At the point when ANWO became involved, the APSP investigators had already collected evidence from the victim, an indigenous woman, and the accused; and made a determination that resulted in Muambi Tangu being expelled from the African People’s Socialist Party and removed from his post in InPDUM.

ANWO stands in complete unity with the decision made by the Party.  While we will not go into the details of the incident, it was clear from the testimony of both parties that boundaries were crossed when the accused imposed his will on the victim.

The thoroughness of the investigation and the consideration given to all the facts, confirm that the African People’s Socialist Party is truly creating a new world dedicated to ending the oppression of African and other colonized people.

What we expect from leaders in the fight to end colonial domination is to destroy all traces of the colonizer in us.  This includes rejecting harmful tendencies that have been used as a method of control and oppression; particularly when it comes to the special oppression of African and other colonized women.  

As colonized African and indigenous women our experience under domestic colonialism is one wrought with sexual violence, hyper-sexualization, and sexual exploitation.

We serious are stamping out this colonial behavior. We must refuse to keep quiet, especially, when it involves someone who claims to be a leader in the fight for our liberation. Silence does not give us the opportunity to struggle against behaviors that threaten our ability to make the revolution.

As we fight for a world free from colonial terror, we expect that our efforts we will destroy the tendencies of the colonizer within the oppressed colonized masses.  It will be through these efforts that we will build a world where the special oppression of African women will be no more and the liberation of colonized people around the world will mean the complete and total eradication of the colonizer outside and inside of us. 

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.

There have also been numerous blog posts about the circumstances of Eric’s death, but none more strikingly condescending than “Why I Will Not March for Eric Garner,” a blog post on the black feminist website For Harriet, written by its founder Kimberly Foster.

The title itself was enough for me to delay reading beyond the first two lines. I did not want to read another self-absorbed validation of “black womanhood” pitted against the idea of the “black man.”

I did not want to read about another African woman who felt like her victimization was justification for her indictment of African men.

I did not want to be upset by the words of an African woman who saw herself and our gender as separate from the African nation as a whole.

I had to read it, however, just because I knew it had all of those things trapped inside its paragraphs. I also realized it was necessary to expose her petty-bourgeois positions.

Foster writes, “I’m not settling for anything less than reciprocity. If you refuse to hear our calls for help, then I cannot respond to yours. I have no desire, as a black woman, to be placed on a pedestal, but I will not allow myself to become a footstool. Do not ask me for empathy if you are content to deny it in return.”

Feminism, a skewed worldview for Africans

The “pedestal” Foster claims she doesn’t want is exactly what her article calls for, a place high at the top as a glorious example of double oppression that everyone must learn to listen to.

The reality is that her calls will continue to go unanswered because she has no understanding of the material conditions of our people. She and African women like her do not understand that we are still colonized—as part of the oppressed African nation—which is why their worldview is so skewed.

They are fighting for “recognition” within a capitalist society that devalues the life of African people, period.

Everything in this society minimizes us and there is no pocket to which we can escape while imperialism continues to exist.

Feminism leads people to believe that there is a safe place for African women, that the devaluation of the African woman can be solved if we get African men to understand and stand in solidarity with our struggles.

This is politically backward because it makes the assumption that African women have it all together, like we have nothing to overcome.

The fact is that some African women are still not clear on who our oppressor is and do not recognize it when colonialism is staring them right in their face. They are therefore ill-prepared to take on struggle toward freedom and liberation.

Violence on one of us is violence on all of us

Foster says that “Black people, both men and women, experience coercive, violent and often deadly interactions with law enforcement.”

To Foster, the “coercive” and “deadly interactions” are merely inconsequential words that take up space on the way to her main point about African men being absent on issues concerning African women.

She continues to convey her feelings of being left out of the mainstream discourse on violence and she attacks African men who she believes benefit from the support of the entire African community.

Her veiled attempt at acknowledging African repression by colonial forces does little to expose the fundamental contradiction of imperialism, which creates the violent conditions we are exposed to. Foster writes that “watching black men show up for Garner after seeing so many derail conversations about Black women’s well-being leaves me with little more than a sinking feeling of despair upon recognition that the understanding so many of us crave will not come.”

I don’t pretend to understand how it is that we can measure and compare stats on our deaths or our experiences of violence.

Some of us seem to think that the factors that cause our misery are cut from two different cloths; as if African women are somehow subjected to a harsher oppressor than African men.

If you look at some of these feminist writings, it would seem that African women came out of the entire experience unscathed and capable of putting out analysis that should not be challenged, no matter how backwards it is.

African men, just like African women have been subjected to some of the worst conditions imaginable. Under colonialism our education, health, security, family and food have been compromised.

Colonialism is the problem

Colonialism brings with it the ideals of the oppressor nation and imposes them on the oppressed nation.

The white nationalist ideals were carried over to the oppressed and enforced through policy and action.

And yes! Colonialism interrupts the natural dynamics between men and women based on the idea that men are superior, women are objects and our lives are valueless.

However, if we do not understand that we are still colonized then the only way some African women will know how to struggle is against African men, who they believe benefit from the oppression of African women.

To them I ask, in what ways do African men benefit? And who do they benefit from? And if you think there is a benefit, do you want that benefit bestowed upon you?

When Foster writes, ”but we are told that unless we are murdered or raped, we are not truly in distress because black women’s bodies are instruments upon which black men can play out their fantasies of domination without reprisal. But the illusion of power crumbles when black men face the police state.” She seems to be having an “I told you so” moment, almost tickled by the idea that African men are taken down a notch when they meet up with the pigs.

She disingenuously attempts to correlate the powerlessness felt by African women at the hands of African men to the powerlessness of African men at the hands of the “police state.”

African women and men must fight imperialism together

What Foster fails to realize is that the violence brought to us by the police is systemic and antagonistic, which is different from the violence within our own communities which is interpersonal and non-antagonistic.

Within our communities we can fix each others behavior, but we cannot fix the behavior of a parasitic system whose existence is dependent upon our continued oppression. We have to destroy the system and we have to struggle like hell together to do it.

If violence against African women by African men is a problem, let’s fix it through discussion or baseball bats to the kneecaps; either way we are going to find a way to struggle through it so that we can work together to cut down imperialism.

“In recent weeks,” writes Foster, “black women have launched campaigns to ensure that we can exist in public without experiencing harassment and have presidential endorsement of policy that addresses our specific needs. And though these petitions seem common sense to me, black women’s mere desire to take up space is met with push back. And then we are caught in a cycle of perpetually asserting our humanity.”

Asserting our humanity to whom? Here is where we discover what perceived benefit African men are being afforded—the attention of reigning imperialist Barack Obama.

Earlier this year the white house announced My Brother’s Keeper, an initiative to highlight the challenges faced by “young men of color” which set off a chain reaction of funding for nonprofits who wanted to get into the business of figuring out the black male’s condition.

Is this the recognition Foster and other women like her are aiming for? They are vying for a seat at the imperialist table or at least the money that sits on it.

Never mind that under the Obama regime, unemployment for Africans has increased, public education has been on the decline and black removal from major cities, including Washington DC, has been on a steady increase.

Instead of making a struggle against these glaring attacks on our people, Foster and other black feminists are scrambling for recognition inside a dying system.

Feminism –worldview of the African petty bourgeoisie

Ms. Foster, your priorities are in disarray. Eric Garner wasn’t even cold in the ground before you fired off this self-absorbed indictment of African men, which left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths, including some black feminists.

Herein lies the problem with feminism—it is the worldview of the African petty bourgeoisie whose class aspirations align them with the interest of the oppressor and not with the African workers. Clearly the ideas offered up here by Foster are not reflective of the views of the African working class—mothers, wives and sisters of those being murdered daily in our communities.

Under the banner of feminism, African women align themselves with petty-bourgeois, colonial and oppressive forces, because it identifies patriarchy as the enemy instead of colonialism.

This is a primary reason why Africans continue to be conflicted about how to struggle against oppression.

Feminism ain’t the solution—revolution is!

African Internationalism is clear in that there are two nations—the oppressor and the oppressed—the former benefits from the latter.

The men and women of the oppressor nation benefit from the subjugation of the men and women of the oppressed nation.

Africans of the oppressed nation have to struggle together to bust up the power the oppressor nation has over our lives, and we will not do that by targeting each other.

My intention is not to downplay the conditions that plague African women at the hands of the oppressor and from African men. It’s a huge contradiction.

The resolve, however, cannot be the malicious attacks of African men rooted in victim self-aggrandizement because then the question becomes “Who do we want to recognize us as victims?”

If the answer is “society” then we are talking about a bourgeois capitalist society that not only causes our misery but benefits from it as well.

The solution to our problems is revolution—a principled objective revolution. It is through the revolutionary process that we will see the withering away of these backward ideals imposed on us through colonialism.

Under the leadership of the African proletariat, the struggle that we make amongst ourselves will be a step towards consolidating the African nation and enhancing our ability to overturn imperialism and free ourselves.

We will win!
We are winning!