50 Years of Transition - Or,
Toward a United Africa by 2065
By Li'l Joe
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
I see the Pan-African Federal Parliamentary Republic coming into existence
by the support of the African Union. The African Union must be seen as a
transitional, rather than a permanent organization.
The authority of the African Union is based on its component state
governments having been elected, or by some other method coming to be the
state's government. The state is a cohesive, bureaucratic-military political
power, with a monopoly of armed power, with courts and prisons. Power
without authority is tyranny, so the first concern of the Pan- African
Federal Republic is the establishment of what constitutes its authority, the
method of authorization.
The capitalist mode of production and appropriation has created a 'natural'
condition, derived from competition, that every man is an enemy, or a tool;
the relation of man to man is mutual exploitation, the nexus of man and man
is trade and therefore money.
Political power is based on material wealth. This 'wealth', however, is not
'money' in the pocket, purse, cash register or bank, which is but government
backed banknotes, used as 'currency'. Rather, the material wealth of nations
is it's natural resources and productive assets, productive forces. Thus the
classes in possession of the nation's national resources and productive
forces possess thereby the wealth and power of the nation, the state is
therefore an instrument of class rule.
The Pan-African Federal Republic, unlike the current African Union and its
component states, is to be 'democratic', i.e., consent of the governed. This
is but a cliché, however, indeed it is an illusory community of interests,
if the People are not the Power. The Power of the People, that is Majority
Rule, having the ability to authorize members of Parliament by Elections,
can be an actuality only if the Natural Wealth of a nation is the Possession
of the Whole People.
Thus, in the course of formation of the All Africa Federal Republic the
Natural Resources of Africa must become the Public Property of Africa and
the inheritance of everyone of its diverse people.
The national states that comprise the African Union are anachronisms that
have served historically to move Africans from Colonial domination to
formal, Universally recognized Independent States.
Yet, the Natural Resources and Productive Forces have remained the
Possession of the national capitalists in league with transnational
corporations and finance capital. Consequently, African states have
degenerated into a condition where Public Power is mocked, and deteriorated
into warring economic factions, a war of all against all. The more developed
industrially and technologically advanced capitalists, represented by the
national government's of Europe and North America, have been party to these
conflicts, beginning with Civil, or rather Tribal Wars, in Congo, and
Nigeria, spanning the decades with such similar, outside sponsored wars in
Ethiopia, Uganda, Sudan, Angola, Mozambique, and full circle to Rwanda and
again in Congo. The prime causes of these Wars are economic, the motivation
being the control of Africa's Natural Resources, Raw Materials and
Production capabilities.
The first task of the African Union is to create technological, economic and
socio-political stasis; there can be no African unity where the natural
resources and raw materials are for the grabbing, resulting in tribal
politics, the bourgeois- neo-colonialist collaboration of one camp against
another.
Africa is a Continent of Failed States. This is true. However, wars and
'failed states' are not the cause of economic chaos, but one of the many
consequences.
The same thing has been happening in Europe over the past two centuries.
Consider the savage wars of the 20th century, imperial rivalries and
nationalist expansionism. The fact is that capitalist commodity production
by wageworkers is a war of capitalist against capitalist, nation against
nation, and class against class.
The proletariat of the European Union can put an end to the anarchy of
capitalist commodity production by winning the battles of democracy,
legislating the transfer of the productive forces from the private
possessions of national capitalists to the public property of the working
classes and toiling masses, and thereupon abolishing capitalist commodity
production and wage labor.
The anarchy of capitalist commodity production, competition, wars and civil
wars are presently destroying Africa and ruining its economies. Ethnic
cliques associated with this or that tribal nationalistic bourgeois are
fighting to control territories rich with natural resources and raw
materials, trading diamonds, gold and oil contracts in exchange for guns,
tanks, mines, military aircraft and anti-aircraft weapons while allowing --
if not acerbating -- famine, draught, malaria, and AIDS to wreck havoc in
what's left of national economies, and decimate what's left of civil
society.
Thus, the African Union is a Union of Failed States that know themselves to
be failures, and thus is a Transitional Conglomerate of Failed States that
must understand it's most important, and significant contribution to Africa
and Africans is to use its power and funds to overthrow the conditions that
are turning Africa into Political and Military battlefields; that is, to
provide resources and assistance to the New Generation of Africans,
committed to building institutions and means for the establishment of an
All-Africa Federal Republic.
Government, 'by consent of the governed', is not possible in the present
circumstances. This is not possible, however, not because the present
African heads of state are corrupt dictators, looting taxes and donor funds,
nor is it because they don't want to step down.
These are not causes but consequences; the failures of African states are
not just the failure or immorality of heads of state, delusions of grandeur
and so on. But is the consequence of a ragged and chaotic economic anarchy
of capitalist commodity production, by the exploitation of social labor in
social production.
Capitalist anarchy can be mitigated only when Natural Resources and
financial institutions are the Public Property of the All Africa and African
Federal Republic. Those national and transnational corporations that
presently own and mismanage the African economy are the cause of the eyesore
and painful poverty in Africa and of Africans. Changing heads of states
won't solve this poverty problem.
The economy of Africa must become the property of Africa and Africans
managed by a federal republic in control of Africa's natural resources,
agriculture, industry and banking institutions.
The political apologists of the very capitalistic system that 'corrupt' the
African leaders, are the one's who are now denouncing them as 'corrupt'!
Politics is a lucrative business, a means by which smart opportunists,
wheelers and dealers go in short order from 'rags to riches'. Of course the
African heads of state are corrupt! So are the politicians and
propagandists, whether Africans, Europeans or Americans who denounce them.
The marriage of 'free enterprise' and 'democracy' is a marriage of
convinces, and the paid lobbyists perform the ceremonies in backrooms in
shady motels. Politicians are the prostitutes and capitalists the tricks,
the lobbyists the pimps.
Africa is in poverty, not because it isn't 'free', but because of 'free
enterprise'. Politicians are the prostitutes and capitalists the tricks, but
whereas in America the lobbyists the pimps, in Africa there are no middleman
lobbyists.
The agents of international 'free enterprise' and 'corruption' African
politicians operate directly, like Newt Gingrich in Harlem, looting a Harlem
school children's fund. African politicians welcome capitalist politicians
into their offices, agents of capitalists there conducting bribery
transactions. In the United States, it is the same 'morally outraged'
Republicans that denounced Clinton's 'immorality', and are denouncing
African politicians as 'corrupt', who defended Bush/Blaire lies vis-à-vis
Iraq, and are also defending the embarrassingly corrupt Republican Majority
Leader, Tom Delay, against being called to the Ethics Committee!
If 'corruption' were the cause of 'poverty', then the United States would be
one of the most impoverished countries on earth! But, it isn't. Africa is
"not free" and "in poverty", because of "dictatorships" as such, but
directly because her Natural Resources and economy are in the manipulated
clutches of capitalists, her children exploited. The wealthy 'tricks' from
Europe and America are paying 'corrupt dictators' to allow them unbridled
access to Africa and her children. The African politicians in power are in
this instance themselves the pimps.
After emerging from prisons, the bush, or exile to take government power,
these African warriors turned politicians became bourgeois politicians,
including those who called themselves 'socialists'. The same capitalist mode
of production and appropriation, with the same corresponding relations of
production, property, and class structures continued as before. The only
difference was in integrating African capitalist's in the economy, and
African politician's in the state structures.
The capitalistic modes of production and appropriations in Africa cannot at
this time be ended, outside of the proletariat in the industrially advanced
countries taking power and the productive forces in their countries.
Nevertheless, Africa's Natural Resources and Financial Institutions can
immediately become common possession: All African People's Public Property
and Central Bank, democratically owned and managed by African workers and
peasants.
This policy will place African workers and peasants in control of the
African economy and end corruption, because they are the majority, rather
than a minority of capitalists and politicians. In the dominate economic and
political positioning, African proletarians and peasants will have placed
themselves in position to determine that profits will be used in the
interests of Africa, its people, and it's industrial and technological
economic development and political independence.
The African Union's member states must prepare the people of their countries
to the new economic and political realities, and their awareness of their
potentials as members of Parliaments in a Federal Republic in which Africa's
vast Natural Resources are the common possession of All Africans, and cannot
be sold or bought, alienated.
Africa's Natural Resources are Africa's inalienable Possession. There are
plenty of conmen and fools in the world. But, with Africa's Natural
Resources the Public Property of All Africans, in common, no capitalist or
politician would be able to sell or own Africa's Natural Resources, anymore
than one can buy, own or sell rain clouds.
Africa was taken, and now retaken for the sake of Africa and humanity, by
the present, and future Nkrumah Enrollment: Nkrumah, Cabral, Che, Mandela,
Fubara
dedicated, passionate, critical thinking activists to work with and
for the Continental African Organizing Committee.
The African Union, from its member states, must place at the disposal of the
Continental African Organizing Committee, resources and funds necessary for
them to organize bureaucracies with the wherewithal to organize a
nomenclature tasked with the authority, and responsibility of putting
together local, urban and rural community staffs. These staffs will be
required to work in local communities throughout Africa at workmen wages.
These African activists and their organizing staffs will be local in their
work but Pan-African in their perspectives. Indeed, these radical
Pan-African perspectives will determine the local work.
The Continental Organizing Committee will organize in addition to local
community activists, local congresses, bringing together in each local,
urban community and rural village self-sustaining mini-congresses,
encouraging self-organization and agendas that are distinct as possible from
existing government bodies and state organizations.
Authority, and funds for the operation of local congresses must be derived
from the communities and villages themselves. Members of these local
congresses must come from their communities, and not be paid agents of any
of the existing state organizations or agencies, and completely separated
from NGOs, and UN agencies.
The Continental Organizing Committee bureaucracies and local staff can help,
aid and suggest, but not give orders. They can participate in mini-congress
settings, but as observers, otherwise they would become a cadre, and as such
displace the local initiative and creativity of the community congresses,
making them appendages.
The people of the mini-congresses are the town hall grassroots basis for all
democracies, and not subject to any other's agenda.
To succeed in establishing a popular democracy, the Local, District,
Regional and Federal Congresses exist on the basis of Mini-Congresses
feeding into Local Congress as Delegates and participant observers; Local
Congresses electing Delegates to the District Congresses; District
Congresses electing Delegations to the Regional Congresses; Regional
Congresses electing Delegates to the federal Congresses. All Delegates of
the Congresses, while subject to recall by majority vote from those who
elected and delegated them, these Delegates cannot be expelled from the
Congresses to which their constituency sent them as constituency
representatives.
Funds from African Union member states must come through the AU, to the
Continental Organizing Committee, and funneled through its bureaucracy to
local, district, regional and federal organizers, preparing for local,
district, regional and federal congresses.
The governments of states will not be in direct, official or unofficial
contact with the Continental Organizing Committee; only the African Union
can do this by its own auspices. This is necessary to avoid reactionary
intrigue and manipulation.
Given the histories, rivalries and conflicts within and between states,
separation of the Continental Organizing Committee from state governments is
necessary for confidence building, that it is not comprised of or controlled
by party cadres and hacks with axes to grind.
Any contact between the governments of state, and definitely money from
those states must come through the AU, not as from one state to a group, but
given to be deposited into the Continental Organizing Account without
distinction and drawn from that Account without reference to donor country.
But, in the last analysis, the integrity and credibility of the
representatives of the Continental Organizing Committee, and the Committee
itself, will come from winning the confidence of the people by their
behavior.
One responsibility of the Continental Organizing Committee is to organize
local sub-committees across Africa, as much as possible recruiting from the
locations themselves, whose responsibility and duty is to creatively bring
together local elders, trade unionists, workers and peasants, to recruit
them to organize mini-congresses.
The work building these mini-congresses will itself educate and train
leaders in how to organize and conduct meetings, and mobilize communities
and villages, holding discussions on local issues and developing plans and
strategies for networking with other communities and village congresses with
the same kinds of concerns, as well as to think Continentally. It is
important for people to view their local issues from a global and
continental perspective, rather than the reverse.
Proletarians of a particular industry or agribusiness will also form locals
of Regional and Continental industries and agribusinesses. As such, they
will have local, district, regional and continental factory and agribusiness
committees, meeting and organizing on all these levels, as well as being
part of local mini-congresses in the communities in which they live. This
will be great for bringing broader economic and political perspectives into
the mini-congresses.
These local congresses will elect members of their community to organizing
committees. These local congresses will also elect from their own community,
local villages, tribal elders, trade union locals and peasant associations,
including both genders as local representatives to District, Regional and
Federal organizing committees whose function is to organize local and
district mini-congresses, district congresses, regional congresses and
federal congresses.
There will be no litmus tests, or special qualifications to be elected to
local congresses and from these to district, and from these to regional, and
from regional to the federal congresses. The primary purpose and function of
this organizing committee is to bring the African masses of workers and
peasants into the political process, learning by doing, that will make them
the determining members of Local, District, Regional and Federal Congresses,
including workers and peasants as the majority. Their task is to organize
and recruit to these Congresses more members of their class. They are the
majority and should supply the majority members of congresses and
Parliaments once established by elections.
(The workers of the cities must consciously bring into the congresses
workers of both gender, of every ethnicity, religion and lack thereof. It
will be the cosmopolitan African proletariat, with universal interests that
will be the Continental backbone of Pan-African Union. As the working class
advances, qualitatively as well as quantitatively, their numbers will come
to dominate the District, Regional and Federal Parliaments, inevitably
introducing, together with Natural Resources the legislating of industries
and other forces of social production transferred to the Public Property,
with production and distribution managed by the working classes themselves.)
In any event, the Congresses will organize bureaucracies that will organize
Local, District, Regional and Federal Elections. Once these electoral
processes are complete, the New Government of Parliaments, Local, District,
Regional and Federal, will assume sole authority and power to govern the All
Africa and Africans Federal Republic.
Thus the Congresses, as will the African Union, and the states that comprise
it, will self-dissolve. Existing nation states will turn over to the Federal
Congress the keys to the kingdom -- money and resources, and then disperse.
Where I speak of Parliamentary Democracy, the model is historically closer
to the French Revolution and Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizens,
rather than the American Republic where actual power is in the Senate,
Courts, and Electoral College selected President, who is not answerable to
the federal electorate during Presidential terms of office, but to the
Senate and Courts that alone have power of impeachment.
To carry through the authority and power to undertake the economic issues of
modernization and development, all the African Natural Recourses must exist
as a Public Trust in which all citizens would be limited stock-holders, and
consequently democratically determining policies carried out by a
bureaucracy of professional macro-economists, accountants, planners and
engineers, and so on, operating under direct control of elected
representatives.
Now, assuming agreement for the sake of case, the issue is how do we bring
this vision into actuality? The determinant concept is a democratic federal
republic of Africa, which will move progressively by democratic
participation of all Africans on District, Regional, and Federal levels.
African workers and peasants have to be brought into this radicalizing
democratic process by the workers and peasants themselves, funded and
organized by workers and peasants independent unions and associations with
no financial or organizational connection with any of the existing
governments or ruling parties. Workers must hammer out their own positions
and perspectives, both in the trade unions and at district congresses.
The utilitarian principle of the greatest good for the greatest number
will be pushed to its logical conclusion by the African workers and
peasants, its trade unions and associations, send delegates to every
District, Regional and Federal Congress, thus representing this immense
majority by the democratic principle one person one vote.
It is up to Africa's working classes and toiling masses to emancipate
themselves, thus they must work among their co-workers and peasants in the
fields to motivate them to participate in this democratizing process of
African politics, to participate in local town hall, civic and religious
meetings, send representatives to District Congresses. It is only workers,
trade unions and peasants and peasants' associations that can and must bring
workers and peasant's interests into this political process by organizing
weekly town hall meetings held in locations accessible to workers and
peasants, at local schools, mosques, churches, libraries, community elders
traditional meeting locations, and so on free of charge.
The dialectics of radicalizing praxis reaching a common posture: Position,
Opposition, Composition or "Consensus". A fighting program advancing the
interest's of Africa's working classes and toiling masses, the poor, and
gender oppressed; always defending the interests of those who because of
poverty, illiteracy, and what have you, are unable to defend themselves
politically.
The trade unions from all of Africa can and should meet, hold district,
national, regional and All-Africa trade union workshop congresses, being
both financially and politically independent of all existing parties and
governments. The business classes and their political agents, government
ministers, and military officers are naturally to be excluded from trade
union workshop congresses, as well as excluding capitalists and corporate
representatives as they are already excluded from trade unions, and their
membership meetings.
The first task is that the African Union, with funds made available from
member states, separate from donor money, invests in creating conditions
required to generate a process that will culminate in an All-Africa
Constitutional Convention, and Federal Republic.
This means, secondly, in its implementation, the creation of a Continental
Organizing Committee, funded by the AU, and as such, independent of existing
individual governments and pressures, that will organize pre-Convention
mini-congresses, on District and Regional basis, in preparation of the
masses to participate directly in an All-Africa Federal Congress, that will
organize the Continental Constitutional Convention, that will have the
authority to write up the Constitution, have it ratified, and organize
elections in the formation of a permanent All African Federal Government.
The African Union must regard itself as a transitional body representing
the existing African states based on state armies on colonial borders. The
objective of these Border States, in their formation of the African Union is
in fact displacing the existing governments with a single Federal State,
with a single Government, Central Banking System and Currency.
To achieve these objectives, the AU will organize and fund the transitory
Continental Organizing Committee that is tasked to organize the initial
Local, District and Regional Congresses throughout Africa.
Democratic Local Congresses will be located on the basis of practical
political geography and demographic, comprised of smaller mini-congresses.
These mini-congresses are 'Town Halls', the grassroots of democracy.
Participants to these mini-congresses, and the Local Congresses, are not
restricted, and no one will be excluded on the basis of class, race, gender,
ethnicity, religion, or political ideology.
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Mini-Congress and Local Congress Issues don't have to be bread and butter
practical concerns to be discussed. Global issues, such as the international
economic situation, the wars in the Middle Asia and their impact on North
Africa, and even scientific issues and achievements taking place in Africa
as well as the world, the universe, should be just as naturally placed on
the mini-congress and Local Congress's agenda, as they are specifically on
the agendas of Regional and Federal Congressional agendas.
What is happening in AIDS research and medicines? What of malaria? What
can be done to protect children? How to fight gender oppression, and what
rights do, and should women have?
What African governments have endorsed the war in Iraq? What are the
connections between the Wars in Palestine, and Iraq to U.S. and Israeli
policies toward Sudan and Libya? Should Nigeria, Angola, Sudan and Libya be
in OPEC? What's up with the Ozone? Are African animals being protected? How
should hunting be regulated, and poaching stopped? These African issues
should be presented and discussed: Specialists should be invited to
mini-congresses and to Local Congresses, to lecture and debate.
What are the latest findings in African paleontology? How does Egypt and
Sudan reclaim archeological artifacts taken to the British Museum by tomb
robbers? These and other such issues are human issues, and African workers
and peasants are every bit as human as are the ruling classes and their
elites. Relevant individuals and organizations can be invited to present the
different points of view, and the discussion open to everyone present, to
agree or disagree, and offer suggestions and resolutions.
The participants in the mini-congresses as well as the Locals have to
become acclimated to Continental, Global and Scientific Issues on a regular
basis.
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The people themselves will decide demographic considerations; participants
of mini-congresses will select delegates to the Local Congress. The
participants of mini-congresses will attend deliberative meetings in the
Local Congresses directly. The Local Congress who are not delegates to Local
Congresses, will never the less have the right to participate together with
the delegates to the Local Congress regarding issues of deliberation, but
only the delegates are empowered by their respective mini-congresses to vote
as the representatives of the mini-congresses majorities.
Local Congresses will elect members to District Congresses. However, all
Congresses are open to the public, and members of Local Congresses of which
the District Congresses are comprised, have the right to speak at the
District Congress, to suggest, challenge, and to participate in District
debates, but only those who are delegated will be allowed present
resolutions and to vote.
District Congresses will discuss issues, both those arising from Local
Congresses and mini-congressional concerns, and those of the Region and the
Continent. Those congresses will, also, importantly, raise issues of
Continental concern, to discuss there, and have District Congressional
Delegates present these issues and resolutions to Local Congresses, and
taken to mini-congresses for further, detailed discussion and debate.
So, many District Congresses constitute the political geography and
demographics of Regional Congresses. There is the North African Region, the
West African Region, the Central African Region, the East African Region,
and the Southern African Region. (But, these are only my speculations; there
can be as many or as few regions as practically determinable) There will be
no Regions on the basis of 'race', religion, tribal identity, or ethnicity.
Federal Congresses are comprised of Delegates from Regional Congresses,
but are open to the public. The function of these Federal Congresses is to
categorize and synthesize the issues sent from Regional Congresses, to place
them in a Continental framework, and in their international significance, if
any, and to deal directly with Continental and international issues,
analyzing, synthesizing and collating these issues, and problems, to be
tackled by the Delegates to the Constitutional Convention.
*****
Mini-congresses will send Delegates to Local Congresses; but all are
invited, and all have the right to speak and debate, whether or not they are
Delegates.
Local Congresses will send Delegates to District Congresses, but all Local
Congressional delegates have the right to go there, and to speak and debate;
but, only the Delegates will vote, in accord with the instructions of the
proportional Local Congress' Majority and Minority.
District Congresses will send Delegates to the Regional Congresses.
Regional Congresses will meet Quarterly. Delegates will debate the ideas and
interests of District constituencies, and other issues relevant to Africa
and Africans at the time of Convening.
Regional Congresses will direct issue resolutions that will be taken to
the All Africa Federal Congresses, which will sit twice, 6 months apart, to
resolve issues and prepare for the All Africa and African Constitutional
Convention.
These Federal Congressional discussions and debates will be open to the
public, but only Federal Delegates can vote.
These discussions and debates will be recorded and published by the
Continental Organizing Committee, whose responsibility is to distribute this
polemic in many languages and distribute copies by the tens of millions.
These as a rule should be distributed and read to the mini-congresses, for
discussion and debate.
Delegates from Regional Congress will report to the Regional Congress,
together with Critiques and disagreements. Regional Delegates will have an
obligation to present verbal as well as written reports, together with
criticisms to the District Congresses, at which will be in attendance Local
and mini-congress attendees.
There will be further discussion and debates at the mini-congresses. The
Continental Organizing Committee will have these discussions recorded, and
published throughout Africa. Thus, these issues will be again taken up at
the following District Congressional sitting. This discussion recorded, and
presented to mini-congresses by the Continental Organizing Committee
throughout Africa.
Reports on these issues, and the sense of the responses, and critiques
will be presented to the next sitting of the Regional Congresses for further
discussions, and the passage of resolutions related will be voted upon.
These, too, will be recorded, and published by the Continent Organizing
Committee, distributed throughout Africa.
Thus the Regional Delegates to the next sitting of the Federal Congress,
will revise, synthesize and collate this information, which new synthesis
will be recorded and published by the Continental Organizing Committee,
distributed throughout Africa.
The Federal Congress will go on to its new business, that being the
urgency of preparing for the Constitutional Convention, where all these
issues will be officially resolved, and seriously collated into account in
the Draft Constitution of the All Africa and Africa Federal Republic.
These debates are legitimate whether taken up, and hopefully so, by
workers on their lunch breaks, at pubs, at home, at church, mosques, village
squares, barbershops, beauty parlors, the Local Congress will be presented
to the District Congress, which back and forth over the year will be
directed at articulations of rights and duties in the All African
Constitution, which will culminate in the guidelines of law and legislation
in the Parliaments.
Every effort must be made to bring Africans into the Local Congresses,
grassroots mini-congress participation that will discuss all issues
confronting Africa and Africans, as well as the World, on a weekly or
bi-weekly basis. The delegates to District and Regional Congresses will
therefore be informed, knowledgeable of all sides of all issues, competent,
argumentative, audacious and ready to vote when the Constitution of the
Continental Federal Republic is presented to voters for approval or
disapproval.
District mini-congresses throughout Africa, based on geographical
locations, taking tribes and kinship groups into consideration, by this
praxis, will prepare workers and peasants to be the democratic base of the
New Africa, formed independently of the political geography of colonial
borders of the present national states.
The Constitution will be presented to district representatives and tribal
elders, and so on, who would operate in direct communication with their
districts and tribes, debating issues to take back to district town hall
community meetings for consultation and ratification, or rejection: the
process evolves. The dialectical interaction between individuals and members
of their communities, districts, regions, tribes and clans sending
representatives to mini-congresses, and back and forth, will politicize all
of Africa.
The District Congressional Delegates to Regional Congresses will be
authorized by elections, in their District and Region, to represent their
constituencies to attend the two Federal Congresses. The final Federal
Congress will in turn be authorized to organize the All African
Constitutional Convention.
The Continental Organizing Committee will have access to the
Constitutional Convention's debates and resolutions, their "Federalist
Papers", so to speak. It's final task, before dissolving, is the publication
and distribution of minutes, resolutions, decisions and minority positions
discussed and debated between Delegates to the Constitutional Convention,
and publishing it and distributing those publications to Africans throughout
All of Africa.
All Africans representative institutions will have become prepared to vote
on the Constitution, having had free access to all literature originating in
Congresses on the relevant issues.
The All Africa and African Federal Congress will take over the mechanics
of organizing the All-Africa Continental Constitutional Convention.
Organizing the Convention includes, among other details, arrangements for
a Convention hall, securing transportation and housing for delegates without
costing delegates anything, so as to eliminate any possibility of poor
representatives of the working classes and toiling masses being excluded by
economic concerns, or beholden to patrons.
This Convention will be attended by delegates from every District and
Regional Congress, and representatives of political parties, trade unions,
peasants' associations, business interests and so on.
The Ratification Constitutional Convention will write the Constitution,
and organize political processes for its ratification, or rejection as the
case may be.
The Constitution will enshrine all fundamental issues of economic rights
and duties of citizens; workers; peasants; business; civil and criminal law;
political parties; federal government, regional governments, district
governments and rules of interaction; federal courts, regional courts,
district courts and rules of interaction.
Delegates to the All-Africa Constitutional Convention must come prepared
to hit the ground running. The democratic principle, one delegate one vote
and thus majority rule will dominate the Convention. Other than this, the
delegates themselves, at the Convention, will decide the politics of the
Convention.
The Issues to be decided by the Constitutional Convention will include,
among others, the nature and scope of Parliament, the determination and
function of the Executive, the authority and function of the Judiciary; a
Declaration of the Rights of Men/Women and Citizens; a Workers and Peasant's
Bill of Rights; the traditional Roles and Functions, if any, of chiefs and
elders; Property laws and procedures of transferring Natural Resources from
the possession of foreign investors and their comprador, and Neo-Colonial
collaborators -- expropriations and/or compensation; Trade, International
Relations, the All-Africa Army, displacing existing national armies, tribal
militias and so on
*****
The Convention delegates will elect members to an ALL-African Commission
that will govern the Continent in preparation for All-African Elections,
including Continental, Regional, District and Local. Report backs to
district and regional congressional constituencies for consultation and
ratification.
Delegates of Constitutional Convention will authorize an ALL-African
Commission that will organize elections to form the new government on local,
district, regional and federal balloting.
The distribution of the Revised Ratified Constitution to All Africans will
be the final act of the Continental Organizing Committee, and will dissolve
upon completion of this, its historic task. .
The AU and the state governments it represents will be superseded by the
All Africa and African Federal Republic's Federal, Regional, District and
Local Parliaments. It only remains for the African heads of superseded
states to bow out gracefully with dignity. Having accomplished its
historical task, the creation of a United States of Africa, the African
Union and the state that comprised it will be no longer in existence. Thank
you.
It will dissolve.
The African States that comprise the African Union will dissolve, together
with the African Union itself, because their superfluous continuation will
be in fact a dual power situation.
With the election of members of Parliaments, local, district, regional and
federal, African Citizen-voters will have democratically determined who will
be placed in power, as their chosen representatives to Local, District,
Regional and Federal Parliaments, to govern Africa.
The continued existence of existing states along side the Local, District
and Regional Parliaments will be at best superfluous, or at worst will
evolve competition and rivalries, which is precisely one of the diseases the
formation of the All Africa and African Federal Republic is in existence to
eradicate.
The Convention included representatives of national parties from the
existing state. They therefore were on that basis committed by political
integrity to eagerly accept the new governments and complete the dissolution
of existing the state, now superseded by the Constitutional Republic.
Besides, following the Convention, these parties have every right, the same
as others, to run candidates for Local, District, Regional and Federal
Parliaments, and by this act confirmed the validity of the New Government.
The dissolution of the existing states is the dissolution of its coercive
institutions, the police, the national armies, and its prisoners pardoned.
There can be but one judicial and legal system, and therefore one legitimate
system of law enforcement, and one Continental Army. The officers and troops
of the existing states will be integrated into the Continental Armed Forces.
The scourge of ethnic and civil wars are eradicated, forever.
*****
The Issues to be decided by the Constitutional Convention will include,
among others, the nature and scope of Parliament, the determination and
function of the Executive, the authority and function of the Judiciary; a
Declaration of the Rights of Men/Women and Citizens; A Workers and Peasant's
Bill of Rights; the traditional Roles and Functions, if any, of chiefs and
elders; Property laws and procedures of transferring Natural Resources from
the possession of foreign investors and their comprador, and Neo-Colonial
collaborators -- expropriations and/or compensation; Trade, International
Relations, the All-Africa Army, displacing existing national armies, tribal
militias, and so on
*****
The Convention delegates will elect members to an ALL-African Commission
that will, by it's authority, prepare for All-African Elections, including
Continental, Regional, District and Local. Report backs to district and
regional congressional constituencies for consultation and ratification.
The ALL-African Commission is the Primary Agency authorized to implement
the Constitution beginning with the organizing of Federal, Regional,
District and Local Elections, as soon as possible.
It is by election, the authority of the New Government and its component
parts including Parliament, the Executive, Courts and Military, will include
workers and peasants as well as professionals of every significant tribe,
religious grouping of both genders implementing procedures democratically
decided by the Delegates of Constitutional Convention will have oversight,
monitoring the work of the ALL-African Commission.
The ALL-African Commission is the Primary Agency authorized to implement
the Constitution. Beginning with the organizing of Federal, Regional,
District and Local Elections, as soon as possible.
To prepare the people, the Commission will establish connections with the
district mini-congresses of Districts, and organize local voter literacy
campaigns among residents, bringing together teachers, authors, professors,
and other literary professionals, who will donate time to urban and rural
areas teaching workers and peasants how to read and write, mini-courses in
critical thinking with the independence to select reading materials, on the
basis of traditions and beliefs.
These classes, free and open to all of the area, will develop not only the
literacy skills of the village or urban neighborhood, but will encourage
traditional community leaders, such as elders, imams and preachers to play
leading roles in organizing these classes, organizing skills that will
recognize and tap natural leaders and give them responsibilities.
These leaders and organizers will appropriate local talented leaders who
will, working with traditional leadership along with District Commission
Representatives, establish local election boards.
It will be the responsibility of these boards, with the material and
organizational aid and support of District Commissioners, to organize
meetings where candidates for Local, District, Regional and Federal offices
will come speak, debate, and recruit to their respective campaigns.
We acknowledge these facts to be self-evident: that the natural resources
of Africa are the common heritage of All Citizens of Africa and their
families:
We hold these Facts to be self-evident, namely that All-Africans are born
naturally free, and endowed by Nature with definite inalienable rights.
Among these are the rights to democratically determine how Africa's Natural
Resources, as the collective property of the African People, will be used to
develop Africa's economy in the interests of all, without regard to
language, religion, culture, tribe, location, district, or region.
Operating upon acceptance of this premise, candidates for Africa's
parliaments has the freedom and creativity to present his or her vision or
plan to the electorate. The campaigns are publicly funded and accountable to
the public, and all would have access to the electorates equally.
It will be the responsibilities of the candidates themselves, and/or the
Parties of which they are representative, to organize their own speaking
campaigns, and help organize get out to vote drives on election day.
The District Commission, working with local elections boards, will be
responsible for establishing polling places, preparing ballots, collecting
ballots, and counting votes. Party representatives and Candidate's staff
will be able to observe the ballot counting, but will themselves be excluded
from participating in these counting procedures.
The Federal, Regional, District and Local Parliaments will take it from
here, legislating any Constitutionally legitimate legislation they want to,
by rules of their own making.
The Constitution must provide a legal framework for resolutions of
problems that predicates the universal needs of All-Africa and African
people, in such as way that the interests of individuals are satisfied.
*****
Local, District, Regional and Federal legislative parliaments will address
solving material problems of relative underdevelopment.
Displace income tax with income investment credits. Work-place investment by
it being in the interests of Africa to do so, as well as to themselves as
individuals, purchasing state of the art technology to increase labor
productivity, wages and Africa's wealth! The new wealth, retained in Africa,
can be democratically decided upon where it is needed most: mine removal?
Health care? Forest preservation? Infrastructure? Schools? Is it possible to
stop desertification?
The funds needed to purchase the means by which to re-develop Africa, which
is the basis for ending poverty and sustaining healthy political discourse
with all the democratic freedoms, and institutions, must necessarily derive
initially from Public Possession of Africa's Natural Resources, purchasing
the machinery and skilled labor from the more technologically advanced
countries of East Asia, Europe, Canada, and if possible the United States.
The first thing to purchase isn't e.g. gold mining machines, but the
machines needed to make the machinery that make mining machinery, and its
spare parts right down to and including screws and screwdrivers. Then
Africans would have the capacity and the skills to do their own repairs.
These natural resources - gold, diamonds, and so on - in their natural state
cannot be alienated. The intervening agency of human hand and brain, work
that changes it from natural resource to raw material gives it a human
quality and quantitatively any other natural resource - as the Public
inheritance of All Africa and Africans - will be African's birthright to
produce African wealth, which does not leave Africa and Africans, except by
democratic decisions, to be alienated, used to purchase whatever machinery
and technology required for producing the technology needed to further
develop Africa's productive forces.
By having this industrial and technological capacity, education and
scientific training Africans will have the capacity of feeding, housing,
educating and training Africans to self-sustaining life in the modern world,
with health, safety, and high standards of living, second to none.
The All-Africa and African's Federal Republic will be organized into
Parliamentary Systems, based on Proportional Representation, including
Local, District, Regional and Federal Parliaments authorized by elections to
organize priorities and oversee the local, district, regional and federal
economic projects that create African wealth for African usages and
benefits.
In other words, the transnational corporations and their African counterpart
collaborators produce tobacco, cotton and cocoa to be sold in Europe or
America, clothing manufactured in Africa sold in America or Europe or
elsewhere turn profits from these sales that are then deposited in European
and American banks, collecting interest. The only thing African workers and
agricultural laborers get from this economic process is wages, paper
currency.
The land expropriated by settler-colonists expropriated by African peasants,
as in Zimbabwe, is returned to traditional agriculture, using appropriate
technology by African farmers to feed villages.
However, we are dealing with capitalist agribusinesses, such as tobacco and
cocoa plantations worked by wageworkers using advanced agricultural
technology. These will not be broken up into private plots but expropriated
by the All Africa Federal Republic, and devolved to Regional Parliaments to
appoint teams of ecologists, agronomists and economists to discontinue the
commercial production of tobacco, cotton and cocoa for export, to instead
organize worker cooperatives to produce vegetables and/or fruit, nuts and
roots to sell to African populations, ending hunger.
A percentage of the profits made by the cooperatives, in excess of the wages
they pay themselves, will be taxed by the Regional and Local Government to
be used to finance housing, health care facilities and educational programs
in this region and location. The retained profits of theses agribusiness
cooperatives will be at the disposal of the workers as they see fit, but
they will be encouraged by their elected representatives to work with the
ecologists, agronomists and economists to reinvest in production to thus
create more jobs as well as produce more food.
>From the Federal point of view, the expropriation of all the agribusinesses,
carried out by regional workers backed by the State, will transfer
agriculture from the possessions of transnational capitalists and their
domestic partners to African proletarians. The billions of dollars and
pounds formerly taken as profits by transnational and/or domestic African
capitalists will remain in Africa contributing to its development.
These initial investments required to purchase the machinery needed to make
machines necessary for the production of tractors, its wheels, spare parts
Etc. might of necessity involve the productive technology required to access
and process iron ore, bauxite, and oil, which will be sold to Asian,
European and American businesses in order to finance the transitions from
commercial export agriculture to subsistence agriculture to feed all of
Africa.
These agricultural technologies will continue to progress in Africa as
elsewhere, and eventually be sold to the agribusiness cooperatives. This
assumes that once on their feet these agribusinesses will continue to grow,
increase productivity, and expand by reinvesting much of their profits in
these development projects.
African capitalists, that is to say, capitalists who live in Africa
regardless of race and ethnicity, and African-American capitalists who
migrate to Africa, who want to get into this African form of democratic
capitalism can do so. They can set up shop anywhere in Africa, as there will
be no national borders: Districts and Regions are not nations.
In a Single African Democratic Republic, national borders are eliminated.
Upon this elimination will be the elimination simultaneously of all
restrictions -- tariffs, duties or surtaxes.
All Africans are free to travel, settle, work or establish businesses
anywhere they please. Their initiative will facilitate productivity and
competitive prices. However, trade with transnational corporations, import
as well as export, is subject to federal state controls and public
accountability.
The entire history of the triangular-trade, colonialism and neo-colonialism
speaks volumes explicating this necessary.
Besides, we can learn much from the successes and failures of state monopoly
capitalism in the Soviet Union and China.
Capitalists will have a role to play, building industries in locations where
they want to, responding to local, national or intercontinental markets.
International trade, and transnational-domestic contracts will have public
oversight and scrutiny by relevant governing committees, appointed by
relevant government parliaments.
Priorities:
A. Invest in Continental Infrastructures Funding Projects
(a) Roads and Railways;
(b) Department of Water and Power - Electrification and Energy Industries;
(c) Department of Agriculture and Industry Support System
B. Invest in Quality of Life Improvement Fund:
(a) Modernized Air Conditioned Housing with all the perks offered by
modern technology, such as central heating and indoor plumbing,
refrigeration, microwave, cable network television, computers, and so on.
(b) Modernized and Massive Health Care Industry;
(c) Modernize Cultural Institutions, Tolerance Revival and Renaissance
Pan-African Social Security, Family Insurance, Pension Funds, Miscellaneous
=============================
NOTE: I think it was Danton, or perhaps Robespierre, when asked what are the
qualities of being a revolutionary, responded: "Audacity! Audacity!
Audacity!"
Lil Joe
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