Pt. II Patrice Lumumba's Pan Africanism w/ the Kenyan Organic Intellectual Network

This year represents an important historical conjuncture that has very important implications for our contemporary moment of crisis, yet extremely instructive in how we can move toward a different future. It is the 100th year recognition of the birth of Malik El Shabazz [aka Malcolm X] as well as Frantz Fanon, Patrice Lumumba, Robert F. Williams, and Medgar Evers. There are, have been, and will be an assortment of panels, programs, conferences, talks, and colloquium that explore and contextualize them, individually, and together. What we intend to offer is an identification of the continuities and discontinuities with the conditions and structures that produced the thought and practice of this group, not intended to isolate them for the many others, but to provide a lens to telescope up, down, above, and under the temporality of human geography, paying acute attention to how people resist in the face oppressive forces. Simply stated, we intend to connect the dots across time and space, attempting to read deeply the instructive details of how to construct a new society, a global society that undergirds these and other people’s thought and practice who resist the backwardness of capital, no matter the cost. With this, today, in this Part II of our collaboration with the Kenyan Organic Intellectuals Network, we explore Lumumba’s Pan Africanism. In this session, we intentionally examine the Pan Africanism of Patrice Lumumba, paying attention to role and importance of the Congo in African liberation struggles asking: • What strains of Lumumba’s thought are important to the current struggles, globally? • Why is the Congo region important in Africana liberation struggle? • What is the connection between ecological struggles and the Congo? We are, ultimately, for the entire series, in general, this session, in particular, interested in thinking collectively about: • What are some of the ideas that each of these figures offer for expanding and informing our practice today? And • Most importantly, how do we understand these figures in the long struggle for liberation in the African/a world? Joining us for this conversation are: Gathanga Ndungu is a community organiser with Mathare Social Justice Centre which is under the Social Justice Centres’ Working Group. He is also part of the Revolutionary Social League brigade that organizes political education in different political cells in the respective centres in Nairobi. As well as the Organic Intellectuals Network. Okakah Onyango is a member of the Revolutionary Socialist League, Organic Intellectuals Network and Social Justice Movement. He is a dedicated tech-driven community organizer, blending roles of revolutionary intellectualism and communications strategist. Gerald Kamau is an ecological justice activist based at Kayole Community Justice Centre as well as Organic Intellectuals Network.