One Africa Worldview

In this episode we present Part One of a 2-part series titled “The Truth About Afghanistan - Colonialism: the graveyard of imperialism”.

That was the title of a September 7th web broadcast, put on by the African People’s Socialist Party to discuss the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and the implications that this defeat has for the liberation struggle of African and other colonized peoples.

That broadcast featured presentations by Luwezi Kinshasa, Secretary General of the African Socialist International; Yejide Orunmila, President of the African National Women’s Organization; Tafari Mugeri, Director of Organization for the ASI Africa Region; Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party; and Penny Hess, Chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee.

First is the presentation delivered by Secretary General Luwezi Kinshasa. SG Luwezi was born in the Congo and is currently based in London. He is affectionately known as Mwalimu, which means “teacher” for his extensive knowledge and engaged story-telling about the history of the world’s peoples.

Next up, Penny Hess gave a recap of the CIA’s role in the creation of modern so-called Islamic Fundamentalist forces, under U.S. president Jimmy Carter, to draw in and defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. She critiques the failure of the white peace movement to mount effective opposition to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and credits the African People’s Socialist Party for its consistent stance in active solidarity with the right of colonized peoples to resist colonial war and occupation.

Then we heard from President Yejide Orunmila of the African National Women’s Organization (ANWO).  In her talk, President Yejide reaffirms her complete solidarity with Afghan women.  President Yejide dispels international propaganda that suggests that the imperialist invasion of Afghanistan was done to liberate Afghan women.  She notes that the largest abusers of women’s rights in the region are US allies and that the US remains silent on French government abuses against Muslim women in France as well as the oppressive anti-abortion laws in Texas.  President Yejide notes that US intervention stopped the progress of Afghan women and noted the anti-imperialist organization that existed amongst Afghan women before the US instigated war with the Soviet Union.  President Yejide views this victory as a victory for Afghan self-determination and the future of Afghan women.

In Part Two we’ll hear from Director Tafarie Mugeri of the African Socialist International Africa Region and Chairman Omali Yeshitela.

The People's War radio show is produced by WBPU 96.3 FM "Black Power 96" in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is hosted by Dr. Matsemela Odom and Dexter Mlimwengu, bringing an African Internationalist perspective to the important issues of our world.

Today’s show is entitled “Getting Fit for the Revolution” and incorporates excerpts from a panel by the same name that was presented at the 2021 International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement Convention from September 3 through 5th.

The convention observed the 30th anniversary of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement as well as the 50-plus year of Uhuru Movement mass organization.  The panels were designed to confront the crises the African community face and provide an African Internationalist way forward.

African health is one arena the movement has always led on. In 1969, the Junta of Militant Organizations (JOMO), a precursor to the African People’s Socialist Party, founded the JOMO Blood Bank. 

From the 1970s to 1990s, the Burning Spear Newspaper ran a regular column entitled Colonialism is Dangerous to Your Health. In 1985, the Uhuru Movement opened the Lil Bobby Hutton African People’s Free Health Clinic.

This all laid the groundwork for the Uhuru Movement’s establishment of the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project and their Emergency Response Program, Project Black Ankh.

"Getting Fit for the Revolution" features

• Kobina Bantushango, with tips on healthy eating and exercise and shares the stories behind the establishment of the All Peoples Tyron Lewis Community Gym and the Uhuru Health Festivals.

Dr. Aisha Fields, Director of the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project, gave an update on the Covid-19 health and safety protocols prepared by project Black Ankh.

The People's War radio show is produced by WBPU 96.3 FM "Black Power 96" in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is hosted by Dr. Matsemela Odom and Dexter Mlimwengu, bringing an African Internationalist perspective to the important issues of our world.

This episode looks at some history of the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement which is celebrating its thirty year anniversary this year, 2021.  The International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement was founded in 1991 by the African People’s Socialist Party, as a mass organization designed to defend the democratic rights of the black community and to bring African people back into political life after the military defeat  our Black Power movement of the 1960s had suffered.  

Since its creation, InPDUM has fought courageously for the African community. The precursor to today’s formation, was founded in Oakland, California in 1985 under the name People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement.

When the organization went U.S.-wide in Chicago in 1991, it was founded under the name the National People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement and then with the establishment of branches throughout Africa and Europe, it became the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement. 

The organization’s first President was Akua Njeri, also known as Deborah Johnson, widow of assassinated Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. An important campaign that came out of Chicago was one to free Free Hampton Jr. who had been framed for attempting to carry on the political legacy of his father.

Throughout the years, InPDUM has led many dynamic campaigns in defense of the African working class.

Taking a look back at more than three decades of grassroots organizing, we’ll hear excerpts of historic speeches, conversations, and even rap songs that help us chart the history of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement.  

We’ll hear from Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Bakari Olatunji, Kalambayi Andenet, Ntambwe Bhekizitha and the legendary rap group dead prez.

The InPDUM Convention on September 3rd through 5th will be broadcast on the Burning Spear TV channel on YouTube and on InPDUM’s Facebook page. It’s free and open to the public. 

The People's War radio show is produced by WBPU 96.3 FM "Black Power 96" in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is hosted by Dr. Matsemela Odom and Dexter Mlimwengu, bringing an African Internationalist perspective to the important issues of our world.

In this episode, we’re going to showcase several African poets and talk about the role of poetry and culture in the African anti-colonial struggle.

We know that the spoken word is powerful.  If not, colonizers would not have stripped Africans of their names, their language, their traditions and their songs. 

The anticolonial writer from Martinique Aime Cesaire wrote extensively on the power of poetry, the spoken word and culture.  In the important essay, “Poetry and Knowledge”, Cesaire argued that poetry was an anticolonial tool because it challenged the conventions of colonial society and allowed the oppressed to imagine new worlds.

In the essay, "Poetry is not a luxury," Audre Lorde wrote, “poetry is not a luxury.  It is a vital necessity of our existence.  It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hope and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into tangible action.  Poetry is the way we can help give name  to the nameless so it can be thought.”

 There is not a time in the struggle for African liberation that we have not seen the power of spoken word, poetry and music as anticolonial cultural influencers.

Today we will speak with revolutionary culture workers including FoFeet Alkebulan. FoFeet is the Economic Development Coordinator and organizer with the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement in St. Louis.  As part of her organizing efforts, FoFeet organizes the Musa Abantu Poetry Nights for the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement.

FoFeet is joined by Valerie VKween Young from St. Louis Missouri, Jheanelle Owens from Jamaica, and Dzidzor from Boston.

We also showcase the poetry of Claude McKay and Gil Scot Heron. 

The People's War radio show is produced by WBPU 96.3 FM "Black Power 96" in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is hosted by Dr. Matsemela Odom and Dexter Mlimwengu, bringing an African Internationalist perspective to the important issues of our world.

Today on the People’s War Radio Show, we are celebrating the birthday of Marcus Mosiah Garvey.  Every week, the People’s War Radio show brings you an African Internationalist perspective of world issues.  African Internationalism, the theory of the African Working Class has its origins in the ideology and practices of Marcus Mosiah Garvey.   

Marcus Garvey organized one of the most important anticolonial African organizations in history.  Garvey’s revolutionary journal, the Negro World, had a weekly circulation of at least 200,000 copies.

Garvey understood the power in Africans reclaiming control of the historical narrative and embraced the African revolutionary tradition.

Marcus Garvey organized the largest African Revolutionary organization in history--the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).  The UNIA was formed in Jamaica in 1914 following Garvey’s return to the country of his birth.  Marcus Garvey brought the UNIA to the United States in 1916.

On this episode of the People’s War Radio show, Dexter and I will discuss the legacy of Marcus Garvey and our place in it.  We will share some of the music that has upheld Marcus Garvey, discuss his significance to political organization nowadays, and present excerpts from a speech given by Chairman Omali Yeshitela on the continued significance of Marcus Garvey.

This episode features the following:

• Excerpts from Chairman Omali Yeshitela's speech to the 2020 InPDUM Convention on Garvey entitled "100 Years Later, It's Still Red, Black and Green"

• Elikya Ngoma's "Liberate the Minds" featuring Marcus Garvey

The People's War radio show is produced by WBPU 96.3 FM "Black Power 96" in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is hosted by Dr. Matsemela Odom and Dexter Mlimwengu, bringing an African Internationalist perspective to the important issues of our world.

Today’s episode is dedicated to the struggle for the release of African political prisoners, in honor of Black August. 

The roots of Black August are in the uprisings and rebellions of African freedom fighters who were imprisoned as a result of their political activity during the height of the Black Power Movement of the 1960s.

Black August was started by incarcerated Africans in California in observance of the death of George Jackson. It’s now honored as a month-long salute to the African liberation struggle, recognizing such historic milestones as the Haitian Revolution, the birth of Marcus Garvey, and the deaths of Jonathan Jackson and George Jackson.  

Black August is a month of Remembrance and Resistance, especially dedicated to our African warriors imprisoned for their heroic stance fighting for African liberation.

In this episode, we bring you excerpts from presenters at the 12th Annual Convention of the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, held August 7th and 8th 2021.

The theme of this year's Convention was “Deepening the Resistance to Police Terror: Honoring our Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War, Black Community Control of the Police”. 

In this program, we hear from:

• Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People's Socialist Party and of the Black is Back Coalition.

For more information on the Black Is Back Coalition, visit blackisbackcoalition.org. To request a free monthly subscription of The Burning Spear newspaper for a prisoner, visit theburningspear.com.

This episode of The People’s War show is dedicated to remembering the life and work of Glen Ford, heroic journalist and African freedom fighter, with commentary by:

• Nia Ford, Glen's daughter

Glen Ford was the son of the famed disc jockey Rudy “The Deuce” Rutherford, the first Black man to host a non-gospel television show in the Deep South – Columbus, Georgia, in 1958. 

Glen was reading newswire copy on-the-air at age eleven. His first full-time broadcast news job was at James Brown’s Augusta, Georgia radio station WRDW, in 1970 – where ‘The Godfather of Soul” shortened Glen’s last name to “Ford.”

Comrade Glen worked as a newsperson at four more local stations: in Columbus, Georgia, Atlanta, and Baltimore – where he created his first radio syndication, a half-hour weekly news magazine called “Black World Report” – and Washington, DC. 

In 1974, Glen Ford joined the Mutual Black Network of 88 stations, where he served as Capitol Hill, State Department and White House correspondent, and Washington Bureau Chief, while also producing a daily radio commentary. 

In 1977, Ford co-launched, produced and hosted “America’s Black Forum” (ABF), the first nationally syndicated Black news interview program on commercial television. ABF made Black broadcast history. For the next four years, the program generated national and international headlines nearly every week. 

Never before – and never since – had a Black news entity commanded the weekly attention of the news services (AP, UPI, Reuters, Agence France-Presse – even Tass, the Soviet news agency) and the broadcast networks.

In 1987, Ford launched “Rap It Up,” the first nationally syndicated Hip Hop music show, broadcasted on 65 radio stations. During its six years of operations, “Rap It Up” allowed Ford to play an important role in the maturation of a new African musical genre. He organized three national rap music conventions, and wrote the Hip Hop column for Jack The Rapper’s Black radio trade magazine.

In addition to his broadcast and Internet experience, Glen Ford was a national political columnist for Encore magazine; founded The Black Commentator and Africana Policies magazines; authored The Big Lie: An Analysis of U.S. Media Coverage of the Grenada Invasion; and served as reporter and editor for three newspapers.

Comrade Glen was a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists; executive board member of the National Alliance of Third World Journalists; and media specialist for the National Minority Purchasing Council.

In October, 2006, Ford and the former writing team of the Black Commentator launched BlackAgendaReport.com, a reliable and prolific source of information and analysis from the black left. He also partnered with Nellie Bailey to produce Black Agenda Radio, a weekly news program syndicated across the U.S. 

In 2008, Comrade Glen become a co-founder of the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations. 

He had been an outspoken critic of Barack Obama from the beginning of Obama’s candidacy. He was in communication with the Uhuru Movement after our 2008 protest at Obama’s St. Petersburg, Florida campaign stop where our demand that he address the question “What about the Black Community?” drew national attention to Obama’s silence on black issues.

For 12 years, Comrade Glen delivered dynamic presentations to the annual Black is Back Coalition’s Marches on Washington, conferences and training schools. His thorough research and insightful analysis brought clarity to the political situation faced by Africans and other oppressed peoples in today’s world.

The Covid-19 Delta Variant has caused a new surge in the United States and other parts of the world.  The Delta Variant of Covid-19 was first noticed in India in December 2020. It subsequently spread rapidly through India as well as places like South Africa, the United Kingdom and Canada.  The first United States cases of the Delta Variant were found in March 2021.  

There has been widespread political resistance to Covid-19 vaccines.  Some opportunists in the colonial media have intentionally spread misinformation about vaccines even while being vaccinated themselves. 

Many Africans have remained rightfully skeptical because of the history of colonial medicine’s experimentation on African people. 

About 56 percent of the US population above the age of 12 have been vaccinated but reports suggest that many of the unvaccinated have no plans on getting vaccinated.

Project Black Ankh and the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project has really risen to the occasion and provided the leadership the African Nation has needed over the last 16 months.  They have been a steady source of honest information in defense of the African working class.

In this episode, Dr. Aisha Fields discusses the updated Project Black Ankh Covid-19 Protocols and vaccine recommendations.  She places the vaccine recommendations into political context, discusses the deliberate misinformation that has been circulated to disarm African people, the role Project Black Ankh's fight against the Ebola Virus played in shaping their Covid-19 Campaign, Covid-19 and neocolonial misleadership in Africa, and the successes and future of Project Black Ankh.

Dr. Aisha Fields is a physicist who became the International Director of the All African People’s Development & Empowerment Project, a non-profit organization founded in 2007.

As the group’s Director, Dr. Aisha is responsible for coordinating African community-led health care, agricultural and educational programs throughout the U.S., on the continent of Africa, and in African communities world-wide.

They’ve built clean water systems, vocational and nursery schools, community farms, maternity centers and a variety of youth and adult educational programs.

They also established the Project Black Ankh to provide African community-based disaster relief, responding to hurricanes in Texas, Ebola in Sierra Leone and now, COVID-19 worldwide.

The People's War radio show is produced by WBPU 96.3 FM "Black Power 96" in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is hosted by Dr. Matsemela Odom and Dexter Mlimwengu, bringing an African Internationalist perspective to the important issues of our world.

From July 9 to July 17 Africans took to the streets of South Africa in protest of the neocolonial government and brutal conditions they live under.  As well, the African working class in the neighboring country of Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, have also risen up in protest.

The colonial media has tried to explain the uprisings in South Africa as support for the jailed former-president Jacob Zuma.  South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has echoed the talking points of the former apartheid regime by blaming the unrests on agitation.

Covid-19, unemployment, and other immediate factors have also been pinpointed by some analysts as the cause for the unrest. 

Our guests in this episode identify the central contradiction that has defined the global uprising of the African working class over the last year--colonialism; the political and economic exploitation of African people by foreign and alien powers. 

Our guests place the uprisings in Southern Africa into the context of the global uprising of African people over the last year.  They identify the current uprisings in Southern Africa as part of the struggle to complete the Black Revolution of the 1960s and place the control of African resources into the hands of African people. 

Our guests talk about a variety of topic:

• The South Africa Uprising

We are joined by three organizers on the ground in South Africa: Tafarie Mugeri, Asa Anpu and Zakhele Mkhondo.

Tafarie Mugeri is the Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party Occupied Azania.  Chairman Tafarie is also the Director of Organization for Africa.  Under Tafarie’s leadership, the African Socialist International has grown throughout various regions of Southern, Western and East Africa.  

Asa is the Secretary General for APSP Occupied Azania.  Asa is also the director of the Better Life Association, a non-profit organization, dedicated to solving the problems of healthcare, education, and skills development in the townships.

Zakhele is the President of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement in South Africa. 

The People's War radio show is produced by WBPU 96.3 FM "Black Power 96" in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is hosted by Dr. Matsemela Odom and Dexter Mlimwengu, bringing an African Internationalist perspective to the important issues of our world.

On July 7, Jovenel Moise, the president of Haiti was assassinated at his home in Petion-Ville.  His wife, Martine Moise was critically injured in the attack and was transported to the United States for emergency medical care.  Moise’s presidency had been marked by mass protests and political crises.  Still, his assassination came as a sudden surprise to many.

This news came as a shock to the world and especially to the people of Haiti; even those who

People are asking: Who did it and why? Who had access to his house? Who took Martine to the hospital?  Likely, the biggest question is who will will succeed Jovenel Moise in running Haiti, who had ruled by decree since October 2019?

The assassination of Jovenel Moise is not an isolated incident.  It is instead part of a series of events that reflects the deepening crisis of colonial-capitalism.  From Haiti to South Africa to Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland), the African working class has risen up.

On today’s episode of The People’s War show we bring you excerpts from a July 12, 2021 webinar entitled “Haiti:  Global Black Revolution”, organized by the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) to address the current situation.

On this episode you will hear excerpts from Elikya Ngoma, Secretary General Luwezi Kinshasa, Penny Hess, Chairwoman of the African People's Solidarity Committee and Chairman Omali Yeshitela, head of the APSP and Founder of the Uhuru Movement.

Elikya Ngoma's family is from Haiti.  She is the Haiti Editor for The Burning Spear Newspaper.  She is also the author of our theme song "Colonialvirus". 

Luwezi Kinshasa is the Secretary General of the African Socialist International.   SG Luwezi was born and raised in the Congo and speaks multiple languages. He is now based in London and works as an educator and organizer in African communities throughout Europe and the continent of Africa.  He writes a monthly column in The Burning Spear Newspaper titled “The  Kinshasa International”.

Penny Hess is the Chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee.  Penny describes the legacy of European colonialism and the role of colonial expropriation in building white society. She calls for a self-criticism from white people in the form of reparations.  She is the author of Overturning the Culture of Violence.

Chairman Omali Yeshitela is leader and founder of the Uhuru Movement.  Over the past five decades, Chairman Omali has initiated campaigns to defend the democratic rights of the African community, to organize and raise up African women, to mobilize opposition to U.S. wars and to popularize the demand for reparations to African people.  He’s built the worldwide Uhuru Movement and the African Socialist International with branches in the U.S., Europe, the Caribbean and on the continent of Africa.

The People's War radio show is produced by WBPU 96.3 FM "Black Power 96" in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is hosted by Dr. Matsemela Odom and Muambi Tangu, bringing an African Internationalist perspective to the important issues of our world.