“We have unity of action. But, we lack unity of thought. It is because we lack unity of thought, that is why our unity of action is so spontaneous. We jump up and sit down. We jump up and sit down. We must come to qualify our action. We must come to get unity of thought.

A young student came to me and said, ‘I sure wished I was in the 60’s.’

And I said ‘why? I never want to go back in history. I want to go forward in history. I always want to go forward. And what lies ahead of me is far greater and brighter than what was layed behind me in the 60’s.’

He said, ‘you know, brother Ture, in the 60’s we were so united.’

I said, ‘were we?’

And he said, ‘yeah!’

I told him, ‘no we were not.’

He said, ‘we were!’

I said to him, ‘no we were not. Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah says, ‘Unity presupposes organization.’ If you have no organization, you can’t be united.

Unity is not a feeling. Unity is not an emotion. Unity is a means of channeling the energy of a people given objectives within principles to reach a common goal.

You must not get confuse between mobilization and organization. Dr. [Martin Luther] King was one of the greatest mobilizers that the world has ever seen, but he never organized. Dr. King was not an organizer. And for him he didn’t need organizing. After all, Dr. King was a reformist. And when you are a reformist, all you need to do is put pressure on the people to do right; to do right by the people. Thus, all Dr. King saw as his job was to put pressure on the U.S. government to show them that they should live up to their constitution, that ‘all men are created equal.’ That was Dr. King’s task.

When you want power, you organize.

Of course, when you mobilize, everybody can be against the same thing. But when you organize, everybody must be for the same thing. You must not think that everybody being against the same thing means that everybody is for the same thing. That’s where the confusion arises. The Black nationalist struggle, the struggle for independence in Africa, is indicative here. And also instructive here. All Africans, all Africans wanted the colonial system out of Africa. They wanted it destroyed. But some Africans, like Mobutu [Sese Seko], wanted the white men out so he can take their place, so they can continue to exploit Africa and Africans. And some Africans, like [Patrice] Lumumba wanted to destroy the colonial system, so they can set up a productive and equitable system for all Africans. So, just because everybody is against the same thing doesn’t mean everybody is for the same thing.

And Unity doesn’t represent what you are against, it represents what you are for. Unity represents what you are for. Consequently, when one speaks of unity one must speak of organization. No people, no people, no people on earth will ever be free, unless they are consciously organized.”

— The Great Nana Kwame Ture

🗣 In this excerpt speech from a 1992 lecture on Pan-Africanism and African unity at Florida International University, Miami, USA, pan-Africanist, political activist and revolutionary Kwame Ture (1941 – 1998) speaks about what it means for Kmtyw=Abibifuo=Farafin=Black people (Africans) to be truly united, and how history offers important lessons about the way forward for Kmt=Abibiman=Farafina=Land of the Blacks=Land of Black people (Continent of Africa).

Kwame Ture (born Stokely Carmichael) was a Trinidadian-born, U.S-raised activist, who was a key figure in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements in the United States, and a lifelong champion of Pan-Africanism and African Unity. He was most notable in his later years as the chief organizer for the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), founded in the late 1960s by former Ghanaian President and Pan-Africanist icon Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah (1909 – 1972) – in whose honor Ture took on his new first name.

Ture’s thoughts are apt at a time when Kmt=Abibiman=Farafina=The Black Land (Africa) faces – for the first time in generations – the threat of direct colonial occupation by Western powers, who are desperate to shore up their dwindling influence on a world that no longer believes in the fiction of Western domination and superiority.

🗣Some Kmtyw (African) nations, like Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, see the coming storm for what it is, and are moving accordingly. It is left to the rest of the Continent to follow suit.