Haiti, the first black republic, is owed billions of dollars by France that could turn around the lives of its people. After independence in 1804, following the first successful slave revolt in history, France demanded compensation for loss of slaves and its plantations. That ransom has crippled Haiti ever since.

The last two weeks of October 1962, 55 years ago, was the closest the world has come so far to a widespread nuclear exchange in what has become known as the “Cuban Missile Crisis.” 

All over Africa the conditions exist for revolution. But there is urgency to clarify the ideas, organization and leadership necessary for the African Revolution. The Russian Revolution of 100 years ago provides important lessons for African Revolutionaries in their quest to dismantle oppression and build just societies today.

The draft protocol on the free movement of persons in Africa, once adopted by the Assembly of the Union in January 2018, will be a powerful tool in the hands of Africans to accelerate the integration process of the continent as reflected in Aspiration 2 of the African Union Agenda 2063.

Qaddafi was leading a world revolution. The revolution would challenge every aspect of Eurocentric epistemology and its inherent racism. It was more than a social, political and economic revolution; it was nothing short of a spiritual and cultural revolution. This confounded not only the imperialist powers but also their reactionary Arab satraps.

An African centered critical pedagogy is required in order to create the cadre of the men and women capable of making the analysis as well as developing the policies, structures and systems for the realization of Pan African objectives. Deconstruction of the imperial power of Euro-America global white supremacy will come about only by African governments and peoples mobilizing and creating a Pan African political culture and an All African Union Government.

Revolutionary intellectuals led our liberation movements. They initiated and organised the left and democratic formations. Thugs and mercenaries of imperialism and their hirelings have tortured and murdered revolutionary intellectuals all over the continent. But with Thomas Sankara they continue chanting: “While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas.”

The whole point of the America-led war on terror in Africa is to keep the continent in a state of permanent war. For not only does it force African countries, finally freeing themselves from Western dependence, into dependence on AFRICOM; it also undermines China’s blossoming relationship with Africa.

An official of the Trump Administration has written to the US President urging him to act swiftly to end institutionalized racism targeting black staff at the World Bank. “I write this open letter with confidence and high hopes that your administration will repeal the legalized discriminatory act and hold the Kim administration accountable.”

Nikanori Apita used the classroom to shape the minds of generations, weaning them out of racist ideology of Empire that cramped their mental growth. Empire’s ideology was ingrained in the colonial texts it was his duty to teach. Apita decided his task was to subvert the texts.

The Che of mythology is presented as a starry-eyed utopian idealist. But the actual Ernesto Guevara was a voracious reader and highly cultured man of science, a revolutionist of action deeply grounded in theoretical study and practical experience. That is the man whose life and work still resonates with the social justice struggles of the world today, half a century after America murdered him.

Despite many efforts to falsify the history of the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania, the heroes of Black liberation have sealed that history with their blood, sacrifice and noble service. But the fundamental struggle of the PAC continues, captured in the political slogan: Izwe Lethu! The Land is Ours! Freedom without repossession of land by colonially dispossessed Africans is a gigantic colonial fraud.

Decolonisation of the Afrikan university must be located within the over 1,000-year-old struggle of Black people all over the world against white supremacy. It must aim at organising Black people towards the attainment of a far higher ideal, perhaps best articulated by Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe who said: “We must fight for freedom. For the right to call our souls our own. And we must pay the price!”

Rwanda’s ruler often poses as a Pan-Africanist. But what Pan-Africanist runs a brutal dictatorship implicated in the murder of at least three African presidents and has committed well-documented war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide at home and the Great Lakes  Region? An unrepentant imperialist pawn, no other known African ruler in history has inflicted more humiliation on his fellow citizens and other Africans than Kagame.

The growing boycott against U.S. football in the U.S. should not be seen simply as a protest against the racist treatment of former U.S. San Francisco Quarterback Colin Kaepernick because of his protests against police terrorism in 2016. Instead, Africans and all peace and justice loving people must see this boycott as an extension of African people’s worldwide cry for justice and self-determination. 

Nkrumah’s dream of African unity remains essential for total liberation and prosperity of the continent. Africans will have themselves to blame if they continue to plough their narrow furrows instead of pooling their efforts, human and material resources, in order to create a cross-continental garden equipped to compete in the globalized 21st century.

Over two years into the International Decade for People of African Descent, very little has been done to achieve the objectives of the UN General Assembly declaration. It is not enough to make such a declaration. Serious efforts must be made to implement it for the benefit of Black people.

Taking advantage of media interest in protests over monuments to historical figures with racist views, activists in Halifax are pushing to remove commemorations of two individuals who helped conquer Africa. And there’s no lack of other such memorials to target across the Great White North.

Celebrating 90 years for Mama Sobukwe is a major feat. It is a sterling life which is exemplary for all, young and old, men and women, that one can serve, suffer and sacrifice for freedom. Her circumstances do not differ much from those of Afrikan women in the rural areas and at the bottom of the pyramid in the social structure.

Bankie was a Pan-Africanist in his own class. He would not want Pan-Africanists to fall into sentimentalism about his passing on to the Ancestral world. Rather he would want us to dedicate our work to the liberation of the African people, particularly working towards black people’s knowledge of self.