The Legacy of Kwame Ture (formally Stokely Carmichael)

June 29th marks the birthday of Kwame Ture who most people still know as Stokely Carmichael. The capitalist media defines Kwame as a former organizer and chairperson for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Prime Minister for the Black Panther Party during the middle and late 1960s. Then, as is typical with capitalist media, they provide no further information until they report to you that Kwame died in November 1998.

With such a weak source of infomration, you are led to believe people like Kwame are has beens who made some noise 40 years ago and basically spent the rest of their lives living off of the reputation they established in the 1960s. Most people fall for this confusion because of a lack of understanding about history. For example, people today believe that South Africa is an independent country free of apartheid because of the spiritual presence of Nelson Mandela. Most people know nothing about the relationship of Southern Africa today to the role of Che Guevara and the Cuban presence in the Congo after the illegal overthrow and murder of Patrice Lumumba in the mid 60s. It was that initial Cuban presence in the Congo that contributed to the later Cuban presence in assisting the liberation of Guinea-Bissau from European colonialism and the 10 year assistance of Cuban troops in overthrowing the colonial presence in Angola. It was the victory of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, which could not have happened without Cuban military assistance, that weakened the South African regime and helped pave the way for Zimbabwean independence and ultimately, the fall of settler colonialism in Azania, South Africa.

When we look at the life of Kwame Ture, we have to closely examine the last 30 years of his life which were spent in Conakry, Guinea, West Africa as an organizer member of the Democratic Party of Guinea and the All African People's Revolutionary Party. Kwame spent those years helping develop the theoretical foundation of the African revolution as articulated by his mentor; Kwame Nkrumah in the Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare, the textbook for Pan-Africanism.

Kwame's last 30 years was also spent laying out the foundation for the actual building of an All African Committee for Political Coordination which is the primary organizing mechanism to bring about Pan -Africanism which Nkrumah defined as the total liberation and unification of Africa under scientific socialism. I remember when I first joined the All African People's Revolutionary Party in 1984, the party had basically one organizer and presence in Africa. That was Kwame's physical presence in Guinea. Today, the A-APRP has an active organizing presence in several African areas including Ghana, Senegal, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Azania, South Africa, and Zimbabwe with contacts and work taking place in other areas of Africa as well. Kwame made his physical transition 11 years ago, but today the A-APRP is actively working to make Nkrumah's prediction about an All African Committee for Political Coordination come true. This committee will pave the way for a true A-APRP which is the life blood of the African revolutionary transformation to scientific socialism.

This theoretical and practical advancement of the African revolution can be gauged by looking at Kwame's work from 1968 to 1998 in Africa while also broadening your mind to understand the work of the A-APRP. At this stage of the struggle, the A-APRP's primary objective is to increase the political consciousness of the African masses to pave the way for a revolutionary consciousness which paves the way for a dominant revolutionary culture which will facilitate revolutionary change.

This is probably the most widely misunderstood aspect of the A-APRP's present program. Possibly, we just are not at the point where people can truly appreciate the necessity to achieve revolutionary consciousness before we can make any mass progress. Possibly, people just don't agree that the masses are the true makers of history so if the masses are not conscious, change can never occur. I'm not sure exactly what that answer is, but I think its a safe bet that Kwame's most important contribution to African and human progress took place between 1968 and 1998, the period where he was absent from the capitalist media. Not the period of 1966 to 1969 when he was in the capitalist media every day. RIP Kwame Ture and long live the African revolution!!!!!