Socialist Resistance : SR48 - October 2007

Pan-African politics

You can’t separate the struggles...

of African people from struggles around the world
Norman Traub

Norman Traub of Socialist Resistance spoke with EXPLO NANI-KOFI, coordinator of African Liberation Support Campaign Network (ALISC Network) and editor of their magazine Kilombo on September 18 in London

NT: Can you tell me about the journal you edit, Kilombo and the significance of its title as well as the aims and objects of the ALISC Network?

ENK: Let me start with the publication, Kilombo. The name comes from the Kimbundu language of the Ambundu people in Angola. We looked for a word from an African language that is a word of resistance in Africa and also for people of African descent outside. We wanted a word that is applicable to both the continent and the diaspora because of our Pan- African orientation.

Kilombo means a fighting settlement or a committee of resistance. Queen Nzingha led the revolts against the colonial occupation of the Portuguese in Angola from her kilombos.

When the enslaved Africans were taken to Brazil they revolted against the slave owners and they called the fortresses from which they fought kilombos. This is how we came by the name.

The ALISC was initiated in 1991 by a group of Ghanaians who came into exile in Europe and had been involved in struggles against the IMF and the World Bank structural adjustment policies in Ghana. When they came to Europe they found the struggles they were involved in had not been heard of – even in progressive circles in the countries to which they fled.

We started the ALISC in Britain in 1991 to bring information about the daily class struggles taking place in Africa to the population of this country. We wanted to strengthen progressive forces in Africa, who had been marginalised by right wing forces making truces with imperialism during the period of independence.

We work closely with new social movements that have emerged fighting all cases of injustice on our continent, fighting for democracy, fighting against military dictatorships, fighting for trade union rights and for all other aspects of social justice.

NT: The break with colonialism in Africa in the middle of the 20th century was ushered in by the struggle of the Ghanaian people under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah. By the end of the 20th century Africa had freed itself from the shackles of colonialism. While this was a huge achievement, many of the hopes and aspirations of the African people in the post-independent period have not been realised. Why do you think this is the case?

ENK: When I was talking about the type of movements and activities we support I referred to the forces that were marginalised in the anti-colonial struggle. This brings to mind your own organisation, the African People’s Democratic Union of Southern Africa.

In the struggle for independence the imperialist forces were not lying back looking at the Africans freeing themselves. Through an alliance with right-wing African forces they ensured that the post-colonial state was structured so that there was no real break in the colonial relationship. The forces which acted as the tools of imperialism ran the state on behalf of these external forces. It was a smoother way for colonialism to operate.

There was a unity in the forces involved in the anti-colonial struggle between the working class, the peasantry and the petit bourgeois. But after independence the majority of the petit bourgeois broke the relationship with the working class and the peasantry and made an alliance with imperialism – leading to the crisis which Africa is facing now.

NT: You had Moukoko Priso of the Cameroon Peoples’ Union (UPC) the radical party of the Cameroon, address your organisation on the subject of Revolutionary Pan Africanism. While he praised Nkrumah as one of the pioneers of Pan-Africanism, he contrasted the approach of the UPC to that of Nkrumah. Can you say something about these two approaches and where you see the place of Pan-Africanism today?

ENK :The UPC participated in various forums and seminars, which Nkrumah organised in Accra in 1963 before the formation of the Organisation of African Unity(OAU). They held the view that bringing together reactionary pro-imperialist governments with more radical governments in the OAU was not going to work in the interests of the African people, rather, progressive governments and organisations should come together in a separate body.

Nkrumah and his associates thought they had to compromise and bring all the governments of Africa together. But in some of his later writings, in particular “Revolutionary Path”, after his overthrow by the CIA and MI5 and in some of his other writings “Class Struggle in Africa” and “Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare” Nkrumah took up similar positions to those of the UPC.

In discussing the place of Pan-Africanism today, we have to bear in mind that the way Africa was integrated into the world economy and its political boundaries and structures created were all externally determined. People of African descent throughout the period of slavery were brought to the North without their consent. The people of Africa and people of African descent living in the North have specific places within the framework of global capitalism today, which cannot be ignored.

Pan-Africanism is not in conflict with internationalism but is a facilitator of internationalism in that this section of the world’s population is historically linked through its integration into the world capitalist economy. In the struggle to overthrow imperialism we have to utilise this historical connection as part of the whole international movement against imperialism. Nkrumah and DuBois have left us with a legacy on which we are building Pan-Africanism today.

NT: You were recently invited to be a panel member on television to discuss whether socialism can work in Africa. Tell us something of the discussion and your contribution.

ENK: I made it clear in the discussion that capitalism emerged historically. Because of the oppressive and exploitative nature of capitalism, the need for an alternative system has become compelling.

Socialism is not a mere declaration or label but is an alternative to all the injustices of capitalism and emerges through a historical process. It is unlike having a choice between two commodities being sold on a market stall.

Capitalism is a functioning system and as such has to be dismantled so that an alternative system can be built. Capitalism has failed to meet the needs of Africa, which is part of the capitalist periphery.

Socialism has not been built in any part of Africa. Socialism has to be built in Africa just as it has to be built in the rest of the world. Unless this occurs, the crisis through which the world is passing will remain unresolved. The inhuman conditions in which the majority of people live today will remain. The alternative to this is socialism.

NT: The US and other states like China are becoming more dependent on oil from Africa. Can you tell us how this new scramble for oil is affecting Africa?

ENK: During the cold war the war was only cold in the countries that had declared war but was very hot in the fields of Mozambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau . With regard to the competition between the US and China, there are those who point out that China was offering better terms than the US and the West. But the laws of capitalism operating in a country, where one company outbids the others, also apply on the global level, where China is outbidding the US.

This competition does not serve the interests of the struggle of foreign powers for control of our resources. It is not a struggle to enable us. There is a real difference between what is happening now and the days of Mao when the Chinese did provide material support for the liberation movements.

NT: One consequence of the scramble for Africa is the increase in proxy wars being fought all over the continent. Could you say something about these wars and how we could prevent these wars from raging?

ENK: These wars assist the multinational corporations to take resources out of the countries without even the application of the unjust and unfair world trade rules that are in existence. This is to say nothing about the lives that are lost in these wars.

If we study these wars, what becomes apparent is that these western countries are always able to find a way of supporting one of the groups or other in these wars.

The war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has become a war of the US and Britain on the one side and France and Belgium on the other. In the war in Somalia, the US is using the Ethiopian government as a proxy

If you look at the war in Northern Uganda, Mouseveni has become the main face of Anglo American imperialism in central Africa, intervening in the DRC as well as Northern Uganda.

We can stop these wars by tackling the countries which control the proxies and the companies which supply the arms. The arms are not produced in Africa but in Europe. Trade unions in these countries can help progressive forces in Africa by fighting the war-mongers at home.

What we in ALISC have been doing in Britain is to work within the anti-war movement in Britain and show the commonality of the proxy wars and the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Because of the strength of the anti-war movement here it has played an important part in the mobilising of the Cairo Conference and the networking of anti-war groups.

The ALISC, networking African groups and working together with the anti-war movement can make a contribution to making it harder for these proxy wars to continue.

NT: You have outlined some of the ways in which Africans in the diaspora can help the African people in their ongoing struggles against their oppressors both internal and external. How they can fight against discrimination in the countries in which they are living and how they can link up with others who are oppressed there?

ENK: Pan-Africanism facilitates internationalism. There is no way in which people of African descent in the diaspora will be able to fight against oppression isolated from other forces especially in countries where they are a minority population. They must fight together with the oppressed section of the majority population.

ALISC makes it possible for progressive non Africans and oppressed Africans to work together in creating a common front of oppressed non Africans and the African minority in these countries on the basis of class.

NT The last World Social Forum took place in Kenya this year. Grassroots movements in Kenya were unable to afford the entrance fees to the WSF but activists within the African continent whom your organization had sponsored to attend the forum made contact with them. Could you tell us about the contact with the Mau Mau veterans?

ENK Those activists from Africa whom we sponsored, built a relationship with a group called Friends of Dedan Kimaathi, who was the leader of the Land and Freedom army which is known as the Mau Mau. They arranged a meeting with this group. We have a DVD of this meeting and I am hoping that Socialist Resistance will take up my offer to show this DVD at a public meeting if they are prepared to organise it.

It includes an interview with a former field marshal of the Mau Mau, Mouthoni Kirima, who lives in the Rift Valley and Mrs Dedan Kimaathi, widow of Dedan Kimaathi. This meeting was also attended by representatives of the Landless Peoples’ Movement of South Africa, socialist activists from Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya and also activists from the African American movement of the USA.

NT Do you see any similarity between the aims of the Pan- Africanists in striving for unity in Africa and the struggle in Latin America spearheaded by Cuba and Venezuela for unity and co-operation of the people of Latin America.

ENK : There has been a long history of co-operation between the leaderships of the Latin American and the African struggles. We took our name Kilombo, which was used in Brazil as well as Angola where it originated. When Nkrumah died, four heads of state carried the coffin and the person in front of the coffin was Fidel Castro. The Pan-Africanists and the Latin American revolutionaries are involved in the struggle by Africans, some of whom are of African descent who are in Latin America, to reverse the way in which imperialism has shaped the world globally. It is the same struggle.

We have built our co-operation using the structures we have created in the separate places in which we have found ourselves.

The unity of the Pan-Africanists and the Latin American revolutionaries has to be linked with the unity of oppressed forces in Europe and the rest of the world.

Norman Traub

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