Why the AU Summit failed Afrika
Dr Kwame Osei | 09.08.2007 11:36 | London
The historic AU Summit in Accra failed to take the bold and radical steps that were needed to initiate the process of Afrika gaining true economic liberation and independence - this is what the grand arhitect of Afrikan Unity Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah advocated ironically in a similiar conference in Accra in 1965. Had the leaders then heeded Osagyefo's advice Afrika would now be a GLOBAL SUPER POWER able to determine its own affairs without White interference.
The much anticipated and hyped AU summit in Accra was an immense disappointment to many including reporters, political analysts and activists alike.
The fact that the ‘leaders’ missed a golden opportunity to move the continent onto a course of true liberation and emancipation showed their inability and comprehension to realize the grand task that was put before them.
In 1965 ironically in Accra, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah called for African states to unite now or perish. Had those leaders at the time heeded his call, Africa today would be a global SUPER POWER able to compete with the West, China and India and managing its own affairs without European/foreign interference.
Realizing how the union of African states would mean that Europeans would literally go hungry they (the Europeans) put in place wicked and deceptive measures such as carefully and systematically plotting the circumstances (including the sabotage of Ghana’s economy), events and finally the coup that overthrew the architect and proponent of African Unity Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.
His overthrow was a stark warning to other progressive African leaders that if you go against the interests of the West a similar fate awaited you and so the dream of African Unity fizzled out completely until Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi re-invigorated it a few years back.
A brief history lesson will give the readers an appreciation of the concept of African Unity.
The reception given to the Accra Declaration by the assembled leaders differed greatly from the enthusiasm shown by the early independence delegates when the 1945 Resolution was adopted at the 5th Pan African Congress in Manchester in October 1945.
The leadership behind the passage of the 1945 resolution, including Du Bois, Padmore, Kenyatta, Azikiwe, Nyerere, Nkrumah and Blyden foresaw the current crisis now facing Africa and advocated for united Africa. They were far ahead of their time.
At the 1945 Congress, speaker after speaker, Blyden, Padmore, DuBois, Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Azikiwe, Mboya, Hayford and Manley (continental and the Diaspora) all passionately argued in favour of unity. The cries from beyond the grave – Africa Unite.
All the participants at the 1945 Congress were greatly influenced by the fore runner of Pan-Africanism, Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey.
Garvey’s influence extended beyond continental Africa and stretched further a field to the Caribbean and North America at the period in question.
Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana who adopted “honourable Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line” dream project, took the fight to the colonialists on the continent and won the independence argument, stated at the All-Africa Peoples Congress in Accra, 1958, that the only way Africa can realistically compete with the rest of the world’s regions is to form a union government based on the federal model of United States of America.
Nkrumah who emerged as the “anointed and successor to Honourable Marcus Garvey” religiously took the same stance as Marcus did, by advocating for unity now! This is the same position that those in the Instantists camp, including Gaddafi argued for.
Unlike the current proponents of the Instantists, Nkrumah’s group carried the day at the 1945 Manchester Congress. Nkrumah’s charisma, intellect and his passionate argument for unity, aided by gallant and great Pan Africanists such as George Padmore, W.E.B. DuBois, Jomo Kenyatta and Blyden ensured that the whole delegates supported the unity agenda.
Padmore’s keynote address fired young Nkrumah who in turn had a great impact and influence on a certain young African American, Martin Luther King Junior years later.
Whilst Nkrumah was taking on the colonialists on the mainland, young Martin Luther King Junior was waging another war for the emancipation of Africans in North America. It is now acknowledged that Nkrumah’s “African Unity speech” at the old Polo grounds in Accra had a great impact on Dr King that led to his “I have a Dream speech” in Washington, DC in 1963.
Marcus Garvey is credited as the father of Pan-Africanism and the one who set the “Africa for Africans” train in motion. Garvey was the first to realise the enormous challenges that faced African people and started his unity crusade when most continental Africans and Africans in Diaspora were still under economic, social and political slavery.
Marcus Garvey’s Black Star flag (Red, Gold and Green) was unofficially adopted as the flag of “United Africa” at the 1945 Pan-African Congress. Writing in the Global Black News, February 2002, Bakari Akil II states, “Garvey knew in his heart that Black people’s loss of knowledge of their history, their inability to defend themselves, lack of resources and lack of self rule were the main reasons Africans (throughout the Diaspora) were unable to return themselves to a state of glory they once held.
Garvey became incensed by the enslavement, institutional racism, colonialism, brutality and forced ignorance that were responsible for degrading roles African people were forced to accept. It became his mission to change the status Africans had to adopt in order to survive.
He felt the only way for African people to regain their legal status was through massive organisation of the African Diaspora and reclaiming Africa for Africans. By accomplishing this very goal, Garvey maintained that Africa would be able to use the resources the rest of the world coveted like oil, diamonds, gold, salt, lush agricultural land, etc., to regain respect and status that other nations and races enjoyed.
He also stated that these resources could be used to increase the level of education, health, political and social standing of Africans and would create a position of strength that would bring about self-determination”.
Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) established in 1914 had a great impact on many Black leaders that emerged years later. Marcus set the wheels in motion for Pan Africanism and the need for Africans to unite under one government and/or one economic regime. DuBois who was a disciple of Marcus later became the father figure of the independence Movement.
Garvey also stated that “a people that depends on another for its economic survival sooner or later dies” recognizing the need for African nations to unite in order to attain total economic liberation and power.
Marcus prophetically predicted his successor (Kwame Nkrumah) and stated that the baton would be handed over to a young continental African, who unlike him, would see the promise land but uniting his compatriots would skip him by generations.
The 1945 Pan African congress in Manchester, England, brought the unity agenda to the fore. Nkrumah and Padmore’s speech electrified the Congress and became a focal point of the African unity crusade. Nkrumah said years later that, “I think that of all the literature that I studied, the book that did more than any other to fire my enthusiasm was the Philosophy of Marcus Garvey published by his wife”.
The 1945 Pan-African Congress RESOLUTION was a historic piece of document that would be cherished by Africans for years to come.
The historic 5th Pan African congress held in Manchester, England, in October 1945 was the defining moment and the start of the unity agenda spearheaded by Nkrumah.
The meeting brought to the fore the young leaders who had been influenced by Garvey. Among the delegates were DuBois, Jomo Kenyatta (Mzee), Nnamdi Azikiwe, Julius Nyerere, Tom Mboya, Appiah, Padmore, Herbert McCauley, Caseley Hayford, J.Africanus Horton, Edward W. Blyden and many illustrious African/Black intellectuals.
So the above was the framework that was put in place with which Dr. Kwame Nkrumah used as his template for the formation of the Organisation for African Unity in May 1963 and where armed with a plethora of information at his disposal called for a Federation of African States immediately.
Nkrumah was well aware with his god given ability to think and plan years ahead that Africa, in order to be a competitive entity and compete with others had to unite because he recognized that African states operating as single units were not powerful to operate alone and could be easily picked off by larger nations.
He knew that a single Africa with its immense mineral wealth and human labour was well placed to meet the challenges of the 21st century and to transform the economic structures of individual African states from poverty to that of wealth, from inequality to the satisfaction of the needs of the African people.
Nkrumah also realized that the balkanization of the continent, as a result of the racist imperialist congress of Berlin in 1884/1885 where FACIST ANTI-AFRIKAN White imperialists decided to carve up the African continent for their own economic and geo-political needs, was not in the best interests of African peoples culturally, spiritually and economically making his cry for African unity now more potent.
This brings us on to the current reality of ‘independent’ African states. African states today are NOT independent because of the mere fact that their economies are legacies of imperialism that are controlled by proxy by these same WHITE RACIST imperialists who carved Africa in 1884/1885.
An example is that 65% of Ghana’s economic output is made up from ‘donor’ countries and that contrary to popular misconception, the economic, fiscal and monetary policies of the government of Ghana are determined by the WHITE OWNED, RUN & CONTROLLED World Bank and the IMF who in essence run Ghana’s economy.
This hardly constitutes the definition of a country that is supposed to be proud and independent and free form foreign dictates.
By their inept failure to seize this historic opportunity afforded to them at this summit African leaders failed not only this current generation of African people both at home and abroad (who in particular are crying out for a united and strong Africa), they have also failed future generations of African people and history will judge them harshly indeed.
The fact that the ‘leaders’ missed a golden opportunity to move the continent onto a course of true liberation and emancipation showed their inability and comprehension to realize the grand task that was put before them.
In 1965 ironically in Accra, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah called for African states to unite now or perish. Had those leaders at the time heeded his call, Africa today would be a global SUPER POWER able to compete with the West, China and India and managing its own affairs without European/foreign interference.
Realizing how the union of African states would mean that Europeans would literally go hungry they (the Europeans) put in place wicked and deceptive measures such as carefully and systematically plotting the circumstances (including the sabotage of Ghana’s economy), events and finally the coup that overthrew the architect and proponent of African Unity Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.
His overthrow was a stark warning to other progressive African leaders that if you go against the interests of the West a similar fate awaited you and so the dream of African Unity fizzled out completely until Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi re-invigorated it a few years back.
A brief history lesson will give the readers an appreciation of the concept of African Unity.
The reception given to the Accra Declaration by the assembled leaders differed greatly from the enthusiasm shown by the early independence delegates when the 1945 Resolution was adopted at the 5th Pan African Congress in Manchester in October 1945.
The leadership behind the passage of the 1945 resolution, including Du Bois, Padmore, Kenyatta, Azikiwe, Nyerere, Nkrumah and Blyden foresaw the current crisis now facing Africa and advocated for united Africa. They were far ahead of their time.
At the 1945 Congress, speaker after speaker, Blyden, Padmore, DuBois, Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Azikiwe, Mboya, Hayford and Manley (continental and the Diaspora) all passionately argued in favour of unity. The cries from beyond the grave – Africa Unite.
All the participants at the 1945 Congress were greatly influenced by the fore runner of Pan-Africanism, Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey.
Garvey’s influence extended beyond continental Africa and stretched further a field to the Caribbean and North America at the period in question.
Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana who adopted “honourable Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line” dream project, took the fight to the colonialists on the continent and won the independence argument, stated at the All-Africa Peoples Congress in Accra, 1958, that the only way Africa can realistically compete with the rest of the world’s regions is to form a union government based on the federal model of United States of America.
Nkrumah who emerged as the “anointed and successor to Honourable Marcus Garvey” religiously took the same stance as Marcus did, by advocating for unity now! This is the same position that those in the Instantists camp, including Gaddafi argued for.
Unlike the current proponents of the Instantists, Nkrumah’s group carried the day at the 1945 Manchester Congress. Nkrumah’s charisma, intellect and his passionate argument for unity, aided by gallant and great Pan Africanists such as George Padmore, W.E.B. DuBois, Jomo Kenyatta and Blyden ensured that the whole delegates supported the unity agenda.
Padmore’s keynote address fired young Nkrumah who in turn had a great impact and influence on a certain young African American, Martin Luther King Junior years later.
Whilst Nkrumah was taking on the colonialists on the mainland, young Martin Luther King Junior was waging another war for the emancipation of Africans in North America. It is now acknowledged that Nkrumah’s “African Unity speech” at the old Polo grounds in Accra had a great impact on Dr King that led to his “I have a Dream speech” in Washington, DC in 1963.
Marcus Garvey is credited as the father of Pan-Africanism and the one who set the “Africa for Africans” train in motion. Garvey was the first to realise the enormous challenges that faced African people and started his unity crusade when most continental Africans and Africans in Diaspora were still under economic, social and political slavery.
Marcus Garvey’s Black Star flag (Red, Gold and Green) was unofficially adopted as the flag of “United Africa” at the 1945 Pan-African Congress. Writing in the Global Black News, February 2002, Bakari Akil II states, “Garvey knew in his heart that Black people’s loss of knowledge of their history, their inability to defend themselves, lack of resources and lack of self rule were the main reasons Africans (throughout the Diaspora) were unable to return themselves to a state of glory they once held.
Garvey became incensed by the enslavement, institutional racism, colonialism, brutality and forced ignorance that were responsible for degrading roles African people were forced to accept. It became his mission to change the status Africans had to adopt in order to survive.
He felt the only way for African people to regain their legal status was through massive organisation of the African Diaspora and reclaiming Africa for Africans. By accomplishing this very goal, Garvey maintained that Africa would be able to use the resources the rest of the world coveted like oil, diamonds, gold, salt, lush agricultural land, etc., to regain respect and status that other nations and races enjoyed.
He also stated that these resources could be used to increase the level of education, health, political and social standing of Africans and would create a position of strength that would bring about self-determination”.
Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) established in 1914 had a great impact on many Black leaders that emerged years later. Marcus set the wheels in motion for Pan Africanism and the need for Africans to unite under one government and/or one economic regime. DuBois who was a disciple of Marcus later became the father figure of the independence Movement.
Garvey also stated that “a people that depends on another for its economic survival sooner or later dies” recognizing the need for African nations to unite in order to attain total economic liberation and power.
Marcus prophetically predicted his successor (Kwame Nkrumah) and stated that the baton would be handed over to a young continental African, who unlike him, would see the promise land but uniting his compatriots would skip him by generations.
The 1945 Pan African congress in Manchester, England, brought the unity agenda to the fore. Nkrumah and Padmore’s speech electrified the Congress and became a focal point of the African unity crusade. Nkrumah said years later that, “I think that of all the literature that I studied, the book that did more than any other to fire my enthusiasm was the Philosophy of Marcus Garvey published by his wife”.
The 1945 Pan-African Congress RESOLUTION was a historic piece of document that would be cherished by Africans for years to come.
The historic 5th Pan African congress held in Manchester, England, in October 1945 was the defining moment and the start of the unity agenda spearheaded by Nkrumah.
The meeting brought to the fore the young leaders who had been influenced by Garvey. Among the delegates were DuBois, Jomo Kenyatta (Mzee), Nnamdi Azikiwe, Julius Nyerere, Tom Mboya, Appiah, Padmore, Herbert McCauley, Caseley Hayford, J.Africanus Horton, Edward W. Blyden and many illustrious African/Black intellectuals.
So the above was the framework that was put in place with which Dr. Kwame Nkrumah used as his template for the formation of the Organisation for African Unity in May 1963 and where armed with a plethora of information at his disposal called for a Federation of African States immediately.
Nkrumah was well aware with his god given ability to think and plan years ahead that Africa, in order to be a competitive entity and compete with others had to unite because he recognized that African states operating as single units were not powerful to operate alone and could be easily picked off by larger nations.
He knew that a single Africa with its immense mineral wealth and human labour was well placed to meet the challenges of the 21st century and to transform the economic structures of individual African states from poverty to that of wealth, from inequality to the satisfaction of the needs of the African people.
Nkrumah also realized that the balkanization of the continent, as a result of the racist imperialist congress of Berlin in 1884/1885 where FACIST ANTI-AFRIKAN White imperialists decided to carve up the African continent for their own economic and geo-political needs, was not in the best interests of African peoples culturally, spiritually and economically making his cry for African unity now more potent.
This brings us on to the current reality of ‘independent’ African states. African states today are NOT independent because of the mere fact that their economies are legacies of imperialism that are controlled by proxy by these same WHITE RACIST imperialists who carved Africa in 1884/1885.
An example is that 65% of Ghana’s economic output is made up from ‘donor’ countries and that contrary to popular misconception, the economic, fiscal and monetary policies of the government of Ghana are determined by the WHITE OWNED, RUN & CONTROLLED World Bank and the IMF who in essence run Ghana’s economy.
This hardly constitutes the definition of a country that is supposed to be proud and independent and free form foreign dictates.
By their inept failure to seize this historic opportunity afforded to them at this summit African leaders failed not only this current generation of African people both at home and abroad (who in particular are crying out for a united and strong Africa), they have also failed future generations of African people and history will judge them harshly indeed.
Dr Kwame Osei
e-mail:
theafrikafoundation.co.uk
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But watch out
09.08.2007 19:57
Big players are hijacking the African unity movement
The hope for a government for Africa is being hijacked by secretive, powerful, Western interests who want to re-colonise the continent.
The latest meeting of heads of state at the African Union in Ghana, from 1 July 2007, discussed the creation a continent-wide government by 2015.
The proposal is being pushed by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who is also arguing for a 2-million strong African army. The proposals have received little publicity in the West.
According to a Reuters report,
Gaddafi recently told hundreds of youth in Ivory Coast’s economic capital Abidjan that integration would give Africans a stronger voice on the world stage as globalization advances.
"One sole African government, one sole African army to defend Africa with a force of two million soldiers. One currency, one passport. Accra must hear this message," he told the gathering which included Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo.
It apparently reflects the hope of many grassroots, Pan-Africanists and Garveyists who have for decades argued for a single government for Africa. But there is a danger hidden in the proposals about which black people are largely unaware.
According to alternative theorists and historians, a secret cabal of super-rich, international bankers and a network of powerful supporters want a system of world-wide regional governments covering Africa, Europe, American and the Pacific. This system will be a key stage toward reducing the sovereignty of the nation state to set up a one-world government that they control.
The fact that Gaddafi is pushing the proposal is evidence of the cabal’s hidden agenda because he has recently become an allay of Britain and Tony Blair.
The one-world government plan was revealed by the late Georgetown University professor, Carroll Quigley in his book ‘Tragedy and Hope’. He was allowed insights into the cabal he called the Anglo-American Establishment.
He wrote: “The powers of financial capitalism had a far reaching plan, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.
“This system was to be controlled in feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences.”
Insiders have admitted that there is a push by power elites towards one-world government. Member of the Anglo-American Establishment and international financier, Paul Warburg spoke before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1950. The record states that he said: "…we shall have a world government, whether or not we like it. The question is only whether world government will be achieved by consent or by conquest.”
Another insider, Admiral Chester Ward, turned against the agenda and revealed it in a 1975 book he wrote with Phyllis Schlafly, ‘Kissinger on the Couch’. He worked for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an influential group and major cabal instrument that boasts US Presidents and senior politicians as well as bankers and business people.
The authors wrote that the CFR's goal is the "submergence of US sovereignty and national independence into an all-powerful one-world government... This lust to surrender the sovereignty and independence of the United States is pervasive throughout most of the membership…In the entire CFR lexicon, there is no term of revulsion carrying a meaning so deep as 'America First.'"
Further evidence of plans of a one-world government comes from power elite intellectual and former US national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski has now become a critic of the plans. After highlighting George H W Bush’s 1991 UN speech about the New World Order, Brzezinski wrote in his 2004 book ‘The Choice’:
'A world government is not a practical goal at this stage of history. America certainly would not yield its sovereignty - nor should it - to a supranational authority in a world that lacks even the minimum of consensus needed for a common government…World government is either a pipe dream or a nightmare, but not a serious prospect for some generations to come.’
He also confirmed that there was a power elite whose world-view was globalist rather than nationalist:
“A concomitant but more general phenomenon is the appearance of a distinct global elite with a globalist outlook and a transnational loyalty…The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum has become, in effect, a party congress for the new global elite: top politicians, financial tycoons, captains of commerce, media moguls, academic heavyweights, and even rock stars. That elite increasingly displays its own distinctive sense of interest, camaraderie, and identity.”
Quigley identified the Anglo-American elite as a network of international bankers, multinational companies, foundations, secret societies and politicians. Key groups include a secret association called the Rhodes Milner Group, Skull and Bones and the Masons, the Rhodes Scholarships, Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission, among many others. But at the top are European royal and aristocratic families and banks that control the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve.
This network, the Anglo-American Establishment, are far more powerful and devious than most politically conscious people realise. They hide knowledge. They use psychological and sociological methods to pre-empt social movements and control people.
They even support apparently oppositional movements for their own ends. Some of the movements they have supported includes the:
- Bolshevik Party and the Russian revolution,
- National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People,
- 1968 Paris student revolt,
- Friends of the Earth and the environment movement,
- CIA’s financing of drug rebel Tim Leary, and
- organisation of the 1970s oil price hikes.
Controlling central banks is key to the Anglo-American Establishment and such a bank is among the proposals of a paper written about an African unity government, 'An African Union Government: Towards the United States of Africa'.
The proposals envisage a three-stage process that would culminate in continental government by 2015. A central bank for Africa is part of phase two.
The 'United States of Africa' movement has political and celebrity support in the US. According to its website
Africa will be one country and the current 54 national states will be reduced to the status of only federal states:
- one transcontinental citizenship
- one currency
- one defence force
- one foreign department
- one policy of foreign trade
- one central government managing the above
- one pan-African parliament, and
- one African court of law.
Quigley pointed out that it is not the ownership of the means of production that really counts as Marxists assert but the control of the money supply. The control of a central bank, produce a debt-based money system are central to controlling governments.
A government acquires money by borrowing it from banks at an interest. Government pays its debt through taxes. It can expand the supply to create growth or cut supply to cause a recession. Through this method and its ability to buy support, finance business and infiltrating key agencies, it can control nations.
But bankers also discovered that war guaranteed the biggest profits because governments are forced to borrow money to fight wars. The bankers can support both sides of the war.
Thus, people have argued that since the creation of the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve has led to more boom and busts and more wars. The Pan-Africanists hope for sovereignty for Africa will be used to colonise it.
The Anglo-American Establishment’s agenda is wide-ranging and is often summed up by the term New World Order. It seeks a feudalist order that includes altering religious ideas, changing lifestyles, continuous surveillance of people and changing political and economic systems.
Covert elite opposition to the Establishment’s plans is serious as well as splits among the cabal but there is every indication that they are pushing ahead with their plans. The ‘United States of Africa’ is evidence of this.
The Anglo-American Establishment have successfully confused liberals, Marxist and black activists and radicals about the nature of the world, their existence and their hidden agenda. Yet, their agenda can explain why progressive movements have only had limited successes and why exploitation, repression, domination and white supremacy continues to have the upper hand.
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