Ghana In Protests Challenging Vodafone In Britain

Environmental and Social Justice Campaigners in London, United Kingdom, have

included Ghana in their list of grievances upon which they are protesting

against the unethical malpractices of Vodafone, the telecommunications

giant, which is accused of tax dodging in Europe, corruption in Afrika (e.g.

Ghana and Kenya) and other crimes of transnational corporate robbery of

peoples all over the World. The Activists in Britain are doing so in a

series of protest actions that started in one of the Vodafone shops, which

got closed down, on Oxford Street in central London on Thursday, 28th

of October, 2010.

Following a request from Accra, the Activists in the UK

added the cause of the people of Ghana to their own grievances and went out

on Saturday, 30th October 2010, to protest again, resulting in the closure

of more Vodafone shops in central London and other cities of Britain. The

request for taking grassroots People-to-Peoples' Internationalist Solidarity

actions in jointly challenging Vodafone in as many places as is possible all

over the World came from the ADIEYIEMANFO Movement of Positive Action

Networks in Accra, Ghana. The ADIEYIEMANFO request was passed on to the

protesting campaigners in London by the Scholar-Activists of PANAFRIINDABA,

which describes itself as a Pan-Afrikan grassroots community-based Think

Tank, or preferrably "a Think-and-Act Gourd" doing groundwork for the

development of an All-Afrikan People's Community Consultative Commission in

Europe.

Brother Fe, an Environmental Justice Activist of the Camp for Climate Action

who led the advocacy among British campaigners for the highlighting of Ghana

in the anti-corporate crimebusting actions against Vodafone in London, said:

"I am proudly holding the Internationalist Solidarity banner of cooperation

with ADIEYIEMANFO in exposing, counteracting and overcoming the many

Poor-people-robbing crimes of Vodafone and its ilk of corporate and state

crime perpetrators. These corporate vampires are unscrupulous criminals who

cheat, lie and even cause great harm to be done, with the impunity of

their reactionary violence, to many of the ordinary masses of our peoples in

Britain and Europe as well as in Ghana and Afrika and other parts of the

World". In this connection, Dr. Naa Ashiokor, one of the Scholar-Activists

of PANAFRIINDABA, gave a reminder of the Axiom of Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah,

the renowned Pan-Afrikanist first President of the Republic of Ghana, that

revolutionary Changemakers see reactionary violence "*in general terms, as

any kind of exploitation or oppression. For example, when a peasant in

Afrika or elsewhere dies of starvation in a World of plenty, they call it

violence. It is violence when a whole class of people suffers indignity,

deprivation and exploitation at the hands of a selfish, privileged minority.

Reactionary Violence must be met with Revolutionary Violence. The latter is

employed every time the oppressed take action to end their oppression,

whether or not they actually resort to armed struggle*" (see *"Revolutionary

Path"*, by Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, 1973. Dr. Naa Ashiokor urged ADIEYIEMANFO

to seriously learn from the Positive Action Experience of Osagyefo Kwame

Nkrumah and other Freedomfighting Heroes and Sheroes of the past, as well as

from the type of Direct Action being taken by the protesters against

Vodafone in Britain today. She cautioned them to take great care in avoiding

alienation of the masses, perverting the cause of Justice or degenerating

into wanton anti-People counterrevolutionary terrorism, as had occured with

the excesses of the so-called 31st December revolutionary process and

similar misadventures in Afrika. She advised ADIEYIEMANFO to join up with

the Committee for Joint Action (CJA) and others, particular groups at the

grassroots of Community Resistance all over the country, so as to replicate

such Direct Action protests against the crimes of Vodafone and other

corporate and state violators of Human and Peoples' Rights within and beyond

Ghana.

Kojo Prah Annan, one of the leading Activists of ADIEYIEMANFO in Ghana,

expresed great joy at the positive response of Fe and other campaigners in

Britain to their request, channelled through PANAFRIINDABA, for

Internationalist Solidarity actions that will enable Vodafone to be held to

account not only for its tax dodging in the United Kingdom but also for its

corrupt transactions in Ghana. He very much would like appropriate actions

to be taken within and outside Ghana in order to compel Vodafone to go

beyond its bribery schemes of fraudulent entertainment and charity

sponsorships and deceptively slick and, often, even hazardous publicity

stunts in Ghana and other parts of Afrika, and rather focus upon

scrupulously fulfilling its public declarations of Corporate Social

Responsibility to all Humanity. Contrary to proclamations that "we are all

in this together", Kojo Prah Annan said: "We, the ordinary peoples of Afrika

and Europe, are the ones in the same dilapidated, sinking and

life-threatening boat together, suffering horrific attacks upon

our standards of living not just by cuts to welfare benefits, which most of

us in Afrika, including Ghana, do not enjoy; but also by the continuing

transnational corporate pillage of our resources, devastation of our

environment and brutal violations of our Human and People' Rights.

These include the 'Desk Killing' white-collar crimes of genocide by the

callous Elites of the global North and South, who are united in

bloodily enforcing their anti-people crimes against Humanity at all costs to

us, the 'Wretched of the Earth'. The cuts about which many ordinary peoples

in Europe are now screaming are more less out of the same horribly cruel

minds that have, for decades now, been prescribing and scheming to violently

impose the murderous diktat of the IMF, the so-called World Bank and other

International Financial Institutions of Maldevelopment upon our oppressed

nations. Shockingly, many, even some well-meaning but uninformed gullible

people, believed all the obscurant hype and chose to drown our Afrikan

voices of protest against such heinous IMF/World Bank policies and Blair

Commision hypocritical cover-ups in the deceptive stardusty razzmatazz of

'Live/Band Aid' scams! The hoodwinking Elites of the North and the South,

who perpetrate these groteque deceptions on top of their atrocious crimes,

are not in the same boat with us, the exploited masses of our peoples. They

luxuriously wine, dine and sin together, always plotting and directing the

execution of their genocidal crimes, from the extravagant comfort of their

posh yachts, aircrafts and 4x4 limousines. We the ordinary peoples of the

South and the North must wake up, help conscientise each other and wisen up

to the fact that, against the unified global might of the Elites, our

victory can be secured only when we also unify our efforts of grassroots

Rebellion, in true Internationalist Solidarity, to better organise,

coordinate and execute our own strategy and tactics of Global Justice

Resistance at all local, national and international levels. We must widely

diversify in rich creativity but also harmoniously connect all our local

into global actions of grassroots People-to-Peoples' Internationalist

Solidarity. We must also globalize all our own local initiatives of peoples'

self-empowering struggle at the grassroots of our Communities of Resistance

of the 'Wretched of the Earth' everywhere. That is our strategic pathway to

resounding successes in each and every locality that shall eventually build

up into the definitive victory of our unified Peoples' Power all over the

World to secure Global Justice for all!."

Awura Afitsufe Ampofo, one of those representing the women's liberation

organisation, ADZEWAGBETO, in the steering organs of ADIEYIEMANFO, also

reiterated the points made by Kojo in Ghana and Fe in Britain, emphasizing

that:"The peoples of Afrika and Europe must strive to rediscover, build upon

and advance the best traditions of Global Justice Resistance which enabled

our ancestral progressive forces to rise above all the divide and rule

schemes of elitist oppressors and work painstakingly together in principled

Unity to overcome chattel and colonial Enslavement and decisively challenge

the racism of Global Apartheid and other injustices. We can win again, like

our predecessor Freedomfighters, in similar Global Justice Resistance

against the neocolonizing Enslavement of the corporate and state elitist

vampires of Imperialism throughout Afrika and the World today. It only

requires our strong unwavering commitment to return to the principles of

true Internationalist Solidarity that powered the joint actions of our

progressive forces in the past, the genuine revolutionary kind of Global

Justice Internationalism upheld by the likes of Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah

together with Sylvia Pankhurst, C.L.R. James, Olive Morris, Ernesto Che

Guevara, Haydee Tamara Bunke Bider (Tania the Guerrilla), Ho Chi Minh, Mao

Zedong, Dr. Norman Bethune, Marilyn Jean Buck, Silvia Baraldini and others.

Upholding the revolutionary banners of such champions of grassroots

People-to-Peoples' Internationalist Solidarity, our New Breed of Global

Justice Freedomfighters shall also win and make another Afrika, another

Europe, indeed another whole new, better and more just World, possible!"

Source: ABENGOMA.

Abengoma@gmail.com