Latest news with #Nkrumah
IOL News
25-05-2025
- Politics
- IOL News
Workers of Africa: The Unfinished Struggle for Liberation
Kenyan Nairobi, 2024-06-24. Protesters confronting a police officer during a protest against Kenya's new Finance Bill in Nairobi on June 24, 2024. Africa's workers face a coordinated attack by capital, both local and global, backed by the IMF, the World Bank, and complicit elites who have abandoned the very people they once claimed to serve, says the writer. Image: AFP Mbuso Ngubane AFRICA Day is not a day for celebration in the narrow sense. It is a day of remembrance, reflection, and recommitment. We do not mark the birth of the Organisation of African Unity on the 25th of May 1963 with song and dance alone. We mark it with struggle. The very idea of Africa's unity, and its promise of liberation, has always rested on the backs, and in the hands, of its workers. Not just those who labour in mines and factories, but also those who clean homes, till the soil, sew clothes, raise children, and build roads. It is working-class men and women, those who carry the continent's burdens daily, who have borne the cost of empire, and it is they who have carried the fight for freedom across generations. Africa's liberation has never been the product of state declarations or elite negotiation. It has always been forged in protest, in strike, in sweat, and often in blood. When Ghana rose under Nkrumah, it was the strikes of railway and cocoa workers that shook the colonial economy. In South Africa, it was not the ballot box alone that broke apartheid. It was the power of the organised working class, from the 1973 Durban strikes to the formation of militant unions like the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa. The same can be said of Guinea-Bissau under Amílcar Cabral, where the peasantry and rural workers were central to building a people's war. Cabral was clear: 'Tell no lies, claim no easy victories.' And we must now also be clear. Africa is not yet free. The great betrayal of African independence was that while flags changed and national anthems were composed, the economic system remained intact. The colonial economy, rooted in extraction and exploitation, continued to thrive. This time under African managers, but still under the same logic of capital. Workers remained landless, poor, and expendable. Their voices were marginalised in the very nations they had helped to liberate. As Thomas Sankara warned, political independence without economic justice is merely the illusion of freedom. Sankara, a revolutionary of rare honesty and vision, called for a break with neo-colonialism, for land redistribution, for women's emancipation, for a new economic order rooted in self-reliance. He was murdered by the very forces that feared what might happen if workers truly led. And today, we must ask: what has changed? In South Africa, nearly 50% of young people are unemployed. Women continue to carry the burden of unpaid reproductive labour, while also surviving on precarious wages in the care and retail sectors. Miners die underground, farm workers live in shacks, domestic workers are denied basic protections, and informal traders are harassed and criminalised. The economy remains colonial in structure. It exports raw materials, imports manufactured goods and services for the profits of capitalists while communities go hungry. This is not transformation. It is continued dispossession. The same conditions exist across much of the continent. In Nigeria, oil workers face mass retrenchments while the profits are repatriated to multinational giants. In the DRC, children dig for cobalt with their bare hands, fuelling a so-called green economy that has no place for them. In Kenya and Uganda, trade union leaders are imprisoned or assassinated. In Morocco and Tunisia, workers organising for dignity are crushed under anti-terror laws. From the Sahel to the Cape, Africa's workers face a coordinated attack by capital, both local and global, backed by the IMF, the World Bank, and complicit elites who have abandoned the very people they once claimed to serve. But this is not just a story of defeat. New fires are burning on the continent. In Mali and Burkina Faso, led by figures like Assimi Goïta and Ibrahim Traoré, there is a rebellion against the dominance of France and the plunder of our resources. These processes are complex, often contradictory, and we must watch them with both hope and clarity. But what cannot be denied is that something long suppressed, is now stirring. A Pan-African consciousness is resurfacing. Not from orchestrated summits or high-level dialogues, but from the lived experiences of those whose hands sustain our economies. It is returning through the organised defiance of farmworkers resisting landlessness, through the daily calculations of informal traders navigating criminalisation and debt, and through the collective frustration of unemployed youth with no future promised to them. It is shaped not in abstractions, but in concrete material struggle. What we are seeing is not a spectacle. It is a substance, and it cannot be ignored. On this Africa Day, we must reject the empty symbolism of liberation without transformation. We must say clearly that the project of African unity is meaningless if it does not speak to the daily struggles of working people. Africa will not be saved by billion-dollar infrastructure deals, or by a new scramble for lithium and rare earths. It will be saved by the transformation of our societies along the lines of justice, equity, and people's power. That re-organisation begins with workers. Those who produce value, who build nations, who raise the next generation. The trade union movement on the continent must rise to this occasion. We must rebuild our solidarity across borders. We must reject the legal straightjackets imposed on our organising. We must stop relying on state patronage and return to the grassroots, to the workplaces, to the streets. Unions cannot be junior partners in capitalist development. We must be the voice of an alternative future. We must also be honest about our failures: where we have been co-opted, where we have ignored women's struggles, where we have failed to adapt to the realities of the informal and unemployed. A movement that cannot renew itself cannot lead.
The National
08-05-2025
- Politics
- The National
How a conference in Indonesia 70 years ago formed the bedrock for today's Global South
Last month, East Asia and the region well beyond marked three important anniversaries. First, at the end of April it was 50 years since the reunification of Vietnam. Second, a few days earlier in 1975, the Khmer Rouge had come to power in Cambodia. And third, mid-April was the 70th anniversary of the Bandung Conference, which laid the foundations for the establishment in 1961 of the Non-Aligned Movement, chiefly through the efforts of five developing world titans: India's Jawaharlal Nehru, Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, Indonesia's Sukarno, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and Yugoslavia's Josip Broz Tito. The first two anniversaries generated quite a lot of coverage, with thoughtful pieces published in states that participated in the war in Vietnam, including the country itself, the US and Australia. The famous image is of the last helicopters taking off from the rooftop of the US embassy in Saigon as the North Vietnamese forces closed in, but even the way one describes the event is loaded: was it the liberation of South Vietnam from a corrupt US-backed regime by the victorious communists? Or was it a justification for the domino theory, that once the capitalist West allowed one state in the region to be taken over by the 'reds', others would follow? The disastrous and genocidal consequences of the Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia have also been widely examined, including some analysis of why many of its people have an ambivalent attitude towards that four-year period. As the Cambodian-American political scientist Sophal Ear wrote last month: 'For many young people, it's something their parents don't talk about and the state prefers to frame selectively.' It was somewhat different, however, when it came to the 70th anniversary of the Bandung Conference. Celebrations of the latter failed to register in large sections of the western press, to the extent that the Economist recently published an article headlined: 'How the Global South forgot its own birthday.' The meeting in 1955 at the Indonesian city of Bandung – also known as the Afro-Asian Conference – brought together participants from 29 countries, representing more than 50 per cent of the global population at the time, and is considered a key moment in building solidarity among the countries that are now sometimes called the 'Global South'. A 10-point 'declaration on promotion of world peace and co-operation' was agreed, and stirring speeches were delivered. Nehru, India's then prime minister, set the tone when he declared: 'For too long we, of Asia, have been petitioners in western courts and chancelleries. That story must belong to the past. We propose to stand on our own feet. We do not intend to be a plaything of others.' Setting the stage for the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement, a major development at the height of the Cold War, was a highly significant movement. If the 70th anniversary of the Bandung Conference had indeed 'passed with barely a squeak', as the Economist put it, that would have been quite shocking. But that was not the case at all. There were big conferences in Beijing and Jakarta, the former co-hosted by the prestigious Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the latter held in co-operation with the London thinktank Chatham House and Oxford University. There were panel discussions and events in – among other cities – Delhi, Johannesburg, Colombo, Doha, Moscow and Hyderabad, op-eds published in newspapers from Tanzania to South Korea, and at least one new book. This is a far from exhaustive list, but it does show that the anniversary was celebrated widely and received extensive media coverage – just not, perhaps, in the outlets the Economist editors care to read or view. But that is, I'm afraid, symptomatic of how Bandung and everything that followed has been treated for decades by what we might refer to now as the 'old world order'. The Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77 developing countries established at the UN in 1964? They were derided as meaningless talking shops, hardly worth mentioning – even while their luminaries, such as Indonesia's then president, Sukarno, and Cuba's Fidel Castro, were viewed as sufficiently dangerous for the CIA to devise countless operations to undermine or overthrow them. In fact, the Bandung principles – including those of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, insistence on peaceful means to settle international disputes, resistance to great-power coercion, and promotion of co-operation and conciliation – have long been at the heart of South-South discourse. They were taken further and incorporated into subsequent organisations such as the Association of South-East Asian Nations (formed in 1967), and have been reborn, as it were, in Brics – which many see as the 21st-century successor of Bandung. Of course, Brics as a grouping is also frequently dismissed in certain quarters. Yet why, as I asked in these pages nearly two years ago, are so many countries keen to join if it is irrelevant? Part of this is a refusal to depart from seeing the world through the prism of highly formal structures such as the EU and Nato. We know what they have achieved. (A highly mismanaged migrant crisis in the Mediterranean and war with Russia, would be one brutal – but true – answer.) What, ask the naysayers, were the concrete consequences of the Bandung Conference? Let's say I asked those same people this question: how did the yearning for freedom and belief in religion contribute to the downfall of officially atheist communist regimes in the Cold War? They would insist that those beliefs did have effects – and I would agree with them – but they would find it almost impossible to quantify them. So with Bandung. It's the spirit of the conference, the power of the idea, that has lived on and has grown. The Economist's writer doesn't get it, saying the fact that India has moved from a policy of non-alignment to one of multi-alignment shows that the notion of collective solidarity has failed. On the contrary, non-alignment was a sign of the times: middle powers and small countries didn't want to end up as client states of great powers. Multi-alignment – which is the position of most countries in the Global South – means they want to be friends with all. And being friends entails mutual respect and a degree of similar standing. That's a sign of confidence. It's a sign of success. And it's a measure of just how far those countries have come since they gathered at Bandung all those years ago.
Mail & Guardian
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Mail & Guardian
Could Ali Mazrui's nuclear pragmatism inspire practical policies?
Kenyan American political scientist Ali Mazrui Possession of nuclear weapons is not incidentally negative, it is directly and purposefully so, designed to instantly kill millions of people upon pressing an intercontinental ballistic missile button, according to Kenyan American political scientist He made this obvious point in the course of comparing what he called the crises of global survival, including climate change and nuclear war. He knew this was an obvious point, although it was often ignored. The Russo-Ukrainian War and the potential fractures in United States extended deterrence have today triggered fears of a renewed nuclear arms race and nuclear proliferation, or even a nuclear war. Contemporary nuclear politics may therefore need creative and even radical ideas that part ways with established practices. One such idea is Mazrui's 'nuclear pragmatism', which holds that horizontal nuclear proliferation — the spread of nuclear weapons to new actors in the Global South — is a necessary step toward a universal nuclear disarmament. He believed this could fundamentally change the mindsets of the leaders of major nuclear powers and encourage them to abolish their arsenals. This idea, a little too counterintuitive for sure, has long been overlooked in the Western canon of security studies literature. I argue that giving it a closer look could at least provoke new lines of thinking. 'Abolish to abolish' and 'proliferate to abolish' are the two schools of thought in Africa on nuclear disarmament championed, respectively, by the first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, and by Mazrui. Both Nkrumah and Mazrui were for the total abolition of nuclear weapons. Nkrumah argued that nuclear weapons were too dangerous to be used for any purpose, including deterrence, since a threat of violence itself is a form of violence. Mazrui agreed with Nkrumah that nuclear weapons must be abolished. But the two diverged sharply on how to achieve this. Nkrumah preferred a geographically focused, legally based approach. The ideas of Africa as a nuclear-free zone and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons resonate with the approach once advocated by Nkrumah. Mazrui maintained that Nkrumah's approach could at best lead us to a nuclear-free Africa but not to a nuclear-free planet; the former is meaningless if it does not lead to the latter. Mazrui thus asserted: '… African countries should stop thinking in terms of making Africa a nuclear-free zone.' His alternative suggestion was for African countries to 'reconsider their position' vis-à-vis the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which came into being in 1968. In other words, Mazrui suggested that African countries should (threaten to) withdraw en masse from the treaty. He insisted, '… non-proliferation for the nuclear 'have-nots' will be a nonstarter until it is matched by progressive military denuclearization among the 'haves'.' From Mazrui's point of view a modest proliferation of nuclear weapons in Africa and the Middle East could increase nuclear anxieties among the major nuclear states in the Global North, intensify the pressure on the leadership there for total nuclear disarmament and ultimately lead to the rejection of nuclear weapons by all — and their abolition. He passionately advocated this idea for more than half a century. Unlike Nkrumah's view, Mazrui's idea was never seriously considered in Africa, and it was never referenced in the mainstream discourse on nuclear disarmament. But this appears to be slowly changing in recent years. The assertion made by the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, in February 2025, however, still accurately captures the prevailing mood about nuclear weapons in the Global South. Guterres said: 'The nuclear option is no option at all.' Mazrui's nuclear pragmatism is based on at least four assumptions: (1) nuclear weapons are evil by nature and should be illegitimate, not just for some, but for all; (2) a modest horizontal nuclear proliferation in the Global South would increase nuclear anxieties within the major nuclear powers; (3) this anxiety, in turn, would intensify the public pressure on the leaders of the major nuclear states for total military denuclearisation; and (4) ultimately, the whole process would lead to the rejection of nuclear weapons by all and their total abolition. Mazrui started from the premise that the nuclear accident at Therefore, he posed the question: what other, less catastrophic alternatives might lead to global nuclear disarmament? What thus came into being was his nuclear pragmatism: horizontal nuclear proliferation, specifically a modest increase in nuclear capabilities in Africa and the Middle East, could offer such an alternative, fostering a climate where crises may be manageable and constructive. Of course, horizontal nuclear proliferation has its risks, Mazrui added, but are those risks really more dangerous than the risks of vertical proliferation in arsenals of the superpowers themselves? A key element of Mazrui's nuclear pragmatism is the distrust that Western powers have about nuclear weapons in the Global South. This distrust could be beneficial if it generates enough alarm in the Northern Hemisphere, which could, in turn, lead to a significant movement aimed at declaring nuclear weapons illegitimate for all nations and working toward their elimination in every country that possesses them. It must nevertheless be reiterated that Mazrui never overlooked the risks associated with nuclear proliferation. The ideal scenario for him was total nuclear disarmament or an initiative toward that end without any additional nuclear stockpile (vertical nuclear proliferation) and additional membership in the nuclear club (horizontal nuclear proliferation). For him, however, horizontal nuclear proliferation would lead to a sufficiently great sense of imminent peril to tilt the judgment in favor of total denuclearization in the military field everywhere. According to Mazrui, the racial prejudices and cultural distrust of the white members of the nuclear club may well serve the positive function of disbanding the larger club. The geographical focus of horizontal nuclear proliferation was to be Africa and the Middle East. But a modest horizontal proliferation in the Middle East would be more dangerous in global terms than a slightly higher level of proliferation in Latin America or Africa. This is partly because a regional war in the Middle East carries a greater risk of escalating into a world war than does a regional war in Latin America or Africa. It was, therefore, the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East that could cause greater alarm in the Global North and trigger a movement for the prohibition of nuclear weapons for all. 'Perhaps until now, the major powers have worried only about 'the wrongs weapons in the right hands,'' Mazrui reasoned, 'when nuclear devices pass into Arab or African hands, a new nightmare will have arrived — 'the wrong weapon in the wrong hands'.' This Northern fear could be an asset for getting the North to agree to total and universal denuclearisation in the military field. Dr Seifudein Adem is a research fellow at JICA Ogata Research Institute for Peace and Development in Tokyo, Japan. He is also Ali Mazrui's intellectual biographer.
Associated Press
07-02-2025
- Sport
- Associated Press
Nkrumah's 14 lead Tennessee State over Western Illinois 87-69
The AP Top 25 men's college basketball poll is back every week throughout the season! Get the poll delivered straight to your inbox with AP Top 25 Poll Alerts. Sign up here. NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Aaron Nkrumah had 14 points in Tennessee State's 87-69 win over Western Illinois on Thursday night. Nkrumah also had eight rebounds and seven assists for the Tigers (11-13, 7-6 Ohio Valley Conference). Travis Harper II scored 13 points while shooting 4 for 10 (1 for 5 from 3-point range) and 4 of 5 from the free-throw line and added five rebounds. Justus Jackson had 13 points and shot 5 for 8, including 3 for 6 from beyond the arc. Trey Deveaux led the way for the Leathernecks (8-16, 2-11) with 18 points, eight rebounds and two steals. Marko Maletic added 17 points and seven rebounds for Western Illinois. Julius Rollins also had 14 points. The loss was the Leathernecks' ninth straight. Both teams next play Saturday. Tennessee State hosts Lindenwood and Western Illinois goes on the road to play UT Martin. ___
Associated Press
31-01-2025
- Sport
- Associated Press
Nkrumah scores 13, Tennessee State downs Little Rock 72-70
The AP Top 25 men's college basketball poll is back every week throughout the season! Get the poll delivered straight to your inbox with AP Top 25 Poll Alerts. Sign up here. LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Aaron Nkrumah had 13 points in Tennessee State's 72-70 win against Little Rock on Thursday night. Nkrumah also had five assists for the Tigers (10-12, 6-5 Ohio Valley Conference). Justus Jackson scored 13 points while going 5 of 9 (3 for 5 from 3-point range) and added five assists. Brandon Weston had 12 points and went 5 of 11 from the field. Isaiah Lewis led the way for the Trojans (13-9, 7-4) with 20 points and two steals. Johnathan Lawson added 15 points and four steals for Little Rock. Tuongthach Gatkek finished with 13 points and six rebounds. ___
