Review: The hidden history of revolutionary politics in Africa

Revolutionary Movements in Africa: An Untold Story, edited by Pascal Bianchini, Ndongo Samba Sylla and Leo Zeilig, Pluto Press.

Revolutionary Movements in Africa: An Untold Story unearths the buried history of revolutionary activists and theorists who sought to go beyond the limits of the postcolonial African states. The editors note in the introduction that the “history of the revolutionary left movements in Africa is largely ignored and disregarded”. Rather, histories have seen the “anti-colonial movements and radical organisations within these movements as…Soviet proxies rather than independent actors”, leading to a situation where “the African continent might appear unfavourable terrain for revolutionary struggle” (p.2).

Revolutionary Movements in Africa aims to dispel that myth and bring to the light the existence of radical figures and organisations that built struggles not just opposed to “Western imperial domination” but also “against ‘bureaucratised’ states claiming to stand for socialism” (p.7). The 1960s and ’70s are the time period most looked into, when a new revolutionary left was emerging among the postcolonial states. Revolutionary Movements in Africa stands as a testimony to activists of the time who, despite all the political limitations and challenges, sought to develop a revolutionary left on the continent.

The editors’ collection of interviews and records of those in the struggle for a really liberated Africa is the culmination of years of research. These histories make the case that socialism did not just mean championing authoritarian regimes, but instead was a living, breathing politics inspiring the imaginations and determination of a new generation of activists. In short, the argument is that socialists who fought the new postcolonial regimes existed. For the socialist movement this is a history worth celebrating and drawing inspiration from today.

The editors argue that the history of the African left in the twentieth century broadly fits into three distinct periods. The initial period was marked by the majority of the African left finding themselves among the diaspora, which meant many of the radicals of the period had little direct impact on the struggles of the early twentieth century. The second phase was when the left found itself rooted in the struggles at home in the later years of colonial rule, cementing themselves as key leaders or participants in the various national struggles. These first two periods cover history far more familiar to those on the left, and this is usually where the story ends.

Revolutionary Movements in Africa, however, aims to cover the third period, a context where the revolutionaries had to adapt to new political challenges posed by the emergence of postcolonial ruling classes, struggles under those new regimes and a new relationship with imperialist powers.

Each chapter in this book covers a different political movement, spanning from Liberia to Niger, South Sudan, Madagascar and Congo-Brazzaville, among many others. Some of these chapters are from participants in the movements. Varied as the countries covered were, the political responses from the movements varied more: from peasant guerrillas in Chad, to student radicals in Tanzania and Congo-Brazzaville, socialist-unionists in Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Mali, militant high schoolers in Madagascar, brave mine workers in Namibia and even an infamous Greek-Mozambican anarchist-communist, to name a few. It is an eclectic mix of activists, with political worldviews a revolutionary socialist would also have disagreements with. Yet the recognition that student radicals, who criticised and organised against the new regimes, or that oppositional labour movements existed has all but been wiped from the historical record. This is not simply due to the blindness of mainstream history, but a deliberate erasure by the left’s historians, obsessed as they are with defending the so-called socialist regimes, such as that of Julius Nyerere in Tanzania for example.

The examples of radicals organising in the post-independence world demonstrated that the revolutionary left had more to offer the workers and oppressed of Africa than authoritarian states. These movements varied from challenging aspects of the new regimes’ rule to forcing revolutionaries to develop a new worldview capable of challenging the whole system.

However, the case studies in Revolutionary Movements in Africa are relatively sober about the serious challenges these new revolutionaries faced and how they failed to build a political alternative capable of achieving true liberation.

For starters, the revolutionary socialist left was at the absolute margins of society globally. Stalinism had been ascendant for decades, and by the 1960s and ’70s was only just being challenged. For African leftists, decades of Stalinist hegemony on the left and an ascendant nationalist politics proved to be major barriers to a genuine socialist politics being developed.

The Stalinists argued that socialists must see their own developing bourgeoisie come to power, at any price, thanks to a vision of socialism that saw socialism being granted from on high. This meant that where the Stalinists were influential, they argued to the workers and the poor of their new nation to settle for what was acceptable to a new, unstable, and sometimes quickly unpopular ruling class. They argued that socialism has to wait, a national revolution comes first, there needs to be a period of unadulterated capitalist growth before your dreams of a classless society can be realised. Those who proclaimed to be “socialist” without being Stalinist, like Alphonse Massamba-Débat in the Republic of Congo, found it easy to give a socialistic language to nothing more than state-led development, while the most radical elements still clung to this top-down view of radical change. This became a consistent challenge to the emerging new revolutionaries.

In short, the old Stalinist politics, despite the potential of national movements that destabilised and kicked out world empires, wound up being the left flank of home-grown authoritarian regimes. Consequently, by distorting socialism to mean merely a top-down state-directed economy, these authoritarian leaders could present themselves as the true heroes of African socialism, with little pushback. The new generation of revolutionaries jostled against this rigid, ahistorical and conservative set of politics.

This is where Revolutionary Movements Across Africa becomes an indispensable resource for those who fight for a socialist world defined by working-class self-rule and total human liberation.

For the new revolutionaries, confusion came in many forms as new political questions were posed. A key question was how to relate to the new postcolonial governments. The attitudes of the left towards these governments depended a lot on their alignment towards the US or USSR, or “socialist” rhetoric. Alignment with the Soviet camp, or proclaiming to be ruling a socialist society, was often enough for much of the left to accept it as fact. However, as demonstrated in chapter 12, with the example of Julius Nyerere’s government, new radicals were capable of seeing through this façade.

Governments like Nyerere’s in Tanzania claimed to be running a classless society, and espousing an “African socialism”. Nyerere was no Stalinist, but saw the appeal of a state-led development model in an incredibly backward country. Chapter 12 details the example of the radical Tanzanian students of the University Students African Revolutionary Front (USARF) and their struggles for a liberated Tanzania. USARF was originally established by enthusiastic radicals to champion the supposedly socialist ideals of President Julius Nyerere, through being a critical but supportive pressure group. Its formation in 1967 at the University of Dar Es Salaam, a focal point for the continent’s revolutionary left, came about after the initial years of Nyerere’s rule. By this point he had already proved to be a friend of the British, and a pro-capitalist warrior – violently putting down rebellions in Zanzibar and the capital, Dar Es Salaam, with the help of the British whom he pleaded with to send military aid.

As the radicals of USARF attempted to put this critical but supportive focus into practice, they began to consciously break with the politics of Nyerere and his party, the Tanganyika African National Union. They criticised Nyerere’s Ujamaa program – an argument for a “socialism” based on state-run collectivised agricultural production and belief that a “socialist” mindset was inherent to Africans – as “utopian”. Importantly, they also stressed that Nyerere was wrong to call for socialism through cross-class unity, which was present in his plans for Ujamaa. For the radicals of USARF, socialism was “international and scientific”, and they began to recognise that class struggle was still present in postcolonial Tanzania, which Nyerere would deny.

While this did not lead them to an immediate critique of the prevailing pro-Soviet politics of the era, they stridently opposed the idea that Nyerere presided over a classless society as he claimed. USARF engaged with Marxist theory of the past and other radicals of the day to develop their own political theory. Their critiques of Nyerere provided far more insight into the political challenges of the time than the many left academics who have written glowing reports of Nyerere’s regime.

For USARF, the question of politics was also never far from the question of political organisation. While these students proved that the new period of struggle inspired some to strive for a clearer set of politics, tragically USARF spent much of their early energy meeting with and appealing to Nyerere, with some hopes they could transform his outlook to that of a true socialist. As they developed they began to see themselves as a “vanguard” organisation to lead the working class to socialist revolution, but seemingly lacked influence to act on this. USARF would only exist for three years; they were brutally repressed by the government as they increasingly became an outright opposition, leaving behind their radical magazine Cheche. While serious steps were beginning to be made, unfortunately nothing lasting was left behind. Nyerere is still venerated today, and the radicals of USARF largely forgotten.

A similar challenge was posed in Congo-Brazzaville, under the Massamba-Débat regime discussed in chapter 8 of the book. Massamba-Débat came to power after a general strike in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, overthrew the first independent government. A new layer of youth radicals sought to force the direction of the new government into a socialist one. One of their most notable achievements was forcing Massamba-Débat to accept Brazzaville becoming a refuge for the region’s radicals – particularly radicals from the ex-French colonies of Gabon and Cameroon, with whose regimes the Congolese government wanted to remain on friendly terms. The youth radicals however had an elitist approach to politics, with little connection to the working class that had brought the government to power, and this limited their ability to fight for the radical changes they wanted. Massamba-Débat’s regime eventually collapsed due to a coup in 1968, and then a section of the youth radicals attempted a coup of their own a few years later. Looking to figures in the military, or even believing socialism could come about through the leadership of an enlightened minority, were consistent problems across the continent.

With colonial powers being forced to leave, a new set of questions about imperialism arose for the African left: Who really rules this country? What is the relationship to the former colonial power? Chapter 13 discusses the history of University of Dar Es Salaam, with the debates over “neocolonialism” demonstrating that these questions, and who you identified as the “ruling class” of your own nation, had a political impact on the movements you built. The major political questions about the nature of the new African bourgeoisie, how to challenge imperialism in the continent and what layers are to be seen as revolutionary were all hot topics of discussion.

That few of the activists of this period came into the struggle with a clear understanding that the nationalist leaders were enemies of true liberation was to the detriment of the potential of the moment. In the popular radical literature of the time, one of the few to appreciate this dynamic was Frantz Fanon. His famous final work, Wretched of the Earth, makes a scathing criticism of the in-built conservatism of the rising bourgeoisie, and is a warning to his comrades to be prepared to fight them. Unfortunately, that warning is hardly the content the book is remembered for. Fanon himself was a contradictory figure who tragically never built the kind of political movement needed to challenge the enemy he identified.

Apart from this book however, much of the popular appraisals are apologies for or downright glorifications of the strategy of looking to the new postcolonial states and their state leaders as steps towards socialism, or already there. Marxists with a history of organising working-class action, like Walter Rodney, at times were not immune to such illusions in the “socialist” regimes. These at best represented a “socialism” with its soul torn asunder, filling the hole of the agency of the working class and the self-activity of the oppressed with illusions in the “progressive” role the rising petty-bourgeois African layer could play.

Softness on their new governments was not the only issue our side reckoned with. Those who broke with the older set of Stalinised and conservative nationalist politics did not immediately formulate a different worldview. Many continued to carry some version of pro-Soviet politics. For others Maoism became the next logical step. It make sense that, in a continent where several of the national movements were won through guerrilla wars and some of the key political players were military officers or a tiny group of elite students, Maoism would have an appeal.

But Maoism, where it developed among students, military officers or peasant revolutionaries, also failed the test. The Maoists found themselves unable to appeal to the rapidly urbanising populations, nor to present the movement with a power capable of properly rivalling the new ruling class. The Maoists who initiated the Derg regime in Ethiopia found themselves brutally crushing the union movement there.^[1] In most places though they struggled to find a foothold.

For many activists, the influence of Maoism manifested in the belief that revolution could come from a small revolutionary elite. The Movement for Justice In Africa in Liberia, discussed in chapter 6, was a key example of this. After years of democratic struggles, and gaining influence in the student and labour movements, they fatally put their hopes in a military coup. Whatever new political orientation the new radicals chose, the problem of an elitist strategy of social change was a common weakness.

Few articulated a strategy for socialist revolution that saw the working class as leaders. The lack of a tradition of revolutionary socialist politics made it an incredibly tall order for activists to draw all the necessary lessons of the failure of the various socialist, communist and national parties to liberate the mass of people. It also related to the class many of the revolutionaries came from, which was a privileged middle class, often students. These radicals took the first steps, but were cut short by a mix of their own shortcomings and the brutal crushing of their organisations.

Marxism, with its focus on revolutionary class struggle as the only way to liberate the world from capitalism, was argued to be Eurocentric, and inapplicable to the countries of Africa, with its far smaller working classes in much more backward economies. While there is no doubt that in some countries the working class was tiny and had little strategic power, many African nations had small, but strategically powerful working classes who were active for decades preceding independence, and often more so post-independence.

Many on the left globally write off the relevance of Marxist politics to struggles across Africa, arguing that it is a politics only relevant to the particular class structures and history of Europe and the industrial world. Yet reading about the radical struggles of this period, it is hard to accept the legitimacy of this argument.

The example of Nigeria in chapter 5, with its radical student milieu and powerful working class, refutes the idea that Marxist politics did not match with reality in the African context. Immediately after World War II, returned soldiers and industrial workers struck for an increase in the cost-of-living-allowance, crippling the British governorate. This power to shake the foundations of the colonial regime inspired the newly forming radical “Zikist” students. Named after a particularly conservative nationalist, Nnamdi Azikiwe, the students quickly broke from his flawed strategy and began to see the need for the organised working class to play a key role in the fight against British imperialism. Socialist unionists became part of the political leadership of the national liberation movement. They presented a terrifying threat to the British, who moved to divide and rule politics – establishing structural divisions in government along regional lines in the 1947 constitution. Then the 1951 constitution gave further power to the various ethnic and regional leaders through federalisation and training a new layer of trusted “natives” to take over running the state when the British would grant formal independence. While the movement failed the challenge of federalism, which has defined Nigerian politics since, the postwar period showed that the organised working class could lead radical students and the poor across the country. Unfortunately, socialist parties built around those politics were small, or incredibly new, and tended to fracture. The succeeding decades post-independence have seen the same dynamic play out over and over in Nigeria: the latent power of the working class, sometimes mobilised, sometimes successful against even military regimes, but lacking an organised socialist leadership.

Through the early post-independence years, we see the frequent flourishing of an enthusiastic, hopeful generation of activists continuing their fight for liberation. While politically confused about their allies and enemies, they fought. Many of the first to take those steps were from the generation of relatively privileged university and high school students. The book gives a wonderful account of the defiant Madagascan high schoolers, whose constant striking brought down their first independent government. Elsewhere, like in Congo-Brazzaville, it is the youth wing of the new ruling parties that has proven a thorn in the side of the regime as they try to carry out the promises of liberation for the entire continent already reneged on by their party leaders.

The contradiction of a wave of revolutions fighting for a vague but inspiring total transformation of life for the masses of Africa, but not seeing much of the change promised, provided ample fuel for radicals. Much like across Europe and America, the new generation of activists, young and many from the expanding student population, gave a political dynamism and militancy that had the potential to sweep aside the crusted, old leaders. That they politically failed to fully capitalise on this moment does not take away from its potential.

Additionally, in many of the examples, such as Nigeria, Mali and Burkina Faso, the working class became a key problem for the new regimes’ ability to enforce their rule. It had been the constant union agitation in Burkina Faso that had created the space for Thomas Sankara to push for power, and it should be seared into the mind of every revolutionary that thousands of teachers struck, were sacked and had their union destroyed by the Sankara regime.^[2] Any socialist movement must be built off these heroes’ amazing struggles, not champion the leaders who saw the working-class struggle as a thorn in their side. The tragedy that is the reality of this period is that our side was too confused, small and disorganised to make good on the potential of the period.

Thanks to Bianchini, Sylla and Zeilig and the many others who contributed their experiences and histories there is now more evidence of the potential of these movements, and the relevance of revolutionary politics. Armed with some information long disappeared from the public record, held only by the few living activists of the various movements, revolutionaries should feel emboldened to argue that a revolutionary Marxist politics has as much to offer to the oppressed in Africa as it has elsewhere in the world. The book promises there are more case studies to be uncovered, from which revolutionaries are sure to draw lessons and inspiration. If the dream of a truly liberated Africa, and the world at large, is to be realised, these histories should be taken seriously.