Some 130 years ago, European powers met in Berlin to hatch an agenda of subjecting Africa and its peoples to mere vassals, property to be possessed and exploited for the benefit of white people. African Liberation Day celebrates the African people’s successful resistance to this oppression. The Day is also a proud commemoration of the role Africa has played in the advancement of human freedom.

The revolutionary pan-Africanist would have been 92 years this week. His struggles for the liberation of Black people from imperialism and its twin, racism, remain as relevant and inspirational as ever.

What is often described as “aid” to Africa is in fact part and parcel of the cycle of dependency stemming from centuries of slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism. The only real solutions for advancement of the continent must derive from the struggle of the masses against Western domination, which can only be effectively realized through Pan-Africanism and Socialism in practice.

For more than a century Canadians have gone abroad to do “good” in poorer parts of the world. Whether they spurred positive change or simply became foreign agents should be of interest to international non-governmental organizations.

Throughout his life, he refused to collaborate with the ruling elite and remained committed to the principle of internationalism as witnessed by him joining up with Namibian migrant workers in Cape Town in the 1950s, or later being the people’s doctor in Lusaka where he treated fighters from various national liberation movements in southern Africa.

As the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) hold their Spring meetings in Washington, DC, billions of dollars due to African nations are illicitly leaving the continent.

The Moors invaded Spain in 711 AD and African Muslims literally civilized the wild, white tribes. Recent scholarship now sheds new light on how Moorish advances in mathematics, astronomy, art, and philosophy helped propel Europe out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance.

For Ngũgĩ, in the struggle against capitalist colonialism there is no home left to return to. Whether within one’s own country or outside, home is the place and space of struggle. Like for Frantz Fanon, for Ngũgĩ the struggle against colonialism is linked to the struggle against capitalism. It is a struggle against the bourgeoisie, both national and international.

Theory and practice have been butting heads at Makerere University’s Institute of Social Research, resulting in graduate students decrying the “authoritarian” leadership style of its director, public intellectual and crusader for the decolonisation of higher education, Mahmood Mamdani. Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire chronicles the machinations of a protracted struggle against perceived creeping neoliberalism.

South African communist leader Chris Hani was assassinated by white racists 27 years ago, removing him from the scene during the nation’s transition to Black rule. Hani fought careerism and corruption in the revolutionary movement. Today, the tradition of internal debate that Hani promoted has become eroded, and criticism keeps being silenced as sowing disunity.

In May, Paul Kagame will be feted for his outstanding friendship with the Jewish people. That friendship chiefly entails cynical use of the Rwandan genocide to advance U.S. and Israeli interests in Africa and the Arab world. Kagame was the only African head of state to support the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He has totally thrown his lot in with U.S.-led imperialism.

Black people are quickly labeled racist any time we raise our voice against white supremacy. It is racism fighting back. It is meant to silence us. We should not openly express what we feel and know. As Black people we should not own our experiences and history. No. We are instead supposed to become complicit in our oppression by attributing our suffering to everything else except white supremacy.

Morocco’s newfound interest in Africa is linked to NATO’s attack on Africa and the murder of Muammar Gaddafi. NATO’s destruction of Libya completely humiliated the African Union. It tore the heart out of an alternative African future. And left Africa seriously exposed once again to the Western imperial virus: a virus contemporary Morocco carries.

Not only was she involved in the development of the first national television network in Ghana, Graham Du Bois worked on a high level within the CPP government as an administrator within the state publishing house. She worked directly with President Nkrumah and was a part of his inner circle of advisors.

It is wrong history to teach that Africa was named by Greeks or Romans when these colonialists illegally occupied this unique continent through aggression and invasion. This was in 332 B.C. until the Roman invasion in 30 B.C. Africa got its name from Africans.

Women played an instrumental role in the formation of the Pan-African Movement and in the national liberation struggles. Inside Africa, women were at the forefront of the independence movement in the areas of mass mobilization, political education, armed struggle and national reconstruction. In the U.S., numerous women provided the impetus for the reemergence of the Civil Rights and Black Power struggles.

The Pan-Africanist movement harbours some African men who conceal patriarchal attitudes. These “Man-Africanists” are cancerous to the advancement of the movement that needs to engage in developing new men who are genuinely anti-sexist, anti-heterosexist, empathetic, connected to a radical political concept of self-awareness, and guided by an ethical sense of equality, justice and freedom for all.

What good is Ngũgĩ, revered as a literary great, if he is unable or unwilling to respond to the most basic of decolonial questions: Can the oppressor leave so that the oppressed can engage? The time for grandstanding and sloganeering about decolonization has come to an end. The time for praxis is now.

Co-founder of the UNIA-ACL, the first wife of Marcus Garvey worked tirelessly for women’s rights and inter-continental unity from the Caribbean and Central America to the United States, Europe and Africa.

 “The actions by our siblings here in South Africa, particularly in Pretoria, when they target those black persons who are from other parts of the continent, are anti-black actions stemming from self-hatred caused by white supremacy.”