Chaos in the Pan-African Parliament—We need the African Socialist International!

The Pan-African Parliament (PAP), an institution of the African Union convened in May this year to vote on its new president. To the dismay of many adherents of Pan-Africanism, the process collapsed into chaos, exposing the ideological bankruptcy of the PAP and the forces that currently make up the institution.

One faction of the parliament was concerned about the voting process not allowing them to stand a chance of having a president from their region.

The process actually had to be suspended several times with some sectors calling for the mother body (African Union) to intervene. The Southern Africa “caucus,” with Julius Malema as its most vocal representative, refused to enter the vote raising concerns regarding the dominance of the West and East African blocs on the vote.

The proposal from the Southern Africa caucus was that instead of each member state having five votes, the presidency should be subjected to a rotational process that would allow all regions to get a chance of having its member become president.

Julius Malema of the Southern Africa caucus stated in one media interview with United Africa News that, “once we adopt a rotational principle, you know the matter of elections is settled forever. We know where the presidency is going next. It’s no longer going to be the big issue which shadows the rest of other issues because some people are obsessed with positions of power. This matter since the establishment of PAP, North and South have never occupied the position of presidency.”

According to Malema, rotation “would ensure fairness and greater transparency.” But then, fairness and transparency to who?

It should be recognized that the Pan-African Parliament is comprised of class forces. What that means is, just like in any other organization, each member participating in the aforementioned institution represents a class interest.

In a global economic system whereby society is split between the parasites and the hosts, it is only logical that every member of any given society always takes a position supporting or against either of the two contending classes. This is more evident with regard to Africa, whereby the African working class virtually make up the pedestal upon which the global capitalist system rests.

The Pan-African Parliament is made up of what we refer to as the African petty bourgeoisie. In this Burning Spear newspaper, the African (black) petty bourgeoisie are correctly described as follows; “A small social force who politically and economically serve the white ruling class and are traitors to their people. They are a wishy washy force, steeped in liberalism. They are sell-outs. They are the ‘Talented Tenth’ about which W.E.B DuBois spoke.”

Historically, the Pan-African Parliament has its foundation in the 1963 Organization of African Unity (OAU), where the neocolonial African misleaders gained political platform to sabotage Kwame Nkrumah’s campaign for one borderless African State. The use of the term neocolonialism, even at the 1963 OAU convention by figures such as Alieu Joof and Nkrumah himself, was limited in its ability to effectively expose the African petty bourgeois neocolonialists as the social basis for the success of neocolonialism. It was left to African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) Chairman Omali Yeshitela to later develop a greater definition for neocolonialism, giving it a class character.

The forces who would get a chance to be elected into the PAP presidency through a rotation from Southern Africa and North Africa are still the petty bourgeoisie and neocolonialists. Indeed, the rotation would bring about fairness and greater transparency, but only amongst the African neocolonial petty bourgeoisie.

The African working class will continue doing the backbreaking work to feed imperialism, while we are exterminated and ruled by the 55 parliaments of the current neocolonial states of Africa.

African people suffer under neocolonialism

A new report has come through indicating that general unemployment in Occupied Azania (South Africa) currently sits at 42.3 percent with youth unemployment having skyrocketed to 74.7 percent. In Mali, the masses still have no power and remain at the mercy of the neocolonial military.

The question is, does the AU and its Pan-African Parliament have a plan of overturning these colonial conditions for the masses of African people colonized within the backward 55 neocolonial countries? What is PAP’s solution to the young people who get buried beneath the mines in tens on almost a monthly basis in Congo alone?

The precursor to the AU failed to resolve the matter of the fragmentation of the African Nation. Up to this day, they have not even begun considering African people as a nation. They refer to us as nations in accordance with the dispersal of our people within the continent, through the borders primarily drafted in the 1884-85 Berlin conference.

Today in the Pan-African Parliament, individuals who are supposedly “African leaders” are still expressing themselves as defending Anglophone and Francophone interests. Can we achieve a unified Africa from the leaders of PAP? Certainly not!

Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, albeit doing what he could to compromise with the concept of sovereign states to please the neocolonialists, warned about what is being manifested today through the AU and PAP.

In his 1963 speech at the founding of the OAU he made the statement; “we have already reached the stage where we must unite or sink into that condition which has made Latin America the unwilling and distressed prey of imperialism after one-and-a-half centuries of political independence. As a continent, we have emerged into independence in a different age, with imperialism grown stronger, more ruthless and experienced, and more dangerous in its international associations.

Our economic advancement demands the end of colonialist and neocolonialist domination of Africa.”

The APSP organizes African workers to govern

The African People’s Socialist Party has called on the African working class to fold our sleeves and get organized. The 2021 Plenary of the Party was themed “African Workers of the World: Unite and Organize.”

Building on that theme, the African Liberation Day (ALD) of the African People’s Socialist Party called for the building of the African Workers’ State. This is a far cry from what is being called for by the PAP parliamentarians, from both those who are for and those against the motion for the rotation policy.

It is through the African Socialist International (ASI), which is the APSP expressed globally stretching itself everywhere African people are located, that the African working class is getting consolidated for an all-African onslaught against imperialism and colonialism. The APSP is currently building in Southern Africa, East Africa, and West Africa under the banner of one Party, one general strategy and one political theory.

This is contrary to the Pan-African Parliament fuss over rotation and voting for a neocolonial president to head the toothless institution. The African Socialist International is building an army of working class revolutionaries getting ready to build the independent and unified socialist African workers State!

Uhuru!

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