On the 57th anniversary of African Liberation Day (ALD), the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) calls on international civil society and progressive states to “Rise Up to Shut Down AFRICOM.”

“Today, U.S. bases, as well as military-to-military relations between 53 out of the 54 African countries and the United States, characterize the aggressive strategy of the U.S. to preserve the interests of the Pan-European, white supremacist colonial/capitalist project on the African continent,” says Netfa Freeman, organizer with Pan-African Community Action (PACA) and member of BAP’s Coordinating Committee. “The U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) represent an existential threat to African independence because these forces are committed to the use of violence to maintain control over the land, resources and labor of African people.”

African development, national sovereignty and self-determination is impossible as long as the U.S. and its European allies are allowed to prop up neocolonial states run by the comprador bourgeoisie who use their countries’ militaries to stay in power to serve U.S. and European colonialism.

BAP recognizes the crucial role of ALD in revitalizing internationalism and anti-imperialism as a bedrock of a reconstituted Black liberation project committed to an authentic process of decolonization.

However, BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley points out, “Imperialism will only be defeated through the sustained actions of the organized people throughout the world. To defeat imperialism, we must target all of the repressive transnational and national state structures and institutions that prop up the ongoing colonial/capitalist project.”

BAP campaign’s, U.S. Out of Africa: Shut Down AFRICOM, is the organizational instrument to build a transnational mass movement that targets U.S. militarism, war, and subversion on the continent.

The campaign and its organizational arm, the U.S. Out of African Network (USOAN), calls on Africans throughout the continent and the diaspora as well as anti-imperialists to mark June 16, Soweto Day, with actions in the spirit of the African youth who rose up against the white supremacist South African government on June 16, 1976. We call for all to “Rise Up to Shut Down AFRICOM.”

“‘Rise Up to Shut Down AFRICOM’ is in the spirit of the courageous youth of South Africa who elevated the resistance to the criminal South African state in 1976, using intensified and sustained blows against the regime,” says Tunde Osazua, coordinator of USOAN and member of BAP’s Africa Team. “Imperialism will not be defeated by shouting at it, no matter how elegant the denunciations. Imperialism will only be defeated through struggle.”

BAP calls on all who are celebrating ALD 2020 to consider highlighting in their actions the importance of defeating U.S. and Western militarization of the continent, which has been used to tighten the pan-European imperialist grip on Africa.

BAP calls on participants of ALD 2020 to re-dedicate themselves to building structures of cooperation and coordination between Africans in the diaspora and on the continent to engage and defeat the enemies of Africa, both foreign and domestic. 

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Photo credit: People of the Republic of the Congo, celebrate independence, July 7, 1960 — one of 17 states in Africa to gain independence that year. (Bettman)