By Abayomi Azikiwe
Note:These remarks were prepared for and delivered in part to the African Liberation Day (ALD) webinar held on Sunday May 25, 2025. The event was sponsored by the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (G-C) and featured speakers from numerous organizations including the Jackson Advocate, the Free Haiti Movement; African Awareness Association (AAA), the Pan-African Society Community Forum of the UK, the Universal Negro Improvement Association-African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) also of the UK, among others. In addition to recognizing the 67th year of African Freedom Day (1958) and ALD (1963), this webinar recognized the 77th anniversary of Nakba Day, commemorating the displacement and genocide of the Palestinian people from May 15, 1948 to the present.
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Sixty-two years ago, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was formed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on May 25, 1963, by 33 member-states from across the continent.
The formation of the OAU was part and parcel of a process of national liberation and Pan-Africanism which emerged in full force in the aftermath of the conclusion of World War II.
In May 1945, after the Soviet Red Army and Allied Forces victory over Nazi Germany, thousands of Algerians went into the streets of Setif, Guelma and other cities then controlled by France to celebrate the end of the war and at the same time calling for the independence of their country which had been under the occupation of Paris since 1830. The French colonial authorities, who had been assisted in their fight to end the German occupation of their territory by the Africans living under colonialism, opened fire on the masses of Algerians killing thousands.
This massacre illustrated clearly the character of imperialism in the 20th century. Despite the efforts to win independence through peaceful demonstrations and petitioning, it would be necessary in many of the territories under colonial occupation to take up arms to win their liberation.
In Algeria between 1954-1962, the National Liberation Front (FLN) fought a war of liberation against France losing an estimated one million people. Frantz Fanon, who was born in the Caribbean colony of Martinique served in the so-called Free French army during the second imperialist war. Later he worked on behalf of the French colonial administration in Algeria where he shifted his allegiance to the FLN during the liberation war.
In a compilation of his writing under the title of “A Dying Colonialism”, Fanon noted:
“1945 was to bring Algeria abruptly onto the international scene. For weeks, the 45,000 victims of Setif and of Guelma were matter for abundant comment in the newspapers and information bulletins of regions until then unaware of or indifferent to the fate of Algeria. The tragedy of their dead or mutilated brothers and the fervent sympathy conveyed to them by men and women in America, Europe, and Africa left a deep mark on the Algerians themselves, foreshadowing more fundamental changes. The awakening of the colonial world and the progressive liberation of peoples which reached beyond her and of which, at the same time, she became a part.”
Later that same year, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) was founded in early October 1945. The presence of African trade unionists in London assisted immensely in the mobilization of delegates which attended the Fifth Pan-African Congress held in Manchester from October 15-21, 1945.
The roles of Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore and Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois was critical in the formation of the Pan-African Federation and the holding of the Fifth PAC. After the Fifth Congress, the stage was set for the acceleration of the movement for national independence and Pan-Africanism.
Dr. Kwame Nkrumah after returning to West Africa in 1947 as an organizer for the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) created the conditions for the formation of the Committee on Youth Organization (CYO) and the Convention People’s Party in 1948-49 respectively. The independence of Ghana, according to Nkrumah, was meaningless absent the total liberation of Africa. This axiom was pronounced on March 6, 1957, and holds true until today. Since the formation of the OAU in 1963, the continent has undergone monumental changes. From the movement towards national independence and Pan-Africanism to the intensified struggle against imperialist militarism and for total unification under scientific socialism.
Defend the AES and South Africa
In the West African Sahel region, the countries of Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali, where the people are backing a revolutionary transformative process aimed at recorrecting the decades-long French colonial and neo-colonial domination, imperialism is attempting to divide and weaken these governments. These landlocked states signed the Liptako-Gourma Charter in late 2023 and formally founded the AES in early 2024.
Due to their commitment to anti-imperialism and Pan-Africanism, the governments of the AES are under constant threat of destabilization and removal. France and the United States have claimed for years to be committed to the safety and security of the Sahel states in Africa. Nonetheless, since the establishment of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and the ongoing interventions of the French Foreign Legions, the overall military and economic situations in the region have worsened.
Pan-Africanists and anti-imperialists must defend the AES administrations from the threats being levelled against them by Washington and Paris. AFRICOM head General Michael Langley made slanderous and threatening comments against Burkina Faso transitional leader Col. Ibrahim Traore before the U.S. Senate earlier this year. Such comments reveal clearly that the U.S. ruling class is committed to the liquidation of all revolutionary governments on the continent.
Niger is seeking to take control of the uranium mines inside the country which produce large-scale deposits of this strategic metal. The country is one of the world’s largest producers of this natural resource utilized for energy and military purposes.
President Cyril Ramaphosa of the African National Congress-led Government of National Unity (GNU) in the Republic of South Africa visited the U.S. last week in an effort to “normalize” diplomatic relations with the leading imperialist state in the world. The president was accused of carrying out genocide against the Boer population since the democratic breakthrough of three decades earlier which brought President Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) to power.
These lies are designed to cover-up the hostility on the part of the existing administration of President Donald Trump towards independent African states. With specific reference to South Africa, the government in late 2023 took the State of Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of the United Nations charging the Zionist entity with violating the Genocide Convention of 1947.
In early 2024, the South African government did receive a positive ruling from ICJ which declared that the charges of genocide by Pretoria were plausible. The ICJ ordered the Israeli regime to halt their genocidal policies and to end the occupation of Gaza. Yet, after a year-and-a-half of this ruling, the Zionist government and its U.S. backers have failed to implement the ICJ findings.
We cannot ignore the unresolved land questions in South Africa and throughout the continent. The masses of people fought for independence and unity based upon the desire for the return of the land to the indigenous people. This is why the struggle for the liberation of Palestine is so closely tied to the freedom and unification of Africa. Historically, the liberation movements and revolutionary governments have maintained their alliances with the Palestinian struggle and that of the entire West Asia region including the revolutionary forces in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran.
Peace and Security Can Only Come from the African People Themselves
Although the current President Trump has said that he has never heard of the Kingdom of Lesotho or the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), his administration is working feverishly to undermine the right to self-determination and sovereignty of the African continent. In the Horn of Africa nation of Somalia, due to the legacy of colonialism, the people have been divided and balkanized.
The northeast region of Somalia, where the leadership of the breakaway territory of Somaliland has been working towards international recognition for more than three decades, the Trump White House is said to be negotiating for the U.S. recognition of Somaliland in exchange for the utilization of the Port of Berbera on the Gulf of Aden as a naval base. At the same time, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has met with the foreign ministries of the DRC and Rwanda to sign an agreement to provide a purported “security framework” to end the fighting in North and South Kivu in exchange for primary access to critical minerals.
These schemes should be denounced by the African Union (AU) and all of the mass organizations and political parties throughout the continent. The history of U.S. interventions in Africa have never benefited the interests of the African people.
Therefore, the only assurance of peace, stability and security is the unity of the African people themselves. As Kwame Nkrumah emphasized in his book entitled “Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism” published in October 1965:
“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 Organization 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.” (See this)
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
26 May 2025
Source: globalresearch.ca