary 
lull followed. But the number of evangelists continues to grow.

Yet even evangelism and the cinema are only two twigs on a much bigger 
tree. Dating from the end of 1961, the U.S. has actively developed a 
huge ideological plan for invading the so-called Third World, utilising 
all its facilities from press and radio to Peace Corps.

During 1962 and 1963 a number of international conferences to this end 
were held in several places, such as Nicosia in Cyprus, San Jose in 
Costa Rica, and Lagos in Nigeria. Participants included the CIA, the U.
S. Information Agency (USIA), the Pentagon, the International 
Development Agency, the Peace Corps and others. Programmes were drawn 
up which included the systematic use of U.S. citizens abroad in virtual 
intelligence activities and propaganda work. Methods of recruiting 
political agents and of forcing ?alliances? with the U.S.A. were worked 
out. At the centre of its programmes lay the demand for an absolute U.
S. monopoly in the field of propaganda, as well as for counteracting 
any independent efforts by developing states in the realm of 
information.

The United States sought, and still seeks, with considerable success, 
to co-ordinate on the basis of its own strategy the propaganda 
activities of all Western countries. In October 1961, a conference of 
NATO countries was held in Rome to discuss problems of psychological 
warfare. It appealed for the organisation of combined ideological 
operations in Afro-Asian countries by all participants.

In May and June 1962 a seminar was convened by the U.S. in Vienna on 
ideological warfare. It adopted a secret decision to engage in a 
propaganda offensive against the developing countries along lines laid 
down by the U.S.A. It was agreed that NATO propaganda agencies would, 
in practice if not in the public eye, keep in close contact with U.S. 
Embassies in their respective countries.

Among instruments of such Western psychological warfare are numbered 
the intelligence agencies of Western countries headed by those of the 
United States ?Invisible Government?. But most significant among them 
all are Moral Re-Armament QARA), the Peace Corps and the United States 
Information Agency (USIA).

Moral Re-Armament is an organisation founded in 1938 by the American, 
Frank Buchman. In the last days before the second world war, it 
advocated the appeasement of Hitler, often extolling Himmler, the 
Gestapo chief. In Africa, MRA incursions began at the end of World War 
II. Against the big anti-colonial upsurge that followed victory in 
1945, MRA spent millions advocating collaboration between the forces 
oppressing the African peoples and those same peoples. It is not 
without significance that Moise Tshombe and Joseph Kasavubu of Congo 
(Leopoldville) are both MRA supporters. George Seldes, in his book One 
Thousand Americans, characterised MRA as a fascist organisation 
?subsidised by . . . Fascists, and with a long record of collaboration 
with Fascists the world over. . . .? This description is supported by 
the active participation in MRA of people like General Carpentier, 
former commander of NATO land forces, and General Ho Ying-chin, one of 
Chiang Kai-shek?s top generals. To cap this, several newspapers, some 
of them in the Western ;vorld, have claimed that MRA is actually 
subsidised by the CIA.

When MRA?s influence began to fail, some new instrument to cover the 
ideological arena was desired. It came in the establishment of the 
American Peace Corps in 1961 by President John Kennedy, with Sargent 
Shriver, Jr., his brother-in-law, in charge. Shriver, a millionaire who 
made his pile in land speculation in Chicago, was also known as the 
friend, confidant and co-worker of the former head of the Central 
Intelligence Agency, Allen Dulles. These two had worked together in 
both the Office of Strategic Services, U.S. war-time intelligence 
agency, and in the CIA.

Shriver?s record makes a mockery of President Kennedy?s alleged 
instruction to Shriver to ?keep the CIA out of the Peace Corps?. So 
does the fact that, although the Peace Corps is advertised as a 
voluntary organisation, all its members are carefully screened by the U.
S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Since its creation in 1961, members of the Peace Corps have been 
exposed and expelled from many African, Middle Eastern and Asian 
countries for acts of subversion or prejudice. Indonesia, Tanzania, the 
Philippines, and even pro-West countries like Turkey and Iran, have 
complained of its activities.

However, perhaps the chief executor of U.S. psychological warfare is 
the United States Information Agency (USIA). Even for the wealthiest 
nation on earth, the U.S. lavishes an unusual amount of men, materials 
and money on this vehicle for its neo-colonial aims.

The USIA is staffed by some 12,000 persons to the tune of more than 
$130 million a year. It has more than seventy editorial staffs working 
on publications abroad. Of its network comprising 110 radio stations, 
60 are outside the U.S. Programmes are broadcast for Africa by American 
stations in Morocco, Eritrea, Liberia, Crete, and Barcelona, Spain, as 
well as from off-shore stations on American ships. In Africa alone, the 
USIA transmits about thirty territorial and national radio programmes 
whose content glorifies the U.S. while attempting to discredit 
countries with an independent foreign policy.

The USIA boasts more than 120 branches in about 100 countries, 50 of 
which are in Africa alone. It has 250 centres in foreign countries, 
each of which is usually associated with a library. It employs about 
200 cinemas and 8,000 projectors which draw upon its nearly 300 film 
libraries.

This agency is directed by a central body which operates in the name 
of the U.S. President, planning and coordinating its activities in 
close touch with the Pentagon, CIA and other Cold War agencies, 
including even armed forces intelligence centres.

In developing countries, the USIA actively tries to prevent expansion 
of national media of information so as itself to capture the market-
place of ideas. It spends huge sums for publication and distribution of 
about sixty newspapers and magazines in Africa, Asia and Latin 
America.

The American government backs the USIA through direct pressures on 
developing nations. To ensure its agency a complete monopoly in 
propaganda, for instance, many agreements for economic co-operation 
offered by the U.S. include a demand that Americans be granted 
preferential rights to disseminate information. At the same time, in 
trying to close the new nations to other sources of information, it 
employs other pressures. For instance, after agreeing to set up USIA 
information centres in their countries, both Togo and Congo 
(Leopoldville) originally hoped to follow a non-aligned path and permit 
Russian information centres as a balance. But Washington threatened to 
stop all aid, thereby forcing these two countries to renounce their 
plan.

Unbiased studies of the USIA by such authorities as Dr R. Holt of 
Princeton University, Retired Colonel R. Van de Velde, former 
intelligence agents Murril Dayer, Wilson Dizard and others, have all 
called attention to the close ties between this agency and U.S. 
Intelligence. For example, Deputy Director Donald M. Wilson was a 
political intelligence agent in the U.S. Army. Assistant Director for 
Europe, Joseph Philips, was a successful espionage agent in several 
Eastern European countries.

Some USIA duties further expose its nature as a top intelligence arm 
of the U.S. imperialists. In the first place, it is expected to analyse 
the situation in each country, making recommendations to its Embassy, 
thereby to its Government, about changes that can tip the local balance 
in U.S. favour. Secondly, it organises networks of monitors for radio 
broadcasts and telephone conversations, while recruiting informers from 
government offices. It also hires people to distribute U.S. propaganda. 
Thirdly, it collects secret information with special reference to 
defence and economy, as a means of eliminating its international 
military and economic competitors. Fourthly, it buys its way into local 
publications to influence their policies, of which Latin America 
furnishes numerous examples. It has been active in bribing public 
figures, for example in Kenya and Tunisia. Finally, it finances, 
directs and often supplies with arms all anti-neutralist forces in the 
developing countries, witness Tshombe in Congo (Leopoldville) and Pak 
Hung Ji in South Korea. In a word, with virtually unlimited finances, 
there seems no bounds to its inventiveness in subversion.

One of the most recent developments in neo-colonialist strategy is the 
suggested establishment of a Businessmen Corps which will, like the 
Peace Corps, act in developing countries. In an article on ?U.S. 
Intelligence and the Monopolies? in International Affairs (Moscow, 
January 1965), V. Chernyavsky writes: ?There can hardly be any doubt 
that this Corps is a new U.S. intelligence organisation created on the 
initiative of the American monopolies to use Big Business for 
espionage. It is by no means unusual for U.S. Intelligence to set up 
its own business firms which are merely thinly disguised espionage 
centres. For example, according to Chernyavsky, the C.I.A. has set up a 
firm in Taiwan known as Western Enterprises Inc. Under this cover it 
sends spies and saboteurs to South China. The New Asia Trading Company, 
a CIA firm in India, has also helped to camouflage U.S. intelligence 
agents operating in South-east Asia.

Such is the catalogue of neo-colonialism?s activities and methods in 
our time. Upon reading it, the faint-hearted might come to feel that 
they must give up in despair before such an array of apparent power and 
seemingly inexhaustible resources.

Fortunately, however, history furnishes innumerable proofs of one of 
its own major laws; that the budding future is always stronger than the 
withering past. This has been amply demonstrated during every major 
revolution throughout history.

The American Revolution of 1776 struggled through to victory over a 
tangle of inefficiency, mismanagement, corruption, outright subversion 
and counter-revolution the like of which has been repeated to some 
degree in every subsequent revolution to date.

The Russian Revolution during the period of Intervention, 1917 to 
1922, appeared to be dying on its feet. The Chinese Revolution at one 
time was forced to pull out of its existing bases, lock stock and 
barrel, and make the unprecedented Long March; yet it triumphed. 
Imperialist white mercenaries who dropped so confidently out of the 
skies on Stanleyville after a plane trip from Ascension Island thought 
that their job would be ?duck soup?. Yet, till now, the nationalist 
forces of Congo (Leopoldville) continue to fight their way forward. 
They do not talk of if they will win, but only of when.

Asia provides a further example of the strength of a people?s will to 
determine their own future. In South Vietnam ?special warfare? is being 
fought to hold back the tide of revolutionary change. ?Special warfare? 
is a concept of General Maxwell Taylor and a military extension of the 
creed of John Foster Dulles: let Asians fight Asians. Briefly, the 
technique is for the foreign power to supply the money, aircraft, 
military equipment of all kinds, and the strategic and tactical command 
from a General Staff down to officer ?advisers?, while the troops of 
the puppet government bear the brunt of the fighting. Yet in spite of 
bombing raids and the immense build-up of foreign strength in the area, 
the people of both North and South Vietnam are proving to be 
unconquerable.

In other parts of Asia, in Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, and now the 
Philippines, Thailand and Burma, the peoples of ex-colonial countries 
have stood firm and are winning battles against the allegedly superior 
imperialist enemy. In Latin America, despite ?final? punitive 
expeditions, the growing armed insurrections in Colombia, Venezuala and 
other countries continue to consolidate gains.

In Africa, we in Ghana have withstood all efforts by imperialism and 
its agents; Tanzania has nipped subversive plots in the bud, as have 
Brazzaville, Uganda and Kenya. The struggle rages back and forth. The 
surging popular forces may still be hampered by colonialist legacies, 
but nonetheless they advance inexorably.

All these examples prove beyond doubt that neo-colonialism is not a 
sign of imperialism?s strength but rather of its last hideous gasp. It 
testifies to its inability to rule any longer by old methods. 
Independence is a luxury it can no longer afford to permit its subject 
peoples, so that even what it claims to have ?given? it now seeks to 
take away.

This means that neo-colonialism can and will be defeated. How can this 
be done?

Thus far, all the methods of neo-colonialists have pointed in one 
direction, the ancient, accepted one of all minority ruling classes 
throughout history ? divide and rule.

Quite obviously, therefore, unity is the first requisite for 
destroying neo-colonialism. Primary and basic is the need for an all-
union government on the much divided continent of Africa. Along with 
that, a strengthening of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Organisation and the 
spirit of Bandung is already under way. To it, we must seek the 
adherence on an increasingly formal basis of our Latin American 
brothers.

Furthermore, all these liberatory forces have, on all major issues and 
at every possible instance, the support of the growing socialist sector 
of the world.

Finally, we must encourage and utilise to the full those still all too 
few yet growing instances of support for liberation and anti-
colonialism inside the imperialist world itself.

To carry out such a political programme, we must all back it with 
national plans designed to strengthen ourselves as independent nations. 
An external condition for such independent development is neutrality or 
political non-alignment. This has been expressed in two conferences of 
Non-Aligned Nations during the recent past, the last of which, in Cairo 
in 1964, clearly and inevitably showed itself at one with the rising 
forcesof liberation and human dignity.

And the preconditions for all this, to which lip service is often paid 
but activity seldom directed, is to develop ideological clarity among 
the anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, pro-liberation masses of our 
continents. They, and they alone, make, maintain or break revolutions.

With the utmost speed, neo-colonialism must be analysed in clear and 
simple terms for the full mass understanding by the surging 
organisations of the African peoples. The All-African Trade Union 
Federation (AATUF) has already made a start in this direction, while 
the Pan-African Youth Movement, the women, journalists, farmers and 
others are not far behind. Bolstered with ideological clarity, these 
organisations, closely linked with the ruling parties where liberatory 
forces are in power, will prove that neo-colonialism is the symptom of 
imperialism?s weakness and that it is defeatable. For, when all is said 
and done, it is the so-called little man, the bent-backed, exploited, 
malnourished, blood-covered fighter for independence who decides. And 
he invariably decides for freedom.

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