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become independent. They sacrificed their education and were ready to die from some bullet in this struggle. The continent has a very rich history of a few dedicated and unwavering Pan-Africanists.
Despite the fact that some have been cruelly kidnapped and murdered, the few who are still living have refused to fall on the wayside. This was the fate of Patrice Lumumba, Dedani Khimathi who received a mockery of jurisprudence, Steve Biko and Edison Sithole inter-alia.
The crime that these men committed was fighting against a system that was anti-human, anti-African and dehumanising, that is the reason why some African nationalists strived to conscientise the African. It is man like Edison Sithole whose unquenchable passion for freedom and independence propelled them to become revolutionaries and rise against the colonial system.
Despite the fact that Edison Sithole met his untimely death at the hands of the Ian Smith racist settler regime, he is part of Zimbabwe’s story, of Africa’s history that is shaped by courage that must never be erased from African memories and all progressive pan-Africanists. It is the vision of such man like Biko, Chitepo and Sithole just to mention a few, that have propelled African revolutionaries to continue to fight that which is by birth theirs, the African legacy.
Africa and progressive pan-Africanists and the African citizens cannot continue to passively and silently sing the song of the dying, they cannot continue to shed tears, and they cannot continue to live in poverty. The African citizen must know that Africa has its God given natural resources and the African has the right to exhibit a certain degree of arrogance or to be polite, must exude immense self-confidence of what God has given them.
Biko, Sithole and others are African “revolutionary prophets” who sung the revolutionary songs of the oppressed. Like Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba and others they had visualised the way that Africa had to develop, and this must not in any way be impeded and must never be sacrificed on the neo-colonialist and neo-liberal rabid racist alter. Africa must never suffer from an identity crisis for doing so will only impede the way that God wants Africa to develop.
If African revolutionaries like Dr Edison Sithole, Tongogara, Chitepo, Mugabe and others had compromised where would we be? Revolutionaries like Edison Sithole realised that there is no half way house to a revolution, they were aware of the wholesome universal desire for the good.
We are indeed as Africans children of the global village but we must continue to fight for this good for our survival must be in honour, a survival with growth, with freedom, with justice, with glory and this is why Dr Edison Sithole, one of the first nationalists to be detained under the notorious Law and Order Maintenance Act, brilliantly observed that Kwame Nkrumah’s strong conviction that Ghana’s independence was meaningless unless it was linked up with the liberation of Africa was “a prayer with a deep touching power to steer African nationalism.”
It is in this guise that African leaders must take Africa’s struggle a step further and ensure that Africa benefits from her own resources.
This then calls for courageous people, militants, youths who are prepared to fight against the neo-imperialist onslaught. The progressive African must denounce, reject and refuse anything that might be aimed or geared at thwarting the African people’s march to total economic emancipation, the march to total conquest of their dignity and their progress. The political and economic emancipation banner that revolutionaries like Dr Sithole and others called for and died fighting for must continue to be carried by today’s youths.
All responsible African citizens must defend the African space and must refuse to sell their heritage, this is one of the sacrosanct principles that must be cherished and respected. It is therefore the responsibility of all progressive Africans to jealously guard the African space.
It is the duty of all responsible African academics to assist our African leaders in conscietising the masses and workers to defend at all costs the gains of what our African heroes and heroines sacrificed their lives for.
This is a struggle that must continue unabated. Re-colonisation has once again glared its ugly head and threatens to dominate the African people economically and politically through the so-called “good governance and human rights hogwash.”
This is not surprising,  take for instance the Resolution 1973 on Libya and the Rudd Concession during the occupation of Zimbabwe, being given the power to do “what they deem necessary!”
Progressive pan-Africanists and revolutionaries must therefore continue to fight against internal forces be they physical or spiritual, that support this neo-colonial and neo-liberal regime change agenda, bent on reversing the gains of liberation. 
Our interests as Africans must therefore never be restricted or thwarted just because we are Africans. Africans must reject being treated like second-class citizens and like the biblical Lazarus be conditioned to eating the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table.
The West has no respect for the millions of Africans who suffer and die because of hunger and disease. Africans are regarded as “mere things”. For them “human beings” only refers to themselves. Africans must become aware of the fact that what the oppressor always wants is to get more, to make and get more at the expense of the oppressed.
Amilcar Cabral opined that “before being Africans we are men, human beings.” This is why the African youths being advised by the older generation must resist falling in the same trap and fate that led to the flagrant demise of their parents’ self-esteem, that of simply providing labour to the “colonial white master.”
They must refuse to play the “boy-role” that their parents were made to occupy. A married man with sons, daughters and grandchildren was reduced to a mere “boy” by the white colonialists.
The African’s name was deemed to be too long resulting in him being given nonsensical names because his African name demanded too much effort for the white employer’s “special tongue to emit a pronunciation.” This is why Africa must take note of Biko’s warning that they must not “live to work.”
All progressive Africans must support the current indigenisation and empowerment drive being championed by President Mugabe. Africans must become their own employers and not live to be employed. This is the system that Dr Sithole was against. To show that he was even better than the “white colonial master” Dr Edison Sithole obtained an LLD that made him the only individual with a doctor of laws degree in Central and Southern Africa.
Dr Sithole fought for the total emancipation not only of Zimbabweans but all Africans that they become drivers of their own destinies, have their history in their own hands, advance and build a better future for themselves and their children. Dr Sithole and other revolutionaries realised that Africans must become aware of their conditions and fight against this exploitation. All progressive African citizens must show solidarity with the willing Pan-Africanist leaders like President Mugabe and former Namibian president Sam Nujoma who are prepared to continue championing the African agenda of empowering the African masses.
As Africans, we must realise and be aware that no one can execute a struggle for us. Is it not a shame that today’s African neo-liberal scholar recites the “isms” of human existence with unspiced confidence ignoring the fact that different facets of humanism are emphasised on the footing of the exponent.
Such neo-liberal African scholars, their supporters and their funded puppet leadership never give themselves time to deliberate on the primary aims of the neo-colonialist’s indulgence on the so-called “African humanitarian crusade.”
Dear reader, one cannot help asking whether the white man can really be a child of two worlds and whether they have a wholesome universal desire for the good. Dear reader, it is a paradox that Zimbabwe in the late 1990s witnessed an unholy alliance that is the coming together of employers and workers. Employers urged workers to embark on an industrial action or mass-job stay away.
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and the employers discouraged workers from turning up for work. They encouraged workers to strike so that they could get a pay rise especially from the government of the day. Private sector workers were actually locked outside their working premises as a sign of solidarity with their public service counterparts.
Ironically, years down the line, the same leaders of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions now deny the same workers a pay rise. Are these the same “men” that we used to know? What was and still is their real motive? Should concerned Africans not worry about these neo-liberal Judases? Africans must be aware that “for every force operating in one direction there is another force operating in the opposite direction.” 
What the neo-liberal funded opposition parties do not know is that activism is not the road to a revolution. They fail to realise that the oppressors cannot think with the people and do not want to know the people better but just to dominate them more efficiently. The West is simply interested in trampling Africa under its feet.
The baton that the youths of Africa must carry is that of refusing these machinations by the West of falsely wanting to guide and advice through the so-called human rights discourse. What they really want is for Africans to become easy prey for manipulation and domination. This is why we posit that a serious and profound effort at conscientising the African masses and youths is necessary.
Dedicated Pan-Africanist leaders and the progressive African citizen cannot allow themselves to continue seeing the majority of African families wallowing in indescribable poverty because it is not the will of God. This is why Africa must continue to sing the songs of liberation because neo-colonialists want Africans to respect the rule of deformed laws promulgated by the likes of Paul Kruger whose obsessive belief in a flat world preceded the emergence of apartheid.
From where Nkrumah, Sithole, Biko and others left, the African struggle continues to make more demands. It gives more responsibilities to surviving pan-Africanist leaders and the youths of today that they must be ready to give everything and give the African masses the opportunity to survive as a people.

Darlington Mahuku and Bowden Mbanje are lecturers in International Relations and Peace and Governance with Bindura University of Science Education.