The Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born in Jamaica on the 17th August 1887, two years after the Europeans divided Africa amongst themselves. Africa's decline is not a recent phenomenon it began in the age of Aires, around 700 BC, when Babylon inflicted a crushing defeat on Egypt under the Pharaoh Taharka, as quoted in the Bible (2 Kings 24:7). This decline continued through the age of Aires with the Persians and Greeks invading and sacking Egypt the repository of our wisdom and knowledge accumulated over 52,000 years.
In the age of Pisces the Romans conquered North Africa and the Arabs later conquered North, East and West Africa, playing a leading role in the destruction of a rebuilt African civilisation featuring Ghana, Mali and Songhay. In the wake of this and the domination of Southern Europe by Islamatised African came the forced transportation of millions of West Africans to the Caribbean, North, South and Central America and Europe into slavery.
The African resistance to enslavement was fierce and consistent for over three hundred years. Two great examples were in Brazil where the great Zumbi set up the Kingdom of Palmares and Haiti where Bookman, Toussaint L'Ouverture and Dessalines inflicted a crushing defeat on the French Army and established an independent African State. These victories show the fighting capacity which we as Africans still possess today.
Marcus Garvey, who came with the Age of Aquarius, had considerable knowledge of our history. When he became conscious, through the legacy of African warriors who destroyed slavery as an institution and who sought to rebuild the African nation to its former greatness, Garvey became aware that we had no government looking after our interests world-wide and asked: what is to be done? His solution was to build a united African (Black) nation. The vehicle for this, 'The Universal Negro Improvement Association' he founded jointly with his first wife, Amy Ashwood Garvey.
Thus Garvey followed the lead of Edward Willmot Blyden who helped to found two African States, Liberia and Sierra Leone and who the Lagos Weekly Herald described as a man who "breathes African Patriotism out of every pore of his body".
Through Garvey's influence and the work of other Africans such as H. Sylvester Williams and George Padmore, both from Trinidad, W. E. B. DuBois from North America and Amilcar Cabral from West Africa, the building of a Global African nation is now the most hotly debated topic all over the African world from North, South and Central America to the Caribbean, Europe and throughout the African continent.
In 1994 a Pan African Congress was held in Kampala, Uganda. Despite being financed by the Ugandan government the African Marxists who run the Secretariat have made no attempt to organise a democratic non-exclusive Pan African Congress around 17th August 1997 to celebrate the 110th anniversary of the birth of the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey as decided at the 1994 Congress. They have heaped dishonour and disrespect on both Marcus Garvey and the Congress.
In making this call for a UK PAC the Hackney Black People's Association is opening up the process for another Global Pan African Congress to be held on our motherland, Africa in September 2000, exactly 100 years after the first congress. This UK PAC will only take place if the Black (African) communities in Britain conclude that such a congress is timely and necessary and is prepared to support the holding of such a congress.
Thus, any African (Black) person, male or female, who wants to be involved with organising or attending such a congress to discuss what is to be done to solve the many problems we face, is invited to make contact to enable the process to develop. This UK PAC will only happen if you, the people, want it to happen.
© S. R. Bedeau 1997-2003. All rights reserved.