Our party RTA-S (Rassemblement des Travailleurs Africains – Sénégal), Union of African Workers – Senegal, is an anti-imperialist party in our country, Senegal in West Africa, that was legally created in October 1995 (after more than 17 years of clandestine existence) after having broken away from the Maoist movement. The goal of our political organisation is to build a strong proletarian party in order to fight for the national liberation of our people that is oppressed by French imperialism in particular.

From slavery to colonialism and to semi-colonialism today, Senegal gained its political independence in 1960 like many African countries, but is still under French domination. Its economy is destroyed by imperialist institutions such as IMF, World Bank, the World Trade Organization that dictate to our government programmes called structural adjustment. Their aids or debts are killing our people because it is simply allowing the institutional organisations to privatise our economy. The country is declared for sale, period; and the public sector has almost disappeared. Let me give you some examples:

• The Senegalese water company SONEES has been privatised and sold to the French group Bouygues.

• The telephone company SONATEL despite its profit of 76.5 billions in 2003-2004 has been sold to France Telecom.

• The cement company sold to the French group Vicat.

• The oil company sold to Advens, another French group.

• The Senegalese Bank of Development is liquidated and replaced by French commercial banks: SGBS, BICIS, Credit Lyonnais, etc.

• Savings of Senegalese too as revealed by a Senegalese expert in finances, 2500 billions CFA francs [currency used in much of West Africa, set at 100 CFA francs = 0/152 Euros] per year are deposited in Switzerland.

• The Senegalese lottery company la LONASE with a profit of 100 million CFA francs per day has been sold to a French group while in France and in the U.S. that business belongs to the public sector.

• There are military bases in Senegal, French mainly, with a mission not to protect the country but to protect their interests against any political changes, internally or externally; cases in Congo, Gabon, Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, etc. are well known to people.

• This shows that our development is impossible in this situation of imperialist domination. Our productive forces are destroyed in Senegal and in the continent of Africa. African countries are all facing the same situation of oppression and national liberation movement to end economic dependency is growing as well.

Our anti-imperialist political line is linked to a socialist view as stipulated in our political programme. That strategic goal makes us proud to belong to the revolutionary camp that aims for the social liberation of the working class.

We know how hard it is to build a revolutionary party of the working class in order to eradicate the exploitation of popular masses and to liberate them from oppression but at the same time we are aware that there are no other ways to emancipate ourselves, our people. This is the reason why we have faith in our struggle for the liberation and the progress of human beings.

It is obvious that we need the internationalist support, solidarity of all anti-imperialist and revolutionary forces around the world in order to realise our common goal to defeat imperialist forces and to create a democratic society in which human beings are put at the centre and not profit.

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