Amilcar Cabral - search results

In this wide-ranging critique of Firoze Manji's article on the failure of left movements in Africa, David Seddon writes that Manji's 'failure' implies falling short of something that could be identified as a ‘success’, which is an extraordinarily and unhelpfully binary approach to the study of class struggle, social movements and political change.

Firoze Manji writes that discontent has been growing across the continent, with spontaneous eruptions and mass uprisings that have in some cases resulted in the overthrow of regimes. In such circumstances, one would have thought that this would have been fertile grounds for the emergence of strong left working class movements across the continent. But why has this not happened?

In the first of a two part article on the struggle of Mozambique’s workers and poor, Judith Marshall writes about the experiment in radical transformation in the first years of the country’s independence after 1975. However the tragic slide in the 1980s into the arms of the IMF and World Bank saw the adoption of structural adjustment. Marshall charts the birth of new protest movements against the government and international capital.

Colin Darch writes about attending the anniversary last month of the Portuguese revolution on 25 April 1974. This was the  “fourth revolution” alongside the anti-colonial transformations in Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Angola. Darch argues that it remains vital to remember that between 1974-1975 radical socialist transformation in a small country on the south-western edge of Europe was on the cards – and that it was African leaders such as Amílcar Cabral, Samora Machel and Agostinho Neto who were showing the way.

One hundred years since Lenin's death, Nigerian socialist Abiodun Olamosu describes of the revolutionary on his own political development. As the preeminent organiser of the Russian revolution, Lenin helped to determine the course of Olamosu's life in Nigeria. Olamosu explores the development of Lenin’s work and legacy. He regards Stalin’s rise to power, and the Soviet Union, as an abomination to the body of ideas of Marxism and socialist internationalism.

Last year, for the first time on roape.net, members of ROAPE’s Editorial Group offered some of our favourite radical reads from 2022, new and old, fiction and non-fiction. Here again, in what we hope will beome an annual offering, Editorial Group members provide a list of books that have served to educate, shock, move, and inspire over the last 12 months, in our 2023 offering of ROAPE's best reads for African radicals. Five of the ten books listed are available as free downloads.

Mikayla Tillery reviews Kevin Okoth's Red Africa: Reclaiming Revolutionary Black Politics. She delves into Okoth’s incisive critique of Afro-pessimism, Negritude, and the academic misinterpretations of Franz Fanon. Tillery discusses Okoth’s arguments against the idea that Marxism is Eurocentric by examining the historical suppression of Marxism in Kenya. She reveals how Okoth highlights the contributions of black revolutionaries and reframes Marxism as a potent force for decolonisation and anti-imperialism.

In this blogpost, Yusuf Serunkuma slams the cowardice of intellectuals today, who display self-censorship and contentment with the status quo, in contrast with an earlier generation of activists and subaltern scholars. Serunkuma argues that this did not happen overnight, rather it has taken years of manufacturing conformity and consent.

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.

May 1968 in Dakar was a defining moment in the political history of Senegal. Dakar University students went on strike and blockaded the campus. The protests were violently suppressed, sparking a short-lived but intense nationwide revolutionary uprising against the ruling class. Over the last several years, videographer Yannek Simalla has been compiling a collection of filmed testimonies from activists involved in the protests. Here, he introduces his collection, the creative process behind its creation, and how memories of May 1968 inform us as much about the present of Senegalese society as they do the past.