The International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) held its 2025 international convention in St. Louis, MO from September 20 to September 21, 2025. This convention was titled, “Cheers to a Dying Colonialism! This Time ‘Til It’s Won!”
This convention saluted the forty-year anniversary of the People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (PDUM). Formed in Oakland, California in the Spring of 1985, PDUM was the local mass organization that laid the ground for the creation of the National People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement in 1991, which was renamed InPDUM in 2001.
Bursting with revolutionary optimism, a capstone to this exciting weekend was the appointment of Comrade Emmanuel Maku as International President of InPDUM.
New president is a proven leader, African Internationalist organizer
Emmanuel Maku is a proven leader and steeled African Internationalist organizer. For over two years, President Maku has served as the Northern Regional Representative of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP).
Maku’s work and leadership in the APSP proves the correctness of our organizing strategy. President Emmanuel first encountered the Uhuru Movement as an attendee of the annual Black People’s March on the White House in Washington, DC, in both November 2021 and again in November 2022. Maku joined the Party subsequent to the 2022 march.
Emmanuel brought a history of organizing and love for the international African Working Class with him into the Party. This aided in his rapid cadreification inside the Party and unity with African Internationalism. Emmanuel had already been an organizer with the South Sudanese community in the DC area.
As a recent college graduate, he had also been a student organizer. His experience with governing processes proved beneficial in his ability to rapidly edit the main resolution brought to the floor of the 2025 InPDUM Convention. The resolution to Build the Black Community Conventions will be central to the 2025 plan of action that President Emmanuel has placed in motion.
First president born on the continent, embodies the future
Emmanuel Maku is the first InPDUM International President to be born on the African Continent. Following his appointment, President Emmanuel explained that he was born in Khartoum to a family from South Sudan. He later moved to the United States.
For decades, the United States colonial ruling class and its indirect power through non-governmental agencies have sought to sow contention and division between recent migrants from the continent and the African Working Class born in the US.
Despite these intentions to divide the African Working Class, President Emmanuel noted that he rejected this. The only place he felt safe, once moving to the US, was in the African Working Class communities. This not only challenges the propaganda of the US colonial State, but it also rejects the neocolonial strategy of the African petty bourgeoisie.
President Emmanuel makes a serious commitment to political education. In fact, he explained, while in transit to the 2025 convention, he was reading through The Burning Spear digital archive, and cited the very first serial print edition of The Spear as part of his presentation. President Emmanuel was a regular attendee of the weekly InPDUM mass political education studies. He proved his unity with InPDUM very early on. In May 2023, he became a Marcus Garvey Lifetime Member of InPDUM.
President Emmanuel has led and created movement institutions
Emmanuel Maku is always recruiting and bringing people with him. He has been vital to organizing locally in the DC area as well as internationally with youth and students. Since 2024, he has chaired the Black is Back Coalition Youth and Student Working Group (YSWG). As the Northern Regional Representative, he has overseen the continued development of the One Africa! One Nation! Flea Market in Philadelphia, which includes the annual health festival and book fair.
Situated in DC, his Region and Party Unit serves as a point of contact for the annual Black People’s March and Conference. His leadership has been vital to the growth of InPDUM and in the Northern Region. We have active members in DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey, and throughout New England.
President Emmanuel assumes leadership of InPDUM at an exciting time with branch growth throughout the world, with arguably our widest presence on the African Continent. President Emmanuel presented a 2025-2026 Plan of Action that will Cadre-ify and SNCC-ify the work of InPDUM.
This plan is the culmination of an organizing process that he has already committed himself to. In Summer and Fall 2024, Emmanuel relocated to St. Petersburg, Florida as a lead organizer of the 2024 Freedom Summer Project, which prefaced the Uhuru 3 Trial that September. In the scorching heat of Central Florida, Emmanuel delivered flyers to thousands of homes and scores of housing projects and plastered the community with hundreds of posters in an immense scorched earth campaign. This is the fierce style of Uhuru Movement organizing that we are known for.
After the tornado hit North St. Louis in May 2025, President Emmanuel answered the call and came to St. Louis. Emmanuel Maku has displayed his unity with the General Program of the APSP and the mass program of InPDUM through his study and his action.
Let us heed President Emmanuel’s call, Cadre-ify and SNCC-ify our work
President Emmanuel calls on InPDUM to continue to transform our work. His concepts of Cadre-fication and SNCC-ification are the embodiment of the teachings of Chairman Omali Yeshitela.
He defines SNCC-ficiation as, “doing political education among the masses everyday, doing outreach everyday, holding events or actions every week which works to achieve a particular political project, all with the intent to bring African people into organization to build committees and organizational capacity, building the local leadership of the African Working Class and the independent agency of our class.”
Cadre-fication and SNCC-fication are dialectical and dialogical terms; they feed each other. By going to the people, our organizers become the steeled cadre that have defined InPDUM leadership over the decades. Primary to this plan is building and holding the Black Community Conventions, building and holding Black Community Rallies, conducting daily outreach to build the rallies and building a stable international headquarters for InPDUM.
At this moment, the work of InPDUM will radiate to all sectors of the African world. This is our time, let’s seize it. Salute to the leadership and vision of our new InPDUM President Emmanuel Maku.
