South African revolutionary in Bay Area

[This letter was issued in preparation for the tour now underway that is described above.]

Open Letter from Tiyani Lybon Mabasa, President, Socialist Party of Azania (South Africa) to Black Activists and Organizations in the United States

Attention:
U.S. Organising Committee
International Tribunal on Africa
Julian Kunnie and Alan Benjamin
P.O. Box 40009
San Francisco, CA 94140
Email: <ilcinfo [at] earthlink.net> and <jkunnie [at] email.arizona.edu>

Dear Sisters and Brothers:

Four years ago, Black unionists and activists from 21 African countries, Brazil, the Caribbean and the United States came together at the International Tribunal on Africa, held in Los Angeles, California. There, on the basis of detailed testimony and documentation compiled in Tribunal preparatory sessions held across Africa over two years, we put the spotlight on the deadly evolution that threatens the very existence of the peoples of Africa.

Our continent, first ravaged by the slave trade and then by colonial occupation, found the promise of national liberation confiscated and betrayed by horrific so-called "ethnic" wars and structural adjustment/debt-repayment programmes -- all of which were imposed by the U.S. government and by the international institutions of finance capital (IMF, World Bank, WTO, European Union, AGOA, NEPAD). Millions of people are dying in the killing fields or in our villages and city streets from HIV/AIDS and pandemics thought to be eradicated long ago.

In Los Angeles, we also reaffirmed that racism against people of African origin on all continents is a scourge that has not been erased. On the contrary, Black people -- from Brazil, to the Caribbean, to the United States -- are being driven into sub-human conditions, rounded up in prisons, placed on chain gangs, subjected to indiscriminate police violence, and/or heaved onto the scrap-heap of unemployment and homelessness.

The children of Africa are looking for a ray of hope. Our peoples want a future free from landlessness, homelessness, unemployment, poverty and want. They want to live in peace, free from the wars imposed from the outside by monied interests. They want to prevent the destruction of their nations and of their very sons and daughters.

Everywhere across Africa people are asking: Is it possible to stem this deadly course? Is it possible to save the African continent? Can we avoid this fate which, unless reversed, awaits all humanity?

Today, we need your help!

Our embattled Africa needs the help of our sisters and brothers, who, with their revolutionary actions began to change the course of history when they helped secure the Northern victory in the U.S. Civil War. We need the help of our sisters and brothers who confronted the water cannons and federal troops to put an end to Jim Crow. We need the help of our sisters and brothers who have enjoined their fight to ours in the struggle for collective reparations, for an end to the imposition of IMF Structural Adjustment Plans and debt repayment, for the cancellation of the African debt, for an end to the U.S.-led military interventions in Africa and beyond, for the withdrawal of all foreign occupation forces from our continent, for the respect of the right of our peoples to self-determination.

We in Africa have viewed with great shock as the current administration levels an unprecedented assault against Black America, bringing back Jim Crow laws and Death Row executions. We've been stunned to see how in November 2000 they stole the vote of the American people -- particularly the vote of 80,000 Black Americans in Florida, who were simply dropped from the voters' lists to ensure the Bush "selection."

We were alarmed to see the Bush administration rain down bombs on the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq for the sake of oil and empire.

But we also were angered by the fact you were abandoned by politicians of all stripes who, despite giving lip service to your cause, refused to mobilise the outrage felt by millions over the Bush/Supreme Court coup d'etat, and who, since that time, have endorsed all of Bush's attacks on working people in the U.S. and abroad in the name of the phony "war on terrorism."

Dear Sisters and Brothers:

The eyes of the peoples of Africa, just like the eyes of the rest of the world, are turned to the United States this election year.

From South Africa/Azania, we are deeply concerned. We know there is bound to be a discussion on all the issues that affect the peoples of African origin. But from afar, we hear no voices speaking out forthrightly against the pillage of our continent, against the wars devastating the peoples and nations of Africa, or against the unprecedented onslaught against working people in the United States itself -- particularly Black Americans and other oppressed nationalities.

As one of the African coordinators of the International Tribunal on Africa, I had the good fortune to travel across the United States in 1999 to build support for the Tribunal in Los Angeles. I visited your schools, campuses, union and community halls, and churches. I heard your anger, but I also heard your fighting determination -- which gave me great strength and hope to carry on.

Today, more than four years later, I am pleased to inform you that I will be returning to the United States to bring our appeal for help. I have been invited by the organisers of the Million Worker March to address this historic gathering at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on Ocotber 17, 2004.

Our continent is on the edge of the abyss. We need your help so that we can start to turn things around, so that we can forge our own solutions, in our own name -- something that is not possible as long as Black people are denied political sovereignty over their own countries.

And I want to bring a message to you: Don't all the children of Africa need an independent voice to speak for them in the U.S. political arena? Is it too far-fetched a notion to think that an independent Black candidate -- someone speaking on our behalf -- could come forward to challenge the politicians of the corporate elite? Is this possible? What would it take?

I would like to open a discussion with you on this burning issue.

The U.S. Organising Committee of the International Tribunal on Africa has proposed that I spend four days in the San Francisco Bay Area (October 11-15) and two days in Washington, D.C. (October 16-17) to renew the dialogue we began when we organised the International Tribunal on Africa four years ago.

The difficult conditions we've faced over these past few years interrupted our discussion. I deeply regret it. But now the situation is so urgent, we must get back in touch. I also want to introduce you to In Defence, the new monthly newspaper published by the Socialist Party of Azania (SOPA).

I call on you to support the U.S. organisers of the International Tribunal on Africa in organising forums and events during my one-week stay in the United States where we can pursue this necessary dialogue.

With your support, I am convinced, we can build a powerful movement to save our African continent and champion the fight of all the children of Africa. We must!

Thanks, in advance, for your interest and support,

In Unity,

Tiyani Lybon Mabasa
President,
Socialist Party of Azania (SOPA)
Azania/South Africa