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The A-APRP emerges from and heralds an intensification of the African and larger worldwide struggles for democratic rights, for national independence and unity; and for scientific socialism. At the same time, it uncompromisingly and unceaselessly fights for the inevitable destruction of capitalism, imperialism, racism, zionism, apartheid and neo-colonialism.
The emergence of the Pan-African movement in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ushered in concrete efforts at building mass, All-African organisations. The Pan-African movement assumed its modern organisational expression and form in 1900 with the formation of the Pan-African Conference spearheaded by Henry Sylvester Williams, Bishop Alexander Walters and W. E. B. DuBois; and later the South African Native Congress led by Jababu; the Universal Negro Improvement Associations led by Marcus Garvey, the National Congress of British West Africa led by Joseph Casely Hayford; the Liga Africana of the Portuguese colonies of Africa and South America led by Jose de Magalhaes; and the African Democratic Rally (RDA) of the French colonies of West Africa.
The 5th Pan-African Congress, co-chaired by Kwame Nkrumah just after of the second, European imperialist war (so-called World War II), marked the beginning of a new period which saw the intensification of the mass phase of the African Revolution; and the emergence of new forms of revolutionary, mass, Pan-African political organisation adequate to the tasks of that stage; the stage of political independence. This process gained intensity and speed with the organisation of the Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG) in 1947 under the leadership of President Sékou Touré, and of the Convention People’s Party of Ghana (CPP) in 1949 under the leadership of President Kwame Nkrumah. In less than a decade, mass parties spread to every corner of the African world; the tip of an iceberg, which, when revealed, shows the true proportions, speed and direction of the African Revolution. Two major watershed events occurred in 1957 and 1958, the attainment of independence by Ghana and Guinea and the convening of the first All-African People’s Conference in Ghana, signalling the birth of a new phase in the African Revolution. In a short 12 years since the subjective conditions had ripened, making it possible to firmly and irrevocably root the Pan-African movement in Africa, its birthplace and only true home to create for the first time, a genuine, mass revolutionary, All-African political organisation.
Correctly analysing this new reality, Kwame Nkrumah published a book in 1968 Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare in which he called for the “formation of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) to co-ordinate policies and to direct action… A political party linking all liberated territories and struggling parties under a common ideology; and thus smoothing the way for continental unity… While at the same time greatly assisting the prosecution of the All-African People’s War.” (ibid, pages 56-57)
The publication of his Handbook and two other works of Kwame Nkrumah, Consciencism in 1964, and Class Struggle in Africa in 1969, provided the Pan-Africanism movement with an ideological and organisational framework, which enabled it to initiate a worldwide effort to lay the foundation for the emergence of the A-APRP. The only programme was and remains: Build the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party.
The primary focus of our work is temporarily on the college campus, politically educating and recruiting an initial cadre from amongst the revolutionary African intelligentsia. Our immediate task is to organise A-APRP work-study cells on college campuses in the African world thereby, creating an initial base from which to launch a worldwide campaign to politically educate and organise the masses of African people who are scattered, suffering and struggling in every corner of the world.
This work began to take concrete expression and form with the creation of the first A-APRP work-study cells in Guinea Conakry in 1968 and then the U.S. in 1972; and later in Canada, the Caribbean and Europe. Since 1973, the A-APRP has recruited Africans born in over 33 countries in Africa; the Caribbean; North, Central and South America; and Europe. In addition, it has developed a worldwide support base. This is testimony to the quantity and quality of work done to build the A-APRP thus far and speaks even more eloquently of the future potential to build A-APRP chapters throughout the African world.