Izwe lethu! Sons and daughters of the soil, I would like to thank you for this opportunity on behalf of the African Socialist International (ASI) and its components.
We have gathered here today as we struggle for the future of Africa, and it is our revolutionary mandate to free Africa and Africans, at home and abroad, from the chains of imperialism and neocolonialism.
Today Africans are strangers in their own land, they are forced to buy back what is rightfully theirs. Privatization of basic services has become the order of the day. Those workers who are building hospitals have no access to health care services. Those who are building roads return back to their homes to find that there are no roads to walk in. Those who are building houses are homeless, and those who are building schools, their children have no access to education.
These are challenges faced by the African working class internationally and they need an international, principled, unified and non-compromising revolutionary movement of the African people. That is the ASI.
As we here know, “When Azania sneezes the whole continent catches cold.” There are struggles led by the African working class in Azania, Nigeria, America, London, Asia, Canada and so on.
These struggles are not winning because they are separated from each other. They must be unified and coordinated under the banner of the African Socialist International (ASI) and our cadres must be on the ground fighting side by side with the masses.
We cannot achieve a United Socialist States of Africa without a united African Socialist International movement. Come you the children of the oppressed Africa and let’s build the ASI!
Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe understood well the question and the need for a revolutionary international Africanist movement. As he said, “here is a tree, come let us be the leaves of the same branches and be the branches of the same tree.”
We must not allow our efforts to build the ASI be limited by opportunists who view the African liberation struggle as a means to accumulate personal wealth and exploit the African working class and peasants.
In conclusion, I quote Chairman Omali Yeshitela: “We have to build an organization that, from the beginning, has a strategy to destroy and smash those borders and build a liberated Africa!”
Izwe lethu!
