May 18 , Washington D.C. - Siphiwe Baleka, Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika, addressed the National Reparations Convention held at the Lincoln Temple United Church , 1701 11th Street, NW Washington D.C. Esteemed leaders, scholars, and diplomats from Reparations Organizations joined in solidarity, unity, and dedication to the pursuit of Self Determination.
Minister Baleka’s presentation during the convention was five minutes and can be viewed at the 1:33.00 mark.. Below is the complete, unedited thirteen minute presentation by Minister of Foreign Affairs SIphiwe Baleka.
ADDRESS TO THE
ADN NATIONAL REPARATIONS CONVENTION
It is an honor and privilege to join you all at this historic reparations convention. I am Siphiwe Baleka, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika which was founded when over 500 delegates attended the National Black Government Conference sponsored by the Malcolm X Society and declared Independence for the black New Afrikan nation on March 31, 1968.
The founding fathers have always emphasized that we are seeking reparations for War damages. The war against our ancestors was initiated by a declaration of war issued by Pope Nicholas the V on June 18, 1452 which authorized the invasion of our homelands on the African continent. Our ancestors were captured, trafficked as prisoners of war, and subjected to chattel enslavement that resulted in ethnocide - the destruction of our ancestral identities - and the loss of our sovereignty. These are the first two damages of war that must be repaired. The war was then continued by legislation introduced into the British colonies in the Americas, and then continued by the Constitution of the United States of America. By the time of the Civil War the enslaved Africans had simultaneously suffered ethnocide while at the same time experienced ethnogenesis - the mixing of various African genetic material into new combinations along with a unique shared heritage born from their brutal chattel enslavement - hence the birth of a New Afrikan nation. After Emancipation, the war was continued against the New Afrikan nation when a coup assassinated President Lincoln and took over the government and the new President rescinded legislation that provided for our return to Africa as well as provided land in the Carolinas and Davis Bend, Mississippi, where we established New Afrikan self governing colonies pursuing Independence. Any attempt at establishing independence for our subjugated black New Afrikan nation within the United States was criminalized. In 1919, both Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. DuBois separately petitioned for the former German colonies in Africa to be given as an independent homeland to build our mighty New Afrikan nation. The League of Nations replied that a procedure required the United States to sign a special treaty agreeing to the international protection of its internal minorities. The question of the New Afrikan non-self governing territories and status as an internal colony of the United States was ignored. When the League of Nations was replaced by the United Nations, the United States government failed to list its internal domestic black colony as a non-self governing territory under the UN mandate system like it did for Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. This is the reason why the era of decolonization on the African continent which led to the recognition of independence for 55 states did not apply to the Republic of New Afrika at its founding. The international community simply ignored our struggle because the United States committed an international fraud by convincing the world that we were citizens of the United States and not an internal domestic colony with the right of self determination. In 1973 Republic of New Afrika President Imari Abubakari Obadele and Attorney Gaidi Obadele exposed this fraud in the Article Three Briefs Establishing the Legal Case for the Existence of the Black Nation The Republic of New Afrika in North America that was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi. The government’s response, the Brief in Support of Motion to Quash Indictment for Lack of Jurisdiction Under Article III, U.S. Constitution Brought by the Defendant states, “Every element of the limits of Sec. (b)(2) clearly exist, with the exception of Obadele showing that he is a person of foreign nationality. That question, however, is a matter of law and requires a decision upon the issue of whether black folks now within the United States have ever been converted, in accordance with settled principles of universally established law, into United States citizens, and divested altogether of their original foreign African nationality”;
Following a workshop of the National Conference of Black Lawyers on September 11, 1987 the PG-RNA submitted to the United States Congress Reparations: A Proposed Act To Stimulate Economic Growth in the United States And Compensate, In Part For the Grievous Wrongs of Slavery And The Unjust Enrichment Which Accrued To The United States Therefrom. The act laid out a simple formula for the payment of reparations: One-third of the annual sum to shall be paid directly to each individual; one third to be paid to the duly elected Government of the Republic of New Afrika, and one-third to be paid directly to a National Congress of Organizations consisting of all the churches and organizations which for a period of two years prior had been engaged in community programs. On September 26, 1987 the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA) was founded.
It is extremely important to understand that the modern reparations movement in the United States was originally conceived by the nationalist element as payment to a nation for war damages suffered by that nation from war conducted against it by colonial governments and their successor state government, the federal government of the United States, and private entities enlisted to prosecute the war, including banks, insurance companies, and many others.
It is also important to understand that a Newsweek poll in 1969 showed that 27% of black people under the age of 30 wanted independence and a separate government of its own and were willing, like the Africans on the continent, to engage in armed struggle to get it. In response to this growing New Afrikan national consciousness, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) intensified the war against the New Afrikan Independence Movement and created its Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) with the following objectives:
Prevent unity
Prevent rise of a leader
Identify and neutralize [warriors]
Alienate the concept of nationalism from the people
Prevent nationalism from embedding in youth and future generations
Because of the assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, and others, as well as the imprisonment of the leaders of the New Afrikan Independence Movement, nationalist consciousness was replaced first with an infusion of drugs creating a drug culture followed by gangsta rap. Meanwhile, in order to mainstream the support for reparations movement, a decision was made to de-emphasize the nationalist element and reduce the amount of overt and covert oppression faced by its proponents. And thus you have the current status today where nationalist consciousness barely exist in black America and is almost completely absent from the Reparations Movement and discussions among the various reparations tasks forces and commissions today. The danger is that if the nationalist portion of the reparations demand continues to be neglected, reparations will not lead to New Afrikan sovereignty and since this is the primary harm committed against us, so-called reparations will not repair this most important harm.
Sovereignty can also easily be restored if the international community supports our righteous struggle for land and independence just like it is now supporting the Palestinians who are demanding sovereignty over their land and recognition as a member of the United Nations. The first step is to conduct a plebiscite - a vote of all people recorded as Black in the 1970 Census and their descendants of voting age - that allows each person to choose one of the following options: (1) return to their ancestral homeland in Africa, (2) the creation of a new African nation on American soil, (3) full US citizenship and (4) emigration to another country. After the vote, the resources are to be given based on the number in each category. There must be a "self determination" component in which the people choose for themselves what form of reparations they want in order to achieve "satisfaction".
The plebiscite is something we must do for ourselves. It will require organizing the logistics for approximately 70,000 voting centers in our black churches, so that 29 million of us can exercise self-determination - deciding which of the four options is best for our family. In this way, we can unite all segments of our community under the plebiscite campaign even though we may disagree on the best way forward for our destiny. Those who want to integrate into America need not fight with those who want to repatriate to their homeland in Africa nor with those who want to liberate the national territory of the Republic of New Afrika. Self determination allows all of us to respect each other and unite in order to get the reparations and remedies that we all need.
The New Afrikan Diplomatic Civil Service Corps (NADCSC) has diligently prepared the Plebiscite Campaign that can lead to a successful plebiscite by 2030 or earlier. It is open to all organizations, activists and individuals who wish to take responsibility for organizing the vote of the approximate 29 million eligible voters. It won’t be easy, and as my great Grand Uncle Reverend Eustace Lewis Blake, the 44th Pastor of Richard Allen’s historic Mother Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia, told his 2,000 congregants at his St. James AME Church in Newark, New Jersey, ‘the price of freedom is not cheap’.