WHEREAS, African nation-states until now miss true sovereignty to which they are entitled by right, and which is now being denied Africa by the might of its former European colonizers with their ally, the United States;

WHEREAS, Africa ended the last century under colonial servitude and oppression; Africa is about to end this century in wars, pestilence, famine, and disease;

WHEREAS, this century has seen us attaining independence on paper. It has not seen us attaining true sovereignty;

WHEREAS, it is only our former European colonizers together with their ally, the United States, which itself was a colony of Britain, who are sovereign in the fullest meaning of that term. The United States policies on Africa, are still on the coattails of British policy. Africa is still agonizing under the colonialism of the IMF and World Bank, both put in place at the end of World War II by European powers and the United States, and they control the economies of Africa with an iron hand clad in a velvet glove, to serve only the interests of the supposedly departed imperalists;

WHEREAS, even the paper independence we attained was paid for at a very high price of pain and suffering, incarceration and deaths of millions of African freedom fighters. The IMF and World Bank, through their founders, continue as our new colonial governors, to control all aspects of our economies and development, rendering our paper independence null and void and of no use whatsoever;

WHEREAS, all people of good will throughout the world agree with those sacred words in the American Declaration of Independence that all men are born equal and have unalienable rights, among them the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In practice at the present day, Africa is excluded; hence it is today treated as a colonial continent for the West to plunder, loot, and decimate;

WHEREAS, none of the supposedly departed colonial powers ever advised us to get rid of them. It would be unwise to hope that a day will come in the dim future whereon the same powers will advise us how to agitate and struggle for the attainment of full sovereignty, because the European powers and the United States do not yet believe that Africans are born equal with Europeans and Americans;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, AND IT IS HEREBY RESOLVED, by the African Civil Rights Movement and friends to condemn in the strongest possible language the continued roles of the IMF and World Bank as at present constituted, and to undertake to spearhead any move for the early demise of these two world institutions, which to Africa mean no more than the extension of colonialism into the third millennium.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the policies of the IMF and World Bank are the two main culprits in denying us our sovereign rights as free and independent nations. Their sustainable adjustment programs have only adjusted our stomachs to hunger and our bodies to disease. We are far poorer today than before independence. And as some European Christian missionaries have written about us that we are poor because we are backward, and we are backward because we are poor, this is a trap we shall never get out of until we get the IMF and World Bank off our backs.

Henceforth, the whole of Africa has to join the agitation for sovereignty as we agitated for independence more than 30 years ago.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that we stand foursquare behind the policy of Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia, of Selective Exchange Controls to fight against speculators and unscrupulous currency raiders. We note with satisfaction that Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe, came out in the open to adopt policies similar to those of Malaysia. We rest confident that the whole of Africa will get together in a United States of Africa, and stop being exploited by the IMF, World Bank, or any other force that may be formed to keep Africa as a colony in perpetuity.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the African Civil Rights Movement in its fight for sovereignty shall not rest until Africa through renewed nationalism achieves:

(a) Sovereignty of every African mind;

(b) Sovereignty of every African state;

(c) Sovereignty of every African soul;

(d) Sovereignty of every African land and natural resource;

(e) Sovereignty that shall free everything we call our own from continuous looting and exploitation by the mighty and powerful well into the 21st century and beyond.

Signed, for the African Civil Rights Movement:

Godfrey Binaisa
Chairman