We have decided to task ourselves, to engineer a platform that will serve as a tool for the identification, defence, and the advancement of the interests of main street Africa, as opposed to those of imperialism and help in focusing attention, stimulating reflection, and enhancing informed responses of local actions in the global context. To explore and encourage collaborative interdisciplinary approaches to problem solving, particularly, deepen our understanding of key international events and how they affect us, or impact on others, and in the formulation of collective solutions to common problems.
Our mission is to help open the political space for the ordinary person in the street to be heard among the cacophony of radio, television, and the other tools of the mainstream media to represent the interests of the establishment and become active participants in their own history and not as mere spectators and victims of history. We need to take maximum advantage of the information age in order to develop comprehensive and systematic generation of information on issues that affect us all without depending on the corporate mass media to confuse us. We must see the big picture all the time and be alert enough to avoid the traps. As Hamid Dabashi puts it, “I think the ability of the people, the democratic will of the people to generate and sustain information and globalize it is far more important than secret wheelings and dealings between the powers that be.”
Structure and Organization:
The Pan-Africanist International is governed by its Executive Council. General Assembly of the Pan-Africanist International is the highest decision-making body of the organisation. The membership of the Executive Council is elected by the General Assembly. A Steering Committee, or politburo is appointed by the Executive Council to oversee the day-today running of the organisation. It works in concert with a panel of experts in their areas of specialisation, who are not necessarily members of our organisation, but who are Pan-Africanists in their own rights, and or, experts in the various fields of interest to Pan-Africanists. The Steering Commiitee is also in charge of the facilitation of collaborative interdisciplinary approaches, activities of our Social Outreach Programmes, Campaigns. The Secretariat takes care of routine organisational as well as administrative functions and serves the Steering Committee.
Aims and Objectives:
The Pan-Africanist International seeks to build a movement that, with your help and support, may soon become a clearing house of information on the identification, defence and advancement of the interests of Main Street Africa. We do this through focusing attention, stimulating reflection, and enhancing informed responses on the following:
I/ RESPONDING TO REAL AND PRESENT DANGERS
II/ FACILITATING SELF-MOBILISATION: CHALLENGING DOGMA AND PROPAGANDA
III/ NETWORKING FOR UNITY AND STRENGTH
IV/ UPHOLDING THE ENDURING IMPERATIVES OF THE PAN-AFRICANIST STRUGGLE
V/ CONSOLIDATION OF INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY BETWEEN AFRICANS AND
AFRICANS IN THE DIASPORA, AND AFRICA AND THE REST OF WORLD
Our group believes that the construction of a new society free from exploitation and oppression has already began even before the Arab Spring! It started when the first slave made his break for freedom! All the same we live in exceptional times. The number of people thrown into misery is probably unprecedented in history, and it is assuming global proportions. At the same time, the amount of money that is being made by the 1% is growing exponentially. We are left with increasing opulence on the one hand, and abject poverty and misery on the other. It is for this reason that we support the Occupy Wall Street Movements and the growing awareness of our people that are beginning to demonstrate themselves in the streets, with increasing frequency and ease.
We are always happy to make new friends, as it is a part of our objective to network for unity and strength. It is therefore customary to do some self-presentations. We are Africans seeking solidarity with all the peoples of the world, in our just struggle for our peace of mind. We know our continent is probably the richest continent in the world. We find ourselves in constant danger because we are literally sitting on diamond mines, gold mines, and, of late, light sweet crude oil is receiving special interest with devastating consequences. We know who our enemies are, that is why we reject the global system of inequality between and within countries. We reject neo-colonial capitalism and all its horrors – poverty, ethnicity, racism, elitism, and the control of our lives by others.
On this basis the Pan-Africanist International, (P-AI) promotes solidarity with the peoples of Cuba, of Occupied Palestine, and of Venezuela, and all other peoples resisting imperialist militaristic interference in the affairs of others under the guise of the “responsibility to protect” RTP. We stand together with working people around the world, in their struggles for improved conditions of work and life.
We fear that the reckless exploitation of nature and its resources, the expropriation and abuse of what belongs to all the world’s peoples for the private profit of a few, has very dangerous consequences for the survival of humanity, all living organisms and world civilization.
The Pan-Africanist International (P-AI) stands and works in solidarity and comradeship with all those engaged in struggles for the sustainable and equitable use of nature and its resources; for the solution of the economic, social and political problems facing the peoples of the world.
We reject Imperialism, now masquerading under a new name -’Globalisation’.
We oppose its neo-liberal agenda driven by its handmaidens – the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). This agenda allocates costs to the public purse, and hands profits to private interests. It has and continues to widen the gap between the rich and the poor, to subvert the sovereignty and democratic will of peoples and nations everywhere.
Through Debt, Unfair Trade and Corruption these agencies facilitate the looting of the resources of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, for the benefit of a few principals in the developed imperialist economies, and their local agents. Everywhere and always, Imperialism and the control of the lives of others – generates poverty, misery, squalor and oppression for the overwhelming majority of the toiling masses.
We live in a very exciting moment of history in the struggle for the continental emancipation of Africa. “Change in the international system comes in large and small doses, but fundamental patterns generally stay consistent.” Writes George Friedman From 1500 to 1991, “for example,” he continues, “European global hegemony constituted the world’s operating principle. Within this overarching framework, however, the international system regularly reshuffles the deck in demoting and promoting powers, fragmenting some and empowering others, and so on. Sometimes this happens because of war, and sometimes because of economic and political forces. While the basic structure of the world stays intact, the precise way it works changes. The fundamental patterns of European domination held for 500 years. That epoch of history ended in 1991, when the Soviet Union — the last of the great European empires — collapsed with global consequences.” Read more: Europe, the International System and a Generational Shift | Stratfor
We must certainly be living in a very great moment of history of epochal dimensions. Symbolically, Portugal, the first European state to pave the way for the 500 years of domination, ends it with style. Those who understand the signals can read from the implications of the recent request from Portugal to Angola for financial aid. It is merely symbolic of the kind of power the continent can wield in our hands to redress our historic grievances about the Bretton Woods institutions, invasion of GM crops, land grabs, US Africa Command, climate change, the International Criminal Court, and so on. Africa is yet to rise to the occasion and follow her own way to freedom and social progress. What makes this urgent is because a new scramble for Africa, destined to leave its footprints on our fortunes for God knows how long! We are just emerging from 500 years of Western domination, and they are already fighting back to maintain the status quo and consolidate their powers and privileges.
“We in Africa who are pressing now for unity are deeply conscious of the validity of our purpose. We need the strength of our combined numbers and resources to protect ourselves from the very positive dangers of returning to colonialism in disguised forms. We need it to combat the entrenched forces dividing our continent and still holding back millions of our brothers. We need it to secure total African liberation. We need it to carry forward our construction of a socio-economic system that will support the great mass of our steadily rising population at levels of life which will compare with those in the most advanced countries.”
- Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, “Africa Must Unite!”, 1960.
Pan-Africanist International – a grammar of Pan-Africanism and its manners of articulation!
