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