Lt. Gen Luther
von Trotha, in present day Tanzania, “within German borders, every Herero,
whether armed or unarmed, will be shot.”
“The foundation
of a ruling class is equivalent to the creation of a Weltanschaung.” (world
view) Antonio Gramsci
MIDNIGHT SPEECH:
At long
last, the battle has ended! And thus, Ghana, your beloved country is free
forever!
And yet
again, I want to take the opportunity to thank the people of this country; the
youth, the farmers, the women who have so nobly fought and won the battle.
Also, I want to thank the valiant ex-service men who have so cooperated with me
in this mighty task of freeing our country from foreign rule and imperialism.
And, as I
pointed out… From now on, today, we must change our attitudes and our minds. We
must realize that from now on we are no longer a colonial but free and
independent people. But also, as I pointed out, that also entails hard work.
That new Africa is ready to fight his own battles and show that after all the
black man is capable of managing his own affairs.
We are
going to demonstrate to the world, to the other nations, hat we are prepared to
lay our foundation – our own African personality. As I said to the Assembly a
few minutes ago, I made a point that we are going to create our own Africa
personality and identity. It is the only way we can show the world that we are
ready for our own battles. But today, may I call upon you all, that on this
great day let us all remember that nothing can be done unless it has the
purport and support of God.
We have
won the battle and again rededicate ourselves… OUR INDEPENDENCE IS MEANINGLESS
UNLESS IT IS LINKED UP WITH THE TOTAL LIBERATION OF AFRICA.
Let us
now, fellow Ghanaians, let us now ask for God’s blessing for only two seconds,
and in your thousands and millions. I want to ask you to pause for only one
minute and give thanks to Almighty God for having led us through our
difficulties, imprisonments, hardships and sufferings, to have brought us to
our end of troubles today. One minute silence.
Ghana is
free forever! Reshaping Ghana’s destiny, I am depending on the millions of the
country, and the chiefs and the people, to help me to reshape the destiny of
this country. We are prepared to pick it up and make it a nation that will be
respected by every nation in the world. We know were going to have difficult
beginnings, but again, I am relying n your support…. I am relying upon your
hard work.
Seeing
you in this… It doesn’t matter how far my eyes go, I can see that you are here
in your millions. And my last warning to you is that you are to stand firm
behind us so that we can prove to the world that when the African is given a
chance, he can show the world that he is somebody!
We have
awakened. We will not sleep anymore. Today, from now on, there is a new African
in the world!
Kwame Nkrumah
“My Ghana, my Akosombo.”
Algeria
Algerian
ululations…
Battle of
Algiers
French President
Charles DeGaulle:
CONCLUSION:
Pan-Africanism remains alive.
Neo-Colonialism:
Lumumba
Mobotu (Congo
becomes Zaire)
“All I mean,” continues Ferguson in his
controversial book Colossus: The
Price of America’s Empire (2004), “is that whatever they choose to call their position
in the world—hegemony, primacy, predominance or leadership—Americans should
recognize the functional resemblance between Anglophone power present and past
and should try to do a better rather than worse job of policing an unruly world
than their British predecessors.”
“The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is
used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed
parts of the world. Investment under neo-colonialism increases rather than
decreases the gap between the rich and the poor countries of the world. The struggle against neo-colonialism is not
aimed at excluding the capital of the developed world from operating in less
developed countries. It is aimed at preventing the financial power of the
developed countries being used in such a way as to impoverish the less
developed.” Nkrumah, 1965 (he
probably coined the term)
How free are we?
The
countries which went through decolonization became free--but how free? The
answer for Africa, as for elsewhere, is not very.
