For me, 2007 began with a high degree of excitement and anticipation. It was Ghana’s 50th anniversary of independence from the colonising British and by extension 50 years of Afrikans winning round one of the anti-colonial struggle. It was also the 200th anniversary of the “abolition of the slave trade” which would provide the opportunity of exposing the fraudulence of this claim and knocking the British state off its criminal high-horse.

2007 would witness a historical assembly of the Afrikan Union summit in Accra with heads of state debating only one item on the agenda, Pan Afrikan Unity! 2007 would also witness national elections in Nigeria. As a political activist and organiser, 2007 could not be more challenging.

In late 2006, Pan Afrikan activists in Ghana began to meet to discuss work for 2007. Meetings with various Ghanaian and Afrikan organisations coalesced into the Afrikan People’s Platform (APP). The 1st task for APP in 2007 was organising the anniversary of the infamous 1966 CIA coup which overthrew one of our fore-most freedom fighters and Pan Afrikan strategists, Kwame Nkrumah. February 2007 saw a public meeting in the Great Hall of the University in Legon which attracted over 1,000 people with a panel of speakers from Angola, Nigeria, Northern Ireland and Ghana to discuss the future of Afrika and her Diaspora in the present struggle to defeat neo-colonialism in this new neo-liberal world order.

About three quarters of the audience was made up of students and youth and one of the powerful messages they relayed was their frustration with the lack of knowledge and information. They made it known that they did not have knowledge about Afrikan history and basic information like Kwame Nkrumah’s books in their library and so had no access to the kind of information they were receiving from the panel which in effect made them intellectually and politically weakened. The fact that the media idolises America and does not inform the public about the role of the U.S. in subverting liberation struggles makes the issue of information critical.

In March the UK government had its propaganda machinery at full steam in Ghana which had the misfortune of being chosen as a satellite nation for launching its bi-centenary fraud project. The media reported that John Prescott, deputy UK prime minister visited Ghana to donate £3million for the execution of the abolition project. So as the abolition drama was being played out in the UK, the British Council and their local collaborators in Ghana were also busy perpetuating the same. They organised musical concerts to attract the masses and media programs to confuse all of us. It was left to Pan Afrikanists to challenge the political space which was being occupied by these pro-imperialist forces. And what a fight back! Engaged and defeated on the airwaves, debated and exposed on public platforms and forced to retreat into a defensive position, the mask of Britain’s moral masquerade was publicly ripped off! The abolition masquerade was disgraced and driven back home.

April brought in the drama of national elections in Nigeria. This 4 yearly ritual where the people are called out to choose which section of the ruling class has the mandate to exploit them and their national resources was taken to new heights. A quarrel between President Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku witnessed a rearrangement of ruling class forces locating themselves under different party banners. The significance of the Nigerian and other neo-colonial elections is that the STATE is the foremost productive industry in the economy. It’s the only game in town! And everyone wants to play. O yes! Hence the mad rush for access to state power as this secures unlimited access to national resources. As President Obasanjo crudely but truthfully stated, it was a “do or die” affair. Either you do it and secure access to plunder national resources and transfer them to be held safely in western banks or like the Afrikan American artist 50 Cent says, you “die trying”. Choose your poison.

Ordinary folks died, lots of politicians were assassinated, some major political players lost but hey life goes on! Nigeria is now, as it’s always been, ruled by a cabal of neo-colonial elements closer to their masters in the west than they are to the over 120 million people of Nigeria. And the beat goes on…. People of the Niger-delta are still exploited and impoverished, citizens of an oil producing nation cannot afford petrol, the national electric power authority is still dysfunctional, so what’s new?

Afrikan Liberation Day (ALD) was celebrated in Ghana in May. Most folks will not recognise that this in itself is a victory for Pan Afrikanism. Why? Because even though ALD was proclaimed by the Organisation of Afrikan Unity (OAU), it is largely ignored by most Afrikan governments. In fact it took a right wing government in Ghana to declare 25th May a public holiday, thereby bringing ALD into the consciousness of citizens.
But the glass is only half full. Since the declaration of ALD as a public holiday, Pan Afrikan forces have sought to utilise the space to organise ALD and return the outstanding question of Afrikan liberation back into the public domain. But the enemies of progress are not been asleep. They have fought to re-designate Liberation Day as Union Day. Their explanation for Union Day is that Afrika has moved out of the realm of liberation as represented by the erstwhile OAU to union as reflected by the current Afrikan Union. The danger is that this argument lulls us into false consciousness, that there is no need to fight neo-colonialism (internally and externally) and that the issue is just one of good old unity. The struggle (for Afrikan minds) continues!

June transformed Accra into the capital of Afrika! Activists, delegates, opinion makers, bureaucrats, policy wonks, political-hawkers, hangers-on, officials and all manner of folks, genuine and dubious descended on Accra. They came from all over the Continent, the Diaspora and the rest of the world. It was phase one of the Afrikan Union (AU) summit scheduled to be held in Ghana in honour of Ghana’s 50th anniversary and as a tribute to that great fighter for Afrikan liberation and unity, Kwame Nkrumah. The AU summit revolved on a single agenda item of Afrikan unity. Even though there was one single item on the agenda, the reality of politics dictated that there were many sub-items on the agenda. Somalia, Zimbabwe, Darfur, the Great Lakes to mention a few.

Advance teams arrived in town way ahead of the main delegations to prepare the ground. So there was the anti-Mugabe lobby that came to ensure that Mugabe would be condemned by citizens and heads of state alike. The success of the anti Mugabe lobby in the West made them totally unprepared for the reaction of the Ghanaian populace. It was the complete opposite of what they were used to. Afrikans in Ghana drew parallels between the demonisation of Nkrumah by Europe and America. They also drew analogies between the Zimbabwean economic “inflation” crisis (ala BBC) and the attacks on Nkrumah during the Cocoa crisis where sanctions are inflicted to whip up internal dissatisfaction. Suffice to say that the MDC did not get a warm reception in Ghana. This time, the western media hysteria on Zimbabwe was counter-productive. Sadly, Darfur and Somalia did not get the serious attention they deserve.

In July, heads of state came into town with the conspicuous absence of some of them. The Gambian president stayed away as he was threatened with a citizen’s arrest for the unsolved murder of 40 Ghanaians in Gambia. The Sudanese president wisely stayed away as his presence would most certainly have provoked a riot. In the meantime groups and organisations organised public debates on the question of Afrikan unity. Of course the broad consensus was that Afrikans wanted unity, the problematic question was, were we ready for unity? My own position was that in our present state of being ruled by neo-colonial leaders, Afrika cannot realise the kind of unity envisaged by Kwame Nkrumah. Unity at this time would be a union of neo-colonial states in service of their masters. And anyway it was clear that our rulers would view unity as a suicidal step. That view came to pass as heads of state gave a hundred reasons for not accepting unity. In reality there was only one reason. Afrikan unity is not in the interest of the external forces of exploitation and the internal forces of collaboration. They postponed the debate till further notice….

After such a highly charged political calendar, 2007 also brought low moments. Two key Afrikan warriors passed on to the Ancestral realm.

In July, Nana Ababio II, an Afrikan American elder who hearkened to Marcus Garvey’s call for Afrikan’s in the Diaspora to return home to the Motherland and re-engage with their Ancestral homeland joined the Ancestors. Nana was a well known figure in Ghana, within the Pan Afrikan and activist community where he was a front-line advocate for Reparations and Repatriation and especially in Elmina where he re-settled his family in the small town of Ituri. He was killed by a hit and run driver in Accra and buried in his homestead at the One Africa family compound in Ituri.

In December, Lester Lewis, aka Prince Ntum ba Azah, another Afrikan warrior and organiser per excellence also passed on to the Ancestral realm. Originally from the island of St Vincent, he spent four decades of his life in the UK organising for Afrikan liberation and unity where he worked as the chairperson of the Hackney Black People’s Association. He was diagnosed with cancer and returned home to St Vincent to spend his final days with his family. He was a tireless organiser who found his calling in the struggle for Afrikan self determination and dignity.

As I reflect on the old year and meditate on the New Year, my mind is drawn to the Moyo maxim “none so fit to break the chains as she who wears them, none so fit to fight for change as she who craves it”.

Ancestral Guidance

Sister Affiong
(January 2008)