The tone of your postings always makes it impossible for me not to respond. As usual, the questions, although too many at once, are quite appropriate. First, let me quickly address the question on the structure of Panafu, which I failed to answer from your earlier posting: PANAFU was always an amorphous organization (i.e, no formal/conventional structure existed). The organizing principle was something called "democratic centralism": rotating chairs for each meeting and later committees for specific tasks. The draw back was, as the MOJA-Liberia folks noted in Accra, an organization without elected leaders to assume full responsibility for actions. From its inception, the older comrades/lecturers assume the position of ideological gurus and the others flowed with the "democratic centralism" guidelines. Just like in Liberi -a where the movement split along the Sawyer, Fahnbulleh, Tipoteh, and other personality configurations, PANAFU tended to operate in the same way, albeit on a much smaller scale. So, there’s little material for in-depth research.

Now, let me also try to systematically address the long list of questions in your posting:

1. The "Basic Document..."was,as noted earlier, written by myself in collaboration with Cleo Hanciles and Ishmael Rashid. The five points there called for a return to multi-party system, even distribution of resources in the society, an end to the mercantilist rule of the Lebanese and comprado- re bourgeoisie over the economy, reform of education.... It became a PANAFU document after a copy was sent to those in Freetown for comments.
2. Ghana became our destination purely out of luck and coincidence, not the pre-arranged help from any foreign government. In fact, were it not for a former Ghanaian student activist, Botchway, I doubt if attending Legon would have been a reality. He was the one who advised Samuel, Julaba, Khanja and myself to come to Accra because it was much easier to study there. He was in Conakry at the time on assignment for the "Graphic", the official newspaper of the Ghanaian government. His sympathy and later heroic efforts to link us up with Akilakpa of Legon set the engine on. The latter wrote an introductory note to the heads of the department of history, philosophy, economics, who interviewed each of us separately. It was then that I realized how useful it was to have been a student of Professor George Carew’s philosophy department at FBC. We immediately set about working to prepare the ground for other less fortunate comrades....

3. When I mentioned something about ex-NPRC members on the net, I really had in mind folks like Hindolo, for I did not follow events in Freetown enough under the NPRC to know that Brandon was a minister. Hmmm, I should have paid a little more attention instead of writing papers on the politics of economic development in Poland and other areas.... Yes, I knew Brandon and also met the Major in Accra. They were both gracious hosts and invited us many times for dinner at their homes. As you would expect during those days of one-party nightmare in SL, our discussions were centered around the home front as we ate cassava leaf.... I think Cleo had the closest contact with Brandon.

5. PANAFU was forced into self-defense/ armed struggle by no one, for no single individual was hitherto elected Maximum Leader of the movement. I, like the rest, played the collective/democratic centralism game and decisions were arrived at without undue force of argument by anyone. How could those in Freetown, who were far removed from your alleged "pressure" from Tripoli, willingly toe the line even when there was no representative from Accra to assist in linking comrades to us? I don’t know why you are failing to see the bigger picture here! Not even Ishmael Rashid, who was an organic extension of the Freetown-based "leaders" among us, could have gone in to impose his will on them, Yusuf. The training lasted for no more than three months at a time, and each group returned home to continue the political work on the ground. In other words, never did we have all the 2 dozens and more cadres together in any single shift. This "army" was no more a threat to the system as Che’s army of 69 guerrillas in the Bolivian jungles were!

6. Sanko came out of a cell/movement that initially operated out of Kenema when Victor Rider (Ebee) returned from Guinea Bissau. It was inde- pendent of PANAFU, and was heavily into Marxism rather than pan-Africanism. I recall once when Ebee arrived from the rural areas in 1983 and attended a PANAFU study

session in Cleo’s office. His argument was a mixture of Mao and Castro along the lines of a rural-based movement rather than urban-based. Ebee later became the "pipe" through which his comrades, including Sankoh, joined PANAFU. This is the context in which the Accra comrades got to meet him. It’s safe to surmise here that Sankoh came with an alternative/hidden agenda to establish their own external links independent of PANAFU....

Let me conclude by attempting to answer the rest of the questions in one single paragraph: The fall out with the core of the movement was a very slow process of degeneration, as I tried to illustrate earlier. We were disunited right from the moment the survival imperative to stay with the collective became less and less significant. There were too many pettiness, which Cleo always condemned in meetings. (As you can see, Cleo was really the only one I had any respect for, and he became my only confidante.) I did not have to fall out with the others, for they were all in Freetown. When three or four of them later chose to join the RUF, I doubt if it was a collective decision by PANAFU or influenced by any of us formerly in Accra. Interestingly enough, none of those who studied at Legon took part in the war.... I was the peripatetic link as a

result of a meeting in Tripoli in which the comrades appointed me as the coordinator, the only time that an individual was thus given a title in the movement. My diary notes tell me that only two comrades in that meeting oppossed it: Khanja and Julaba. It was agreed that I could not be stationed in Tripoli and take part in any training in order to ensure that other tasks were taken care of. Ishmael Rashid could also not train because that period coincided with his final exams, not for faking an illness.

Yusuf, I hope you will not have to stimulate me into writing such a long posting again. I am going to arm myself with some anti-Yusuf resistant juju so as not to abandon my urgent and more important tasks these days!!!!

Best wishes to your family.

Sanjhan

p.s. The Green Book was very peripheral to our ideological views. In fact, we never studied it in our weekly study sesssions, which were always dominated by Marxian analyses of the issues under discussion. Even

the annual calendars we produced in Accra for PANAFU never carried a picture of Gadaffi; we had Sobukwe, Nkrumah, Cabral, Nasser, etc, in order to emphasise our pan-African/Marxist outlook.