In this blog summary of a ROAPE journal article, Ben Radley argues that the Democratic Republic of the Congo provides an illustrative case of...

Ending the war in Sudan will require real Sudanese dialogue and carving out a new political course. Nada Wanni argues that any Sudanese dialogue will be intensely contested particularly at this time of war. Wanni warns against a controlled, manufactured process, run by a political and economic elite which will only reproduce the conflict and political crisis in different forms. This will bring neither peace nor stability to Sudan or the region.

One hundred years since the birth of the Mozambican revolutionary-intellectual Aquino de Bragança on 6 April 1924, his friend and comrade, Colin Darch, writes about this “man of anguish” – constantly battling to understand what it meant to be a Marxist in the twentieth century. Darch writes how Aquino spent his adult life committed to the struggle for the liberation of Mozambique and for the rest of southern Africa. In 1986 he died in the plane disaster alongside President Samora Machel.

This series on state repression and police brutality in Senegal arrives as the nation transitions to a new presidency. The blog documents cases of torture, killings, and unlawful arrests suffered by political opponents and ordinary citizens in Senegal, providing clear evidence to the public of the abuses under the Macky Sall regime. ROAPE shares two pieces by journalist Moussa Ngom, which are introduced by Senegalese Scholar-activist Rama Salla Dieng and contextualised by activist Florian Bobin.

The Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Biafran War, lasted from 1967 to 1970, and resulted in the deaths of over a million people. The secession of Biafra was a response to perceived marginalization against the Igbo people, and grievances regarding representation and power. Gavin Williams argues that despite almost sixty years since the end of the war, its legacy continues to shape Nigerian society and politics today.  

This year marks ROAPE’s 50th anniversary. To mark the year, Robin Cohen, one of our founding editors, discusses the period in which ROAPE was born. At the time many similar journals were established and declared themselves as ‘radical’ and ‘alternative’. Like ROAPE, these new publications explicitly challenged the mainstream in their disciplines, and proposed changes to scholarship and the world.  

The Central African Republic has, despite being at the centre of the continent, been a country on the margins of global power since independence. Despite a conflict which has lasted for more than a decade, the country remains largely ignored. Ben Jackson writes that while African conflicts are often underreported, for example the war in Sudan barely gets a mention, the situation in the Central African Republic demands our attention.

ROAPE’s Rama Salla Dieng writes that the current political crisis in Senegal is neither a symptom of ‘democracy dying in Africa’ nor the country being ‘on the brink’ as some headlines from the western media would have it. On the contrary, Dieng argues, this illusion does not hold when one considers the country’s political history stained by state and police brutality and human rights violations since independence.

Pascal Bianchini interviews Ahmed Salem El Moctar, also known as Cheddad, who was a leader of the Mauritanian student movement in the early 1970s, as well as an underground activist with the Kadihines movement. Cheddad recounts his activism in Mauritania during the late 1960s and 1970s, providing insight into the period's school movements, strikes, and the fight against neocolonialism. He offers insight into the complexity of Mauritanian post-independence politics, the significance of the Kadihine movement, and the National Democratic Movement.

The year 2025 will mark the one hundredth anniversary of Frantz Fanon’s birth. ROAPE intends to mark this occasion through reflections, arguments, and analyses of his life, his philosophy, his activism, and his political legacies today. For this issue, our call for papers is proposed in the belief that Fanon is an indispensable thinker for addressing Africa’s past, present, and future.

Henning Melber challenges Ludo de Witte who claims to reveal the “true role” of Dag Hammarskjöld “in the imperialist catastrophe that savaged the Congo”. Melber argues that De Witte's blog offers no new empirical evidence, and demonstrates a failure to understand global institutions and the role of individuals within them. He argues Ludo de Witte shows a total denial of local dynamics and agency, which has led to misperceptions bordering on conspiracy theories.

Jesse Harasta describes the complex dynamics of contemporary imperialism and resistance. He argues that understanding a world system divided into Core, Semi-Periphery and Periphery is essential for unpicking and analysing the real workings of global capitalism today. Harasta states that Gulf states have engaged in an active imperial re-peripheralization of the Horn of Africa, which has had devastating consequences but it has also triggered resistance, and important political confrontations.

Heike Becker writes about what has been going on in Germany since 7 October last year. She contextualises the German government’s unconditional support of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and astonishing efforts by government and civil society associations to silence critics of Israel’s actions. Becker points out the deafening silence in mainstream German politics and society about the thousands of children, women, and men who have been killed.

A terrible myth has developed around the UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, who died in a plane crash in 1961. Ludo De Witte explains that the UN chief was one of the architects of the Congo crisis that led to the removal and murder of the country’s first leader, Patrice Lumumba. De Witte reveals the true role of the UN, and Hammarskjöld, in the imperialist catastrophe that savaged the Congo in 1960.

Towards the end of 2023, the fully open access and free to download Zambia Journal of Social Science published an edited collection of nine articles investigating and reflecting on the life and legacy of former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda. Here, one of the collection's editors Duncan Money introduces the body of work. The contributions are wide ranging, from those that deal directly with anti-colonial struggle - including an exploration of some of the tensions and failures within Zambia's liberation movements - to those interrogating Kaunda's postcolonial politics and governance, to a remarkable series of interviews with Kaunda and those close to him, which offer a fascinating glimpse into his daily life and habits.