Last month, representatives from the Uhuru Movement traveled to Sierra
Leone on the west coast of Africa to participate in the founding
conference of the African People's Socialist Party - Sierra Leone in
Freetown, the opening of an Uhuru Radio FM station in Makeni, a fishing
project in Oloshoro, and a healthy pregnancy program in Allentown.
On December 20th, at
4:00 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time at the Uhuru House in St. Petersburg, the
delegation will report on their trip, sharing photos and video footage
in a special program to raise funds for Party's work in Africa. The
program will be videocast live on Uhuru News and will include talks by
Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Dr. Aisha Fields, Nyabinga Dzimbahwe, Gaida
Kambon and Penny Hess.
Sierra Leone is a
beautiful, mineral rich country with gold, bauxite, gold, iron ore,
rich offshore fishing grounds and some of the best gem quality diamonds
in the world. Its capital city of Freetown sits on the Atlantic coast
with lush, verdant hills rolling down to the sea.
But with the mineral
and agriculture wealth of the country still controlled by foreign
interests, the people of Sierra Leone experience some of the poorest
living conditions in the world, with no electricity, clean water or
health care. Life expectancy is 37 years. There are few paved roads, no
public schools or social services.
For the past 2 years,
the Uhuru Movement has worked with the Africanist Movement of Sierra
Leone to install rainwater harvesting systems and conduct trainings for
healthcare workers to combat waterborne and other preventable diseases,
also raising the funds to purchase a boat motor for a community-based
fishery.
Dr. Aisha Fields, a St.
Petersburg physicist, coordinates the Uhuru Movement’s development
projects in Sierra Leone. She returned from last month’s visit with a
call to raise funds for an urgently needed birthing center. She reports
that “African women in Sierra Leone are dying in childbirth for a
simple lack of nutritional supplements and medical supplies.
Traditional birth attendants in the community are working hard to meet
the needs of the pregnant women and we must support their efforts.”
It was his first trip
to the recently war-torn country for Nyabinga Dzimbahwe, director of
Uhuru News and Uhuru Radio. “Just like in Kenya, Ghana and South
Africa, we found our people living sharing the same impoverished
conditions and the same aspirations for the betterment of our
communities. The people we met embraced us as returning sons and
daughters of Africa.”
The highlight of the
visit was a 3-day conference held in the capital city of Freetown to
establish the African People’s Socialist Party – Sierra Leone
(APSP-SL). It was attended by over 500 people who agreed to form the
first workers’ party on African soil. They adopted a “revolutionary
national democratic program” that includes the nationalization of the
mining industries. Uhuru leader Omali Yeshitela delivered the keynote
presentation to the conference. He says, “It’s a new day in African
politics. We are now beginning to realize our long-held vision for a
unified Africa, shared by Kwame Nkrumah, Marcus Garvey and others.”
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