By Duke Tagoe

On May 16, 2011, Nigerian Brigadier Hassan Lai, Chief of staff for Economic Community of West African States and Malian Brigadier Toure were invited to AFRICOM's temporary command in Stuttgart, Germany, to begin negotiations on how to collaborate on areas of "common interest".

Whatever those interests are, we say no to AFRICOM in Africa. ECOWAS must watch out because we know what it has become, an instrument of the U.S and her allies. Hands off Africa!

What is happening in Libya must serve as an eye-opener to all these stooges most of whom have no understanding of the situation confronting the African people. For most of them, they must pillage the resources of the African people so that their children and great-grand children would escape the poverty and diseases that has afflicted the continent.

Agents of the West who are not in sink whatsoever about the impoverishment and the nightmares of our people have managed often through coercive and subversive means to get their counterparts in the imperialist set up to impose them on us as leaders.

What we must do now as progressives is to study and have full grasps of the problem and above all organize the various struggle of our people in the mining areas and elsewhere so that anytime anyone is called upon to serve the people we would know what we must do.

In this struggle, there would be charlatans and opportunists whose only expectation is that a successful revolution must serve as a chance for them to entrench the old system towards their own selfish ends.

In this struggle there would be opposing forces and some would die along the way but as Osagyefo Dr. Nkrumah said, “Out of tension being is born becoming the child of opposing forces”, so let’s bear in mind that in our own camp, there would be wrangling and bickering but that should never divert attention from the superior goal of fighting the neo-colonial and the elite who have perpetuated this unjust system of the exploitation of workers in order that they can maintain their status in society.

No man whether black nor white must serve as a hewer of wood and a drawer of water to any man black or white especially under an oppressive system.

The exploited Caucasian in the United States and in Europe is our friend. The same applies to the Latinos of South America and those in Asia and the Middle East because modern imperialism is no respecter of race and gender.

Since the advent of the free market economy in Europe and later in Africa (after the overthrow of progressive regimes), every noble effort at creating systems that seeks to meets the needs and aspirations of our people have remained an exercise in futility.

They hold seminars and conferences at which our policy makers are advised to craft policies which will encourage the participation of foreign private capital. These agents of the West know very well that it is not realistic to hand over the economy to foreign private capital and at the same time demand of them to raise enough revenues to support large scale social services for the entire people.

What positions do we occupy in the process of production at the factory and in the society? Why must others have the best of health care whilst others cannot? Who owns the resources of our country? And why must any African in the 21st century go to bed with hunger knocking on the doors of his stomach when more than 70 percent of the worlds resources can be found under his feet and in his environment?

Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah having convinced himself that the socialist road to reconstruction and economic development was the best option for liberated colonies led the way to disseminate the ethics that underline such a process.

At the outset, the state must play the major role in economic activity “because colonialism prevented the emergence of a strong local capital class, because production for private profit is based on exploitation, and because the less developed nations need a high rate of economic growth, the government is obliged to play the role of main entrepreneur in laying the basis of national economic and social advancement” (page 119 of Africa Must Unite).

Other factors that must impact on the approach to economic development are the need to break “the European monopoly domination of our economy,” the necessity of being extremely vigilant in scenting out the subtle and insidious infiltration of neo-colonialism,” the ever-present “danger of sabotage foreign interest …. Enjoy the privilege of building economic enterprises in our midst” (p.102) and the compelling need for stimulating within the country “capital accumulation for re-employment in wider development.” So what do our friends in the other side of the political divide in Ghana mean when they say that “Government has no business doing business”.

I take consolation in the fact that there is an awakening within the black African and all exploited people of the world and things will not be the same.

One fine day these leaders of the world will wake up to realize that their glory is our plight and we will act with decisive force and they the champions of today, will crumble like grey baft just off their drier.

It is not too late to redress all the social and economic injustice in our society. Something must be done and it must be done right now because the peoples of this world can bear the deprivation no longer. Chooboi!