Tuning into the messages, social media stories and viral videos shared by citizens during the recent protests in Kenya, it is not difficult to see the historical connections between notable pan-Africanists and Kenyan freedom fighters’ visions for the continent and the declarations and demands expressed by today’s new voices for radical change in Africa. The hints of revolutionary ideological continuity on display in Kenya can also be found in recent cases of political transition in the Sahel region, resistance to undemocratic electoral reforms in Senegal, the struggle for economic sovereignty in the Congo, and popular challenges to environmental devastation in Nigeria. Kenya has been described as the place where capitalism is at home, but the crises of capitalism have reached a critical point in the nation and across the continent. These crises have manifested in the privatisation and commodification of public institutions and systems, leaving many unable to afford access to public goods and services such as healthcare and education. Efforts to solve pervasive poverty and support economic growth continue to rely heavily on orthodox theories and market principles, often rehabilitating and perpetuating Africa’s exploited position in the global capitalist economy. Despite the promises offered by liberalism – an ideal today encouraged through NGO-led initiatives, civil society relationships and state governance reforms – economic disparities have widened within borders and between African nations and their former colonisers. In addition to ongoing economic exploitation, Africa is disproportionately witnessing the impacts of the global climate emergency through renewable resource extraction and unpredictable and devastating weather events. These salient features of Africa’s political economy make a renewed anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist critique and socialist vision for the future imperative. Answering the call in a new collection of conversations conducted between 2015 and 2023 with 38 African and Africanist socialists, interviewees and editors from the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) amplify silenced radical histories, remember lost voices of liberation, and introduce strategies, tactics and activists who are engaged in the contemporary struggle to reshape Africa.
Marking the 50th anniversary of the introduction of ROAPE as ‘the new platform’, the book’s editors begin Voices for African Liberation: Conversations with the Review of African Political Economy by reminding readers that the journal – first independently published in 1974 – was born during the period of great, radical hope that followed the global 1968, as it is now described. This was a period when, like their European counterparts, students and workers in many newly independent African countries joined the international uprising for revolutionary change and contributed to the people’s demands for political and economic transformation echoing around the world. As chronicled in the introduction, ROAPE began by fostering critical inquiry, debate and learning as a second wave of liberation struggles emerged across the continent – encouraging and applying a Marxist historical materialism that analyses a situation in order to change it. Unlike earlier top-down and state-led projects for change that faltered following independence, by the mid 1970s the continent, like much of the world at the time, witnessed the emergence of counter-hegemonic movements that challenged the political and economic forces of capitalism and sought radical social transformation. The first issues of the journal were enthusiastic about the determination of this wave of liberation movements and their rejection of token independence, an inherited state, and continued economic domination. As nations like Angola and Mozambique showed promise of real liberation and socialist transformation following their victories against Portuguese colonialism, ROAPE ‘saw itself as a fraternal, broad, though Marxist platform, supporting these movements and helping, where possible, with the exceptionally difficult issues of socialist development’ (iii). Intentionally avoiding the pitfalls that leave much of academic publishing removed, isolated and hollow, ROAPE embraced the outward-facing posture of engaged public scholarship concerned with the actions needed if Africa was to secure independence and develop its potential. Vital topics of analysis in these early days included agency and subjective factors in liberation movements and coalition-building, as well as debates that persist regarding the modes of social transformation and the tug of war between state-led, top-down projects for socialist change and class struggle from below. Sustaining five decades of presenting new, rigorous and empirically researched material on the political economy of inequality, exploitation and oppression, while offering stimulating perspectives on prevailing theory and coherent arguments for fresh understandings, the journal has undoubtedly advanced materialist interpretations of change on the continent. In their retelling of the emergence of ROAPE from the radicalising history of the late 1960s and the foundational theory underpinning early anti-colonial struggle, the editors introduce Voices for African Liberation to a world that is again reverberating with a sense of revolutionary zeal – a historical moment that resembles 1974 in its visible characteristics of capitalism’s contradictions, appreciation for emancipatory pan-Africanist theory, and restored enthusiasm for mass, militant people’s movements.
As the years passed, the journal became more entrenched in the thicket of academia and the business of academic writing. It wasn’t until 2014 that Roape.net was launched to connect with a new generation of radicals in Africa and elsewhere, divorcing from the tyranny of neoliberal academic publishing the revolutionary potential offered through an open ‘forum for radical commentary, analysis and debate on political economy and the vibrant protest movements and rebellions on the continent’ (v). The website opened a virtual space that reinvigorated revolutionary discussion and learning among African and Africanist socialists – enabling shared knowledge creation, community and solidarity free from the limitations of resource availability or geographic proximity. In sharing interviews that ‘bring to life older voices of liberation, frequently hidden, or lost histories, and newer initiatives, projects and activists who are engaged in the contemporary struggle to reshape Africa’ (v), the website continues to make an outstanding contribution in analysing, understanding and advancing demands for change in real time. In the 506 pages of Voices for African Liberation, the editors present a curated selection of these interviews, organising the book into three parts: ‘Lessons from the Past’, ‘Weapon of Theory’ and ‘Militancy at Work’.
Encouraging the vital process of learning from past defeats and victories to inform contemporary struggle, the first section of the book focuses on historical moments, figures and periods of the African liberation struggle. Tunisian sociologist Fraj Stambouli recalls learning from and working with Frantz Fanon while the now renowned psychoanalyst and theorist of national liberation lived in exile from Algeria. Stambouli explains how he witnessed Fanon work alongside Dr Pierre Chaulet and other Algerian Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) exiles from the time he arrived in Tunis, quickly becoming a fierce political speaker, brilliant polemist, and activist journalist for El Moudjahid, where he would record his vision for ‘a future Algeria leading the way to a revolutionary Africa, secular and modern’ (184). Stambouli reveals the lessons offered by Fanon’s explanations on how former colonies inherited imbalanced power structures left behind by previous rulers during regional decolonisation efforts over 60 years ago, demonstrating how Fanon’s tools, humanism and hope remain relevant and are to be considered as we question and challenge African societies’ present-day stagnation.
In an interview with editor Leo Zeilig, Jesse Benjamin, scholar-activist and professor at Kennesaw State University, discusses Walter Rodney’s work, life and activism and how Rodney’s work ‘remains vital for those now seeking to overturn the systems of oppression worldwide’ (53). The interview presents Rodney’s intellectual and activist trajectory as relentless, multifaceted, focused and unfinished, clearly demonstrating his commitment to putting ideas, teaching and writings to work in the vital and necessary struggle for continued liberation and revolution. Benjamin explains that Rodney’s strength was his ability to unmask dynamics usually left opaque or unexamined altogether, providing ‘a nuanced and flexible Marxism and flexible thinking in general, to describe more than 500 years of history in Africa, and with a high degree of specificity for each region’s details’ (59). Rodney’s work remains central to discussions on underdevelopment, world systems, pan-Africanism, Marxism, Black history, race/class, education theory and, as Benjamin suggests, ‘should be more central to modern genealogies of how we understand the politics of knowledge, coloniality and decolonial theory’ (61). Benjamin reminds us of the importance of thinkers like Rodney today, explaining how Rodney’s experience in the Non-Aligned Movement resembles the moment we are facing now – ‘a period of unwritten possibilities based on unprecedented ruptures in the capitalist world system, where better visions [can] emerge to confront colonialism, imperialism and outright fascism’ (63). Like other interviewees presented in this first section of Voices for African Liberation, Benjamin shows that, under close examination, Rodney’s writings offer innumerable parallels that can help us to raise questions and advance anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist critique.
In another selection presented in the first section, South African scholar and activist Mosa Phadi discusses the revolutionary legacy and contribution made by Steve Biko to black consciousness and liberation. Nelson Mandela is credited with referring to Biko as ‘the spark that lit a fire across South Africa’, but, as Phadi reminds us, Biko’s ideas did not offer much towards cohesive alternatives to current systems. Still, Phadi explains, the persistent significance of Biko’s work is found in his ability to galvanise people into action through tapping into daily experiences and the radical potential of everyday culture. Additionally, Congolese historian and scholar-activist Georges Nzongla-Ntalaja speaks with editor Ben Radley on his motivation of solidarity with the oppressed and uncompromising pursuit to expose the truths of the political history of the Congo and Africa generally from the colonial period to the present. Hakim Adi, historian and scholar of pan-Africanism and communism, discusses the significance of the 1917 revolution in showing that alternative systems can be created in the present and future. Similar to how other theorists, revolutionaries and events are presented in this section, Adi highlights how the historical lessons from 1917 continue to show us how revolutionary change ‘can be created by the actions of the wretched of the earth themselves, if they can organise themselves appropriately, and find ways to deprive those who currently deprive them of power of the means to do so’ (35). Voices for African Liberation offers readers with a comprehensive, digestible collection of historical lessons, like that presented by Adi, to consider in the creation of needed revolutionary alternatives.
In the second section, ‘Weapon of Theory’, the editors feature conversations with ‘organic intellectuals and committed scholar-activists of national and international renown whose prime focus and concern is on developing theory from real-world observation’ (v) to inform present-day revolutionary struggle and transformative processes. This section is motivated by Amílcar Cabral’s notion that every practice produces a theory, and while every failed revolutionary cause has been based on conceived theories, no movement has yet made a successful, sustainable socialist project without a revolutionary theory. The section begins with lessons from the late, great Samir Amin – a Marxist economist, writer and activist who spent decades examining Africa’s underdevelopment and Western imperialism. Notably, Amin discusses his important guiding strategic principle of delinking, which argues for the need to escape from the constraints of the global capitalist system that have strangled any hope for economic development in the periphery. In a conversation with Freedom Mazwi, socialist activist and writer Issa Shivji examines the peasantry, capitalist development and socialism, and expresses his hope for change on the continent as divergent ideas and slogans of socialism become embraced more widely among the African working class and poor. Lena Grace Anyuolo, a Kenyan writer, poet and social justice activist with Mathare Social Justice Centre and Ukombozi Library, discusses how activists can heal from the trauma of living under the impossible conditions levied on them by capitalism and the task of fighting for socialism through the transformative power of communal grassroots organising for revolutionary change. These and other contributions – like the conversation with researcher and political activist David Seddon – suggest that the revolutionary theory underpinning our contemporary struggles can be refined through praxis and strengthened through revealing and understanding the structural contradictions and inadequacies of the prevailing system.
In the final part of the book, ‘Militants at Work’, the editors showcase ‘a range of contemporary anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist struggles, as told by those directly involved’ (vi). The conversations here move from anti-imperialism in Senegal to lessons from labour activism in Zimbabwe, and from the future of electoral politics in South Africa to questions of environmental justice and organising in the time of unrelenting global climate crisis. Readers are presented with accounts of transformative projects engineered by pioneering activists – revolutionary causes and revolutionaries to be admired, defended and championed for their work challenging imperialism and uneven capitalist development through class struggle and national liberation. Leaving few topics untouched in their collection of conversations, the editors present viewpoints and analysis on inequality, race, gender, land and climate, and economic systems and governance by a slightly imbalanced line-up of female and male interviewees – leaving questions of religion, ethnicity and national identity somewhat underexplored or unconsidered. Still, these contributions introduce readers to innovative activism and inspiring political lessons to consider in the making of victorious and sustained revolutionary change in Africa.
As history illustrates, foreign imperialists will use a hybrid strategy of economic, political and – as needed – military warfare to supress the rise of voices for African liberation and prevent revolutionary transformation and the consolidation of power in sovereign African societies. However, as capitalist contradictions are made more visible and the grip of former colonial rulers slips, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist consciousness must continue to develop and African and Africanist socialists must continue to find ways to encourage learning, praxis and organic movement-building – supporting the people joining the ranks of those who are already refusing to submit to colonial domination any longer. In Voices for African Liberation, the editors provide readers with a collection of radical theories, strategies and tactics, and anecdotes and lessons that will prove useful in designing and launching movements, providing a toolkit for building their toughest resistance yet to the violence of neo-colonialism and imperialism.