Instructions to the Youth Organizations
A critical requirement of the African independence movement is to be self-reliant. When we were in Senegal we talked about how shameful it is for African leaders to be going around the world begging people for what we should be doing ourselves. A beggar cannot have dignity. Africa has everything that we need to develop, what is lacking is proper organization and confidence among the people. Our goal is to become so organized that we can do in one day what previously took us twenty years.
This is the reason why we are going to have an African women and youth conference in Dakar, Senegal in March of 2007. The theme will be self-reliance. A quote from Samora Machel, first president of Mozambique, “Nobody will overthrow the independence of Mozambique. It doesn’t matter if they ignore us in the West. We do not exist because of them. They did not produce us. They did not give us independence. Whether they say anything or not, what does it matter? We are speaking, we have our own tongues.”
It is only by our own labor that we are going to build a liberated Africa. Real wealth comes from labor. It was African labor that built the United States of America. If Africa built the United States of America, Africans can certainly build Africa.
We call on our youth organizations to confront this question of self-reliance with determination. One way to express this determination to be self-reliant is for our youth organizations to organize collective kitchens, and childcare. This will free women to make an even bigger contribution to the liberation of Africa.
We want collective kitchens because it is a more superior organizationally than every woman being required to cook meals everyday for their families. Since everyone has to eat everyday anyway, we can organize the meals so that many more families can eat in one place. We can pool our resources together, employ some people to prepare the food, and everyone can enjoy each other from the social gathering at the same time. The more the community collectively comes together, the better we can solve problems together.
Another project that we are asking our youth organizations to organize is childcare. We need to organize places that our women can take their children and know that their children will be in good hands. This is also a way we can employ people who are willing to do that work. We want the collective to finance this project.
The African Women’s Charity Organization wants to build organizational structures all over Africa. We want to identify the organizations that are connected to the Charity by the structures that they build in terms of collective kitchens, and childcare. We quote Samora Machel again, “Being organized means first of all having structures… Structures are the instrument for democratizing our life, since they lead to everyone’s participation in an organized manner and to a collective solution to problems. When we involve everyone in problem solving, when we make everyone feel responsible for solving the problems that arise, we are collectivizing our leadership, collectivizing our lives. Structures do not drop from the sky; they are the product of specific situations and answer specific needs. This means that structures must be operative, that is must meet the particular needs and circumstances of a given center…The structures must adapt themselves to life, and life must not be subordinated to the structures. This means that structures must be flexible, must always be responsive to the actual situation.”
We want to encourage in our youth a spirit of initiative and responsibility, a collective sense, love for one another, appreciation for manual work and study, and a hatred of exploitation. People have been asking us how they can help out with the African Women and Youth conference that we are going to have in Dakar in March of 2007. The best way to help out is to organize an _expression_ of self-reliance that is worthy of being imitated all over Africa. This is one of the biggest contributions that you can make. If you make this kind of contribution, then you are making a serious contribution for the liberation of Africa, and that is the purpose that we are organizing conferences. Please let us know of any organizations that are willing to take on these tasks and we will follow their (our) development.
