Kwame Ture on the Revolutionary Pan-African Movement
by Bob Brown
Tunapuna, Trinidad, and Tobago
Pan-African Roots thanks the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC), the African Awareness Association, and the dozens of our supporters who enabled and empowered me to renew my U.S. passport and make this trip to Trinidad and Tobago. We thank Dr. Jerome Teelucksingh, Senior Lecturer in the History Department of the University of the West Indies, for the Invitation to speak.
Tens of thousands of people are starting to arrive for Trinidad’s and Tobago’s Carnival 2025, “The Greatest Show on Earth,” which will be held on Monday, 3 March 2025 and Tuesday, 4 March 2025. Unfortunately, I will miss it. I will try to come next year.
I thank the staff of the Morton House, a Presbyterian Church-owned Guest House, in Tunapuna, for their gracious hospitality this past week as I prepare for our presentation in the Audio-Visual Library at the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine on Thursday, 27 February 2025, from 1 to 3 P.M.
The title of our presentation is: “The World is on Fire, and Kwame Ture is Still Dancing in the Fire!” See attached flyer. Information will follow on how you can connect with the event via livestream and/or access a copy of the presentation.
In the meantime, Pan-African Roots introduces you to an 11-minute presentation that Kwame made in 1996, at the University of Cincinnati titled “The History of Pan-Africanism.” Political education, Nkrumahist-Toureist political education, was the most important role that Kwame played in the African and larger World Revolution. He continues to play that role today. His presentation was videoed by C-Span as part of its “Africa and the Future Series.” As of Aug 28, 2017, 68,737 people had viewed it on the Afro Marxist Channel on YouTube.
In this historic presentation, Kwame made two extremely important points. “First, Africa, like any other society anywhere in the world, was involved in the same evolutionary process going from family to tribe to clan to nation to continent. … Even though Europe has fought more fratricidal wars than any other continent, or all the continents put together, Europe still speaks of European continental unity.”
“The evolutionary process towards continental African unity,” Kwame explained, “was interrupted by European imperialism. It came in two forms, slavery (including the slave trade) and colonialism. … Since it was interrupted by European capitalism, the only way that Africa can unite today is through a revolutionary process aiming at a socialist economy. If capitalism destroyed us, it doesn’t make sense to use capitalism to continue with it. We must use the antithesis of capitalism, which, of course, is socialism.”
“Secondly,” Kwame emphasized, “Pan Africanism must be seen as a movement, a mass movement, and this mass movement must be properly understood. … Pan Africanism found its organizational expression in 1900 [in London], at the 1st Pan African Conference. … One of the leading organizers of this Conference was a man by the name of Henry Sylvester Williams, born in Trinidad, a man whom you should do some history on, a very, very great man.”
Listen to Kwame’s full presentation here.
Point One:
Permit Pan-African Roots to raise several related points:
- From 642 AD to the 1500’s, Muslim, and Arab forces, invaded the Northern and Eastern Regions of Africa, and launched the so-called Muslim slave trade, and resultant slavery, into the Mediterranean, Red Sea, and Trans-Sahara areas.
- From 1444 to 1888, the Catholic Church, Portugal, Spain, and other European and Protestant countries and churches invaded Africa and launched the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, and the resultant slavery in the Regions of Africa, south of the Sahara, and in the 6th Region of the African Diaspora.
- From 1517, the Ottoman Empire—modern day Turkey—invaded and colonized Palestine and Africa. The Ottoman Empire controlled the Muslim and Arab slave trade, from 1517 to 1922, the end of World War I.
- The League of Nations and the United Nations continued and solidified colonialism and imperialism in Africa and the Middle East through its Mandate and Trust System, which Ralph Bunche and other Africans born in the United States were and are complicit in. This genocide and racism, colonialism and apartheid continue today.
- From 15 November 1884 to 26 February 1885, 14 Euro-American Empires: Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, The Netherlands, the Ottoman Empire, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Norway, and the United States met at the Berlin Conference. The General Act of Berlin formalized the end of the global slave trade and consolidated colonialism and settler-colonialism in related areas in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The Berlin Conference intensified and expanded the Scramble for Africa, the new and continuing imperialism.
- One hundred forty years after the Berlin Conference, the G20 and G7 countries, under the leadership of the United States, have launched a new “Scramble for Africa,” and an even more vicious capitalism and imperialism in every corner of the world. Palestinian, African and Oppressed Humanity are fighting back. The World is on Fire. And Kwame, and we, are still dancing in that Fire!
Point Two:
One of the Pan-African Movement’s most egregious errors, since the Universal Negro Improvement Association’s Black Star Line Project in the 1920s, is its preoccupation with capitalist values and objectives, methodologies, and programs. The Honorable Marcus Garvey was not guilty of corruption as the lie is told. He has been exonerated by the masses of African and progressive forces in every corner of the world, even though he continues to be falsely condemned by the United States, the British and other Governments, and their corrupted lackies and slaves.
Kwame Ture was correct in this video. It doesn’t make sense for us to continue to use capitalism to solve our socio-economic or political problems or to build a revolutionary Pan-African Movement. Capitalism’s historical and continuing crimes and failures are obvious.
A mass, revolutionary, and socialist Pan-African Movement must be built. Mass, revolutionary, socialist, and Pan-African political-edutainment is required. This video must and will be expanded and improved. We need and ask for help!
Bob Brown