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While revolutionary movements of the 1960s and 1970s in Europe, the United States and Latin America have been the subject of abundant literature, similar movements that emerged in Africa have received comparatively little attention. In an extract from their forthcoming book, the editors, Pascal Bianchini, Ndongo Sylla and Leo Zeilig shed new light on these political movements. They argue that Africa’s revolutionary left was extremely active in these years, and forms a vital part of global history.

Barbara Bompani takes aim at the dominant narrative that rising homophobia in Africa is the result of external actors, and in particular US conservative Christian groups. Drawing from more than a decade of research and analysis, she argues rising homophobia is not simply the result of external influence, but is shaped by the complex role religion has played in shaping new forms of nationalisms on the continent. What we are observing in several African countries, she contends, is the emergence of a new politics that threatens untold and profound harm to LGBT communities.

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.

ROAPE’s Hannah Cross writes that the UK government’s policy to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda has been ruled unlawful by the Court of Appeal. Asylum seekers, the court argued, risked being returned to their home country and could face inhumane treatment and persecution. Paul Kagame’s Rwanda, with the complicity of Western media and international financial institutions, has been presented as a successful developmental state, but in reality it is a place of systematic state brutality.

Tom Gillespie and Seth Schindler argue that infrastructure megaprojects in Kenya and Ghana have driven rapid urbanisation processes in historically rural areas. Drawing on the concept of rentier capitalism, they show how infrastructure initiatives created opportunities for the appropriation of rents by various actors, from global real estate developers to local land speculators. If policy initiatives to socialise and redistribute land rents are to be successful, Gillespie and Schindler conclude, they must be accompanied by political movements to challenge the vested interests that benefit from rentier capitalism in Africa.

Foreign aid to Somaliland has fostered authoritarian rule and contributed towards conflict in the eastern city of Las Anod. In recent months, the apparent miracle of democracy has fractured as conflict has led to hundreds of deaths, and hundreds of thousands displaced. Jethro Norman writes there is a clear international dimension to the crisis. Those in Washington, London and Brussels are oblivious to the problem right under their nose: the consequences of their own aid and investment strategies. 

In a response to Fana Gebresenbet and Yonas Tariku’s recent Debate piece in ROAPE’s journal, ‘The Pretoria Agreement: Mere cessation of hostilities or heralding a new era in Ethiopia?’.  Mulugeta Gebrehiwot, Alex de Waal, Martin Plaut, Jan Nyssen, Mohamed Hassen, and Gebrekirstos Gebreselassie argue that the article reproduces the central narrative threads of the propaganda of the Federal Government of Ethiopia.

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.

Habib Ayeb and Abeer Abazeed celebrate the life of Helmi Sharawy. Born in Egypt in 1935, Sharawy saw Africa as one with all its own coherence. He spent his life campaigning for African unity, with empirical knowledge of Africa he was a committed anti-racist and anti-colonial scholar and activist. The idea of two Africa-s was a colonial and racist lie – the continent was one and must unite.

ROAPE’s Leo Zeilig interviews the radical journalist, campaigner, and writer Victoria Brittain. Brittain has spent a lifetime exposing the lies and destructions of Western imperialism and celebrating the resistance and hope of those who fight back. For decades, Brittain worked and lived in Africa, and struggled to get the voices of the oppressed heard, and their lives seen.