Louise Montus | Dynamique Unitaire Panafricaine
I speak on behalf of the Dynamique Unitaire Panafricaine (DUP), which brings together more than twenty African and Afro-descendant organisations. Its objective is the conquest of sovereignty in the service of African peoples and the so-called overseas territories, departments, and the unity of Africa. It fights for a rupture with imperialism and capitalism.
At a time when imperialism is showing itself in all its nakedness, its monstrousness, its cruelty—pursuing without restraint its military and mercantile assaults against Venezuela, attempting to strangle Cuba, having struck Iran, wrongfully claiming Greenland, and continuing the genocide in Gaza and across all Palestinian territories occupied by the Zionist Israeli state—the leader of imperialism, the United States, is continuing its penetration of the African continent, disregarding its imperialist allies already in place, such as France and its European partners, as well as various other satellites seeking their share of the spoils.
The grip of imperialism is everywhere in Africa. It continues to foment, fuel, and balkanise (Sudan, Somalia, Mayotte), to plunder, to indebt to its own profit, and to support neocolonial regimes despised by their own peoples. It is in the DRC—rich in minerals and rare earths—that for more than 30 years a war has been fed by imperialism, its multinationals and its satellites, resulting in nearly 10 million deaths, with the Congolese people utterly bled dry. It is in Sudan, balkanised once and continuing to suffer the assaults of US satellites—the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia—which arm and finance the warring factions, all in the name of controlling rare earths and, notably, gold reserves. The result is more than 10 million displaced persons, 44 million Sudanese on the brink of famine, and more than 150,000 dead in two years.
Imperialism in Africa means 14 former French colonies turned into neocolonies, still under the yoke of the CFA franc—without control over their own money, their foreign exchange confiscated by the French Public Treasury. These are the so-called cooperation agreements that are nothing but agreements of enslavement in all domains, economic as well as military.
Africa is the granary of humanity. Having been the cradle of humanity, it is now the youngest yet the poorest continent—a consequence of the domination and plunder it continues to suffer after 12 centuries of Arab-Muslim slavery, 5 centuries of European slavery, colonisation, and today neo-colonisation.
The so-called overseas territories and departments—dominated, exploited, maintained in dependency and alienation—allow France to be the world’s second maritime power, without any benefit to their peoples.
It is more than imperative that we shake the knee from our necks by organising ourselves, rallying our forces, and coordinating our actions, because it is from our weakness of organisation that imperialism draws its strength. Together and organised, we are the strongest—for we are the most numerous and we produce the wealth. Let us begin to think about organising a general assembly (États-généraux) of anti-imperialism.
Long live Revolutionary Pan-Africanism!
Long live anti-imperialist internationalism!
