Talking back - search results

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 Mike Powell introduces a selection of Amílcar Cabral’s writings, speeches, and interviews. Cabral was one of the most important revolutionaries of the 20th century who led and founded a movement which not only led to the liberation of Guinea Bissau but prepared the ground for a revolution in the colonial power itself. This selection of Cabral’s speeches and interviews, and other writings, is provided in the hope that some readers will find in them inspiration and hope for the revolutionary struggles to come.

In this wide-ranging interview with ROAPE's Mike Powell, Leo Zeilig asks him about Amílcar Cabral’s revolutionary activism. Powell talks about Cabral’s relentless focus on actual political dynamics of struggle, the purpose of theory, and his focus on the mode of production. For Cabral, Powell argues, nothing was static, everything was in a process of dialectical change, processes which could be consciously influenced by people acting together. Powell also discusses Basil Davidson’s collaboration and friendship with Cabral.

Eugénie Rokhaya Aw, imprisoned under the regime of Léopold Sédar Senghor, was an active Senegalese left-wing activist who fought clandestinely for the country’s democratisation in the 1970s. More than a year after her passing in July 2022, her testimony sheds light on the struggles of several generations who fought imperialism beyond official African independences.

In an analysis of the Wagner group in Africa, Graham Harrison argues that Western coverage on the group’s activities on the continent characterises it as an extension of the Kremlin’s violent and venal cronyism and a disrupter of African-Western partnerships dedicated to the building of liberal sovereignties through aid, peacebuilding, and policy advice. Yet, Harrison explains the commentary from Western circles share a deep and significant misreading of African politics.

In an interview with Victoria Brittain, Tariq Ali speaks about Winston Churchill, the subject of his latest book. Ali has produced a searing critique full of little known detail, of a long and powerful British life which did untold damage at home and abroad. Ali exposes Churchill’s crimes against freedom fighters in Kenya. As the reputations of empires are being dissected, Ali and Brittain discuss the crimes of an imperial activist.

Using Fanon’s work, Benjamin Maiangwa, Gillian Robinson and Ethan Oversby ask if questions of origin and geography are racist and discriminatory, with harmful and belittling connotations. Does the question ‘where are you from’ contain in it white supremacy, entitlement, and racism. Surely, the authors ask, no-one should have to constantly affirm their existence.

In ROAPE's latest tribute to Amílcar Cabral, Chinedu Chukwudinma interviews António Tomás, who wrote Cabral’s biography in the 21st century. Tomás speaks about Cabral’s political development, as well as his abilities as a teacher, revolutionary diplomat and leader. But he also discusses his insecurities, shortcomings and the myths surrounding national liberation in Guinea-Bissau.

Yusuf Serunkuma writes that a migrant worker dies many times, and has many killers. They die in their home countries - where they are structurally, violently uprooted -  they then die on the journeys to either Europe or the Middle East and then, they finally die in dehumanising working conditions if they ever arrive. Serunkuma exposes the hypocrisy, racism and murder at the heart of the global north.  

Benjamin Maiangwa asks: Has white supremacy permeated every place on earth and created a world view that favours whiteness so that the question – where are you really from? - is asked to determine your state of being? Being African, Maiangwa argues, you are always idenitifed as the exotic, noble, disease-infected, and chronically misgoverned “other” -  traits or images that outsiders confer on the continent.