This comes as no surprise since the decision leaked in May. Since then, many women have demonstrated their opposition to this impending reversal, while others began building legal opposition to abortion barriers in their states. 

ANWO recognizes that this decision will undoubtedly have a huge impact on African and other colonized women.  But we also understand that this is just one of the many forms of attacks on our ability to produce and reproduce life for ourselves. 

The fight to ensure we can truly make decisions about our bodies and rights to reproduce cannot be fully won under colonial capitalism.  This system of oppression and exploitation has robbed us, for centuries, of our motherhood and our humanity through the violence of slavery, colonialism, Apartheid, Jim Crow, and every other iteration of colonial assault we can name. 

In 2022, we are still fighting against the kidnapping and transfer of our children.  Mothers are losing their rights while the colonial state decides the fate of our children.  This happens to hundreds of African mothers every day.

Enough is enough! The time is long overdue to mount a formidable anti-colonial response to the ongoing attacks on the rights of women.  For African women, who have long been subjected to the worst forms of colonially imposed contradictions, there is no other time than now to show your support for ANWO and join the revolutionary efforts to build us up.  We will not let anyone speak for us.  

ANWO is the voice of African women who are fighting back against the terror of white power, the colonial terror that has been unleashed upon us for centuries.  

For many his victory represents a new promise in the ability for people who were targeted by the Trump presidency, to have more influence within a Biden presidency, despite the fact that Biden had not expressed any particular commitment to oppressed communities. 

Instead he focused on “getting Trump out” and improving the COVID-19 response left open by the Trump presidency. 

Biden’s appeal was helped by the fact that his vice presidential choice was Kamala Harris, a black woman former prosecutor and district attorney with a record of heightening the policing of African and other colonized communities in California.  

She was the self-proclaimed “Top Cop”, creating policy that created serious penalties for misdemeanors like truancy and who has a history of keeping people in prison who were proven innocent. 

Feminists Celebrate Contradictions, Not Overturn Them

Despite these contradictions with Harris, there was a call to support her, led by the petty boo ‘black girl magic’ cult of personalities that sees any advancement of black women into capitalist colonial society as a win.   

Angela Davis, former political prisoner associated with the Black Panther Party,  in an interview with AJ+ said she was excited about Kamala Harris becoming the U.S. Vice President and that it is a “feminist approach” to dwell in the contradiction of Kamala Harris’ record.  

During the African National Women’s Organization’s (ANWO) the Breakdown, Facebook Live discussion on August 24th,  Dr. Aisha Fields, African Internationalist and International Director of the All African People’s Development Project (AAPDEP) responded to Davis’ comment saying that, “in the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement we talk about overturning contradictions because dwelling in contradictions is more than accepting it.” 

Fields goes on to say, “we are supposed to be exposing them [contradictions] to make sure that we do not do the same thing we did yesterday that was a mistake, an error or tendency;  so that tomorrow can be better. 

As African Internationalists we expect to be confronted by and eradicate contradictions that act as barriers to the freedom and liberation of African people. 

Kamala Harris is the newest neo-colonial distraction in the U.S. imperialist arsenal.  Unfortunately, she is not the first nor is she the last African woman to be used by colonial white power to show the “progress of blacks” in colonial society. 

Feminism’s erroneous conclusions, such as what has been determined by Angela Davis and many others, continue to lead African women down a dark narrow path away from any type of freedom.  

African Internationalism, on the other hand, opens up a wide road of opportunities  for how we as African women can liberate ourselves.  So, while the feminists are ‘yassing’ the contradiction of Kamala Harris,  African Internationalism gains traction among poor and working class African women. 

The Road to African Women’s independence is Painted with African Internationalism

African Internationalist women are engaging in theoretical discussions during the Harriet’s Daughters Book Club.  They are joining committees to set up the Uhuru Kijiji Childcare Collectives in different cities.  

They are helping to strengthen DeColonaise,  the economic development project that funds the African National Women’s Organization.   They are conducting street outreaches in the U.S. and Africa. 

They are engaging in the process of solving the problems that prevent African women’s long-term participation in the African revolution.   They are using the issues to organize the class and meet the needs of our people.  

In this way African Internationalism becomes the practical application of theory that empowers, educates and organizes African women.  In the final conclusion this has long lasting and profound  impact on the sustainability of women’s participation in the African revolutionary project. 

We are calling on African women who desire to see an end to the oppression of people to join ANWO and participate in the African Revolution.  Sign up at anwouhuru.org 

We are the Vanguard! 

We are Winning! 

Photo credit: “Kamala Harris” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

What the South African media has been referring to as ‘gender-based violence” is another symptom of a broken society as a result of colonialism and the rise of capitalism. We can’t solely blame the perpetrators of these crimes without examining the underlying issues or causes of these social ills that are inherent in colonial domination. 

Yes, we are correct to be angry, shout and yell at the immediate perpetrators which are mostly men, for hurting, abusing, raping and mercilessly killing us. But we should also blame and attack the colonial capitalist system that created and maintains social conditions under which black people live. 

This writing emanates from the recent reports of “gender-based violence” and merciless killings of black women and children by black men in South Africa, especially now during the State imposed lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Day in and day out we hear horror stories of women and children being murdered; like the 3-year-old baby girl who went missing for a few days, only to be found killed, with stab wounds on her upper body and dumped in a plastic bin.  We heard about the 79-year-old woman who got attacked inside her home and the 25-year-old woman who was axed to death by her ex-boyfriend and the  28-year-old heavily pregnant woman who was stabbed and hanged on a tree, with an 8 months old unborn baby still inside her, taking two lives in one go. 

This is sickening! It has to stop! Enough is enough! I plead with you, to please protect and defend African women and children. If we don’t, who else will?

African women have been through a lot and we are still going through a lot. The African community must take a stand to defend African women; we have been subjected to all kinds of pain and violence. 

We are not only dealing with a colonial capitalist system’s exploitation as we generally experience it, we have an additional yoke on our shoulders as colonized women, which is our special oppression usually carried out within the African colony by other colonized people. 

PARASITIC CAPITALISM COLONIALISM IS RAPE CULTURE

The first attack African women suffered was colonialism (the foreign domination of an entire people for the material and spiritual benefit of the colonizer). Europeans are the ones who first killed, raped, and used African women and men as commodities. Over the course of centuries of subjugation, our brothers became indoctrinated with this nonsensical, immoral, and toxic white culture towards African women. 

Therefore, what I see happening today is the legacy of the colonial capitalist system. With the arrival of the colonial settlers, came the rise of capitalism from its primitive accumulation of our resources and labour.  They separated our families by taking our fathers, husbands and brothers to the mines to dig up our resources for white consumption, while they turned African women into baby-making machines to produce labourers for production.  We were turned into maids, demeaned as human beings, as you still see it today – white people make us walk their dogs or carry them around on our backs as babies.

Black men adopted the “rape culture” and violence from Europeans who brought the savagery, death and destruction from Europe to Africa. Now our condition has been exacerbated by the material want that our communities are subjected to with the theft of our resources.

When our colonizers attacked and occupied our land, they did that through the barrel of a gun. When they raped and killed African women, they also did it through the use of force and violence. Today, violence and “rape culture” is synonymous with black men. They are the face of every cruel and toxic behaviour that’s happening in the society, while the white men who introduced it are models of “good moral and behaviour.” 

Even today, white people still axe and kill each other, but the first suspect becomes black men. Both prominent white cases (S v Pistorius and S v Van Breda case) where white people were brutally killed by their own, the suspects or intruders were black men. These two cases explicitly show us that white men are not models of “good moral and behaviour” as the media has made many of us believe, this thing is embedded in their historical DNA, but they’ve always had a cover-up, called black men.

Just as they introduced their cold and cruel religion, that they call Christianity, Europeans used violence and instilled fear to black people, that they will go to hell if they don’t comply. Our fore-bearers, after years of resistance, were ultimately subdued and forced to adopt it. Down went our cultural values. Those who continued to resist this incursion were called pagans (amaqaba) while the converted ones were called “amagqobhoka”.

The settlers in Azania not only enjoy the fruit of our labour and resources, but they also brutalize and kill us as a form of therapy. That is also why they would even kill a 16-year-old teenage boy for allegedly “stealing” a sunflower. Unashamedly, shooting and killing black men in the farms and claiming that they mistook them for baboons. 

And exactly why they would violently and inhumanly put an alive black man in a coffin and also feed a black man to lions in 2005. Europeans have always been violent and black people learned from them. However, by saying all of this I am not justifying a black man’s behaviour, but I want to deal with the underlying causes first before we deal with the symptoms.

PATRIARCHY IS A SYMPTOM OF COLONIALISM

African women cannot breathe. The environment is not conducive and safe for us. For hundreds of years the system has been kneeling on our necks in more ways than our equally colonized male counterparts. Therefore, I call upon both African men and women to fist up and fight back and unite against the colonial capitalist system and it’s patriarchal underpinnings of masculinity over femininity. 

Yes, we need to dismantle patriarchy together because it came with colonialism. In pre-colonial Africa, black men and women were united and treated each other with love and respect, hence they never raped their women, despite walking around braless and wearing traditional mini-skirt called inkciyo. Black men were never discomforted by seeing naked breasts, until a colonial settler arrived. 

In Europe men treated women like property and upon their domination of Africa,  African men were positioned to be superior to African women. The European settlers reinforced backward notions such as men are the boss in the house, a woman must bow before them, she is weak and cannot do this and that. 

Before colonialism, black men and women were equally working together plowing the fields in order to produce food. Also, during harvest time both African men and women, boys and girls would go on the fields and work. That is why even subsequent to our dispossession, both boys and girls would go and herd the cows; for example, Mama Winnie Madikizela-Mandela grew up herding the cows. 

Europeans never had equal powers with their women, a woman was told her place is in the kitchen, so patriarchy is their thing, exclusion of women from power, it came with them. Our brothers learned this and adopted it. It is wrong African brothers, and we will help you unlearn through revolutionary struggle, so we can be together as one, fighting our oppressor together. 

WE NEED BLACK POWER! 

In conclusion, my African brothers and sisters, let’s unite and fight together to reclaim our Black Power so that our Black Lives will matter as we build a new world. Because if we don’t crush the capital colonial system which maintains patriarchy, we are going to continue with these numerous futile hashtags #MenAreTrash #NotInMyName #MenMustFall #AmINext and the rest of them. 

To you, African men in Occupied Azania (South Africa) in particular, you have to stop your petty-bourgeois inspired nonsensical “bro code” of loyalty; call each other out and expose the perpetrators, and stop protecting them because they are your friends, homies and colleagues. The entire African community must take a stance in defending African women from the violence perpetrated against us on a daily basis. 

Vuyo Nyeli is a Clinical Consultant, senior law (LLB) student at the University of South Africa (UNISA), and a member of the African National Women’s Organization. 

Considering most women do not know they are pregnant until after 6 weeks, one thing is clear, these laws are going to have a devastating impact on women, more specifically African women; leading to a heightened rate of incarceration and death.

Capitalism forces black women into abortions

A 2015 report by the Kaiser Foundation, shows that the rate at which African women have abortions are high compared to our population in the U.S.

We recognize that these rates reflect our lives under capitalist colonialist domination. Often, the decisions we make about our bodies are not based on our inherit wants and needs, instead, we are forced by the demands that capitalism places on us; such as not having enough money to feed, house and clothe children; in addition to the cost of childcare, and the absence of a network of friends and family who might have been available for childcare, had they not also been a part of the African working poor.  

Many are viewing this as an attack against women “in general,” positioning it as a Republican vs. Democrat issue; with Republicans attempting to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that protects a woman’s right to choose whether or not to have an abortion.

We understand, however, that this part of the rising crisis of imperialism which has brought forth an attempt by the white ruling class to raise their birth rate.  

Despite the fact that African women comprise some of the highest percentages of abortion cases in specific states, white women still hold the lead nationally.  

Non-reproducing white population threatens the hegemony

Faced with an aging, slow-growing population the white ruling class is moving at a rapid pace to prevent the projections made by William H. Frey in his 2018 book, Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics are Remaking America,  which states that white people will become a minority in this country by the year 2045.

The impact of which will be a loss of political power and a dwindling white ruling class. This is why we see support for these anti-abortion legislations from both bourgeois political parties: Democrat and Republican, both men and women.

It is a contradiction that the white ruling class is trying to resolve amongst themselves.  

We, however, are not blind to the reality that crisis in the white oppressor nation, manifests itself 10 times over in African colony.

This is a point that white women won’t overlook as they prop up campaigns to defend their right to choose on the backs of black women. Unsuspecting black women will be dragged into this fight, aligning themselves with white women, under the pretext that we are fighting for our rights as women.

History tells us, however, that political alignment with women of the white oppressor nation, who sit on the pedestal of our oppression, will result in a loss for us and a gain for them.  We see evidence of this as recent as the white-woman-hijacked MeToo Movement and the Women’s March fiasco, where women associated with the group challenged, African woman, Tamika Mallory’s support for Louis Farrakhan.

This is not to say that African women shouldn’t struggle against anything that attempts to restrict our inherit right to do with our body as we wish.  Especially since these laws will lead to increased challenges amongst African women. We can and are addressing this through the African National Women’s Organization which recognizes the need for African women to be free of capitalist colonialist domination, which makes decisions based on white ruling class contradictions.  

Opportunism of white oppressor nation women

The opportunism of white women serves the white oppressor nation because its character is  to get in front of the emerging radicalization of African woman and bring them into the cold embrace of capitalist solutions.

In our resolution to the 2015 African Internationalist Conference on African we defined the different political interests of white women and black women:

“There is a difference between the women of the oppressor nation and women of the oppressed nation. The former often reconciles differences with the men of their nation as a way to further exploit the women and men of the oppressed nation. In many cases oppressor nation women use the contradictions present in the oppressed nation to deepen the colonial agenda by dividing the African nation up along gender and class lines.”

We can conclude from this, that any resolution made amongst the people of the white oppressor nation will always benefit their women,  while African women continue to face challenges to our right to reproduce that goes beyond our womb.

Black women reproductive rights extend beyond the womb

Under U.S. domestic colonialism, black mothers are more likely to die from complications due to pregnancy. Black babies are more likely to die in childbirth.  Black children are more likely to die as a result of State or horizontal violence. Black people are disproportionately represented in prisons when compared to our population. Black children are disproportionately taken from black mothers and kept as foster children – wards of the colonial state.

These statistics  prove that the reproductive rights of women includes more than our right to give birth, but also our right to raise our children into adulthood without trauma, death or violence. In some communities it is hardly expected that our children will live past the age of 18. If they do, the likelihood that they will have a life free from the terrors of colonial violence and oppression, is slim.  

Destroy Capitalism Increase birth outcomes

When the foundation of the  worldwide system of capitalism is rooted in the destruction of African life, the odds that our lives will be improved by our alignment with capitalism is illogical.  

We have experienced this terror since Africa was first attacked and the first child was ripped from the arms of his mother.

This is all a result of enslavement and colonialism. There is no law that a bourgeois political party, that upholds colonialism, could ever pass that ensures the production and reproduction of African life.  A vanguard Party led by African workers, united under one socialist government, in control of the state, will do that.

The African National Women’s Organization was created by the African People’s Socialist Party to raise up the contradictions that life under capitalist colonialism deepens for black women.  ANWO has created opportunities for us to center our voice in this discussion and organize for the destruction of the system that continually undermines our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  

For example,  ANWO’s ArrestCPS: Stop Kidnapping Black Children and Uhuru Kijiji Childcare Collective campaigns work hand in hand to directly address the reproductive rights of African women, while exposing the state and building a child welfare alternative all our own.

If we continue to lean on the whims of the white ruling class, we will continue to be trapped in their crisis. Let’s build and support our own.

Death to Imperialism! Forward the African Revolution!Forward the leadership of revolutionary African women!

From February 5th  to February 14th the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon was under a lockdown initiated by the Ambazonia interim government. The Republic of  Ambazonia (aka Amba Land) is a self-declared state consisting of the English speaking regions of Cameroon that want to separate from the dominant French speaking Cameroon.

For the past twenty-five years, sectors of the African petite bourgeoisie in the French and English speaking regions have been in contention with one another. The primary criticism from the English speaking sector being that they are denied access to the larger social and  political arena dominated by the French speaking Cameroonian government.

The contradiction came to a head in 2017 when neither sector of the petite bourgeoisie would concede to each others demands.

Since then, the country has been entangled in a ongoing crisis that has killed and displaced hundreds; mostly in the English speaking regions.

The Lockdown causes crisis for the African poor and working class

While the reason for the lockdown was not clearly stated,  we understand that the goal was to destabilize the government and its activities in specific areas of the country.

During the lockdown all sorts of activities were banned as a way to undermine National Youth Day on February 11th, which is also the anniversary of the United Nations sponsored 1961 plebiscite which forced the unification of the British ruled and French ruled regions of Cameroon,  locally referred to as La Republique.

The Ambazonian consortium of the English regions, have on several occasions, opposed celebrating this as a national day on the grounds that they were not well respected and acknowledged by the current government. Thus, the prerequisite was to put a halt on this day.

On Wednesday the 6^th of February, a mass arrest of citizens was carried out by the state defense forces whom are assumed to be the security of its citizens. Women  were molested and sexually violated and there was about fifty young men who were forcefully taken from their rooms. As of this writing, little is known about their status or the health condition of the abused women.

One can then conclude, without fear of contradiction, that though the reason behind the lockdown was not clearly stated, it endangered  the lives of the poor and working class population.

There is a cry for justice and the application of the international law throughout the cities which have gone unanswered by the United Nations and the African Union.

The Crisis in Cameroon is a crisis caused by imperialism

In the Uhuru Movement,  we understand that the basis of the current crisis is one rooted in imperialism.

We blame imperialism, for dividing up Africa; creating a false national consciousness and pitting Africans against one another.

It is the fault of Germany, England and France and their continued intervention in the African political landscape, which fosters the type of instability we are seeing now.   

France and England installed neo-colonial rulers (white power/black face) in its place, to make it look like Cameroon had independence in 1961.

They did this to avoid the emerging trend of armed struggle and African nationalism  sweeping throughout Africa in the 1950’s. Africans were fighting against European colonizers and inflicting high casualties in Algeria, Guinea Bissau & Cape Verde, Mozambique, Angola, Belgian Congo, Kenya and in French speaking Cameroon.  

Europe didn’t have the man power to continue fighting these wars,  so in the mid to late 50’s it began to end direct colonialism in favor of indirect-colonial rule, by installing neo-colonial leaders throughout Africa.

Undermining the historic revolutionary resistance of Cameroon

Even after the so-called independence in 1961, France and Britain worked with their installed neo-colonial leaders to squash the indigenous nationalist movements of Cameroon, who sought complete independence and a socialist economy.

What is happening now is not a result of misleadership, it is a result of the attack on Africa that disbursed Africans around the globe and slicing up of Africa to facilitate the theft of our resources, for the benefit of Europe.

Dividing Cameroon further  does not solve any problems for Africans, it solves the problems of the colonizers and the African petit bourgeoisie.  Ambazonia, if they succeed in separating from Cameroon, will be a failed state, just like all of the other countries in Africa; infiltrated by the enemy and where the masses of our people continue to suffer under neo-colonialist regimes.

Neither the Ambazonia or Cameroon government is a revolutionary government with the interest of the poor and working class at the center. Both are led by the African petit bourgeoisie who have no vision for Africa beyond the violence and limitations of capitalism. Evidence of this is seen in the suffering of the people.

The call should be to unify Cameroon, but under one revolutionary government that brings together all of Cameroon for the betterment of all of its people and unite with the struggle for all Africa to be free under one socialist government led by the poor and working class.

Below is a video taken by members of the community on February 10, 2019. It shows bodies of young men killed by what the speaker identifies as “terrorists”. The speaker also calls on the United States and United Nations for their concern, however, we understand the United States and other imperialist forces are already in Cameroon. They are the real terrorists supplying arms to the proxy forces and instigating the crisis.

E. A. M. is the local President of the African National Women’s Organization in Cameroon.

On December 31, 2018 white male, Daniel Taylor, attacked African woman, Yasmine James; a worker at a McDonald’s on the South side of St. Petersburg, Florida.  

In a video posted on the internet, Daniel Taylor can be seen arguing with Yasmine James before lunging across the counter grabbing her by the collar and pulling her toward him.  

James responded quickly to free herself from his grasp; by punching Taylor in his head and face, until he loosened his grip.  After Taylor was pushed back, he proceeds to snap his fingers and bark orders at the mostly African staff, demanding a refund and the firing of James, while also calling her names.  

He is eventually escorted out of the store, but then returns to yell at the workers before kicking another African woman worker.

He was eventually arrested and charged with two counts of misdemeanor assault and held on $1000 bond.   

He couldn’t control the African working class

At one point during the attack, Daniel Taylor yells, “I couldn’t control you” to explain why he resorted to violence after a defiant Yasmine James refused to serve him.  

This is the culture of violence that define the white oppressor nation.

After all, it was the control of and violence against the African working class that established the hoarded wealth of the white world and impoverishment of the African nation, resulting  in the worldwide system of parasitic capitalism and colonialism, as explained by Chairman Omali Yeshitela of the African People’s Socialist Party:

“It was this savage aggression against Africa, Asia and the Americas that raised Europe from a disease-ridden habitat of warring tribes to a dominant force in the world.”

“Europe is today inhabited by a people whose sense of sameness is both defined and challenged by the unifying parasitic capitalist economy that puts them in opposition to the rest of the world upon which their economic lifeline depends.”

It was the four hundred years of forced labor and the unfettered access to African resources that created the pedestal of oppression upon which Europe and the rest of the white world sit, which is proven by asking the following question posed by Yeshitela:

“Would capitalism and the resultant European wealth and African impoverishment have occurred without the European attack on Africa, its division, African slavery and dispersal, colonialism and neocolonialism? The answer is No! No! No!”

The white world is shaking in their bootstraps, as their future is increasingly threatened by Africans and other oppressed people resisting the imposed conditions that define our current conditions as dominated people.

Yasmine James’  resistance to being controlled is representative of the same resistance that defines the African working class who are punching the face of capitalist exploitation and colonialism.  

It is part of an ongoing culture of resistance by African people that has loosened the controlled grip which has defined our lives for hundreds of years.

Colonial violence plain and simple

This attack has raised questions about the protection of women, in general, as if this was just a question of James being a woman. As materialist we have determined that there is no such thing as women in general; the idea that all women have a common oppressor and that oppression is gendered.

The reality is that there are two groups of people; those people who belong to the oppressor colonizer nation and those who belong to the oppressed colonized nation.  The oppressor nation is parasitic, forcefully extracting the labor and resources of the oppressed nation to maintain itself.

Which means that even the women of the oppressor nation benefit from the oppression  and exploitation of the men and women of the oppressed nation. This includes oppressor nation women who experience violence at the hands of oppressor nation men.  

While James happens to be a women, it is clear that this incident represents the dichotomy of the oppressor versus the oppressed, the colonizer versus the colonized.

The attack on Yasmine James by Daniel Taylor is part of the long history of  violence against the colonized and oppressed African working class, by the white oppressor nation.

It cannot be separated from the sexual violence, beatings, experimentation,  murders of African women and men that define the parasitic relationship that the white nation has had with us since Africa was first attacked.

From police and vigilante violence to state sponsored kidnapping of African children, the African poor and working class are most often confronted by of this colonial relationship.

African women

African women are integral to African resistance. Not only in the physical momentary fight, but in the ongoing struggle to free ourselves from the grips of a colonial oppression.

Who better than us to help define what a free and liberated African people can look like? We are confronted with the specific oppression that comes from both the oppressor white nation and from within the colonized nation.

Therefore, we have the most to gain from destroying the oppressive conditions that come from capitalist colonial domination of our entire people.

We call on Yasmine and other African women to join the revolution; to join the African National Women’s Organization (ANWO) in order to really fight for ourselves and the women of the class.

The African National Women’s Organization is a membership-based mass organization created by the African People’s Socialist Party and is part of the overall Uhuru Movement; which was created to address the special oppression of African women.

We exist to build the revolutionary capacity of African women, with a focus on the poor working class. We do this with the understanding that for African women and people to be free we need to have a world-wide revolution led by African poor working class.

As the only anti-imperialist, anti-colonial revolutionary African women’s organization, ANWO is leading on the everyday issues that impact the lives of African women.

Join our action on Saturday, January 5, 2019 at 3pm in front of the McDonald’s at 4595 34th Street South in St. Petersburg, Florida.  To get additional details contact our local organizers at 727-914-3617.

We are winning!

Power to the African working class!

We would rather spend all of our time engaged in solving the problems of our class; organizing African women to combat colonialism, which threatens our participation in the African liberation struggle.

We are forced to, however, make critiques of the subjective petit bourgeois nature of feminism because it is a divisive, unproductive political line that leads African women away from African liberation and toward an unrealistic stance of self-preservation under white power imperialism.

ANWO is a confusing organization for many feminists and feminist leaning activists, because while we are in favor of equality of African women on one hand; we are against colonialism in all of its forms including in the form of petit bourgeois feminism which puts forth the position that patriarchy is the primary barrier for African women.

Patriarchy, as problematic as it may be, is not the core contradiction. It can be overturned with political education in the form of discussions and, from time to time, physical resistance.

Colonialism, on the other hand, cannot be reasoned with. Its very existence is at the expense of the lives and lands of many of the world’s peoples regardless of age, gender, political alignment, class or religion.

Therefore, ANWO understands that patriarchy is undesirable; as we continue to critique feminist conclusions that prioritize ending patriarchy over all other things, because we understand that an equal society cannot be achieved under the parasitic exploitative system of capitalist colonialism.

Only the African revolution can bring about an equal society

What we do instead is build toward a revolution. In that process of building a new socialist society where African workers have control of the State, we are challenged and transformed through criticism and self-criticism, dialectical materialism, combating liberalism, engaging in struggle and forwarding the leadership of African women, as a practice.

Alternatively, feminism encourages equality in order to maintain the status quo within the existing parasitic social structure.

For example, 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.

So 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 affect poor working class colonized people.

Patriarchy does not explain the overrepresentation of the African prisoners in the U.S., Europe and Canada; State violence; the overrepresentation African children kidnapped by the State; dumpster babies; neocolonialism; infant and maternal death; poor healthcare; food deserts; gentrification; ethnic cleansing; and proxy wars.

Feminists are confused about privilege, patriarchy and oppression

The fact that feminism cannot explain the world confuses even feminists themselves. Feminism does not provide an analysis for oppression, colonialism or violence, even though violence seems to be the primary basis for the creation of a black feminist.

A self-identified feminist initiated a struggle with Party member, Dexter Mlimwengu, after he made a critique of Angela Davis on a social media post. What resulted was a stream of strawman arguments, used by feminists, to defend their position that African men benefit from white power.

The feminist tried to make a point about oppression, which lobbed all forms of internal colonized oppression on African men.

When Dexter presented her with the variations of violence that happen amongst the colonized giving the example of “cishet” African women “oppressing” queer African women, the feminist says, “we do, but in a power structure, it doesn’t do anything. Like a black person being “racist” to a white person.”

To which Dexter asked, “but if their “oppressing” doesn’t do anything then they are not really oppressing. So black women are incapable of oppressing but black men oppress black women?”

The reality is that oppressive violence is a symptom of colonialism. Colonized people engage in violence at much higher rates than if we were not colonized, because of the forced contained conditions that are in place to control us.

This is how we explain the African mother who kills her children or the African trans man who beats his girlfriend, or the African teenage girl who stabs and kills her classmate.

Colonial conditions breeds violence. Colonialism is not the creation of African men it is the creation of white power, imperialism to maintain control of the colonized.

African men cannot therefore, benefit from white power when they are victims of it.

The feminist could not contend with this line of questioning and attempted to retreat from the discussion when the comrades deepened the question of African male privilege and oppression.

Confused about privilege, patriarchy and oppression

There is no such thing as African male privilege

Does male privilege then save us from getting gunned down by the pigs?

Does male privilege work when white women yell rape and the next thing you know, there’s a lynch mob at the door?

Did African men get whipped less [and African women more] on the plantation? Did African men get to be in the house while African women were outside?

Does male privilege keep African men from being stuffed into prisons?

Perhaps it was male privilege that crushed the Black Revolution of the ‘60s too, right?

Where is my so-called male privilege to grant me power over judges, the police, the courts, the schools, the banks? How does one begin to organize to defeat “male privilege”, since this seems to be the fundamental issue?

Colonialism, imperialism, and parasitic capitalism be damned! It’s “male privilege” that snatches African women’s children away and places them in foster care.

It’s ‘male privilege’ that has distorted the relationships between African men and women – not centuries of oppression.

How do you define how you, a black woman, ended up in this country? Do you say that “male privilege” did that?

This “male privilege” that African men supposedly has didn’t come into effect when we were being stuffed on to those slave ships, same as African women.

It did nothing for us when they dispersed us around the world; it does nothing for us today with the present conditions of genocide.

To think that African women can achieve liberation separate of African men, you really have to ask how that will happen.

African men do and say horrible things to African women, and vice versa, not as a result of “male privilege” but because of this relationship we have with colonialism. When we identify our issue as “male privilege”, we place the onus on the oppressed versus the oppressor and doesn’t give us an opportunity to overturn it.

The feminist responded, “You see! That’s what black men do! You always make it about you! That’s what I’m talking about!”

This sister does not have a historical materialist understanding of the world and the place of Africans in it, such as what is explained in the theory of African Internationalism, therefore, she has come to the wrong conclusions about the whole question of patriarchy and privilege.

We can have ideological disagreements with sisters who have this understanding, but at the end of the day, we want every African woman to be educated about the root cause of our conditions and how to fight. We recognize barriers that are sometimes present in our communities and unite that they should be destroyed. We do not want to fight African men and discourage them acting as the State in our homes, communities or any other space, and we support dialogue and action that dismantle colonial behaviors that mimic the oppression of white power.

That’s why we are actively involved in dismantling these behaviors, like what we’ve done in Santa Barbara, California when we organize our community to respond to a campus predator.

We have also targeted our work at the primary purveyors of violence in our communities, the State. We have organize protests against slumlords that threatened eviction and social service offices that denied services – and won.

We’ve organized a community response to the state-sponsored kidnapping of African children from poor working class African families, with our campaign #ArrestCPS.

We are also organizing a community response to child welfare, Uhuru Kijiji Childcare Collective that makes the community responsible for African women, children and families overall.

We are also engaged in building economic self-sustainability for our organization and our community through our brand DeColonaise and we provide political education through our website, flyers and The Burning Spear Newspaper’s column Harriet’s Daughter.

Our work addresses the real material conditions of our people. So even as we debate about patriarchy, we are actively involved in overturning real colonial conditions—Our feelings about patriarchy.

To learn more about what we do contact us at info@anwouhuru.org or (240) 326-3959 (U.S.) or visit our website at anwouhuru.org.

© Ziphozihle Kati 2011

Following this past April, a viral video of the brutal assault of an African woman flooded the internet, displaying the sexually connotative attack by three white male officers violently grabbing twenty-five-year-old Chikesia Clemons and aggressively forcing her to the ground where they proceeded to straddle her and expose her breast while attempting to detain her. The use of aggressive force was expressed in the video as the cop blatantly stated that he was “about to break your arm” after Chikesia asked what he was doing to her.

The widely circulated video was recorded by Chikesia’s friend Canita Adams, she witnessed the entire attack and stood in Chikesia’s defense against the vicious police. It was stated by a Waffle House spokesman that prior to the attack, there was an altercation between white Waitresses and Chikesia and her friends, thus justifying the call for police.

It was captured on the establishment’s surveillance camera that Chikesia and Canita Adams did indeed engage in this altercation after having been told to pay for plastic utensils that Chikesia requested from those employees. It was stated by both Canita Adams and Chikesia Clemons that the white women employees were very rude when first addressing them and throughout their stay continued to provoke them. After having been told to pay for the plastic utensils, Chikesia Clemons told the employee that she wasn’t familiar with any establishment requiring payment for plastic utensils.

She further requested for the district manager’s card so she could file a complaint on one of the waitresses. As Chikesia waited for the number, these white women instead called the police on both of the African women.

The vile molestation committed against Chikesia by the state officers is nothing new to the horrifying experience African women have historically faced by this colonialist State.

Our circumstance as a colonized African people results in a lack of power over our black lives; let alone our own black bodies, which are brutalized and abused in every way possible by the State.

African women’s bodies have been manipulated as a tool by the colonialist state and the colonial white population to further prove our lack of power and reinforce its grotesque imperialist force.

African women continue to be sexually assaulted by colonial cops in many more scenarios.

Daniel Holtzclaw was a police officer in Oklahoma City, who was convicted for targeting  poor and working class African women within their communities with the motive to rape and sexually assault them between 2013 and 2014.

There was also the recent case of Sherita Dixon-Cole, an African woman in Waxahachie, Texas who was raped by a cop after rejecting his request for sex in exchange for her release in detainment.

While African women continue to endure this colonial attack of sexual assault, white women remain quiet and align with the State, as they too are the oppressors of African people.

Just as it was showcased in the video at the Waffle House, it was white women who called the cops on the African women and as Chikesia was being molested, the white women sat aside and watched, thus proving their true stance as the oppressor alongside white men who committed the sexual assault.

This is why the African National Women’s Organization says there’s no such thing as “women in general”.

There are in fact women of the oppressor nation who live at the expense of oppressed women and owe reparations to women of oppressed nations.

The false narrative of “unifying all women” under feminism and against the fight of patriarchy is a hindrance to the fight for freedom of the African nation.

Focusing on the critical realities of African women to be a result of patriarchy, instead of addressing the historical political basis of colonialism, the violent assault on Africa and theft of African people by Europeans, is a waste of time.

The relationship between white women and African women is defined by the parasitic capitalist social system which can only be resolved through the complete demolishment of this colonial system and through reparations, So we say unity through reparations!

The African National Women’s Organization lifts up the resistance of African women.

We have been organizing since 2015 to bring African women into the African liberation fight that will free us from the shackles of colonial bondage.

We lift up the political theory of African Internationalism that puts revolutionary practical science into the hands of poor and working class Africans!

We unite with the Black is Back Coalition’s demand for Black Community Control of the Police!

Women from across the country came to participate in discussions and panels that spoke directly to the interest of working class African Women.

Held on March 24-25, 2018, our theme, ”building the revolutionary capacity of African women,”  was aimed directly at African women who wanted to mobilize against the colonial conditions that disproportionately affect our lives.

The first day opened up with a tribute to African women heroes who fought for our people.   We highlighted the contributions of African women workers from the past to the present who struggled  in the interest of African people.

We believe this was important for setting the tone of the Convention because often we witness praise of African women who work in the interest of the oppressor’s system;   women like Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama for example.

This was followed up by my presentation which laid out the ideological contradictions of the  women’s movement, which exploits the colonial conditions of African and other colonized women, to propel the issues of white oppressor nation women.

My presentation put out the need for working class African women to determine our own trajectory as an anti-colonial movement to dismantle white power in all of its forms; including its manifestation in the form feminism.

In our call to attend the convention we spelled out our position as one against colonialism not patriarchy.

“We are clear that the white oppressor nation is the colonizer, and as such carries out violence against the colonized in the form of political, economic, social and judicial policies.”

“ We therefore understand that the following is colonial violence; Welfare, State-Sponsored kidnapping of children, police brutality and murder,  domestic abuse, sex work, underemployment, homelessness is colonial violence, poverty, poor or inadequate healthcare, mis-education, gentrification, drugs and police in schools.”

Panels Highlight the Political Maturity of African Women workers

Other high points from the convention was the discussion on the “African Village: the relationship between African men and women,” which included  Africans who are Gender and Sexuality Non-Conforming (GSNA). The goal of this panel was to discuss and propose resolutions to overturn contradictions that often keep the  nation divided.

The  “All Black Hair is Political “panel approached the issue of  the attack on the identity of African woman through an attack on our hair.  We confirmed that a resistance to these attack, is resistance to colonialism.

The Black Immigration presentation, given by Elikya Ngoma, whose experiences as an African from Haiti living in Miami helped us understand the influence of colonizer immigration law contributes to dividing the nation, exploitation of African women and children, the break up of families and criminalizing African immigrants.

The, “African women to the forefront” panel explored the use of electoral politics and campus organizing as a way to raise the political consciousness of our people.

The “Independent African Economy” panel, which included Kunde Mwamvita, Dr. Aisha Fields and Kalambayi Andenet  who represented the independent economic institutions of the Movement. They put forth the importance of building and supporting African economic institutions that have a responsibility to the masses of our people.  This panel drove home that it’s not enough to Buy Black but instead we should Buy Black Power.

All of these panels and presentations offered our attendees an opportunity to interact with the speakers; asking questions, offering their own testimony and thoughts.  The audience engagement was amazing. Even the performers and vendors, were active participants.

There isn’t any intersection for the poor and working class

The political success of this convention proved that there is a need to discuss and mobilize around the issues affecting  working class African women.

What constitutes black women organizing today is divided between the working class and the petit bourgeois middle class, whose stance is often  riddled with opportunism.

African women workers who experience some of the deepest contradictions as a result of colonial exploitation, had an opportunity to become members of the African National Women Organization. Now they do not have move alone, but participate in a revolutionary process that empowers and embolden.

This point was reiterated during the conference by Ro’Shawndra Earvin who joined ANWO in the heat of her struggle to get access to the resources her mostly white campus afforded  to white women sexual violence victims, but were denied to her.

She stated that she called on Sharpton’s, National Action Network (NAN),  the NAACP and others to help her, no one answered the call. When she called on ANWO, however, we were there.  We her helped to develop a plan of action to ensure we expose the contradiction.

ANWO the organization of revolutionary African women

The strategy of the African National Women’s Organization is to forward the objectives of poor and working class African women.

The political theory of African Internationalism, helps us understand our place in the world, why African women experience a special oppression. When we understand this we are better positioned to fight and win.

African internationalism also helps us  understand that “under colonialism, African people as a whole, but specifically African women, have been conditioned to internalize and accept direct violence from the oppressor.”  Conditions that we no longer intend to be victims of.

Join the growing movement of African women who are organizing against the colonial exploitation of African women.  Find out more about us on anwouhuru.org

We are winning!