Today the African nation of Egypt started a new path to freedom by forcing  the resignation of the 30 year reign of yet another African despot who refused to leave & allow a democratic government for the people by the people! Today Africa’s freedom fighting angels President Nasser & President Nkrumah smiled upon Egypt’s people & allowed their spirits to lead them to reclaim the revolutionary fight for freedom that they had brought to their nations & to Africa as a whole. No matter what, Egypt is & will always be not only African, but directly linked to the greatness of Africa’s history of freedom from both pre & post colonialism. As many Africans cheered on Tunisia & Egypt’s revolutions as the new wind of change in Africa’s freedom, many others fell back to old divisions of race, religion, culture & tribalism that has been the bain of African unity between Black & Arab Africa long before & after Dr. Kwame Nkrumah called for a United States of Africa & became the physical symbol of unity between Black & Arab Africa with his marriage to Fathia Rizk of Egypt.

“Fathia Nkrumah (1932–2007; born Fathia Rizk; Arabic: فتحية رزق‎), was the Egyptian First Lady of the newly-independent Ghana as the wife of the Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, its first president. Fathia Nkrumah was born and brought up in Zeitoun, a district of Cairo to a Coptic family. She was the third daughter of a civil servant who died early and Fathia was raised by her mother single-handedly after her husband’s death…Nkrumah proposed to marry her. Her mother was reluctant to see another of her children marry a foreigner and quit the country, as Fathia’s brother had left Egypt with his English wife. Fathia explained that Nkrumah was an anti-colonial hero, like Nasser, yet her mother refused to speak to her or bless the marriage. Nkrumah married Fathia the evening of her arrival in Ghana: New Year’s Eve, 1957-1958…Fathia Nkrumah was a very young wife and mother of three very young children when her husband was overthrown in Ghana’s first successful military coup d’état on February 24, 1966. She had to take her children to Cairo, Egypt to be raised there while her husband went to exile.”READ MORE

From facebook to twitter, to blogs & in many homes throughout the world there are heated discussions amongst Africans & African descendants on Egypt’s so called “African identity problem” that sees today’s Egyptians as Arab invaders who committed genocide  & enslaved  Egypt’s original residents, much like many Arabs & others who sympathize with the plight of Palestinians have labeled Israel & its Jewish state. Many Black Africans & their descendants including some Egyptians do not count today’s Arabs in Egypt as Africans & the media completely dismissing the fact that Egypt is in Africa as they report on the revolution shows that we still have a long way to go in recognizing the dream of what President Gamal Abdel-Nasser of Egypt & Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana not only expressed but embodied for Africa.

“Whenever Arab-African ties come into question, one cannot help remembering the days when colonialism was the threat closer to home and one Arab leader was always at hand to lend support to those Africans who wished to throw off its yoke. That was the time of solidarity, of a common Arab-African dream, of nations taking their first steps to freedom. That was Nasser’s time. The solidarity between Arab and non-Arab Africans is not a historic accident. It is rooted in a common vision, drawn from a common cause. It all started in the late 50s and early 60s, when Africa’s leaders-to-be were still freedom fighters, and Nasser was their closest ally. For Nasser and his fellow African leaders, African liberation was a historic duty. They lived and died for the cause of national liberation. Few Arab leaders of Nasser’s stature were involved as intimately as he was in the struggle to liberate Africa from colonial rule. It was this dedication to the cause of African liberation that endeared him to like-minded African leaders. What they had in common was a radical agenda of social change, a task they knew would not be easy, a mission that remains, to this day, incomplete…” READ MORE

There is no denying the long fought turmoil & hatred passed down generation after generation between Black Africans & their Arab counterparts in Africa & specifically brought to the world stage by the modern day continued enslavement & genocide in nations like Sudan- who just came to finally win their freedom just months ago through secession, which separates the Black Sudanese in South & the Arab Sudanese in the North. What has been seen as religious infighting between Christians in the South & Muslims in the North goes deeper than religious infighting & can clearly be seen in the division between color lines because there are Black Sudanese who are Muslim just as well as Christians, yet they have still been enslaved & deprived of their freedom by Arab leadership dominance in Sudan. The stupidity in color division is that many of these so called fairer & superior Arabs are darker than the so called Black Africans, a perfectly idiotic ode to the internalization of the teachings & mental enslavement passed down by European & American slave masters & colonizers.

It seems all over Africa there is always a certain hatred or division targeting Northerners as outsiders of every nation, whether it is in free democratic Ghana or war torn Sudan or Cote d’Ivoire. Africa in moving forward to true freedom, justice & unity needs to not only address its “Arab issue”, but also its northern divisions & other “isms” that separate us on our shared homeland amongst color, religion, tribe, region & class lines. Arab or Black African, non of us have clean hands in the killing, suffering & enslavement of generations of Africans through the years & even in present time in some nations. We have to deal with the wounds of our past, specifically the past & present internalized degradation of slavery that has never been properly addressed or abolished in Africa by Africans Black & Arab alike.  In order to move forward to heal for our future, we must acknowledge & make amends with our collective past from Africa to her Diaspora. Africa must unite because it has been proven time & time again that “United We Stand , Divided We Fall“.

When will Africans collectively recognize that we continue to do the bidding of our former colonizers & current neo-colonialists through our continued infighting & desire for separation instead of finding intelligent solutions for unity?  African unity by design has always been the biggest fear of demagogues, slave masters, separatist, colonizers & neo-colonialists because a continent of people with unparalleled resources  & intellectual power will surely be an unparalleled  super power if it ever unified to recognize & exert its full power & potential. Africa, since slavery was never meant to be made whole by those of the world who saw its true potential & threat because the beauty, glory, power & worth of anything made whole is worth much more than the sum of its broken pieces. Dr. Nkrumah’s vision was so simple & was perfect for his time, this time & anytime, but when one is broken even a simple vision can not be recognized until one is made whole. It is time for Africa to be made whole !

We all have a part to play in our forward movement as a continent- individually & nationally.  The young people of Africa have shown time & time again in their everyday lives that they do not want to carry the divisionism & separations of their individual nations & their collective continent’s past into shaping their future! The world has watched the young people of Egypt bring a nation together across religious, age, sex, class & color lines in hope for true freedom that will define a new Africa, where we can come together to recognize the dream that Dr. Nkrumah’s life & legacy exemplifies along with the vision in freedom that both he & President Nasser fought to see come to fruition. The younger generation live in a world made border-less through technology &  have & will continue to use it to fight the powers of demagoguery & division locally & globally.

“Repressive regimes thrive on ignorance –the ignorance of their people, and the ignorance of the outside world. For too long, the image of Africa has festered under the haze of the Western world’s ignorance and its resulting apathy. A relevant example of this is the unofficial annexation of Tunisia, Algeria and the continent’s other northern nations, for reasons of race alone, to the Middle East. (Though the majority of Egypt’s land mass is in Africa, a portion of that nation, the Sinai Peninsula, is in the Middle East, making it transcontinental.) Africa is, and has been for the past several centuries, a continent of artificial boundaries and of divisions constructed along the lines of race, class, tribal and ethnic grouping — divisions cleverly constructed for the purposes of conquering. It is an infrastructure that, by design, lends itself to dictatorship, to the powerlessness of the masses…” READ MORE

Each one teach one & let’s hold our truths in our proclaimed desire for peace, justice & freedom for not only Africa but for humanity to be self evident as we take Ghandi’s words to heart , mind, voice, action & soul by becoming “the change we want to see in the world”!

“Kwame Nkrumah inspired other leaders to break the yoke of colonialism. He had a vision of Africa linked by road, bridges, rail and air transport, just like in America. He started a transcontinental high way from Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana and stopped after he was kicked out of office, in La Cote d’Ivoire. He funded a feasibility study that showed that the Congo river alone could supply all the continent’s electricity! (That is why he sent a Ghanaian Army Force to keep the peace after the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba was asassinated by the Belgians). The former colonial masters were concerned about the loss of ready markets for their goods, as these countries were now trading with Russia, China and the eastern European countries. America was interested in Africa for extension of its ideologies, markets and position as the only super power. Every African leader toppled after independence has CIA prints all over them! The Judas in the case of Nkrumah, was an African American named Brown who was his mate at Lincoln. Brown was made US Ambassador to Ghana, and he fed info back to the CIA who paid the Army officers who made the coup about $3m! (the 30 shekels was affected by inflation!:))You can check archival material that has been released 30 years after the 1966 coup in Ghana...”READ MORE

“At the age of ninety-three, Du Bois was invited to Ghana by President Kwame Nkrumah to assume editorship of the Encyclopedia Africana, a monumental project involving scholars from around the world. He assumed Ghanaian citizenship and lived in the land of his fathers until his death at the age of ninety-five on August 27, 1963– the day before the March on Washington that marked the climax of the civil rights struggle in the United States..” SOURCE

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“First Lady Fathia Nkrumah, the wife of Ghana’s first President Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, with their daughter Samia reading her husband’s book, ‘Challenge of the Congo’ in 1967. If the prospective union between Ghana and Egypt was such a threat to the then dying British Empire, what more could we say of the then prospective union between all countries of Africa – the very vision Nkrumah symbolized? What can we say of the power that symbol still wields? Regardless of whether Samia Nkrumah is ‘her father’s daughter’ or ‘her own woman’ let us not forget about the symbolic power of her ‘Africa Must Unite’ becoming” READ MORE

“We must change our attitudes, our minds, we must realise that from now on, we are no more a colonial but a free and independent people. I made a point that we are going to create our own African personality and identity. It’s the only way that we can show the world that we are ready for own own battles..We have won the battle and we again re-dedicate ourselves …Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa…Freedom is not something that one people can bestow on another as a gift. Thy claim it as their own and none can keep it from them. We face neither East nor West: We Face Forward.Forward Ever, Backward Never“- Dr. Kwame Nkrumah

IT’S TIME FOR AFRICA!

Billions have been raised so far in charitable donations for Haiti, but more & more Haitians are dying every day after surviving being buried alive in years of poverty & the rubble of the earthquake, having only their sheer will to live to hold onto. International bureaucracy & power struggles of people with invested interest more in economy than humanity is becoming the continued cause of many Haitians being handed their final death certificates.

We need to be diligent & aware about keeping up with who is controlling the purse strings of all the humanitarian aid & the future sovereignty of Haiti. We can raise all the money we want to help Haiti, but Haiti will still be in the same condition & possibly worse, with an achieved loss of sovereignty if Haitians & Pan-Africanists at large do not come to the aid of their brothers & sisters in attaining & retaining economic empowerment & sovereignty. We have seen throughout the history of the world that a nation’s power & health rests upon its economic power & health; however for many African nations & Diasporans, genuinely fighting to attain this reality has been less & less of a priority because it has been easier & less work to collect foreign aid in return for resources, to leave the health & upliftment from poverty of their citizens to NGO’s & to just silently exist without much fight nor change within broken systems of governance, as long as the few in power continue to hold their titles as beneficiaries.

“Something in the nature of an economic revolution is required. Our development has been held back for too long by the colonial-type economy. We need to reorganize entirely, so that each country can specialize in producing the goods and crops for which it is best suited…..We have the blessing of the wealth of our vast resources, the power of our talents and the potentialities of our people. Let us grasp now the opportunities before us and meet the challenge to our survival. ” Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s First President

We need to be diligent about not turning a blind eye to where all the Haitian relief funds are going when there are so many still begging & waiting for relief. Where is all that money being allocated to? Who is watching over the money & making the decisions on how it is spent? These are the questions we should never stop asking as we give of ourselves in charity because what is the point of charity when the situation of the people is never helped, but rather seems to get worse than better? This is the question we should be asking the Red Cross & the 10,000 + NGO/charities that were in Haiti prior to the quake & the numerous more that are in Haiti now.

“We shall measure our progress by the improvement in the health of our people; by the number of children in school, and by the quality of their education; by the availability of water and electricity in our towns and villages, and by the happiness which our people take in being able to manage their own affairs. The welfare of our people is our chief pride, and it is by this that my Government will ask to be judged.” Dr. Kwame Nkrumah

February honors Black History month in America- we should not & can not allow the history of Black people throughout Africa & her Diaspora to be written in the same way in the next decade as it has been written in the past because that only will show the lack of forward movement & the acceptance of stagnation amongst Black people globally. If this decade is going to be diffrent than the last decade for Haiti & Black people globally, then we must recognize our common struggle, the same struggle that became the catalyst for the movement of Pan-Africanism.

We need this new decade to be a revival of Pan-Africanism with new, young, intelligent, concerned, enlightened, awake, aware, unabashed,unbought, unbossed, pride filled Black people in the likeness of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, W.E.B Dubois, Jomo Kenyatta, Marcus Garvey,Patrice Lumumba, Edward Wilmot Blyden, Ahmed Sékou Touré ,Gamal Abd El Nasser,Haile Selassie,Bob Marley, Fela Anikulapo Kuti etc. -everyday people turned leaders who knew,understood & accepted that although they have been spread all over the world, their legacy empowerment & economic freedom is intertwined in the legacy, empowerment & economic freedom of Africa-the spiritual birthplace of home. The type of feeling of home where one always comes back to pay homage while seeking the guidance & comfort of mama Africa’s bosom -the only true mother of our blood & roots regardless of our adopted mother nations.

There are the Kimmie Weeks of Africa & the Wyclef Jean’s of the Diaspora, who need to join forces with the likes of people like Samia Yaba Christina Nkrumah, daughter of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, who has decided to take on the mantle of her father by starting a new intelligent revolution toward real resolution. There needs to be a new era/new decade of Pan-Africanism with a Pan-African summit based on the original teachings & goals of empowerment & health through our collective economic freedom at the forefront.

“She is emerging as the new face of the current crop of selfless continental African leaders who think more about the development and prosperity of sub-Saharan Africa, first and foremost than looting from the continent.” Ghanaweb.com.

Sami Nkrumah & the growing crop of new thinkers & leaders are the only way to make this new decade, a decade where Africa & the Diaspora truly gets our house in order in efforts to write our own history in the manner that we would like to be recognized & heralded. We can’t rest on touting the legacy & greatness of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah or Toussaint L’Ouverture when there has been little to no forward movement created by the generations after them, in terms of the level of global respect & conditions of Africans & her Diasporans.

“Achieving political and economic liberation, social justice and national and continental unity including the African Diaspora are yet to be realized.” Samia Nkrumah

Pan-African movement
“Movement dedicated to establishing independence for African nations and cultivating unity among black people throughout the world. It originated in conferences held in London (1900, 1919, 1921, 1923) and other cities. W.E.B. Du Bois was a principal early leader. The important sixth Pan-African conference (Manchester, 1945) included Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah. The first truly intergovernmental conference was held in Accra, Ghana, in 1958, where Patrice Lumumba was a key speaker. The Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) was founded by Robert M. Sobukwe and others in South Africa in 1959 as a political alternative to the African National Congress, which was seen as contaminated by non-African influences. The founding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU; now the African Union) by Julius Nyerere and others in 1963 was a milestone, and the OAU soon became the most important Pan-Africanist organization.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60U0IV20100131

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/haiti/story/1455459.html

http://mashable.com/2010/01/13/haiti-red-cross-donations/

http://open.salon.com/blog/ezili_danto/2009/10/13/oil_in_haiti_-_economic_reasons_for_the_unus_occupation

“When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.” — Jomo Kenyatta, Pan-Africanist & first president of Kenya

“It is said, of course that we have no capital, no industrial skill, no communications, no internal markets, and that we cannot even agree among ourselves how best to utilize our resources for our own social needs…Yet all the stock exchanges in the world are pre-occupied with Africa’s gold, diamonds, uranium, platinum, copper and iron ores. Our CAPITAL flows out in streams to irrigate the whole system of Western economy. Fifty-two per cent of the gold in Fort Knox at this moment, where the USA stores its bullion, is believed to have originated from OUR shores. Africa provides more than 60 per cent of the world’s gold. A great deal of the uranium for nuclear power, of copper for electronics, of titanium for supersonic projectiles, of iron and steel for heavy industries, of other minerals and raw materials for lighter industries – the basic economic might of the foreign Powers – comes from OUR continent.” Dr. Kwame Nkrumah

http://ghanaianoracle.wordpress.com/the-history-of-ghana/

The Achievements and Failures of President Kwame Nkrumah
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/history/cia_nkrumah.php

Richard Helms (CIA) file on Nkrumah
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/history/cia_nkrumah.php

“Countrymen, the task ahead is great indeed, and heavy is the responsibility; and yet it is a noble and glorious challenge – a challenge which calls for the courage to dream, the courage to believe, the courage to dare, the courage to do, the courage to envision, the courage to fight, the courage to work, the courage to achieve – to achieve the highest excellencies and the fullest greatness of man. Dare we ask for more in life? ”
Dr. Kwame Nkrumah -Address to the National Assembly. 12 June 1965