Africa: The Next Liberation Struggle?

Abstract

This article brings into focus the immediate challenges facing progressives in Africa as they now seek to forge social and political initiatives that can hope to attain power and implement policies able to confront and ultimately to bend the apparent logic of global capitalism – thereby permitting more humane outcomes on the continent. Taking as a starting-point the moment of heightened reflection on such issues that occurred in Dar es Salaam in the 1960s and early 1970s, the article up-dates the insights of that period with reference to the even grimmer circumstances in which Africa currently finds itself. Suggesting that mere ‘reform’ (NEPAD, ‘liberal democratisation’) offers little real promise of meaningful and substantial change of the continent's desperate situation, the article seeks to canvas the range of resistances in Africa that indicate the emergence of a more radical project of transformation. While acknowledging that it is easy to be pessimistic regarding such possibilities, the article identifies sufficient movement on the continent to suggest that Africa, in terms of the emergence of a ‘post-nationalist, post-neo-liberal’ revolutionary politics, now stands at a moment analogous with 1945. At that time few could have anticipated the speed with which African nationalist movements would win independence for their territories from colonial rule. The article concludes with the argument that, despite its current eclipse, the language and vision of socialism will have to become part and parcel of this continuing revival of Africa's revolutionary endeavours and of its ‘next liberation struggle’.

1844/2004/2044: The Return of Species-Being

“…While Shaw and Nyang'oro recognise, it seems, the unevenness of Africa's recovery, and the expression of the continents renaissance promoted by Africa's post-insurgent states, Uganda, South Africa and Eritrea, they also note that it is a renaissance that is not immune from hijacking by the IFIs or justification for intervention by African states in the internal affairs of others, namely in Rwanda and Congo. See also Cliffe 2002, Saul 2003 production of aluminium has steadily increased since 1975. Most of this increased production, however, is based in South Africa.…”

Political inclusion without social justice: South Africa and the pitfalls of partial decolonisation

“…The worsening socio-economic situation in the country and the violence that accompanies it is increasingly linked to the political settlement that was reached in the early 1990s during the negotiations for a democratic South Africa. While this view has historically been confined to left-wing or progressive intellectuals (Bond, 2000; Saul, 2014, 2021), it has now gained traction even among senior leaders of the ruling ANC. Echoing early critics of the negotiated political settlement reached in the early 1990s, Lindiwe Sisulu (2022) argues that decoupling political inclusion from social justice was a mistake that has entrenched the racial fault lines inherited from colonialism and apartheid.…”

South African splinters: from ‘elite transition’ to ‘small-a alliances’

“…The extreme political divisions and ideological distortions within the ruling party's 'big-A Alliance' with labour and the Communist Party may not permit the ANC's big tent to stay open to all, no matter Zuma's personal charisma and goodtimes inclusiveness. It may well be necessary, finally, to construct a 'small-a alliance'as John Saul (2005) named the idea -of organised workers, poor people, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), environmentalists and other organised progressives.…”