ROAPE believes that our times are radical, and we need to radicalise with them in theory and practice - we have been attempting to do this. We inform our readers and supporters that in order to return revived and refreshed to the struggles we have been covering, ROAPE will be pausing activities in August on journal production and the website and social media....
The murder of George Floyd has triggered giant protests around the world. Demonstrations in Africa have been much smaller, with tens or at best hundreds of protesters on the streets. Baba Aye, Lai Brown, Heike Becker and Sabatho Nyamsenda reflect on the Black Lives Matter movement on the continent, the development of radical art and how institutionalised racism and its root – capitalism – continue to kneel on all our necks....
On 3 June 2019 there was a massacre of protestors camped around the headquarters of the Sudan Armed Forces in Khartoum - the protestors were attempting to reinvent politics for a world to come. Magdi el Gizouli and Edward Thomas write about the dynamics of the Sudanese revolution and the need to delve beyond the asphalt of cities and towns....
On International Workers' Day, ROAPE celebrates the life of activist and publisher Kevin French who died almost a year ago in South Africa. His life spanned decades of involvement in political struggles and reflected at its centre an activist who displayed immense integrity, commitment to working class struggle and the relentless ability to think critically and independently....
In a passionate defence of the strike action of university workers in the UK, ROAPE’s Rama Salla Dieng describes the intolerable pressures on teaching staff and the gender and ethnic inequalities within the academy. Dieng writes, ‘We are on strike to resist the marketisation of our knowledge and lives, and to build radical solidarities with our students.’...
In a report on a recent conference in Dakar on the Revolutionary Left in sub-Saharan Africa, Adam Mayer celebrates a gathering of activists and researchers, which could not have been more different from the mega-conferences of academia today. The conference examined the extraordinary vibrancy of left politics and movements across the continent in the 1960s and 1970s....
In recent years governments across Southern Africa have targeted foreign investors, increased taxation on mining companies and enacted indigenisation. In this blogpost, Alex Caramento and Richard Saunders investigate the social forces currently shaping resource nationalism in the region. They hope to initiate a discussion on the various responses to extractive capitalism in Southern Africa. ...
Examining the recent and brutal attempts to suppress the Sudanese revolution, Magdi el Gizouli looks at the efforts by the regime and its various factions to seize the initiative from the streets. In recent months the ruthless figure of Mohamed Hamdan Daglo (aka Himeidti), the leader of the infamous Rapid Support Forces, has moved into the centre of Sudanese politics. However, will the ‘neighbourhood committees’ be able to translate their revolutionary zeal into mass political action that can unite rural and urban discontent and challenge the regimes hold on power?...
Bettina Engels writes about the murder of two activists in Burkina Faso. The activists were well known for campaigning against mining in the province of Yagha in the North East of the country. For years the region has been a hotspot of artisanal mining and conflicts between residents, the mining company and state security forces. Using the fight against ‘Islamic terrorism’, the government is frequently targeting activists. ROAPE appeals to our readers for solidarity and any form of support in the campaign to expose the murderers....
In a blogpost drawing attention to the large number of suicides by immolation in Tunisia, Habib Ayeb explains that there has been an average of between 250 to 300 suicides per year since 2011. These desperate political acts are intended to draw attention to the dire social and political conditions experienced by millions of Tunisians in the years since the revolution (and the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi in December 2010). Translated by Max Ajl, the blogpost looks at the origins of the Tunisian revolution, and broken promises. ...