The African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) has taken another historical step by translating our 14-Point Platform, titled “What We Want – What we Believe” into the Kreyòl (Haitian Creole) language, deepening the connection between Africans in Ayiti (Haiti) and the African Socialist International (ASI), the organization of combined APSP organizations around the world.

Premiering in the May 2021 issue of The Burning Spear newspaper, the Kreyòl translation of the 14-Point Platform will be amongst the French and Spanish translations that rotate in The Spear and also the first African language to have its appropriate translation of the revolutionary platform.

Kreyòl is spoken by 10-12 million African people in Ayiti and around the world, including being the second most spoken language in Cuba. It is also the most spoken Creole in the world, in regard to Creoles with the presence of the French language.

Having the 14-Point Platform translated in this language opens the Party up to Africans in Ayiti and those displaced from Ayiti to the United States, throughout the Caribbean, Europe and anywhere else in the world, especially those who do not speak or understand English, French or Spanish. It also demonstrates the Party’s ongoing demonstration of unity with Africans in Ayiti.

Kreyòl was a critical component of the African Revolution of Ayiti

The Kreyòl language was developed as a means for the various groups of Africans who were enslaved in Ayiti to be able to understand one another, especially as they planned to overthrow colonial slavery and the colonial enslavers. It was created to be a language of African unity and resistance!

When discussing Kreyòl, many people believe that it is “broken French,” but it is in fact its own language, separate from French, with its own orthography, grammar, rules and regulations, syntax, conjugation and everything else pertaining to the ‘legitimacy’ of a language.

Kreyòl has long-faced marginalization by the white ruling class and black petty bourgeoisie, as part of the same ongoing attack made against African people around the world and especially in Ayiti.

This is also largely due to Ayiti’s school system which was established by the French and has been maintained for over 200 years, that also raises the French language as a superior language over the Kreyòl language developed by our African intellectual ancestors.

By the same token, French has been long used as a tool of division by the black petty bourgeoise in Ayiti, where all official documents are written in a language that 95 percent of the population does not know, understand or speak.

Only five percent of the population in Ayiti speaks French and an even less percentage speaks it fluently, so it remains an official and effective weapon of the neocolonial State of Ayiti where Africans are denied services daily and even an understanding of their rights, because they don’t even know how to answer the question “how may I help you?” when they walk through the door.

The African People’s Socialist Party’s 14-Point Platform being in Kreyòl not only recognizes the validity of Kreyòl as an official language, but also recognizes the people of Ayiti as a part of the process of Africans achieving the international revolution required for our freedom everywhere.

Bringing the international African Revolution to the language of African resistance

Although it did not become recognized as an official language of Ayiti until the 1987 Constitution of Haiti, the first Kreyòl text was a poem written between 1754 and 1757.

Besides the bible, which has been translated into over 700 languages, there are not too many texts that are translated into the Kreyòl language. 

Most Africans from Ayiti who learn and adopt a new ideology or tendency, whether Pan-Africanism, Marxism, feminism or religious beliefs, do so after first learning a new language.

Intellectualism in general has been kept away from the everyday people of Ayiti, but now the everyday people of Ayiti will have access to revolutionary intellectualism, by way of the Kreyòl translation of the Party’s 14-Point Platform and of all ASI texts to be translated into Kreyòl in the future.

Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African Socialist International, is the revolutionary leader under which the Party’s revolutionary, anti-colonial 14-Point Platform could even exist in the first place.

He has assigned me, Elikya Ngoma, to be the Haiti Editor of The Burning Spear newspaper and the ‘Haiti Expert’ of the African People’s Socialist Party and it is an absolute honor to connect the Kreyòl language with the revolutionary theory of the international African Revolution.

Long Live the African Socialist International and the international African Revolution!

Point #5 of the 14-Point Platform states:

“We want the right to the international political and economic association with Africans and all other peoples anywhere on the face of the Earth.”

The greatest weapon created to achieve this goal is none other than the theory of African Internationalism, developed by Chairman Omali Yeshitela, and The Burning Spear newspaper which puts the theory directly in the hands of poor-and-working-class Africans around the world.

Now, African people in and from Ayiti and all others who understand Kreyòl will also have access to adopting the theory of African Internationalism as our own and also the African Socialist International as our organizational home and the vehicle to our freedom.

Long Live the theory of African Internationalism!

Long Live the African Socialist International!

Long Live Chairman Omali Yeshitela!

Viv Ayiti! (Long Live Ayiti!)

Viv Revolisyon! (Long Live the Revolution!)

Uhuru!

Join the African People’s Socialist Party at APSPUhuru.org!