[From December 8-10, members of political parties, trade unions,
community-based organizations, women’s groups, other social
movements across West Africa gathered in Winneba, Ghana to participate
in the West African People For A New World conference.]
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‘WE MUST UNITE OUR CONTINENT’  
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Kyeretwie Opoku
December 12, 2022
Peoples Dispatch
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_ From December 8-10, members of political parties, trade unions,
community-based organizations, women’s groups, other social
movements across West Africa gathered in Winneba, Ghana to participate
in the West African People For A New World conference. _

Kyeretwie Opoku, Convener of the Socialist Movement of Ghana
addresses the West African People For A New World conference, (Photo:
WAPO conference)

 

_To kick off the West African People for a New World conference,
Kyeretwie Opoku, convener of the Socialist Movement of Ghana (SMG),
addressed the delegates to present an analysis of the current moment
and a vision of what the conference hopes to achieve._

_Below is an excerpt from his address:__ _

Comrades, we meet here as a tiny representation of West Africa’s
progressive, pan-Africanist social movement; its organized workers,
women, youth, culturists, and political activists. We meet here
because we know, despite the misery and chaos of our current
circumstances, that it is possible to build a prosperous, just,
progressive, sustainable, and humane society—a new world free from
poverty, disease, homelessness, hunger, ignorance, and war. We meet
here because we not only know this but because we are committed to it.
We meet here because we know that to achieve that vision, as Nkrumah
taught us, we must unite our continent. We must plan and optimize our
socioeconomic development, defend what is ours against hostile
neo-colonial forces, and play a constructive role in global affairs.
We meet here finally because we know that the strategy for
pan-Africanism requires that we scale up West Africa’s participation
in the anti-imperialist, pan-African project. Because we know we must
step up from national and sectoral to regional and political
struggles.

Comrades, however brief, any accurate history of West Africa will
acknowledge that our roots go back thousands of years, to the dawn of
civilization and culture and not simply to the arrival of Europeans on
our lands 500 years ago. We were not “discovered” by anybody. West
Africa participated independently in humanity’s rise from
hunter-gatherer to farmer, from primitive communalism to slave and
feudal-type societies. We built cities, states, federations, and
empires. West Africa independently developed science, technology,
religions, universities, and legal systems. Of course, our people were
not angels or “noble savages.” Our pre-imperialist history is as
bloody and oppressive as the pre-industrial history of other peoples
around the world. We had class exploitation and oppression. We had
forms of slavery and gender oppression. We fought wars. And we
resisted these terrible institutions. We both scaled the giddy heights
and plumbed the miserable depths of the human development
experience—the same as contemporaries worldwide. The point is that
this was an authentic independent experience. It was development.

However, comrades, the last 500 years have been a period of
destruction and humiliation for West Africa. We suffered centuries of
slavery and slave trading—a system that reduced Africans to
commodities, brutally killed or captured, imprisoned, exported, and
sold, in strange lands, as field animals. When slavery became
impossible because of African resistance and significant shifts in
North American capitalism, imperialism transitioned West Africa to
colonialism. Europe carved up our entire continent brutally and
inorganically to facilitate monopoly looting of our resources and to
forestall a European war. Our transported brothers and sisters, once
slaves, became oppressed second- or third-class citizens in the
Americas in their new countries. We who remained in Africa were
deprived of sovereignty and made second-class citizens in our own
lands. Imperialists reorganized our societies in many overt and subtle
ways for their profit and to limit our will and capacity to resist.
But resist we did. And we were slaughtered by what we are now pleased
to call our “Development Partners” in the interest of European
Capital.

And then, comrades, imperialism plunged the world into two disastrous
world wars. These wars restructured global capitalism again, leaving
European capital too weak to repress African resistance, exclude other
capitalist states, especially the US, _and remain profitable_.
Imperialism, therefore, staged a tactical retreat to neo-colonialism,
under which African exploitation and oppression continued, supervised
now by treacherous imperialist-socialized local elites wielding
Western-designed institutions—a sop to popular demands for liberty.
We have endured and resisted neo-colonialism for almost 70 years now.

However, comrades, neo-colonialism, never more than a tactical
experiment, has run its course. The combination of our continuing
resistance, the deep internal crisis of the global capitalist system,
and the emergence or re-emergence of powerful new global forces like
China and Russia (and the other BRICS) threatens the preferential
access that neo-colonialism guarantees the West. At the very least,
West African elites are finding that they have new options for
exploiting our people that are not controlled by the hypocrisy of the
West, and seek to expand this “freedom” from Western hegemony. The
question is, what lies ahead?

Comrades, imperialism’s agenda is clear. It is to resume direct
colonial control of West Africa—by military force if necessary. And,
comrades, military force will be required to repress social resistance
and exclude the West’s competitors effectively. Our future is a
difficult one. The United States and all the major European powers are
already engaged militarily on our soil under a series of shameful
“status of forces” and “Security Cooperation and Assistance”
agreements. These agreements directly deny our sovereignty and confirm
the spinelessness of our leaders. US and French military bases now
encircle us in West Africa. The West cynically manipulates our
internal social crises (often products of colonialism itself) and the
threat of “militant Islam” (absolutely a product of
neocolonialism) to terrorize our leaders into submission to further
military occupations. And now ECOWAS leaders, in their alienation and
panic, have announced a plan to engage militarily with ECOWAS
countries that have overthrown corrupt and oppressive leaders—under
the pretext of restoring bankrupt constitutional arrangements and
corrupted electoral systems. While we do not support military
usurpations of power, such a military response (by leaders of
questionable popular legitimacy) offers no solution. ECOWAS military
action does not restore our people’s control over their destinies.
Instead, it will provoke a conflagration, the collapse of more of our
fragile “democracies,” and hundreds of thousands of deaths. But,
it will leave our strategic and precious resources intact for
Imperialist exploitation—all that matters to the West.

Could this happen? It sounds like madness, I know. But, as observed,
this will not be the first time imperialism has slaughtered our people
to protect profit. Further, Western forces are already deployed and
multiplying across West Africa. We know how easy it is for imperialism
to disrupt and destroy the lives of Palestine, Syria, and other
countries of the Middle East to protect the apartheid state of Israel.
And we have all seen recently how ready the US and its allies in NATO
are to destroy Ukrainian lives to provoke a nuclear-armed Russian
Federation; or to destroy Taiwan’s semiconductor industry (and
perhaps the entire island) to prevent this industry from falling again
and rightfully under the control of the People’s Republic of China.
Imperialism’s violence and disregard for human life know no limit.

Comrades, we must either step up our self-organization or suffer a
massive sharp reversal. We cannot confront this and the many other
threats we face as fragmented national and sectoral movements. We must
unite and deploy politically, or face imperialist re-colonization.
Comrades, even if we escape direct colonization, the West will still
intend to control our sub-soil resources, finances, and trade
(including our currencies). Imperialism seeks to deepen their control
over our soils, water bodies, forests, seeds—and our thinking. For
example, comrades, as we speak, all our countries are in terrible
crisis. Our irresponsible leaders in cahoots with Western financial
speculators have plunged us into a new debt debacle. All our countries
are being marched to the IMF to agree to austerity measures and
postponed development to ensure that the financial speculators who
gambled on irresponsible lending and loss are kept whole at the
expense of our innocent people’s needs and legitimate aspirations.
The austerity on the cards is inevitable, leading to unrest. It does
not take a prophet to anticipate strikes, riots, coups d’etat,
uprisings, revolutions, and state failure. We are already seeing state
chicanery and repression. Comrades, it is not enough for us to point
out the greed and profligacy that has brought us so much misery. We,
as anti-imperialist forces, must have a program response. We must
provide leadership to our people in protecting and advancing
development and ensuring that they can resist oppression by the same
governments that created these crises in the first place. We must
reject IMF debt collection schemes. We must begin in this meeting and
in the structures we establish over the next few days to think through
how we respond to these challenges and use them to build something
new, wholesome, and viable. This, comrades, is our task. This is why
we are here.

Comrades, this conference will not “create” anti-imperialism or
pan-Africanism. Both have a long and honorable history. They are like
rivers rolling inexorably to the sea with many twists and turns—and
with many tributaries. What we hope to achieve here is to become, as
West Africa, a stronger tributary to the overall flow and help it cut
its way to the ocean. There is no time to discuss that proud tradition
today. Many of you know and can present it much better than me.
Perhaps, during deliberations, a bit of that will come up. Suffice it
to say that hundreds of organizations in West Africa articulate an
anti-imperialist and pan-African approach to resolving our region’s
problems. Perhaps thousands also instinctively share our positions but
do not articulate them as we do. And hundreds of millions who,
confronted with the information and the choices as we understand them,
would opt for a united anti-imperialist Africa. How do we put the
correct information in front of these organizations and their members?
How do we help them make the necessary choices and act on them?

Many of us suffered frustration, isolation, and danger following the
great neo-liberal counter-revolution of the late 70s, 80s, and 90s.
And many of us could only lift our heads above the parapet from the
late 90s onward to see a desolate, despoiled political landscape
dominated by pro-Western NGOs. But we saw that imperialism was
floundering. And we heard rumors of a broader revival of mass
anti-imperialist activism worldwide. We began hoping that the river
had rounded another bend and again flowed toward the sea. And we
worked to be ready to resume open struggle. Organizations like SMG
emerged, or came out from “hiding.” Without these waiting warriors
and their organizations, today would not be possible.

A critical event in the history of today’s conference was the third
Pan Africanism Today conference held here, in this hotel in 2018,
which some of you participated in and most of you have studied. PAT
III brought together 350 activists from 62 countries to discuss
anti-imperialism and what a pan-African project would look like today.
It was a ground-breaking event “when the world came to Winneba,”
the largest gathering of the continental mass movement in over 50
years. SMG was proud to provide local support. IPA and PAT, which
helped organize, are “processes” for stimulating, facilitating,
and coordinating anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, and anti-racist
mass organization. We in SMG are proud participants in both, and we
hope that, following these deliberations, many more of the
organizations here will engage with these platforms independently and
participate in strengthening our collective work. We certainly hope
that we will also engage with them collectively.

Comrades, we look forward to constructive deliberations that enhance
the struggle in our sub-region against anti-democratic and imperialist
forces. We are in a life-and-death struggle. We cannot fail. History
is once again on our side. The river has turned a corner again and the
coast is in sight. The struggle continues.

Long live the solidarity and struggle of the working people of West
Africa!

Long live the solidarity and struggle of the working people of Africa!

Long live the solidarity and Struggle of the working people of the
Global South!

Long live the solidarity and struggle of all the working people of the
world!

Thank you.

Cde. Kyeretwie Opoku

Convener, Socialist Movement of Ghana

* West Africa
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* anti-imperialism
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* Pan Africanism
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* socialism
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