Building an A-APRP: What’s the Point?

The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) is not the first Pan-African organization in the glorious history of African people. The Garvey Movement, which was spread primarily by the organization Marcus Garvey himself founded, the Universal Negro Improvement Association/African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), is over 100 years old.  The Garvey Movement has spawned, inspired and influenced a multitude of organizations, movements and Pan-African Leaders up to the present, including the A-APRP.

In 1945 the Fifth Pan-African Congress was held in Manchester, England at the end of the Second Imperialist War (or World War II. We call it an imperialist war because it was fought mostly by and between colonizing imperialist countries like Germany, Japan, England, France, U.S., etc for the sole purpose of maintaining and expanding their domination over the colonized and exploited nations of the world). The Fifth Pan-African Congress represented a critical point in the intensification of the radical Pan-African Movement. At this congress, the call was made for the building of MASS-BASED Political Parties throughout the length and breadth of the African world, especially on the continent. The call for Mass Based Parties, which were financed and controlled completely by Africans, was both a positive acknowledgement of as well as a logical development to the Garveyite tradition.

IMPORTANCE OF BUILDING REVOLUTIONARY PARTIES

Ancestor Kwame Ture (formerly known as Stokely Carmichael), former A-APRP Central Committee member while speaking at a conference on Malcolm X in 1990 in Havana, Cuba made the following statement:

 “A Spontaneous Movement can bring down an unjust system. We’ve seen it. Examples of history exists. But it cannot construct. In order to construct you must have an [permanently] organized force.” – Ancestor Kwame Ture

The history of the African Independence Movement validates Kwame Ture’s point. Formal colonialism in Africa was overcome in the majority of African states led by a variety of political forces. Some states were led by non-violent mass movements, some by armed struggles led by political movements or political parties and others by vanguard political parties which mobilized the masses (in coordination with mass movements that were sparked by the masses) to victory.

But even the revolutionary forces leading various African territories to independence were at different levels of political development and maturity. Those who had the vision, organization and political will to put in place the building blocks for post-independence development WHILE at the same time fighting to take down the old colonial order, tended to have the a longer revolutionary existence in power. Examples include the Democratic Party of Guinea-African Democratic Rally (PDG-RDA) in Guinea-Conakry and the Convention People’s Party (CPP) in Ghana.

The function of building an A-APRP has two primary and complementary requirements:  1) To work for the achievement of ideological unity amongst our people. Ideological unity such that the basic democratic and revolutionary principles which we seek to collectively live and work by are systematically studied, developed, understood and practiced by all of its members and 2) To develop, build and institutionalize a political-organizational structure that can facilitate the eternalempowerment of the masses of African people spread across the planet. Empowerment in a way that the vast human and material resources of Africa and African people are efficiently used to improve the quality of life of and ensure the security of the African masses both at home and abroad.

This effort by its very nature is a long term fight! It is not a quick fix. It is not a microwave process. This is why the A-APRP says the only program of the A-APRP at the present time is to build the A-APRP. The A-APRP as conceptualized by Kwame Nkrumah and others, is in the PROCESS of being built and does not exist yet! While we know this may sound confusing or even contradictory, it is true. We exist as an entity and as an organization, yes. But the QUALITATIVE  level of development described by Kwame Nkrumah is still under construction. By working to build an A-APRP, we are seeking to lay the groundwork for a future society that our people will bring into being. We are doing this construction simultaneously as the present exploitative system currently dominating the world, known as capitalism, is in the process of being done away with by the democratic and freedom loving people of the world.

COMPLIMENTARY NATURE OF PEOPLE’S MOVEMENTS AND REVOLUTIONARY PARTIES

All political parties whether revolutionary or oppressive, whether elitist orientated or mass orientated are born from social-political movements. For example, The Democratic Party of Guinea-African Democratic Rally (PDG-RDA) of Guinea-Conakry was a product of the movement of African people suffering under the oppressive French colonial domination in so-called Francophone Africa in the 1940s. The Lowndes County Freedom Organization (or LCFO, which was the first Black Panther Party) came into being as an outgrowth of the African Human (Civil) Rights Movement in the United States in the 1960s.

The political objective of the A-APRP is Revolutionary Pan-Africanism: The Total Liberation and Unification of Africa Under Scientific Socialism. The A-APRP, or any revolutionary party for that matter, cannot achieve its long term objectives or fulfill its true mission without the success of and an organic connection to a mass movement. It is both elitist and counter-productive for any truly revolutionary political party to divorce itself from political movements that are born from the people’s genuine desire for justice, freedom and development. Whether the various Landless People’s Movements that are fighting for Land Reclamation and Land Reform in places like Kenya, Azania/South Africa, Namibia, Brazil, Columbia, and Pacific Islands etc. Whether the Black Lives Matter Movement gaining steam in the U.S., Caribbean and South America. The people’s social movements (working to bring immediate end to systems and practices of exploitation of the people) and revolutionary political parties (seeing long-term power and development by/for the masses) must find common ground and working unity between each other.

Revolutionary Parties, which by nature seek long-term planned development and stability, must give encouragement and support to the various people’s movements work while at the same time challenging themselves and the movement to also seek long term solutions and institutions post-victory. We join and help build coalitions around issues like Zionism, the Military-Police-Prison-Industrial Complex etc. We work to build African United Fronts (AUFs), Anti-Imperialist fronts and form alliances against all forms of Imperialism in Africa, Asia and the Americas. At the same time, we respect the actions and work of those in the global African community and other oppressed communities that engage in activist activities by going to and participating in their organized protests and/or giving them space at our events to promote their positions and activities amongst our people, as their success is our success and vice versa.

A-APRP with Members of Black Lives Matter, N’COBRA and New Era Chicago @ African Liberation Day 2017 event in the U.S.

It is the historic responsibility and obligation of both Pan-African/Revolutionary parties such as the A-APRP and movement organizations to find the common thread in our respective work and align ourselves to create a continuum between the destruction of the old, wicked, exploitative world order and the construction of the new, just, democratic order that we all seek and desire. Ahmed Sekou Toure in his book Strategy and Tactics of the Revolution, speaking on the people’s class describes it as “…all the social strata which fundamentally have as their common interest in the struggle which they are carrying, the conquest of all powers, the exercise of all powers in a democratic sense, for an always more asserted social justice, excluding thereby all forms of arbitrariness or discrimination.” For our part the A-APRP continues to call and work for a broad African United Front of organizations in our community and systematically work to build the future world for the supreme interests of the people’s class.