The following article is the transcript from the presentation given by President Yejide Orunmila during the Black is Back Coalition’s February 18th livestream 

African people have been fighting for our freedom since Africa was first attacked by Europe.  This has always pitted our struggle for self-determination against the colonial mode of production. We are talking about a mode of production that raped, pillaged, enslaved and colonized people and lands using both ends of the rifle, machetes and any other weapons of mass destruction they could think of.

The colonizer is always developing strategies to infiltrate and destroy our efforts to free ourselves from their grip.  Why?  Because without us they wouldn’t survive.  

During his 2023 State of the Union address, Joseph Biden highlighted how much his administration has accomplished for the people of this country.  He capped it off by saying that the United States is the only country that has faced adversity and come back stronger than it did before. He alluded to the United States being a great beacon of freedom. 

The United States is still the Greatest Purveyor of Violence 

Of course, this is the narrative of the colonizer.   What do the colonized say?  Martin Luther King Jr. said the United  States was the greatest purveyor of violence.   That was in 1967 and they killed him. This was a man who touted non-violence  in the face of violence and the United States killed him. 

In 2023 we started the year with the murder of Tyre Nichols at the hands of the colonial police.  It doesn’t matter that the police were black. It matters that they are agents of the colonizer, carrying out colonial law.  Unlike their white counterparts, however,  who can kill and get off; they go directly to jail. 

In my lifetime there has been constant war managed by U.S. imperialism.  I was a child, but remember Oliver North and what the U.S. government called the Iran-Contra Affair.  They called it a “scandal” attempting to minimize the gigantic scope of what occurred. 

The Iran-Contra Affair was a serious network of U.S. agents and government officials that attempted to undermine the Nicaraguan fight for self-determination by developing an opposition (The Contra)  and  supplying them with guns and money in exchange for cocaine that was sold in the United States as a fundraiser in support of the the U.S. campaign against the Sandinistas. 

This influx of cocaine in the U.S. led to the crack epidemic in African communities. This scandal had horrific consequences for millions of people around the world.  It’s like defining Christopher Columbus “discovering” America as a little white lie.  The colonizer trivializes its impact on the people they devastate. 

The Chairman says they are not devils and that we must be dialectical ,but, this is diabolical. Right? 

Colonial Policy has always opposed African Self-Determination 

The United States, the place where they say you can “bring your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore”, was just a call for desperate Europeans who sought  a better life for themselves and did so on the backs of Africans.   

In order to get that better way of life, they had to stand at the feet of every hanged negro, rape every black woman, call every black man a rapist, burn a cross at every home, bomb every church and drop bombs on thriving African communities.  

The poor wretched colonizers, coming from desperate, starving, filthy and violent places,  to a land that was carved out of the blood native people. They enthusiastically became settlers establishing their little house on the prairie as long as they were willing to defend it by fighting and killing native peoples who have used that prairie for centuries.

No, Joe.  The United States is not the beacon of freedom you say it is.  It is, as the Chairman says, a prison of colonized nations. 

FBI is an agency of the colonial U.S. Gov’t

So, when the FBI created this indictment against the Uhuru Movement they were attacking the ongoing struggle for African self-determination.  The African Freedom Struggle.  A movement that had set a goal to extricate ourselves from the binds of colonial domination. 

Like Harriet, Nat, Marcus, Malcolm, Nkrumah, Sankara, the Panthers, Bishop and so many other African people that had fought for freedom,  the Party has set a course and are organizing our way out. The Party and the Chairman are the Vanguard.  

What is the freedom are we talking about?  We are talking about a freedom that overturns the current social world order. A freedom that destroys the colonizer and by doing so destroys the designation of the colonized. A freedom that frees people and lands up to determine our own future without the ever-looming threat of violence that comes from the colonizer nations.  

The colonizer nations who have historically waged massive campaigns to infiltrate, subvert, kill, and destroy our struggle to protect their parasitism. Without this parasitic relationship to the colonized they would shatter when faced with adversity.  Their success is dependent on our oppression. 

Freedom means overturning the social system 

The Uhuru Movement believes African people should be free. We have rejected the status quo.  We have rejected the centuries long war against our very existence and have the audacity to tell the world that we want our freedom.   Not by cowering in the night.  By organizing a response to the colonizer in every community that we can.  Building organizations and institutions that have become the beacon of light to the African working class. 

We are doing it out in the open. In every community we can, we create Burkina Fasos  (lands of upright men and women). What we create now in times of serious crisis and oppression is  just the baseline of what we can achieve.  Imagine if we had access to all of our resources and land, the incredible things we could accomplish for ourselves.  To know that when we free Africa we  free the world.  

Obviously this is a challenge to the colonizer. This is why they constantly develop strategies to undermine our efforts.   So when they created this indictment and attributed our freedom struggle  to the Russians and not to U.S. colonial violence and the prison of nations they’ve created, they are opening up another campaign of untruths.   

Dangerous Negroes are reborn through the struggle for African Liberation 

Well, they’ve made a mistake, haven’t they?  The Uhuru Movement is prepared to put the colonial state on trial if they ever try to pursue their delusionary indictments. 

We are dialecticians.  Political Scientists.  Oppressed people with eyes, ears and brain that can figure stuff out.  All we have to do is look back at our history.  In every nook and cranny, around every corner, the presence of the colonizer is there.  Foot on neck, squeezing the life out of us.  They have targeted entire movements like the UNIA and The Panthers, Sojourners for Truth and Justice  or individuals like Claudia Jones and Paul Robeson, Ida B. Wells, MLK Jr., Assata – these were the dangerous negros. 

Well, the Uhuru Movement are the dangerous negros now.  Pushing back on every front. Moving ahead to accomplish our mission and create steeled cadre forces to bring Africa its liberation.

Watch Now

The stolen labor of African people and the theft of the world’s resources is the pedestal upon which the entire colonizer white world stands on.   Hence capitalism was born parasitic, demanding the necessity of colonialism to sustain itself in countries throughout the world.

Though this comes as no surprise to African people who have been under the assault of colonial capitalism for centuries, the theory sets Africans and any others on the path toward ending the oppression and exploitation that robs us of our humanity – this requires that we destroy the parasite. 

This is the genesis for African women who want to end the oppression we have endured. 

We recognize that the assault on Africa happened to our whole people. African women as a sector of our people experience special oppression that came about as a result of being colonially dominated.  

The attack on Africa brought about the worldwide system of terror that used our bodies as the factories for the production of new workers, slave labor for the production of raw material, and made patriarchal policy in the colonies – patriarchy that had existed as a system of oppression in Europe for thousands of years.  Now Africans are trapped by it.  

What had been transitional communal roles such as caretakers, food producers and preparers had become societal edicts for women,  on top of which we were now forced into producing for the colonizers.  

African historian Wunyabari.O. Maloba in his book, African Women in Revolution says:

“It was colonial policies that  reshaped African social norms, that ‘unlike the precolonial period, where ‘in many parts of Africa, women who farmed had rights over land,’ under colonialism the imposition of private ownership of land left most women without their ‘customary right’ to land.’” 

The conditions that African women experience today are not a result of natural development but an attack that shifted us away from being self-productive to producing for the colonizers and this resulted into the change of the entire economic and social landscape of the world and the relationship that African people have with one another.

African people were forced to participate in the colonial mode of production that upholds parasitic capitalism as Chairman Omali Yeshitela so brilliantly explains in his 2022 report to the African People’s Socialist Party Plenary:

“Our theory [African Internationalism] provides us with the scientific proof that our colonial oppression is the origin of the parasitic capitalist system that rapes, humiliates, and exploits Africa, Africans, and the majority of the world. Eventually, we came to understand that this rape and pillage of Africa by Europe matured into a global, colonial mode of production that rescued Europeans from feudalist ignorance, poverty, and oppression.”

Pan-Africanism and Neocolonialism the perfect storm

African flag independence did not bring relief as it gave rise to neo-colonialism and the ascendency of the African petty-bourgeoisie, the most radical of them using pan-Africanism as the rallying cry to organize itself. 

Luwezi Kinshasa Secretary-General of the African Socialist International writes of the failures of pan-Africanism to meet the needs of the revolution in his article, The historical class struggle within the African Liberation Movement, published in the Burning Spear Newspaper:

“The 5th Pan-African Congress did not mobilize Africans to fight the United States, which emerged out of the second imperialist world war as the new imperialist world leader. The main target of this PAC was the colonial powers from Europe like France, Germany, Portugal, and others. The Pan-Africanist pacifist approach left Lumumba vulnerable in the face of his enemies from within his own organization. Since the Pan-Africanists in Manchester were never concerned with class interest inside the African community, their non-violent method meant that they did not anticipate that they would have to fight the colonial state to get to power. This meant that our best leaders, like Lumumba, Sobukwe, and others, were vulnerable at the hands of our class and national enemies who had control of the State and were prepared to strike at our leaders at any time. Nkrumah himself, who failed to grasp the class question, was overthrown by the same social forces that murdered [Patrice] Lumumba five years earlier.”

Abdulrahman Mohammed Babu who worked with Lumumba and Nkrumah was a Zanzibar-born Marxist and pan-Africanist who played an important role in the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution. He too came to realize that neo-colonial pan-Africanism did not serve the interest of the masses. He was a minister under Julius Nyerere until he was jailed by Nyerere in 1972 for being critical of Nyerere’s model of African socialism failing to address Tanzania’s reliance on raw material exports and for irresponsible and unsustainable nationalization.  He writes in his 1981 book,  African Socialism or Socialist Africa: 

“The main characteristic of [so called] post-colonial Africa is the struggle between the forces of justice equality and self-reliant development (in short, socialism) on the one hand and, on the other, the forces of neo-colonialism, comprador tyranny, arbitrary military-civilian dictatorship, class aggrandizement of social and economic resources and oppression of the people in the name of national progress and development.  The political consciousness of the African masses has developed, by and large, in a social and political environment characterized by an uneven development…”

Socialism is what we are calling for!  A United Socialist Africa is the only way forward and the path to it is painted in black. 

Not only should we destroy colonial capitalism; we have to replace capitalism as the colonial mode of production with socialism to ensure the forward progression of society. 

Socialism is when the workers control the state and own the means of production. That way there can be an assurance of redistribution of wealth, contributing to a more equal society. 

Under socialism, we will be jolted out of the fog of mysticism and economic depravity and driven toward a future that will require the rapid development of the people. 

Practices that had previously been the only source of economic stability, sex work, female genital mutilation (FGM), and other practices that trap women primarily, will fade away as society is opened up to new opportunities.  Worker-owned production will ensure that all of our people can make a living contributing to the development of our nation and most importantly provide financial security for women and other vulnerable sectors of our society, making us less vulnerable.

The need for a revolutionary African women’s organization

You’ve heard us say many times that there is no such thing as women, in general.  There is a difference between the women of the oppressor colonizer nation who benefit from colonial domination and the women of the oppressed colonized nations who suffer as a result of colonial domination.  

Colonizer women, although oppressed because of the patriarchy that existed in Europe, came into the colonial mode of production at the side of their oppressors and reinforced it in the colony. They were the missionaries, the teachers, and the madames who offered strategic points of entry into the colony.

They benefitted from having African women in their homes as servants which gave them the pedestal upon which they launched their struggle for equal rights to their male counterparts.  

They’ve created this narrative that all women are in the same boat.  That patriarchy, male domination over women, is our primary barrier.  However, it has been impossible for them to win this position alone as colonial white women and they have created strategies to adopt colonized and oppressed women to their fight by pandering to the experiences of those women. First with the bourgeois woman’s movement and finally through feminism. 

Feminism encourages equality in order to maintain the status quo within the existing parasitic social structure.  It has African women fighting for equal pay for “women”, while oppressor nation women continue to earn more than African, Indigenous, and Latinx men and women in the U.S.   

Essentially, colonized oppressed people within the U.S. colony are fighting just to catch up to white women,  while white women are fighting to be equal to white men.  Patriarchy cannot explain this dichotomy nor can it explain the many other issues that impact poor working-class colonized people. 

Patriarchy does not explain the overrepresentation of African prisoners in the U.S. Europe, and Canada,  state violence, the overrepresentation of African children kidnapped by the state,  dumpster babies,  neo-colonialism, infant and maternal death, poor healthcare, food deserts, gentrification, ethnic cleansing, proxy wars; just about everything else.  

Yet still, they’ve worked hard to force the false narrative that all women suffer from patriarchy and must band together, using the conditions of the poor and oppressed people they dominated as a springboard for their bourgeois women’s issues.   

White women in the U.S. catapulted from abolition to the fight for women’s suffrage to struggles for equal pay, reproductive rights, and ending sexual violence;  all of which was happening as African women were fighting off sexual violence as low-wage workers in the homes of white women.  

From the very public cases of  Recy Taylor a mother and wife,  who was kidnapped and gang-raped by six white men in 1944, sparking the Movement in Defense of Black Womanhood to Megan Williams who was kidnapped, raped, and tortured by white women and men in West Virginia in 2007;  the sexual violation of black women and girls never garnered the rallying cry of any of bourgeois women’s activism. Especially if white women couldn’t capitalize on it.

In fact, black women have often been depicted as liars or worse, complicit in our own assaults. 

The white women who help their male counterparts win local and national political victories, feign ignorance about the long-standing culture of rape and violence inherent in this parasitic social system, founded on rape and violence. 

The rape of African women benefits white women as much as it does their male counterparts. The children produced are capital that supports the entire white nation.

Only when it is to white women’s political advantage, is the victimization of African and other colonized women used as a prop to bolster their own objectives. 

As expected white women’s adoption of our issues did not improve the material conditions of African and other colonized women, solely because white women sit on the pedestal of colonial capitalism, which robs African people of self-determination.  

This reality laid the groundwork for Black Feminism to use the momentum of the bourgeois feminist movement and the gains and contradictions of the black power revolution of the ’60s to:

1. Make the case for patriarchy as the primary contradiction  based on the misogyny within black organizations up until that time
2. Align African women of the petite bourgeoisie to the bourgeois call for “all women” to fight against patriarchy. 
3. Take the focus away from anti-imperialism to anti-racism.  
4. Try to resolve the contradictions of oppression while upholding the system that oppresses them.   
5. Attempt to use feminism to change the system by becoming part of the system

It doesn’t require the pre-condition of revolution, the destruction of the capitalist system as a motive force leading to the liberation of women.  Black feminism is a petit-bourgeois divisive, unproductive, political line that leads African women away from African liberation and toward an unrealistic stance of self-preservation under white power imperialism.  For these reasons, feminism is not a liberation ideology.  African internationalism is. 

This conclusion laid the foundation for building a revolutionary anti-colonial anti-imperialist African women’s organization that could contend with the popularism of feminism.

The Party creates the African National Women’s Organization 

The African National Women’s Organization (ANWO) is guided by the political theory of African Internationalism, not feminism. African internationalism informs us that colonialism, not patriarchy, is the root of African women’s oppression.  

Making our fight against patriarchy obscures the colonial reality of African women.  

Our existence comes as a result of the attack on Africa, the enslavement and colonial domination of Africa and African people, not because of patriarchy. 

The African National Women’s Organization was born as a strategy of the African Revolution. We were founded by the African People’s Socialist Party in 2015 after having successful African Internationalist conferences on African women in Washington, D.C. in the U.S.  and London England, which were attended by African women from the Caribbean, Africa, the U.S., U.K., and other places in the diaspora.   

These women voted to establish an international organization of African women, to forward our revolutionary aims and objectives.  

Although, the mandate to create an African women’s organization had been written into the resolutions of the African People’s Socialist Party decades earlier. 

We understood that the pursuit of the economic, social, and political emancipation of African women is a vital part of the struggle to free the African nation and defeat white power imperialism. 

I was appointed as the president of ANWO  by Omali Yeshitela the Chairman of the African Socialist International and our first International Executive Committee (IEC) was voted in by the body of the conferences. 

Our initial priorities were to work on the resolutions that were adopted during the conferences which were to:

1. Protect and defend Assata Shakur
2. Organize against African mass incarceration U.S. and U.K.
3. Form Uhuru Kijiji Childcare Collective 
4. Expose the colonial contradiction regarding Immigration and organize against it
5. Organize against  Horizontal Violence (intimate partner violence) 
6. Develop political education to stop the harmful practice of Female Genital Mutilation 
7. Organize against the imperialist wars targeting women, children and men in the Congo and Africa
8. Develop Birth and Reproductive Justice initiatives
9. Develop Economic Development project

The International Executive Committee (IEC) is the highest body of ANWO. It leads the day-to-day affairs and political activities of ANWO including making sure that our work adheres to the resolutions set during our conventions. 

Growth marked by the fight for the African working class 

This year marks seven years of the African National Women’s Organization’s existence. We are still a small organization, led by members who commit to carrying forward the mission of bringing African women into revolutionary life. Our smallness, though not ideal, carries the stretch marks of growth and struggle. 

From the outset, we struggled to define who we were to the world, however, that revealed a lot of internal struggles. ANWO was and remains to be a confusing organization for many feminists and feminist-leaning activists because while we are in favor of equality for African women on one hand;  we are against colonialism in all of its forms including in the form of petit-bourgeois feminism. 

Initially, feminists thought they could carry feminism into our ranks. This became a point of contention because, while feminists aren’t excluded from our membership, the petty-bourgeois class characteristics of feminism required us to spend a lot of time struggling with them to abandon petty-bourgeois aspirations and contribute their skills to the interest of the African working class.   We fought for structure, accountability, and action.  

What was exposed was that some women joined not understanding that they aspire to be the African petty bourgeoisie – a  sector of the African colony that maintains the status quo and who are not particularly interested in becoming the leaders of the African revolution, shapers of our new society.

There are also women who we consider the radical petty bourgeoisie. These women are unhappy with the current social system and are constantly voicing outrage or protest in order to initiate reforms within the capitalist system.

In either instance, the outcome is African women who do not believe that African liberation is possible but join ANWO because it represents the militant politics that they hope to embody.

Liberation requires organization, not anarchy

We are a mass organization which means that any African woman can join.  

We do, however, have objectives that we expect members to contribute to.  

The highest expression of membership is action either on the ground or by supporting with dues.   The African working class demands a flexible self-funded organization that will carry out its interests. 

What we find is that some women are opposed to the strategizing, organizing, and execution that is required to get us closer to our mission; and are drawn to groups or individuals who do not have structure and where political theory does not exist. 

That is anarchy and we are not anarchists.  

This struggle constantly emerges because the characteristic of the African petite bourgeoisie is to be liberal.  

Since they do not believe in African liberation they do not have a vision of a free future. So every action item is tedious, inconvenient, “confusing”, or too hard.  

They do not help solve problems, they present problems.  They suddenly don’t have convertible skills and they do the bare minimum or nothing at all.    

In some cases, they have contempt for the African working class, evidenced by their unwillingness to engage in basic organizing in our communities.

They would rather work hard for capitalist industries or in bourgeois institutions, rather than work hard for the revolution. 

They fear “coming out” as revolutionary, but are ok with being an activist.

We have to engage in the long, hard, important work to build power amongst African women who suffer immeasurably inside the colony. 

The conditions of African women demand organization

There are over 1 million African women who live in combat zones as a result of colonial exploitation.  

Many of us are poor and without access to resources. Many of us are illiterate and are victims of violence on a daily basis. 

There are hundreds of thousands of African girls who are missing. They are forced into prostitution just to make ends meet.  

There are mothers, right now, looking for their children or crying over the bodies of their children.  

This is the world we live in because of capitalism.  

It’s in the interest of African women to destroy parasitic capitalism. In the process of destroying capitalism, African women learn to solve problems and emerge as leaders in the African revolution. 

ANWO remains committed to building that legion of African women who will birth a new world free from colonial domination and parasitic capitalism.

So we have been building campaigns like ArrestCPS and Uhuru Kijiji Childcare Collective in addition to what Erika mentioned in my intro because this is the training ground under which people, our women, and our communities, learn how to become revolutionary. The struggles we engage in while fighting to get our children back,  building community control of welfare, or building our own economic development institution, are all capacity-building for the African revolution. 

These struggles build our political fortitude and bring us to a place where we can come to the final conclusion that regardless of what we do under capitalism, we will continue to struggle for hundreds of years in the future if we don’t destroy colonialism.

We cannot avoid the inevitable that we have to become conscious active revolutionaries. We cannot add any value to this system. 

The only redemption that is worth having is the redemption of the African working class when we burn this system down, wipe it out and begin anew to create a structure where African people and other formally colonized people can live free without having this exploitative parasitic relationship with the colonizer that we have today, as once stated by Comrade Demetrius.

The crisis of imperialism defines our politics

We’re living in a time where the entire imperialist world is targeting Russia because of the Russian-Ukraine conflict. The imperialist targeting of Russia is nothing new because Russia, having developed outside of the colonial mode of production, has been an outlier in Europe for over a century.  

The Party put out a position in support of Russia’s defensive war against Ukraine and ANWO, as a member of the Uhuru Movement, is in support of this position. 

This created a struggle within our own organizing efforts to build the Black Mothers March in Washington, D.C. scheduled for Mother’s Day May 8, 2022.  Two of the 7 black-led “activist” organizations decided to abandon this important work because they did not agree with ANWO’s position.  

One of these organizations that identified itself as a “Black Queer Feminist,” while abandoning the effort to bring black families to Washington D.C. said their position is anti-imperialist, even though their decision to join the worldwide condemnation of Russia is fomented by U.S. imperialism which means that they sided with the U.S. and European imperialism by default.  And their ultimate decision to leave the efforts to organize this March for black families targeted by U.S. imperialism through colonial state-sponsored kidnapping of black children means that they have no interest in the struggles of the African working class. 

This struggle shows that the crisis of imperialism doesn’t escape any part of our existence and thus we must articulate our position.  We must be prepared to not only struggle to find a better understanding but also win people to the correct position. 

African Internationalism leads us to an understanding rooted in dialectics. It isn’t based on feelings but on historical facts that place the interest of the African working class at the center.  We are no longer sitting on the sideline as the objects of history, we are the subject of it. As black women, we have to learn how to explain the world that we are living in so that we can give leadership to anybody.

It’s African women’s responsibility to be the leaders, shapers, and makers of human history.  We must be involved in the revolutionary project to win liberation for our people. It cannot be limited to specific projects like anti-cps. We have to see further than that because if it’s just about getting back this one child back or getting this one family back together;  down the street, somebody else’s child is being taken away.  So, while we are out here, helping and assisting and organizing and fighting with these parents, we are also struggling to come to the final realization that the system must be destroyed in order for this terror to end. 

The African National Women’s Organization is here to be an avenue for African women who have abandoned their allegiance to this social system and want to be a part of the work to find and define what our worldview is.

African internationalism, not feminism, gives us the political acumen to contend with anyone on any issue.  I am so appreciative of the Chairman for studying and for developing this theory and arming the masses of our people with it to use it at our disposal, to fight for the unequivocal freedom and liberation of African people.

Not only that but also to fight on behalf of the African working class, which is the motive force to transform, change and destroy the system of colonial capitalism.

In struggle! 

Uhuru

Yejide Orunmila is the President of the African National Women’s Organization and a leading member of the African People’s Socialist Party. This report was presented at the March 2022 Black Women’s Convention.

This was a real situation in one of the richest cities in the United States,  New York City, where the cost of living is skyrocketing and jobs that pay a living wage for poor and working class women are hard to come by. 

Fortunately for this mother, she approached a member of the African National Women’s Organization (ANWO) who is the founder of the Watoto Freeschool in Brooklyn, NY and is in the midst of organizing ANWO’s Uhuru Kijiji Childcare Collective to complement the paid services she offers at her facility.  

Fortunately for the mother, an African centered therapist was at the facility and was able to help de-escalate the crisis.  Together these African women were able to work out a preliminary plan to help minimize the strain this mother was under, which included enlisting the support of the African father. 

This is just one incident of many that exposes the dire situation of African mothers, not just in the United States but in many places around the world.  

The splintering of African communities 

Gone are the days when the community contributed to the raising of our children.  It wasn’t just mother, it was aunt, uncle, cousin, neighbor, friend, grandparents, who came together to ensure that every African child could grow up supported by the community. 

In the United States, where 60 years ago the main employment for African women was private domestic labor as maids taking care of white women’s homes and children which often meant that mothers had to trust the oversight of their children with someone in their family or from their community.

Following desegregation and changes to laws following the Civil Rights wins of the 1960, different opportunities opened up for African people. As African people chased the resources that brought us out of the protection of African communities and into white neighborhoods and businesses that were previously closed off, we saw a fraying of our communities and a breakdown in the social structure that we created out of necessity. 

The State became the substitute for community. Don’t have enough money to survive in the City they gave it to African women, with requirements that made it nearly impossible for households with African men to be given enough resources.  

No community to help take care of your children? Child Welfare offices sprang up in poor and working class African communities to monitor and exploit situations where working single African mothers struggled to keep their family together. 

Decades later, as the rigors of surviving under a growing oppression spurred by the crisis of imperialism, we are suspicious of each other and fearful of the State.  In the absence of community, our children have had to fend for themselves.  

The Uhuru Kijiji Childcare Collective is the answer

As a dual power do-for- self institution, run by ANWO and our volunteers, the Uhuru Kijiji(Freedom Village) Childcare Collective (UKCC) takes the childcare and education of our children out of the hands of the State that colonize, oppress and kill us and our children and empowers the parents and our community to assume responsibility for the welfare of African children.

UKCC addresses a basic and fundamental need of, specifically, though not exclusively, poor and working-class African women, who, more often than not, are single mothers with the sole responsibility of caring for their children and for whom, the question of securing help with childcare is difficult and in most cases, non existent.

The UKCC in addition to helping organize a community response to childcare so that women can be freed up to take care of different needs, seeks to provide education and cultural enrichment teaching our kids their true culture. The UKCC allows our entire village to share in the dignity of knowing that we have resumed the responsibility for the welfare our own children.

Like the situation earlier in the article,  our aim is to help bridge the gap in community and bring all resources together in a holistic impactful way.   

We believe that if we don’t do this, then we are leaving our communities open to attacks from the state.  And we know all too well, that when African mothers are trapped in the clutches of the State, it is nearly impossible for us to be involved in the work for national liberation when we are fighting to get our children back or figuring out how we survive the next week.  

The African National Women’s Organization is currently in the process of helping to establish the Uhuru Kijiji Childcare Collective in New York City,  Maryland/DC, and North Carolina. 

Find out more about how you join the Uhuru Kijiji Childcare Collective as a member or volunteer and anwouhuru.org/uhuru-kijiji-childcare-collective.

The Strength of Theory

Our strength lies in our theoretical development. 

Using the theory of African Internationalism, we are able to better articulate how African women who join the African Liberation fight are engaging in and working toward a world free from the oppression of African women and girls.

The socialist theory of African Internationalism is a theory of practice which can be seen throughout the ranks of the Uhuru Movement organizations. 

Women are visibly part of the rank and file and they are integral to the development of campaigns and the Movement’s leadership. 

As deserved leaders, African women have led and are leading areas of the work, which requires people under her leadership to report their work to her – Democratic Centralism.

African Internationalism, for the masses of African women not in the Party, offers a future where the leadership of women is not tokenism but necessary to the growth of the nation. 

African women will be released from the expectations of colonial roles and duties, ushering in a new African woman responsible for the birth of a free African Nation where women and girls are protected, because we will be the part of the revolutionary State. 

Our theoretical development has also pushed away from gender pop politics which splits us into multiple identities. Gender politics have become all the rage in academia, where it is taught. 

Whereas before, African women were trained in the struggles of our people to fight for their independence through liberation. 

Theory without practice is meaningless 

Our weakness has been that our membership has been overrun with petit bourgeois feminists or feminist leaning women who would get in the way of progress. That is due to how we’ve recruited women into the work. 

A heavy concentration of our members over the last five years have come through their attraction to us on social media. 

Less comes from what we are doing on the ground. However, not all of our members who meet us online are the petit bou. 

But their expectations of the type of work they will be engaged in is limited to social media content and “thought work”. 

For us, the measure of our effectiveness and recruitment will be in how we politicize and recruit from women who are the poor and working class. Front line women whose close proximity to the State has resulted in micro and macro confrontations that deeply impact the African community. 

Opportunities lie ahead

Our opportunities rest in going back to the basics. 

Organizing 101, how to build a branch or unit. It requires the constant measured work of contact collection, calling, and engagement that allows the working class to lead on the issues that impact us. 

This process creates leaders of African proletariat women. 

So ANWO will be creating activities that will get our members in the streets. 

We will organize and continue to build monthly events and create strong committees that can expand the work of our economic development projects which are geared toward the benefit of African working class women. 

Summary and moving forward

This Plenary more than many others before it represents a shift in the trajectory of our Movement. It is rooted in the intensity of the time and a recognition of a dying imperialism. 

African workers have to be poised to take power in our hands in our own interest. 

The Black Women’s Convention happening in Philadelphia, March 27-29, 2020 is following the example of the Party’s Plenary providing a big picture opening to the lives of African working class women and our leadership. 

Our Pre-Convention Conference is happening in Soweto, Occupied Azania (South Africa) on March 7, 2020, organized by ANWO forces and Party forces who live in the settler colony of South Africa.

We recognize that much of what is written about women doesn’t offer us a future, however, ANWO is strengthening ourselves so that we can lead ourselves to the future of our own.  

Join us at our convention and conference by registering at convention.anwouhuru.org and/or call us if you have any questions at 240-326-3959 (U.S.) or 061 319 8765 (Occupied Azania).

We are sisters united by revolution uniting to win bread, peace and Black Power for the entire African Nation!

African women must lead!

African working class women to the forefront!  

This is important in order to fulfill the strategy of the Party which is to bring African women into revolutionary political life, through organization.

After all, we are the only organization for African women with the implied mission of filling our ranks with African poor and working class women.

Struggle between the working class and the petty bourgeoisie

In order to accomplish this objective we have struggled with our members to abandon any petty bourgeois aspirations and contribute their skills to the interest of the African working class.

This has been a point of contention, which has led to many struggles inside ANWO, as we’ve fought for structure, accountability and action.

The basis of the contradiction has been that some women joined not understanding that they aspire to be the African petty bourgeoisie – a sector of the African colony who maintains the status quo and are not particularly interested in becoming the “leaders of the African revolution, shapers of our new society.”

There are also women who we consider the radical petty bourgeoisie. These women are unhappy with the current social system and are constantly voicing outrage or protest in order to initiate reforms within the capitalist system.

In either instance, the outcome is African women who do not believe that African liberation is possible, but join ANWO because it represents the militant politics that they hope to embody.

Liberation requires organization not anarchy

We are a mass organization, which means that any African woman can join. We do, however, have objectives that we expect members to contribute to.

The highest expression of membership, is action. The African working class demands it.

What we find, however, is that some women are opposed to organization.

They are opposed to the strategizing, organizing and execution that is required to get us closer to our mission; and are drawn to groups or individuals who do not have structure and where political theory does not exist.

That is anarchy and we are not anarchist.

This struggle constantly emerges because the characteristics of the African petite bourgeoisie is to be liberal (read Combat Liberalism by Mao Zedong).

Since they do not believe in African liberation they do not have a vision of free future. So every action item is tedious, inconvenient, “confusing”, or too hard.

They do not help solve problems, they present problems. They suddenly don’t have convertible skills and they do the bare minimum or nothing at all.

In some cases they have a contempt for the African working class, which is evidenced in their unwillingness to engage in basic organizing in our communities.

They would rather work hard for capitalist industries or in bourgeois institutions, rather than work hard for the revolution.

They fear “coming out” as a revolutionary, but are ok with being an activist.

Kill “Becky”

Kalambayi Andenet, InPDUM President, calls these tendencies “Becky” – the white woman that lives inside our head. “Becky” leads us away from black power and the African revolution.

In ANWO and the Uhuru Movement overall, our goal is to kill “Becky” everyday.

We do not want the selfish individualistic opportunist characteristics of oppressor nation white women to take over and make us comfortable with living in the colony.

We aim to destroy the colonizer, which in turn, will destroy the colony.

We have to engage in the long, hard, important work to build power amongst African women who suffer immeasurably inside the colony.

The conditions of African women demands organization

Currently there are over 1 million African women who live in combat zones as a result of colonial exploitation.

Many of us are poor and without access to resources. Many of us are illiterate and are victims of violence on a daily basis.

There are hundreds of thousands of African girls who are missing. They are forced into prostitution just to make ends meet.

There are mothers, right now, looking for their children or crying over the bodies of their children.

This is the world we live in because of capitalism.

The worldwide system of capitalism started as an attack on Africa which resulted in building wealth for the white world and poverty and misery of the African world. Hence, capitalism was born as a parasite, sucking the blood of African and other colonized people for its existence.

Colonialism is the brutal instrument of capitalism used to repress the colonized- the people and their lands and economies that white power has destroyed.

It’s in the interest of African women to destroy parasitic capitalism. In the process of destroying capitalism, African women learn to solve problems and emerge as leaders in the African revolution.

ANWO remains committed to building that legion of African women who will birth a new world free from colonial domination and parasitic capitalism.

Read our site to find out more about us and how you can join. Save the date of March 27-29 for our 2020 national convention. Follow us on social media and sign up for newsletter to be kept up to date on the latest news and info from ANWO.

ANWO is a revolutionary organization for African women with the sole interest of empowering poor and working class African women to overturn our relationship with imperialism, through practical application of African Internationalism, which explains the world and our place in it.

Although, colonialism and capitalist imperialism are realities for African people, analysis on the ways it impacts African women are absent.  This is a critically important oversight that will lead to history repeating itself. Once we understand colonialism and capitalist imperialism, will we be able to build up the trajectory of the African revolution and fill the ranks with African women.

Through interactive panel discussions, specified group organizing projects, direct organizing opportunities, and a variety of culture, at this year’s plenary; attendees will participate in and realize our capacity to  put into practice the organizing work necessary to break poor working class African women out of the grips of colonialism. Ultimately organizing the women of the class to their fullest capacity in the interest of the African revolution.

Register for the plenary at anwoplenary2019.eventbrite.com

“The revolution starts at home”, as stated by my mother when she learned of my intentions to organize with the Uhuru Movement.

Essentially her thoughts were that I should not be out organizing in the streets. She thought I should be at home taking care of my children.

Quite often I become angered by the notion that women who are apart of a revolutionary organization, neglect their childcare responsibilities.

In reality, not adopting an active role in the revolution by ensuring liberation for our children could be considered as child neglect. My children are the center of my life; therefore, it is my duty to liberate my offspring from imperialism.

Because I am a revolutionary, my intentions are to secure my children’s future as well as the future of the African people everywhere.

Colonial confusion

It is easy to become discouraged by my mother’s sentiments; however, what we must understand is how colonialism has confused the minds of the masses to such a devastating degree.

Unfortunately, my mother along with other African people, live as colonial subjects within the global capitalist system.

Thus, a number of people exist in this world lacking a complete understanding of the fundamental contradictions responsible for creating the disastrous conditions forced upon our neighborhoods and entrapping our families. She, just as the masses, does not understand the full reach of colonialism. My job as a revolutionary is to help her understand.

Warrior women

When women make the decision to engage in work to liberate ourselves and our people, we take our specific situation out of the center.

We recognize that our condition, single motherhood, is not any more different than any other African woman who faces raising their children on their own.

There is no distinguishing factor that could be highlighted between the African woman in the Congo whose husband is murdered in proxy wars spurred by capitalist exploitation of the resources and the African mother in Detroit whose husband is murdered by the police.

We are no different than African women who dwell in the favelas of Brazil, who bear the burden of working as domestic workers just to put food on the table for their children.

And we are no different than the African women in Milwaukee who experience some of the highest infant mortality rates in the America.

Colonial domination exists as a direct obstruction to self -determination and control over our own resources.

Systematic suffering

By gaining a historical materialist understanding of the world around us, we will realize that our suffering is systemic. In order to improve our conditions we must adopt an objective solution. The solution must be to make a revolution.

Far too many African women in the world have been assigned the great responsibility and chore of raising children by ourselves that many do not even think of revolution as a solution.

We must see revolution as the answer to change the condition of single parenting, because revolution means creating a new world.

The way the world is today, we have to make decisions such as leaving our children in a hot car  to go on a job interview, because  we don’t have childcare. Without a job, one could become homeless. If you are homeless, a litany of additional problems arises. Revolution is very necessary.

Disruption in the African family unit

Our familial relationships have been directly impacted by colonialism. Where once we had an extended family to assist with raising the children, now, because of capitalism – which forces us to abandon our homes to look for jobs just to sustain ourselves -there is no one available who can help with this task.

Childcare is a precarious situation that leaves African women vulnerable to and dependent upon the system. We are constantly looking for someone/someplace that could fulfill the role of caregiver without divesting us of all the money we earn.

This is difficult, but a contradiction that has its roots in colonialism as W.O. Maloba points out in his book African Women in Revolution; “to facilitate the flow of African labor, the African family’s economic viability as a self-sufficient unit had to be thoroughly compromised.”

This deconstruction of the African family has been ingrained in Africans from the first time Europeans colonized and enslaved us 600 years ago.

Wives were sold away from husbands and mothers were sold separately from their babies. African mothers were also separated from their nursing babies to nurse the colonizer’s babies.

The deconstruction continued with the welfare state, which bans men from living in the home. To the chemical warfare waged on the African community through drugs such as crack cocaine and now with the school to prison pipeline.

As a result our people feel like they have to take care of themselves. Especially the youth, who can’t see a future or see the future a bleak.

It is under these conditions that African women are forced to raise families, a reality that Maloba ties to the onset of colonialism in Africa when “women came to shoulder not only increased responsibilities but also to discharge those duties that in precolonial Africa would have been considered as belonging to men.

These women assumed the responsibility of ensuring the survival and the integrity of the family.”

The struggle for engagement

So the situation is just not specific to me, it is specific to the colonial oppressed African nation. Therefore when I engage in this struggle to educate and liberate, it can’t just be a personal struggle.

This struggle has to be one that addresses the contradiction for the entire African nation.

Through political education, the African working class will become informed and understand the urgency to unite for the purpose of overturning this capitalist system. We want self-determination and control of our resources.

We must organize!

We learned that it’s not enough to resist, we must organize. The rebellion in Ferguson was phenomenal because the people continue to rebel and resist colonial oppression.

The status quo march and rally was abandoned. They resisted fearlessly compelling the eyes of the world to surrender their attention to the cries of the oppressed Africans living in the so called land of the free.

Ferguson raised the consciousness of oppressed people worldwide. Yet, everyone’s consciousness being raised is not enough, it will not be enough. People must be organized in mass revolutionary struggle in order to overthrow this system.

The International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) was created in 1991 to fight for the democratic rights of the African working class.

The African People’s Socialist Party realized that not everyone is ready to join a political party when they are worried about day-to-day realities such as food, clothing, shelter, and housing. InPDUM was created to meet the African working class where they are, in the midst of the day-to-day struggle for survival.

Only through organized struggle can we overturn this parasitic system of imperialism and become a self-determined people. InPDUM is committed to spreading African Internationalism to the masses of African people in the U.S. by organizing everywhere to liberate the African community.

We are calling on Africans everywhere to join InPDUM and ANWO and help build the Uhuru Kijiji Childcare Collectives.

“I am 20 years old and for all these 20 years I have lived in this city, specifically in this neighborhood. In all these 20 years, the St. Petersburg city government has done nothing but work against the black community. I have entered this election because the black community is and has been under assault by the leaders of this city,” declared Akilé.

Cainion denounced the city’s policies that impose poverty and police containment on the black community. She called for new positive policies of economic development, public safety through black community control of the police, reparations and an end to gentrification.

“I am knowingly and willing running against a rigged election system that they have painted as a single member district where our democratic rights are insulted. Where our community is under the impression that we have the ability to vote in the leadership of our districts in the primary elections until the general elections are opened up to the entire city and the final vote is cast by the white community. This is a farce and strips this community of every ounce of political power,” Cainion explained.

“The economy of St. Pete was built from the labor of black people. Reparations are owed to the black community because this city has destroyed thriving black neighborhoods, crippling this community and restricting us from being economically self-reliant,” Cainion expounded.

Cainion’s Deputy Campaign Manager, Ona Zené Yeshitela, praised the candidate’s work as leader of the “Three Drowned Black Girls campaign” (3DBG). The campaign seeks justice for three black teen girls who were driven into a pond by Pinellas County Sheriff’s department deputies, who stood on the scene watching as the young girls screamed for their lives, their car sinking into the pond.
Akilé’s father, Ntambwe Gashaye Bhekizitha, a local barber, and her mother, Miezi Tadiwa Bhekizitha, stood by their daughter and spoke of her strong leadership skills and love of service to the people, exhibited since she was a little girl. Other supporters at the announcement included St. Petersburg local International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) president, Liu Montsho Kwayara, 17, and St. Pete boxing great, former undisputed light middleweight world champion Winky Wright.

Eritha “Akilé” Cainion closed her announcement statement by calling on all residents of St. Petersburg to be sure they are registered to vote in time for the August 29, 2017 primary election, declaring that “Radical times call for radical change. This community will win. I will win. I will be your next District 6 City Councilwoman. Thank you.”

Anyone interested in following or learning more about Eritha “Akilé” Cainion’s campaign for City of St. Petersburg District 6 councilperson can go to Akilé’s Facebook page or call 727- 914-3619.

Even though the march was fronted by African and other colonized women, the idea for the march started when a white woman, Teresa Shook, from Hawaii, went to Facebook to express her outrage about Donald Trump winning the election.

Her outrage was so great that she created a Facebook event page for a women’s march, that quickly grew to over 10,000 attendees within the first week. The event page was followed by the creation of a website that started off with a simple statement of “unity”.

The website has since exploded into a donation page in need of $2 million dollars to cover the “logistics and expenses to put on the women’s March on Washington”. However, it is understood that permits are free in D.C. and there were no water bottles, bags or snacks passed out during this demonstration. There were just entertainers and a stage.

Regardless of the implied statement of unity, however, it was apparent that the March was not inclusive of poor and working class African or even of other colonized women . Even though the white media placed two African women as allies it was still a ploy to have African women be pawns for white women’s agenda, which has been the case historically.

During the marches, an overwhelming amount of women were white. It consisted of some of the 54 percent of white women that voted for Trump and now feel threatened by the attacks on the rights of bourgeois white women, which might have been protected if Hillary Clinton had been elected.

Marchers made no criticism of imperialism

As the protest began, it was clear from the messages on placards that this was merely an attack on Trump as person. There was no criticism about what he represented to U.S. imperialism or even how his policies could devastate already impacted communities.

As we began our organizing at the March on Washington, we were confronted with signs stating “This pussy grabs back”,“Nasty women”, and “Keep your tiny hands off my rights,” as opposed to messages speaking to deportations, mass incarceration, state violence or anything that would imply that this March was serious about challenging something besides what white women felt, was important

What was clear is that even though these women were opposed to Donald Trump they were still united for imperialism, as supporters of oppressor Hillary Clinton held signs reading “I’m still with her”.

Selling the Burning Spear at the “white” Women’s March. Women marchers center issues on white women genitalia

What was also a clear indicator of this March’s aim to unify white women was the wearing of pink hats that represented white women’s vaginas (pink pussy). There are so many issues with this so-called statement of empowerment, but the dominant one being that these white women relegated all women to just a body part and a white woman’s body part at that. It was dismissive even of trans and other gender nonconforming women of the bourgeoisie.

There were also no signs of explicit activist groups represented in this coming together of white women. It was a singular unit of white women yelling at Trump.

African women appeared to be confused at what the goal was for this march and essentially where they fit in, in this sea of whiteness. But the reality is, African women will never fit into an agenda orchestrated by white women.

After yelling, speeches, performances, and walking around D.C. the crowd dispersed to go back to the safety of their white nation, not making a difference just being nasty women who want to be grabbed by the pussy.

Still no demands from March organizers

After the March, the website was updated to include 10 actions in 100 days; a way to contact local lawmakers, but there has yet to be a list of demands or petitions clearly stated.

African women know, however, that lawmakers are not the solution for the issues we are facing. Lawmakers weren’t the solution when Obama was president or any other president for that matter.

Our solution will come as a result of claiming space in the fight against the system that oppresses and exploits our people and this puts us in direct opposition to any strategy laid out by white women, whose main objective is to coax lawmakers into considering their contributions to white power.

We encourage African women who saw the contradictions of the March to join the African National Women’s Organization so that you can be armed with a theory that champions your own agenda.

Forward the interests of African women!
Down with white opportunism!

There have been many things happening to African women here in Sweden. The crisis of imperialism has deepened the oppression felt by our people and there haven’t  been any organizations responding to these issues effectively. The feminist movements have attempted to co-opt the issues felt by African women to prevent us from looking at the primary contradictions caused by the State.

They have a grip on the minds of the masses and distorted the struggle we need to make.

Despite this, however, many sisters are looking for answers to all of the contradictions we face as colonized people.  They can see that feminism does not have the analysis or the capacity to fight for African women whose conditions are worsened as a result of being colonially oppressed.

For these reasons, the APSP in Sweden has decided to focus on building ANWO in Sweden to give leadership to African women who are struggling to make sense of their conditions.

We began our organizing by directly taking down the feminist narrative used to slander the African (specifically Somali) community.

On Sep 20th Sia and I  attended/crashed a feminist event that was hosted by the State, in the form of police, politicians and other petty-bourgeois forces. Their agenda was and is to attack Muslim/African men in the name of “women’s rights”.

The meeting was held in an African/Muslim community in Stockholm, called Rinkeby.

There wasn’t any notice given  to the African/Muslim community about the meeting, even though the meeting intended to “discuss and solve the issues” of the African community.  There were 1 or 2 Africans who represented the African petty -bourgeoisie  in attendance, but they were not there to represent issues of  the community.

ANWO’s goals and objectives for this meeting was to:

• Expose the hypocrisy of the feminist agenda to the African/Muslim community
• To let the imperialist state know that we will resist in an organized manner whenever they come in to our communities
• To find possible new forces to build with ANWO and our coming campaign around the issue of the State kidnapping African children

Below is an account of what happened  (video included):

The key presenter was Amineh Kakabaveh, who is a well-known Kurdish feminist and “anti-racist”.
This event was about promoting feminism by trying to see a “common factor” when it comes to the oppression of “all women/women in general”.

It is important to mention that it was held in the Muslim/African community because they wanted to talk about hederskultur (honors culture)  since it is supposed to be a “Muslim problem” which it is not; it is a primarily Kurdish problem in Sweden.

This is a very controversial statement in Sweden, but we say it because  the state uses honors culture as a way to attack the whole Muslim/African community, with these discussions or attacks are never directed at the community where this behavior is exhibited most – the Kurdish community.  They always bring it to the African community.

After the panelist gave their presentations, ANWO forces stood up to make our comments. We wanted to clearly  show where we stand as African Internationalist, exposing the hypocrisy of the feminist agenda and how it relates to the colonized woman on a day-to-day basis.

The first comment was made by sister Inaa where she went to Amineh’s Facebook page to expose the contradictions of Amineh.  Amineh had, at one point, spread nasty propaganda about Muslim men and Islam as a whole. These are one of the reasons Muslims don’t respect this woman.

When sister Inaa started talking, the leading committee rushed to silence her by saying, ” your 3 min are over,”  which couldn’t be further from the truth since she had just started speaking (1:01).

Earlier in the event, a leading committee member stated that , ” men of the third world have not learned how to control themselves sexually” / ” how all the institutions and major companies even in the African/Muslim communities are patriarchal.” 

 When I had chance to speak, however,  I disputed this statement and offered the African Internationalist explanation; that what was being identified as patriarchal was in fact white power institutions who deepen crisis in oppressed communities and then come to chastise us for our response.

So I said that if someone wants to come to the Muslim/African community they can talk about the real issues we face which is mainly the police harassment on our youth (2:31).

I also mentioned  that if they want to talk about the oppression of women, we all know it originated in Europe and that it has been imposed on us because we are colonized (3:22).

That was when some people(Africans and Muslims) in the back of the audience clapped their hands in unity with the statement.

I also mentioned why we don’t call ourselves feminists.

Sia gave her comments following mine, saying that if they want to come to our communities and “help” they can talk about the real issues that the masses are faced with, like gentrification/housing/police/unemployment/the kidnapping of Somali children by the state/ cockroaches in the houses etc.

She also said that hederskultur is disgusting and that ANWO can show solidarity with Kurdish women, BUT not to say that all Muslims have this issue, asking the question, “since when did Somali girls get killed because they are socializing with their friends, you cant say that!”

So after our comments Amineh wanted to attack us by saying that it was racist of us to say it is a Kurdish problem and that we had a anti-feminist stance – which is like a slur in Sweden. 

We left the event and rallied outside with placards as ANWO, telling her to leave our communities and the masses approached us and showed huge solidarity with our statement.

After the event, SÄPO (similar to the  FBI) had to take her out of the event and out of the community.

This video was posted in a Facebook group and there were no opponents but only people who united with our statement.

As a result, ANWO has  been invited to 2-panel discussions by organizations who heard our statement.

People were saying things such as, “the sisters put words on everything I’ve been thinking about” and ” they said everything I was afraid to say”

We want to deepen the political understanding in our communities and call on people to organize with us for this coming campaign.

We see one of our missions moving forward  is to stand up at different events to expose the truth  so  that we can continue to win African communities in Sweden to the position African Internationalism as a path to freedom.