ROAPE’s Peter Dwyer interviews the South African socialist David Hemson. Hemson was a leading labour militant and trade unionist during the mass working class uprising and strikes in Durban in 1973. In this introduction to the videoed interviews, Peter Dwyer discusses working class politics and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, a history often forgotten or marginalised in popular accounts.

In an interview with ROAPE, Micheline Ravololonarisoa discusses the history of Madagascar, French colonialism and the remarkable student movement in 1972 which she was one of the leaders as a member of the strike committee. Coming from a non-political family, Micheline became a student leader, and then a pan-African activist, based in Kenya, and forced into exile from the continent. She reflects on a life of activism, and Madagascar’s place in Africa.

ROAPE interviews Mark Duffield about his life and work. For decades Mark has worked on the political philosophy of the permanent emergency, the current global crisis in capitalism, the war economy, and the political and economic situation in the Horn of Africa. From his early days growing up in the West Midlands, to his research in Sudan, and later examining the militant struggles of Indian workers in the UK, Duffield has spent a lifetime examining at the central dynamics underpinning our interconnected world of genocide and imperialism.   

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.

ROAPE’s Leo Zeilig interviews researcher, writer and activist Florian Bobin on the deepening crisis in Senegal. Bobin describes the repression and bloodshed of the last few years, and the efforts to unseat the president. He analyses the potential for a radical left alternative emerging in the country, based on the “deep, systemic re-foundation” of society and its institutions. If this does not happen, Bobin argues, the ranks of the opposition once in power will have at their disposal the same powers that oppressed them.