25 May Kongamano La Mapinduzi Statement on African Liberation Day
KNT:
I first attended ALD in the year 2013 here at the Kenya National Theatre at the invitation of a comrade. At this ALD, I met many familiar faces. I met Ruth Mumbi, Gacheke Gachichi, Juliet Wanjira, Kimanzi, Garang’ Mzalendo, McOlonde, And Grandmaster masseuse – rest in power!. All ever familiar faces – Nuki Githethwa’s wisdom was prominent – as was Fahamu and other progressive organisations.
This journey at this particular ALD would enable my generation to witness the growth of PAM-KE. I connected with the revolutionaries, communists, pan-Africanists, and a powder-keg of liberals and anarchists. We witnessed the growth of the Pan African movement Kenya under the growth of McOlonde. This decade enabled me to see the birth of Africans Rising, a Pan-African movement for justice, peace, unity and dignity. At a certain point of arrival, these collective organising enabled me to meet a comrade, Alieu Bah, with whom I would co-found Mwamko.
That we have been able to come back here every year is no small achievement. It is a sign of persistence and consistency. It is a sign that our organising efforts continue to bear fruit, for we are not just witnesses of history, but active participants in its creation. Active participants in the struggle for new worlds – worlds of joy, love, laughter, and dignity. We are part of the forward march of our people.
Us/Rememberance:
5th Pan African Congress…. 3 questions
Who are our friends?
Who are our enemies?
What must be done?
The First Conference of Independent African states held in April 1958 in Accra, Ghana, called for the founding of an African Freedom Day to “mark each year the onward progress of the liberation movement, and to symbolise the determination of the people of Africa to free themselves from foreign domination and exploitation”. The years that followed provided a glimmer of hope in a sea hitherto marked by the dark forces of slavery and colonialism, those brutal systems that were used to subjugate and extract from the periphery to fatten the centre. With the colonial state now in retreat, representatives of thirty independent African states met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 22nd May 1963 for a meeting that culminated on 25th May with the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). That meeting also resolved to rename Africa Freedom Day to African Liberation Day, which has since then been commemorated annually on the African continent and its diaspora.
Restitution:
We are today commemorating the 62nd African Liberation Day under the theme Revolutionary Pan-African Unity: the battle for socialism against capitalism and imperialism.
But this year’s commemoration comes at a time of great pain – a time of untold war, genocide, and mass suffering across the globe.
Unbridled capitalism is killing our planet. In addition to fuelling colonial patterns of economics and extraction, it has also immensely contributed to changing weather patterns and rendered whole farmlands unproductive. Forces that are both internal and external to Africa have ganged up to manufacture war in Sudan, Congo, and countless other places across the continent. The whole world has watched a genocide unfold right before their eyes in Palestine – the first genocide to be televised almost minute by minute.
In Kenya, our health system is in shambles, our education system is a mess – we are even now told that kids might not be able to sit national examinations because the money allocated to that cannot be traced. Our seeds have been commodified, and the levels of inequality continue to grow wider every day. Our young people were matyred on the streets of Nairobi in June of 2025 for simply asking for dignity.
But we must never give up. Geneologies of resistance and rebellion..
In the almost six decades that have passed since 1963, various moments and movements in our shared history as a people have given hope and added impetus to the original aspirations of Africa Liberation Day. Nkrumah reminded us that we (Africa) neither look East nor West, we look forward. Nyerere, dreaming of self-reliance, put Tanzania on the paths of Ujamaa, which CLR James, in that historical epoch, described as ‘something new coming out of Africa’. Cabral, viewing cultural resistance as an act of National Liberation, reminded us that culture is both a seed and a determinant of history. Today, like all days, is a day to affirm great figures like Dedan Kimathi, Thomas Sankara, Winnie Mandela, Joe Slovo, Garang’ De Mabior, Kinjeketile wa Ngwale, Cheikh Anta Diop, Queen Nzingha, Julius Malema and the countless heroes and heroines in our communities as both seeds and determinants of history. They remain an eternal inspiration to millions across the continent and its dispersed diaspora. In different epochs, the past becomes the present, and the present an illustration of what is to come.
On this 62nd ALD, we at Kongamano la Mapinduzi reiterate our position in support of the liberatory ideals and principles that undergirded the first generation of Pan Africanists. We affirm this, even as we understand our context today demands a newness in analysis, theorizing and practice. We must not be stuck in dogma… Moscow
The National Liberation Struggle is still unfinished until our collective organising efforts lead Africa and her people out of the realm of necessity, and onwards to then building the federal African socialist society under one government – and finally to become a sovereign, radiant and free people who will control the means and realization of production and reproduction – the land, the food, and their destiny.
We must organise! Garvey…