 Repubic Democratic Congo. Senegal, Nepal. Mauritania, Ghana. Morocco. Kenya. Zimbabwe. Guinness Vissar. Venezuela. India. Palestine. Switzerland. Zambia. The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa is pleased to be part of this incredible historic gathering of working class formations to discuss and to debate the crisis facing the global working class and how to find real viable socialist solutions to the crisis that faces all of us. We are facing many challenges facing us nowadays, facing our youth and our women. My expectation is that out of this conference or conference, we come up with a constructive solutions on how we are going to address the challenges facing our women and our youth. A movement in Kenya that is spread all through the counties of Kenya but also is working with other social justices in Tanzania and Kenya. I'm here as an artist who believes in bringing change through art and as a Pan-Africanist too. My biggest expectation with this is that we merge our voices and bring them together because we have to build a front. We're living in a predatory capitalist system that has brought almost everything to a standstill. If you look around the world, not only in South Africa, not in Ghana, but all over the world, workers are not sure what they want, I mean how to live anymore in terms of what they end. If you look at what they produce and what they end, it is just unmatched. In terms of housing, in terms of feeding, in terms of health, in terms of education, the world is actually at a crossroads. We are here to discuss issues that are challenging to the community at large and the working class and to discuss and plan the way forward, how can we resolve the issues and what needs to be done. What we're here to do is to examine the situation of the world and to look at it from the African context. We are here to look at how we can mobilize our forces to ensure that we build a better world, a world which banishes poverty, a world which banishes hunger, a world which expands access to education for the working people, a world which makes land available to the tillers, a land in which information is not used as a weapon against the struggles of the working people for emancipation and liberation from drudgery. That is the purpose of this conference. Unanimously, almost all the founding fathers said that the path to growth, to development for the people of Africa and for that matter, prosperity for people of the world was to choose scientific socialism as the way forward. I think this conference on dilemmas is crucial. I mean it's about time, isn't it? We're looking at situations where we are at this stage where imperialism tends to dictate everything around us. So it doesn't matter if you don't have the people who should care. I'm talking about authority, you know, and the establishment should care that, well, there are people who need our help and there are people who must be asked and made to contribute to their quota. Are we doing that? So which is why I say for me, this conference is crucial, it's necessary, and I'm happy that there are a lot of young people here. Because really, if we want them to look into the future, just like, you know, older people are looking, then we ought to give them the skills, shouldn't we? We ought to give them the agenda, shouldn't we? We ought to point them to the direction where we want them to go, shouldn't we? Which is why I'm saying that it's very necessary that we have a conference like this, we talk, because when you look at socialism really, it's life. Literally coming to this particular conference is a huge opportunity for us back in Tanzania, with Nviwata and Tanzania Socialists Forum and other organizations, to actually foremost understand what actually is happening in other parts of the continent, because there are actually a lot of misconceptions and a lot of fallacies spreading from different areas. So this is actually a perfect opportunity for people who are engaged with the grassroots movement, the left-oriented, socialist-oriented activists to actually share the actual perspective of their home countries and divide and diverge from the lies, the fallacies of the mainstream media. So as somebody from a socialist movement of Ghana, I think it is our refusal to adhere to this advice, that's why we find ourselves where we are today. The path to growth and development can never be capitalism. Capitalism today has proven to be inefficient, to be something that has become very predatory, and whatever we produce is in the hands of a few people. So the rest of us are not sure where to go and how to go about things and how to live on this earth. So yes, it's important for us to sit on the table to draw and see the way forward. Because you cannot just say capitalism is not the way forward, you have to propose a new way forward. And for us, as people coming from the socialist movement of Ghana, we think scientific socialism is the way forward, that the resources of Africa and the world must be exploited for the benefit of the ordinary working class people and not for just a few people. Yeah, in a world that the gender gap is getting bigger by day, it is a world that youth unemployment is becoming scary. It is a world that our health and education situation is in crisis. We would have to have a conversation about this. We have to have a conversation as a people who want to build socialist wealth. We would want to have a conversation to find solutions and know the answers to some of the questions people are raising. So yes, I'm here to partake in this. I'm here to be with political parties, trade union, movement, progressive movement, gender movement. So we have this conversation. It's a good platform for us to exchange ideas. Thank you. It's really about answering the question around how do we deal with the brutality of the capitalist system? And how do we build socialism in our lifetime? And what are the basic building blocks that can assist us to get there and ensure that we're actually able to fulfill that agenda? So it's a gathering of 40 organizations from 17 countries here in Bella Bella and Limpopo. And as known, so we are so excited to be part of this event, to be working together with Pan-Africanism today, Secretariat, in order to host this very, very historic event. At the end of the day, all of us individually and as a collective own this. And when we move out there, we move out with actions that we are going to implement as our part of pushing this work forward.