On June 1st, the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) sponsored African Liberation Day (ALD) in Paris, France. Africans came from throughout Africa, Europe, and the United States to build for the future of a liberated Africa, while honoring the past.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela, presented the keynote address which highlighted the current state of imperialism, and exploded the silence surrounding the French and European oppression of African people in Africa and throughout Europe.
Deputy Chair Ona Yeshitela, introduced Black Star Industries, the economic institution created by the African People’s Socialist Party as the key instrument for developing our own independent anti-colonial economy.
Secretary General, Luwezi Kinshasa of the African Socialist International, Penny Hess, Chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee, and Unia Leti were among the other speakers.
2013 also marks the 41st anniversary of the founding of the African People’s Socialist Party and marks the 41st anniversary of African Liberation Day activities in the U.S.
Here is a series of photographs from the day.
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African Liberation Day 2013 marks 41st anniversary of three milestones in the African liberation struggle:
First – 2013 marks the 41st anniversary of African Liberation Day activities in the U.S.
Second – 2013 also marks the 41st anniversary of the founding of the African People’s Socialist Party. In May of 1972, at a time when the Black Liberation Movement had been destroyed as a movement and in a climate of political terror and brutal repression, Chairman Omali Yeshitela founded the African People’s Socialist Party. Since the 170’s, the Party has made its main goals to keep the Black Power Movement alive, defend the countless Africans locked up by the counterinsurgency, and develop relationships with Africa and Africans worldwide to establish a independent unified socialist Africa.
Third, 2013 marks the 41st Anniversary since the death of African patriot “Osagyefo” Kwame Nkrumah.
Nkrumah was the founder of African Liberation Day.
One of his major works, Africa Must Unite, laid the scientific basis for a united socialist Africa.
Another of his works, Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism, defines exactly the political norms we see on the African continent and worldwide today–from Barack Hussein Obama in the U.S., to Yoweri Museveni in Uganda and Jacob Zuma in Occupied Azania (South Africa).
They all represent neocolonialism–white power in black face.
Born a colonial subject in what was then the Gold Coast in 1909, Kwame Nkrumah, through his political actions and writings, became the lightning rod for a united and socialist Africa.
Nkrumah was the first president independent Ghana on March 6th, 1957. He pursued a policy of rapid industrialization and the building of infrastructure along with provide arms and support to African rebels in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.
In February 1966, Nkrumah was on a state visit to North Vietnam and China, when his government was overthrown in a military coup, by the same neocolonial forces about whom he had written. Western imperialist had engaged in a destabilization tactics against Nkrumah’s government, but were supporters of the new government that suspended the constitution and banned all political parties.
Nkrumah never returned to Ghana. He lived in exile in Conakry, Guinea. President Sekou Toure, named him the “honorary co-president of Guinea.”
In August of 1971, he had a series of health issues that required him to seek medical care in Bucharest, Romania. Nkrumah died of skin cancer on April 27th, 1972. He was 62 years old.
He is buried in a national park in the center of Accra, Ghana on the very spot that Nkrumah declared independence on March 6, 1957. On that day he noted the most self evident fact of the African liberation struggle, “the independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent.”
One Africa! One Nation!
