We can find all justifications for not carrying out the revolution to its end and that can majorly be in the name of diplomacy etc., diplomacy is different, this is different and difficult, that is this, this is complicated. There is nothing complicated, do what Sankara did and not piecemeal reforms which we know in the revolutionary approach as just delay and camouflage.
What Sankara, Magufuli and Nkrumah did is to draw an African line which anyone can not cross, he Sankara said; we will produce our own food and cloth and no importing, what is diplomatic about that? Nkrumah said, we can’t allow foreign militaries on African soil, what is diplomatic about that? Magufuli said we will take back the country’s mines and he built a 2000MW dam, electric standard gauge railway, restarted Tanzania Airways with 7 Planes bought with cash, without a single borrowing and stamped out corruption and built a lot of hospitals, roads in just 5 years, what is so difficult and why should you be diplomatic about urgent issues upon which the lives of many Africans depend and are dying?
We can’t and should not keep justifying and supporting people who are delaying the rebuilding of Africa for all. we can’t keep trapping ourselves in a system which we know we can’t win in and claim we are carrying out diplomacy and therefore things are complicated. Somebody has got to sacrifice to rebuild the Continent and that sacrifice we can’t keep putting it off.
What Franz Fanon is saying in his work is exactly what the African bourgeoisie are doing, they talk about reform, wait a bit, its complicated, we are doing diplomacy etc., What they are doing is to delay the revolution in favour of the imperialist enemy who has more experience than them whether they know it or not. While some are doing somethings that are commendable like South Africa which is strong on defending Africa in its foreign policy, it doesn’t mean we should not push them to address things with urgency, we have to criticise and put pressure on them where they are slackening like taking back the land, they have to mobilise the African continent and take back the land from these settler colonial remnant whites and give it back to the African people instead of engaging in arrivalism and stealing from the public.
If Museveni is talking and pushing back against the Europeans, its good but we should not pat him on the back, we have to question him why is he not backing this Pan-African rhetoric with action and talks about Niger and other African countries as if they are some far off group of people on a different landmass continent? if he is talking about creating a United States of Africa in Africa, he has to be warned that there is no such thing, there should only be one United states of Africa not a United States of Africa in Africa, it is dangerous petty nationalism he is engaging in.
Between 1957-1966, there was one solid revolutionary Pan-African party in Ghana in power called the CPP-Conservative people’s Party under Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, yet it did more work than the almost 4 to 5 parties which call themselves Pan-African today, the ANC in South Africa, NRM in Uganda, ZANU PF in Zimbabwe, and maybe in Eritrea and Ethiopia. but all these can barely identify anything they have contributed to the Pan-African Cause apart from engaging in rhetoric and the primitive accumulation of wealth by the individuals running them. They have forgotten about the revolution, and they think they arrived. They say they are in diplomacy and therefore its difficult, now that they are in Power it is more difficult to mobilise the people when they have all the resources at their disposal? what then aided them when they mobilised the masses when they were not in power and didn’t have resources? this requires heavy criticism.
