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Rastafari Speaks Archive 1

We Must Become Responsible And Help Ourselves

I have just receive this from some of our people, feel free to read it and digest it mentally, it is quite nourishing
Again I send many oceans of blessings and self determination to African people everywhere.
ONE BLACK LOVE ONE BLACK HEART
Baba Ras Marcus.

Forwarded Message:
Subj: Bluefields, Nicaragua Speech--On Pan Africanism Alliances
Date: 12/15/2004 1:06:01 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: DaudiPembe
To: DaudiPembe

COMMENTS ON PAN AFRICANISM

BICU CONFERENCE DECEMBER, 2004

David L. Horne, Ph.D

Pan Afrikan Organizing Committee

West Coast Representative, Los Angeles, California

December 3, 2004

Buenas Tardes, mi amigos. (To begin with, regarding Affirmative Action, there are only two types—that that you wait for someone to give you, or that that you seize for yourself. Only the latter matters in the long run. Women, for example, who intend to have equality and affirmative advancement will never get either by waiting on others to give it to them. Likewise, Pan Africanists and reparationists who are only committed to waiting on the good graces of others must ultimately fail. Power concedes nothing through merely asking for change, according to virtually all human history.)

In 1916-1917, the Honorable Marcus Garvey made a journey by ship and by rail,

through a large part of South and Central America and the Caribbean.

He read extensively about the African continent as it was depicted in the literature. He was looking for the status of Black people in these areas. His conclusion was that wherever he looked and found the Black man and woman, we were not in charge of our own lives.

We had been made dependent on the White Man—the Gringo—regarding most major decisions regarding the welfare of our families and the future prospects of our lives. Whether in Africa, in the Americas or in the Caribbean, we had become colonized and enslaved people, exploited for our labor, our natural resources, and our land.

In the aftermath of World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II, circumstances

changed somewhat. There was a Pan African Movement to reclaim our land, to

redeem our place in world history, and to re-establish our rights to determine our own

lives.

In 1957 when Ghana became the first modern African country to regain its

political independence from England, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah not only said that

Ghana’s real independence would only become manifest when the rest of the African

continent is free, he also correctly said that Africans had the right to choose their own

directions, their own destinies---if they made African mistakes, so be it.

It was not the destiny of African people to forever live under the oppression and domination of Europeans. African people were born free, but they had had their freedom limited and at times, completely taken away. However, according to Nkrumah, Africans were determined to take back their freedom however they could, wherever they were, and through whatever means were at their disposal. This meant legal means, mass protests, the raising of the public’s consciousness and political skill through African-controlled education, and sometimes it meant armed guerilla warfare and other forms of violence.

The result was a long pattern of African countries either being granted their political

autonomy or they seized it. Thus, from 1957 through 1977, from Ghana, Nigeria,

Senegal, Guinea, and Gambia from the West Coast of Africa, through the Sudan,

Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya and Tanzania, to Namibia, Angola,

Mozambique, and finally South Africa itself and Nelson Mandela in the 1990’s

and Eritrea just recently, 54 African countries gained political, but not economic, autonomy..

Without going through a long litany of the problems of African development, which by the way looks like a carbon copy of the problems of Central American development,

let me say that the problems of land, control of economic resources and development,

health care, housing, education, transportation, and basic infrastructure have made

exercising real political autonomy a tremendously difficult task that we have not yet

conquered. Africans have de jure or legal independence, they have Africans in charge

of their governments, but for the most part the majority of everyday African people

still work very hard but they remain poor, ill-fed, lacking in adequate drinking water,

housing and health care.

In other words, Africa remains de facto, a land dominated by neo-colonial structures and dependence on foreign banking, control of trade, devastated by HIV-AIDS and other diseases, and inconsistent educational opportunities for the young people who are its future.

But as your esteemed ONECA president likes to say, but hold on, all is not lost.

There has been great progress in the past, there continues to be great things being

done inside and outside the African continent to help better the lives of African people.

That now brings me to the main point of this speech. I represent a new Pan African

organization, a 21st century Pan African organization, called the Pan Afrikan

Organizing Committee. Our purpose is to set up a widespread international network of African and African descendants who look just like you, and who believe fervently in working relentlessly to help reclaim, restore, redeem and re-establish the dignity of being African in this world.

Remember, everybody in the world—all Whites, Mestizos, Japanese, Koreans, etc.—evolved from Africans, and all of their DNA shows that. In fact, based on all known scientific research, everybody in the world is mixed with our African blood, they are all Afro descendants by blood, you know, although they stay in constant denial. In other words, being Black does not determine whether one will be a genius or a fool, politics and access to opportunities does that. We have African geniuses who have gone beyond Einstein’s theory of relativity, and writers who’ve won the Nobel Prize. At the same time we shoot each other everyday and many times act as if we are absolutely insane.

The point is, as Kwame Nkrumah said, we can and we must control our own destiny.

We must not only be autonomous in the lands in which we live, we must learn to

be self-sufficient. That we have not yet done in more than two modern African countries.. As Marcus Garvey said over 88 years ago, wherever we look the Black man and woman are still not yet in charge of their own affairs and economic growth. Even with people who look like us as president and as members of the National Assembly, that has not made much difference. We must stop looking only to the government of the moment for our salvation. We must do for ourselves.

But all is not lost. The PAOC (Pan Afrikan Organizing Committee) believes in

the exact same things as does ONECA. As your president has said, we must

provide bridges to where we each have access and resources. The PAOC wants

to affiliate with ONECA and help you in Central America gain access to other

resources to help you, as African and African descendant people, gain self-

sufficiency and reclaim your true destiny in this world.

I am presenting to your president right now a copy of the PAOC Constitution and our Structure. We believe in mutual respect among all of our members and we believe in getting work done. Let’s establish this lasting bridge to share our skills, our experiences,

our opportunities, and our undying commitment to making this world, this

region, and this time a better place for all African people.

Gracias y Buenas Tardes to you.

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