It's Either We Destroy Imperialism, or Imperialism Destroys Us by Sara Bafo
"The questions my generation is asking are the following. If I can summarise, we do not understand how Africa, with so much wealth on our soil, with generous nature, water, sunshine in abundance—how Africa is today the poorest continent. Africa is a hungry continent. And how come there are heads of state all over the world begging?"
- Ibrahim Traoré, President of Burkina Faso, speech at the Second Russia-Africa Summit
Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have been at the frontline resisting Western imperialist domination, forming an Alliance of Sahel States (AES) —a people's revolutionary struggle formed on September 16, 2023. AEScounteracts the image that African people need rescuing from outside groups from Western NGOs, the Charity Sector, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank’s neo-colonial projects. The demands of AES have been sharp and precise - demanding an end to Western colonial intervention.
We are watching a global mass uprising from oppressed people resisting the ruling class, its exploitation and pillaging of resources and its contribution to the climate crisis. Privatisation of everything has the plates of the wealthy filling up whilst the stomachs of the poor become emptier and emptier. Western imperialist powers are occupying countries in the Global South. When the oppressed rise up and are left with no option but to resist, they are villainised and criminalised for resisting the occupation.
It isn't the poor emitting the majority of carbon emissions, profiting from weapons of mass destruction, causing environmental damage and ruining lives. The Global South isn't responsible for the cumulative greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that contribute to the climate crisis. Our planet is suffering because capitalism has enabled the creation of empires through colonisation and the continuation of imperialism. Defined broadly as a system of extending a country's power and influence through colonisation, military force, or other means.
Enemy number one is Imperialism
The primary enemy of the oppressed is imperialism, which is the highest stage of capitalism; imperial powers have been in a battle for global domination. Imperialism has spread across the world, as described by Ghassan Kanafani:
"Imperialism has laid its body over the world, the head in Eastern Asia, the heart in the Middle East, its arteries reaching Africa and Latin America. Wherever you strike it, you damage it and serve the World Revolution."
Who are these imperialist powers we must strike for the world revolution- for our collective liberation? America and Israel, both settler-colonial entities, Britain, France and the list continues — these are very imperial forces that have a historical and present link to the destruction of the Global South environmentally, economically, and psychologically.
Burkina Faso has been a nation of popular resistance against colonial entities, from gaining independence on August 5, 1960, to Thomas Sankara, an anti-colonial pan-Africanist revolutionary leader who raised the masses' consciousness about the implications of Western intervention—naming the perpetrators, the IMF and the World Bank, as a US imperialism machine that strangles Africa.
"Imperialism is a system of exploitation that occurs not only in the brutal form of those who come with guns to conquer territory. Imperialism often occurs in more subtle forms, a loan, food aid, blackmail. We are fighting this system that allows a handful of men on Earth to rule all of humanity."
- Thomas Sankara
France has employed various tactics in maintaining colonial and imperialist domination through imperial monetary policy. One tactic to preserve their colonial powers was establishing the CFA franc, a colonial currency created in 1945 that still operates in fourteen African countries, permitting France access and control to the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO). Understanding the role of the beast we call imperialist powers helps us understand the condition that leads the people to resist by any means necessary.
The role of the World Bank and IMF is the role of the oppressor controlled by American and European powers who create exploitative conditions, forcing the oppressed to rely on their colonial solutions with fixed terms and conditions. In a speech given in July 1987 at the Organisation for African Unity, Thomas Sankara declared: 'Debt's origins come from colonialism's origins. Those who lend us money are those who colonised us.' On October 15 1987, Thomas Sankara was assassinated. The role of the beast is to erase the role of the revolutionary collective on a mission to liberate the people from the shackles of Western imperialist oppression. Yet, in the words of Fred Hampton, ‘You can kill a revolutionary, but you can never kill the revolution.’
The Revolution Lives On
The Sahel Alliance is a declaration of Fred Hampton's words that you can never kill the people's revolution. In taking a unified, principled stand against imperial forces determined to hold the Global South in a chokehold, the AES is striking the arteries of imperialism. Since the birth of the Sahel Alliance, they have forced the imperialist neocolonial military out of the land, understanding that an attack on one of them is an attack on all of them - steadfast in the principle of unity.
The Sahel Alliance is an anti-imperialist revolutionary pan-Africanist liberation movement—a present revolutionary movement that must be studied and supported. It is a people's revolutionary movement addressing imperialist neocolonial practices and discovering practical solutions to address the climate crisis—a revolutionary movement on a mission to build a unified and socialist Africa, to build a just world.
Our liberation from the shackles of imperialist forces cannot be depended on the saviour of NGOs, charities, and nonprofits whom we have long understood the role as institutions that have individualised systemic oppression, and to go even further, those very institutions' existence is dependent on oppression and harm.
The Sahel Alliance, Palestinian resistance, the youth-led resistance in Kenya, and revolutions across the Global South, which are being ignited against imperial powers, must guide us in the imperial core to understand our role in destroying imperialism before imperialism destroys us. We are in the belly of the beast. We have access to the arteries that keep the imperial forces breathing. We must strike the arteries for the people's revolution. Our planet is not inevitably doomed for destruction - the ruling class is destroying our planet. We must resist, and we will be victorious.
Glory to our peoples, dignity to our peoples,
victory to our peoples.
Homeland or death,
we shall conquer!
- Ibrahim Traoré speech at the Second Russia-Africa Summit
References
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/imperialism.pdf
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/ghassan-kanafani-voice-of-palestine-1936-1972/
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2017/07/12/the-cfa-franc-french-monetary-imperialism-in-africa/