African Liberation Day: New Approaches Necessary – (Part 1)

In ten days’ time, those of us from the Vincentian community who are concerned about matters of heritage and solidarity will once more be commemorating African Liberation Day.

With a local history which spans almost four decades, African Liberation Day (ALD for short), has become very much a part of the Vincentian activities calendar, though not always as well supported as in times in the past.{{more}}

ALD has grown from its origins on the African continent to a very international event, observed by not only Africans at home and their descendants worldwide, but also by the international community as a whole. It has its roots in the colonization of Africa, the enslavement and dehumanization of its peoples and the rape of that continent’s precious resources.

Following the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884, at which European nations divided Africa amongst themselves, drawing lines of “possession” willy-nilly on the map, ignoring historical, cultural and ownership realities, only the Kingdom of Ethiopia, and Liberia, founded as a colony for ex-slaves from the USA, remained independent by the time the Europeans engulfed the world in the first of two global wars in 1914. By the outbreak of the second World War in 1939, Egypt and South Africa, blood-dripping apartheid system and all, had joined the less than a handful of independent African states.

It took the significant weakening of the colonial powers in the wars, continued resistance and determined struggle for independence to bring about the liberation of many African states. Libya, Sudan, Tunisia and Morocco all achieved political independence between 1951 and 1956, but it took the advent to power of the Pan-Africanist, Kwame Nkrumah, who led Ghana to independence in 1957, to make the qualitative difference.

Under Nkrumah’s leadership, the first Conference of Independent African states was held in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, on April 15, 1958. That Conference made the historic call for the observance of African Freedom Day, to mark and reinforce the struggle against colonialism and to liberate the entire African continent. That was the genesis of African Liberation Day. It was given further impetus at the historic gathering of African leaders in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on May 25, 1963, which established the Organization of African Unity (OAU). That meeting also made a clear commitment to freedom for all African peoples and formally changed African Freedom Day to African Liberation Day, to be henceforth observed on May 25 of each year.

Focus on colonialism and apartheid

From the outset then, ALD had its focus on colonialism, apartheid and racism. That focus was best emphasized by the historic speech of Emperor Haile Selassie to the United Nations in October 1963, immortalized in Bob Marley’s classic “WAR”, of which the following extracts clearly make the case for a global struggle of the African people to free the continent:

“….until the philosophy which holds one race superior and the other inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned…..

the colour of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes……until the basic human rights are guaranteed to all without regard to race….until the ignoble and unhappy regimes which that hold our brothers in Angola, in Mozambique and South Africa have been toppled and destroyed……..until all Africans stand up and speak as free beings, equal in the eyes of all men, as in Heaven…………………………………………………………………………..

We Africans will fight if necessary and we know we shall win, as we are confident in the victory of good over evil……”

There could not have been a more clarion call for African liberation, nor a justification for ALD. Much success has been achieved in the half century since then. The ugly faces of colonialism and apartheid, if not yet racism, have been erased from the African continent. The most famous prisoner of the dreaded Robben Island prison in South African rode the tide of global solidarity and organized struggle to bury apartheid and become President Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black President. Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Guinea Bissau have all thrown off colonial shackles. Africa has entered a new phase.

In recognition of this, so too must our own focus on African liberation and ALD. Our level of discussion must now deal with current African realities, challenges and possibilities. It is all well and good for us to sport our finest African garbs, to proudly display our heritage on the occasion. But we can do those for Black History Month or Emancipation Month in August. We need to go beyond that in speaking of African liberation.

That is the conversation in which I would like to participate in the second part of this article, next week, Inshallah.

Renwick Rose is a community activist and social commentator.