The Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Biafran War, lasted from 1967 to 1970, and resulted in the deaths of over a million people. The secession of Biafra was a response to perceived marginalization against the Igbo people, and grievances regarding representation and power. Gavin Williams argues that despite almost sixty years since end of the war, its legacy continues to shape Nigerian society and politics today.
By Gavin Williams
The events leading to the Biafran secession and the Nigerian Civil War itself were the most tragic and important in the history of Nigeria. They have also been silenced. Much is forgotten; what little is remembered is selectively constructed, as was much written at the time. There were fine analytical accounts and copious documentations of these events published in the early 1970s. During following thirty years, the war and its international context was not a subject for historical research and political analysis. A sociological interpretation depends on subjective understanding. War accounts were revived to serve current political purposes. It may be that the sadness, bitterness and bravery of the times can only be captured by poets, playwrights and novelists.
Sequences of events appear with hindsight to have been inevitable; we ask what made them happen rather than what made them possible. Historical explanations contextualise complex processes of different kinds across overlapping periods of time. The origins of the civil war may, with reason, be traced back to the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates, to the electoral conflicts over political spoils from the 1950s, to the Action Group crisis of 1962, to the census ‘counts’ of 1962 and 1963, to the 1964 federal election or to 1965 elections in the West. More can be added; each of these can be seen as following from the preceding histories and as creating the conditions for the coups of January and July 1966 and the killings by civilians and soldiers in May and then August and September 1966. But to understand these events, we must bring all of them and their connections into play.
Political alignments changed between, within and across regions, provinces, and communities. The authority of the Federal Government and the terms of political association were questioned at various times by politicians and soldiers from each of the regions and by politicians from both the North and the East. The government of Eastern Nigeria was not the first to threaten secession. Northern officers and soldiers demanded separation in July 1967. But the Eastern government was the first to be in control of civil government and armed forces within its own territory.
If there was a decisive moment, it may have been when the negotiations at the Constitutional Conference were adjourned on 3 October. In the subsequent months the Government of Eastern Nigeria and the Federal Government followed comparable strategies. Each was willing to find agreement but on their own terms; otherwise they would assert their own sovereignty. Lagos and the West were important in the calculations of the North and the East. So too was the creation, or not, of new states. Apparent agreement among soldiers broke down when its ambiguities were revealed. The key negotiators on both sides were civil servants, intent on securing their governments’ sovereignty.
The war itself was the pursuit of politics by other means. Biafra seceded on 31 May 1967. The outcome of the war was clear by 4 October. A Biafran attack across the Niger with the aim of reaching Ibadan and Lagos had been repulsed; Nigerian troops had taken Bonny; Enugu, the Eastern capital had fallen. Yet the war continued until January 1970. The ability to defend a core Igbo area, despite the Leader and president of the brief Biafran state from 1967-1970, Odumegwu Ojukwu, blaming all setbacks on saboteurs; the incompetence of Nigerian commanders; and external military and humanitarian supplies enabled the Biafrans to sustain resistance with no chance of winning the war.
Biafra was imagined initially as the antithesis of the tribalism and corruption of Nigeria, as an idea of Eastern civil servants and academics, returning from Lagos and Ibadan in the face of anti-Igbo discrimination in federal institutions. The refugees from the massacres in the north provided the popular basis for Biafra. Support for the Federal Government was more conditional but it was able to secure civil and military alliances and to claim, successfully, the authority of the sovereign state.
The events of 1966 to 1970 were most easily explained by grand theories: the Igbo plot, or the northern conspiracy. Evidence can be adduced for either account by incorporating them into the grand narratives. The coup-makers of January 1966 blamed the failures of Nigeria on tribalism, regionalism and politics, arguments which resonate in subsequent and contemporary Nigeria. Their solution was to reject tribalism, abolish regions and exclude politicians. ‘Tribalism’ cannot deal with the ambiguities of Nigerian politics. ‘Regionalism’ emphasises the institutional bases of political power but does not explain why they could not be accommodated with one another or why Nigeria did not break up into its constituent regions. We must ask why politics took the forms that it did.
Yet Nigeria’s political class depended on the state’s control of funds and its regulation of economic activities, and by the relative dependence of the economy on imports and exports.
The post-war expansion of oil production expanded the money and opportunities controlled by the state, but accentuated its dependence on fluctuating export revenues. The war and military government provided the ‘super permsecs’ [super permanent secretary] with the opportunity to centralize fiscal resources in the hands of the federal government. Their promised revolution from above did not materialise.
Oil rents were appropriated by civilian and most spectacularly by military rulers. The turnover of political leaders and senior military officers enabled rulers to marginalise rivals and to extend patronage to new generations. The allocation of oil rentals from the top down meant that state and local politics came to be about claims to multiply points of access to and increase shares in oil revenues. Political violence is most common at local or state rather than federal levels; for most people, Abuja is a long way away. Political elites have sought to rebuild regional alliances across ethnic boundaries under new or old names.
‘Minorities’ have made collective claims for political recognition, the more effective for no longer being within the control of regional governments. Indigeneity reconfigures conflicts within and across state boundaries. Religion has been a repertoire of political tools and the fault lines of social divisions. Communal violence and military suppression have claimed far more victims than the violence after 1966.
The redemocratization of Nigeria was followed by the ‘generals elections’ and military arbitration of presidential succession in the current period. Political interests are incorporated and electoral rivals repressed within the dominant party state. Did last years elections show that electoral politics had come back full circle. Or had it changed from ‘competitive’ to ‘coercive’? Does re-examination open up political wounds and stand in the way of reconciliation? The attempts to interrogate past injustices opened the way for political elites to claim and defend their own shares of Nigeria’s resources. The War raises more fundamental questions. If nobody can be held to account for murder provided it is on a large scale or by current rulers, what constraints are there on fears of exclusion and the politics of spoils and expropriation? Why does Nigerian politics break down into political violence? Why, bluntly, do governments at all levels come to be run by avaricious crooks? Have academics and writers the obligation to break the silences that surround the civil war?
The events of the war were the result of decisions made by different people, often without regard for the likely consequences. People were killed in coups, wars and on the streets. Ojukwu led the people of Eastern Nigeria into war without the means to fight it. The federal government and army preserved the unity of Nigeria, but killed many fellow citizens to do it. As Robin Luckham commented at the end of his 1971 study of the Nigerian military and the origins of the war, both sides and many others before them ‘contracted with the means of violence. They all bear the responsibility for the consequences’.
Gavin Williams is a South African who was among the founders with Ruth First of the Review of African Political Economy and a colleague of hers in the Department of Sociology at Durham University. He has published articles on Nigeria, on South Africa and on the World Bank, about political economy, politics, land, agricultural and economic policies, on market regulation, land and black empowerment in the South African wine industry, and on the idea of ‘development’. The Review honoured him with a set of essays by former students and colleagues in 2012.
Featured Photograph: Alabi-Isama (second right) briefing Col. Obasanjo (third right), Col. (Rev Father) Pedro Martins during the Nigerian civil war.
This year marks ROAPE’s 50th anniversary. To mark the year, Robin Cohen, one of our founding editors, discusses the period in which ROAPE was born. At the time many similar journals were established and declared themselves as ‘radical’ and ‘alternative’. Like ROAPE, these new publications explicitly challenged the mainstream in their disciplines, and proposed changes to scholarship and the world.
By Robin Cohen
It is only appropriate to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Review of African Political Economy, given that the journal has made such an important contribution to radical scholarship on Africa. The journal has a distinctive character and coverage, but I want to situate it in a suite of comparable journals that surfaced at nearly the same time, arguing that they had a great deal in common. The journals I have in mind, with their founding dates in brackets, are:
The overwhelming characteristic of these journals is that they were, and thought of themselves as, ‘radical’ and ‘alternative’. The word radical appears in the titles of the Review of Radical Political Economics and Radical Philosophy, but the core idea that they were set up to oppose is evident in the opening editorial statements of all of the listed journals. The Journal of Contemporary Asia, for example, sought to provide ‘an alternative to mainstream perspectives on contemporary Asian issues’, while prospective authors to Antipode were invited to ‘push at the boundaries of radical geographical thinking’ and ‘encouraged to critique and challenge settled orthodoxies’. For Radical Philosophy: ‘contemporary British philosophy [was] at a dead end. Its academic practitioners have all but abandoned the attempt to understand the world, let alone to change it’.
It is important to emphasize that while radicalism was frequently invoked it was not associated with any particular political party or tendency. In the first editorial statement of Critique of Anthropology, the editors declared that: ‘Particular attention will be paid to current developments in historical materialism throughout the world’. However, this nod to Marxism disappeared in later editorial statements which alluded to the journal ‘challenging received wisdoms inside academic anthropology and in society at large, presenting work that is innovative, challenging, sometimes experimental and often uncomfortable’. All the journals can broadly be classified as progressive in that most of the editors aligned themselves to anti-colonial, anti-imperial, anti-apartheid, anti-racist and feminist causes.
The journals had other features in common. They were founded by young scholars who were markedly undeferential towards older, more established academics. Until this wave of radical journals appeared, it was common for scholars to move slowly up the greasy pole of recognition and acceptance. After an approved set of publications, service in a professional association, recognition on the conference circuit and a recommendation from a ‘name’ in the field, one might be invited to become a more junior editor of one of the long-established and highly regarded journals. These journals were often associated with a subscription to a professional body. The editors of the radical journals totally subverted this tradition. The whole point was to develop a critique of existing scholars and scholarship. The word ‘critique’ indeed rivalled the term ‘radical’ in the frequency of its use.
The existing professional associations were ignored as were the existing publishers. Instead, nearly all the journals were initially self-produced and self-published. Technical progress made this a little easier in that electric typewriters with augmented features (like line justifying) allowed a more professional finish, though we were still a long way off full word-processing, on-screen editing, and the easy selection of alternative typefaces.
As I recall, the first issue of Critique of Anthropology deployed an old-fashioned Remington Typewriter font and was clumsily stapled together. This did not matter in the slightest, as the amateur appearance lent some authenticity to the product – seriousness of purpose was far more important than a slick appearance. Citation indices and rankings were of no concern and barely existed. Instead of professional recognition, editors carried multiple copies of a favoured journal to seminars, workshops, conferences or to common rooms, where hand sales led to conversations and new readers.
The radical journals not only published material opposed to conventional scholarship, they also were devoted to countering the conventional narratives perpetuated by the media, which had poor coverage of the Global South and were frequently infected by old Cold War rhetoric combined with racist, corporatist, misogynistic and imperialist precognitions. Correcting the corporate media was at the heart of the Middle East Research and Information Project, publisher of Merip Reports, which defined its mission as ‘to document and support popular struggles for peace and social justice in the Middle East, and to promote progressive change in U.S. policy toward the region’. Likewise, the North America Congress on Latin America’s NACLA Report on the Americas described itself as ‘a quarterly magazine of news and analysis [and] the oldest and most widely read progressive magazine covering Latin America and its relationship with the United States’. Even where the bulk of a journal comprised academic articles, there was often a space reserved for corrective reportage and short think pieces, as in the ‘Briefings’ section of the Review of African Political Economy.
It is also possible to see some similarities in the sociological profile of the editors of the various journals. I have already indicated that they were young and of a somewhat rebellious disposition. Most of the editors of the regional journals had worked in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, or Latin America, or had been part of volunteer programmes abroad (like Voluntary Service Overseas or the Peace Corps). They had also been influenced by the youth culture of the time – dressing informally, smoking the odd joint and trying (if not always succeeding) to be anti-sexist and anti-racist.
Naturally, the journals were edited collectively, sometimes with elaborate rotating arrangements to avoid any possibility of an iniquitous hierarchy congealing. All the listed journals were based in the US or UK and the membership of the editorial working groups reflected this. (I have not considered journals in France and Germany here.) Editors from the Global South were much valued despite being scarce on the ground in the first years. Most journals had to manage by appointing associated editors based in the regions they covered. Contributions from the Global South were also encouraged, and the journals often provided a platform for emerging scholars.
All the nominated journals covered women’s issues more thoroughly than the older publications and most of the journals had strong representation of women in their editorial collectives. Passionate debates among feminists about whether to find a place alongside other progressive movements or to define a separate arena for the airing of feminist analyses never found complete resolution, though several new journals focusing exclusively on feminist analyses were founded in the period covered. Probably the most prominent was Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Unlike the other radical journals, Signs found a prestigious publisher, the University of Chicago Press, from the start. Its aims were, according to an opening editorial, to ‘publish the new scholarship about women … exhibit[ing] … a ‘charged, restless consciousness’ that questioned ‘the social, political, economic, cultural, and psychological arrangements that have … defined femininity and masculinity’. Over the years, editorship of the journal was done in singles, pairs, and collectives. Given that the journal was based at the University of Chicago Press, perhaps Signs should not qualify as a radical journal – in which case, Feminist Review(founded in 1979, just outside our period) would make a worthy substitute. It’s first editorial adopted a decidedly more militant turn: ‘We must [learn to] widen our circle of influence, to turn gut reaction into a programme for change. We start from the position that theory and political analysis, which will necessarily draw on a variety of sources, are crucial to the struggle for women’s liberation’.
In addition to the attention to women’s issues another common theme was ‘political economy’, which appears in two of the titles and underlay much of the thinking across the whole collection of journals. The expression was used, of course, by Adam Smith as well as Marx and had been retained by the economics departments in a few established universities, including Glasgow and Toronto until the 1970s, when more conventional labels were adopted. The alternative and progressive meaning of ‘political economy’ was succinctly defined by John Weeks in the opening article of the first issue of the Review of Radical Political Economics (1969) when he wrote:
The overriding reality of the American economy is in inequality of income, inequality of power, in equality with regard to the ability to determine one’s life. Inequality is what economics should be all about. But, in fact, economics as it is taught and practiced by economists deals very little with inequality. The failure of marginal analysis is that it is used by those who … seek to justify things as they are. It is the politics of economists, not the techniques of economists, that makes this so.
In effect, political economy became the ethical and intellectual meeting point between the three core social science disciplines of economics, politics and sociology.
Because the radical journals were founded by editors who were driven by a strong sense of social justice, crafting a new intellectual space was also accompanied by reaching out to a wider readership though conferences, pamphleteering and workshops. In this respect, the History Workshop Journal was the uncontested leader of the pack. History Workshops stressing history from below, women’s history and social history indeed preceded the foundation of the journal. With a solid base at the trade union college in Oxford, Ruskin, the workshops started in 1967, when 50 people attended. By the mid-1970s, up to 1000 delegates were crammed into the college to hear such luminaries at Anna Davin, Ralph Samuels, Edward (E.P.) Thompson, Christopher Hill, Dorothy Thompson, and Eric Hobsbawm. The History Workshop model spread to France, the US, and South Africa, where a particularly vigorous offshoot took root.
Critique and renewal
Readers will not be surprised that, in harmony with the founding principles of the journals concerned, I think it is important not only to a sing their praises, but also think of their failures and limitations. Most of the journals concerned relied on unpaid or lowly-paid labour of members of the editorial collectives and/or their partners. When that goodwill was exhausted, they were easy prey for the established publishers who were often looking for more lively journals to spice up their mundane offerings.
In fairness to Taylor and Francis and Sage, who took over a considerable number of the radical journals, so far as I am aware, they did not seek directly to dilute editorial policies. This happened more slowly and subtly. The peer review process, the rankings of journals and citation scores conspired to make the articles more and more homogeneous and professionally acceptable. Arguably, most articles lost their ‘bite’. Many of the authors were themselves complicit in generating conformity to conventional academic norms as they were under pressure to publish in recognized and high-ranking journals. Editors, under similar pressures and additional constraints derived from increasing work loads, bowed to the inevitable and streamlined editorial processes.
Buoyed by hard-working and charismatic figures, extra-journal activities like the History Workshops, conference and seminars flourished. When these figures died or retired it was difficult to keep up the momentum. At the more theoretical level, perhaps the ‘radical’ moment had now passed. The radical journals, with some exceptions, took too long to grasp the salience of the environmental crisis and other pressing issues. One counterexample is Antipode, where an updated prospectus suggested that many of the articles published in the journal ‘are inspired by Marxist, socialist, anarchist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, feminist, queer, trans*, green, and postcolonial thought’. Other radical journals have not fully risen to the challenges of a multi-polar world, the revival of crude nationalism and populism, the politics of international mobility, identity politics, global pandemics, the environmental crisis, seemingly never-ending regional wars, digital capitalism, the challenges of AI, and many other issues that need urgent attention by critical scholars.
The good news is that with digital connectivity there are many opportunities to relaunch an alternative and progressive stream of ideas. This could take the form of parallel initiatives like roape.net or wholly independent, open access, digital platforms. If the questing spirit that marked the birth of the radical journal movement can be reinvigorated, there is a prospect of truly engaging authors and readers from all over the world, reworking the original vision of progressive change by addressing new problems, and finding new opportunities for transnational co-operation.
Robin Cohen is emeritus professor of development studies at the University of Oxford and was a member of the Editorial Working Group of the Review of African Political Economy from 1974–1988.
Featured photograph: ROAPE’s founder, Lionel Cliffe, speaking at the Ruth First symposium in 2012 at the University of London (Ben Joseph).
The Central African Republic has, despite being at the centre of the continent, been a country on the margins of global power since independence. Despite a conflict which has lasted for more than a decade, the country remains largely ignored. Ben Jackson writes that while African conflicts are often underreported, for example the war in Sudan barely gets a mention, the situation in the Central African Republic demands our attention.
By Ben Jackson
Since the Seleka uprising in the early 2010s, the Central African Republic (CAR) has been very much a fragmented state. In Sango, the word Seleka means coalition or alliance and was used to refer to a group of mainly northern rebel forces who came together to bring down the government of President François Bozizé. Throughout his tenure, Bozizé had been embroiled in civil conflict with armed groups in the northern region of the country. With the departure of Bozizé in 2013 after the Seleka made it to the capital Bangui, successive governments have struggled to control territory outside of the city. France, as the former colonial power, has always been willing to get involved to protect its interests in the country. In 2013 they launched Operation Sangaris, an ineffective intervention that officially ended in 2016, although complete French withdrawal did not come till a few years afterwards. Sangaris was, remarkably, the seventh intervention by the French military in CAR since independence in 1960.
Even now, the most recent letter from Omar Hilale, Chair of the CAR Peace-building Commission outlined how armed groups continue to destabilise the country in the east, west and central regions. Many of these groups formed the previous Seleka rebellion but have since fractured into multiple different clusters of combatants, who over the past decade have attempted to entrench themselves within the various regions of the vast country. Back in 2015, a group known as the Popular Front for the Rebirth of CAR (FPRC), led by Noureddine Adam, announced that they had formed a new state known as the Republic of Logone centred around the city of Ndele. The new Republic was short lived and was never taken seriously, but it was a reflection of how former Seleka groups were trying to carve out areas of influence. Cities such as Bambari have come under rebel control over the past few years, while in other regions such as the Ouaka and Haute-Kotto provinces we have seen former Seleka allies fighting each other for territorial control. In the absence of state protection, many civilians and former members of the military formed groups known as the ‘Anti Balaka’, which translates to anti-machete. Both Anti-Balaka militias and former Seleka groups have been known to commit human rights violations over the past decade.
Multiple attempts at peace talks have failed, with treaties being signed and then renegaded on almost immediately. The state has then lacked the means to equip and deploy its own military due to UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2127 that imposed an arms embargo on the armed forces (FACA). This embargo, in place since 2013, was only relaxed through UNSC Resolution 2693 in July of 2023. As a result, the country has been reliant on a UN peacekeeping force that has been described as undermanned and underequipped to carry out its mandate. Given that there was no peace to keep, the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) became an active military component to the country’s civil war.
MINUSCA has been involved in trying to tackle the rebel groups head on, with some limited success. In 2020 they were able to retake Bambari from the Unity for Peace in Central Africa (UPC) rebel group. However, their more active involvement has certainly caused some backlash. There have been allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse, as well as use of excessive force against detainees during its operations, while their lack of overall success in bringing about the end of the conflict raised questions amongst the population about their role and effectiveness.
Enter Russia
Into this security void came Russia. After French failure to control the situation, alongside allegations of sexual misconduct against the former colonial power’s military, the government turned to Russia. The move was intriguing to many, considering that during the Cold War there had not been much of a relationship between the CAR and the Soviet Union, given that France had held sway over most of its former colonies. Yet, as we have seen in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, French influence on the continent is waning, and has been rejected by popular pressure. Into this gap, Russia has been more than willing to step forward.
Russia’s military involvement in the country began in 2018, with the UN easing the arms embargo enough for Russia to provide some weapons to the struggling Central African Armed Forces (FACA). Alongside this formal state involvement, the now well-known Wagner Group were also entering the country. While formal Russian involvement took the form of ‘military advisors’, the reported 1,200-2000 strong mercenary group were active combatants helping the government in attempts to reclaim lost territory. The force was effective in defending the capital and prevented the government of President Faustin-Archange Touadéra from falling at the hands of a more united rebel front in 2021.
Wagner’s counter insurgency also gave the government much more control of its territory than since the elections in 2016 and 2021. However, during the counter insurgency there was documented evidence of human rights abuses carried out by Wagner forces, as well as the death of a number of Russian journalists investigating the groups presence in the country in 2018.
Furthermore, there have been accusations that the Russian presence in the CAR is a means to secure valuable diamond mining and other resource concessions from the state. This is certainly nothing new in the history of great power involvement in African states. During the Cold War, many African leaders were highly skilled in using state resources to extract what they needed out of these more powerful actors to ensure the survival of their regimes.
Yet for many citizens of the country, Russian presence is a positive compared to the years of UN and French involvement. For example, in Bangui there is even a statue dedicated to Russian soldiers, showing a group of them protecting a woman and her child. After the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Wagner, there were even messages and flowers left underneath the statue.
Cold War rivalries resurface
As the war in Ukraine intensified, the war of words between the US and Russia has also escalated. As such, we have seen a return of the Cold War battlegrounds in a state that is often ignored. Early last year, the United States government made an offer to the CAR government. If they were willing to expel Russian military forces, the US would step in to train the FACA and increase humanitarian aid at the same time.
Yet this offer did not come out of the blue. As reported by Le Monde, a memo was sent to President Touadéra outlining the benefits of a shift from Russia to the US at the end of 2022. The ultimatum was apparently set to expire after 12 months, although this has never been confirmed nor denied by the State Department.
For readers of African history since independence, it can feel like Groundhog Day. Cold War rhetoric within a modern theatre of international diplomacy, where news and fake news are constantly battling for supremacy. The most recent report on the CAR from the State Department was titled The Wagner Group’s Atrocities in Africa: Lies and Truth. Russia is accused of disinformation by falsely claiming that the Wager Group is a force for good in the CAR, as well as in Mali, Sudan, and Libya.
President Touadéra now occupies the position that so many African leaders did throughout the 1960s-1980s. After removing the limits to his presidential term in 2023, he is looking to make himself invaluable to global power, with the result that domestic policies are largely ignored. Touadéra has already shown signs that he could be ready to play the game, using both sides to get what he wants. During the UN General Assembly vote on an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine last year, the CAR was one of 32 abstentions. However, Mali, a country that draws many comparisons, voted against the ceasefire alongside Russia.
The end of French influence in Africa?
Both Mali and CAR, in their rejection of the former imperial power France, are expressions of a shift in the external influence on the African continent that has been emerging since the 2000s. For a number of decades now there has been tension between China and the West in terms of influence within African states, especially regarding development aid. When the former Soviet Union withdrew its support for its allies in the late 1980s, given that the financial cost of keeping satellite states afloat, this gave former colonial powers and the US free reign, for a time. Yet China, as its role as a global superpower grew, has been willing to come in and provide aid, free of the conditionalities that have been tied to donor money from the west.
Many did not see a return of Russia, and certainly not a situation in which the country would be able to usurp French colonial influence. Even after granting independence, France, and French companies, continued to exert extraordinary influence over its former colonial possessions. So, for years, CARs Presidents have historically been able to rely on the backing of the French military to keep them in office, but now that appears to be no longer the case.
A number of former Francophone countries in Africa, including the CAR, have rejected French military influence in favour of looking further east. Across the Sahel region, both military governments in Niger and Burkina Faso have joined them in sending the French troops home and turning to military support from Russia to protect their new army-led regimes.
It begs the questions as to what future role France has, if any, in Africa? Can the role of Françafrique – the poisonous neo-colonial relationship between the French state, and its former African colonies – be resuscitated? While the situation in the CAR may feel like a return to Cold War politics, it comes during a time of wider French decline within Africa, especially across the Sahel.
Ben Jackson is a Senior Project Support Officer and researcher at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. He has a BA in International Relations from the University of Leeds and an MSc in African Politics from SOAS and is interested in conflict, power, and African history. He released his first book on the history of the Africa Cup of Nations at the beginning of 2024.
Featured Photograph: Russian mercenaries guarding the presidential convoy in the Central African Republic (16 February 2022).
It is with great sadness that ROAPE marks the passing of Eddie Webster last week. Eddie was a giant of both South African labour sociology and global labour studies. Alex Beresford and Mattia Dessi offer some brief reflections on his influence on them as international researchers of labour politics.
By Alex Beresford and Mattia Dessi
Alex Beresford: To me, Eddie was the embodiment of activist-scholarship. This meant working with unions, including workers’ education and the establishment of worker-focused publications, such as the influential South Africa Labour Bulletin. Indeed, the tributes that have poured in from representatives of the labour federation, COSATU, as well as left-wing activists and journalists alike are testament to this critical element of Eddie’s reach beyond the walls of the university.
As captured brilliantly by his colleague, Andries Bezuidenhout (University of Fort Hare), “Eddie was an institution builder par excellence” and this was reflected in the role he played in the formation of the Sociology of Work Project (SWOP) at the University of the Witwatersrand and later the Global Labour University for trade unionist education.
William Gumede, one of the leading political analysts in South Africa today notes that Eddie was a “towering intellectual” who “nurtured generations of black sociologists” through the founding of such institutions. As Bezuidenhout observes about Eddie’s work in this regard, “To build institutions and movements, you have to build people, and this is maybe the most radical thing anyone can invest their time in.”
Eddie’s activism was also reflected in his engaged approach to supporting fellow academics. As labour scholar Carin Runciman (Edinburgh) notes, “There are hundreds, possibly even thousands, of us who benefited from his engagement, mentorship and guidance to undertake critical work in the service of labour and social movements.”
Indeed, my own experience of him was of a welcoming, generous and compassionate scholar committed to building a wider institutional architecture that created spaces for others to grow.
It was a commitment Eddie sustained beyond retirement. I recently enjoyed lunch with him where he reflected on his latest book, Recasting Workers’ Power: Work and Inequality in the Shadow of the Digital Age in which he once again demonstrated his prowess in marrying detailed empirical insights into the ever-changing world of employment relations with thoughtful theoretical interventions in global labour debates.
This continued desire to engage and lead debates was built into the DNA of his profile as an activist scholar who remained active into his final days – as has been noted widely on social media in response to the shock at his passing.
On a personal level, Eddie’s work was an inspiration to me through my studies and beyond. I believe Eddie coined the term “Social Movement Unionism” (SMU) to denote the significance of the strategies and tactics employed by COSATU back in the struggle against apartheid. He recognised that SMU reflected an important understanding of workers in South Africa that their struggles for justice and emancipation in the workplace could not be divorced from the wider political struggle against the apartheid state. This helped spark global debates about SMU and union revitalisation in an era of neoliberal globalisation – a debate that Eddie remained central to in his extensive body of work.
It is a debate that remains perhaps as salient as ever today. Workers in South Africa, like their counterparts elsewhere, confront the challenges posed by the fourth industrial revolution and the transition to low-carbon economies. These will generate the most significant social, political and economic upheavals in recent history. It calls upon all students of labour to sustain the traditions of activist scholarship so brilliantly personified by Eddie.
Alex Beresford writes on political struggles over inequality, power and corruption and conflict resolution and climate change. Alex is also an Associate Professor in African Politics and Director of Research and Innovation for POLIS at the University of Leeds.
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Mattia Dessi: I first discovered Eddie’s work as a Masters student when I was initially considering the idea of focusing on South Africa. It would not be an exaggeration to say that his work played a great part in my decision to pursue that path. The way which he was able to present to the reader rigorous analysis of dynamic social processes has been, I believe, a great source of inspiration not only for me but for many other young students of different generations.
Eddie’s ability to combine theoretical insights with detailed empirical evidence has always been one of his many academic skills, and there is no better book, in my opinion, where this transpires than the classic Cast in a Racial Mould(1985). The book encapsulated Eddie’s talent as a qualitative researcher while also showing his knowledge of international theoretical debates. But most of all, it showcases a recurrent theme in his work: the attempt to connect international scholarship with the rich tradition of South African labour studies. A connection that was made, however, not from the position of someone passively adopting theoretical concepts crafted elsewhere, but instead based on the awareness that a critical revaluation of these theoretical debates from a South African viewpoint was necessary.
I visited South Africa for fieldwork at the end of 2022. Eddie’s work has shown, among other things, the importance of interviews and participant observation as a necessary part of a researcher’s attempt to understand the world, but it also showed the difficulties that this process sometimes involves. It was not long after I landed in Johannesburg that I started to feel pessimistic about the possibility of gathering the data I was looking for. Until that point my correspondence with Eddie had been limited to a few email exchanges and interactions at online conferences, yet he showed no hesitation when I contacted him asking for help. Despite being officially retired by then, we had lunch together and he asked a lot of questions about my research, never stopping from writing down notes, while also explaining what his current research interests were. The same afternoon he had already put me in touch with people who could help with my fieldwork.
I was glad to see him at a following Southern Centre for Inequality Studies seminar where I presented some preliminary results of my fieldwork. Needless to say, he wasn’t short of questions and comments.
It was with great sadness that I discovered on Wednesday 6 March that the seminar was the last time I enjoyed his intellectual brightness. For young scholars like me, and I’m sure for many more to come, he will always be a source of inspiration. Not only for his academic work, but also, and perhaps even more, for the way he selflessly put his knowledge at the service of the labour movement.
Mattia Dessi joined the University of Leeds in 2019. His work revolves around the world of work, trade unionism and Marxist theory with a focus on the mining industry in South Africa and the interrelation between technological change, organisational health and safety and political economy.
To access a few of Eddie Webster’s articles in ROAPE please click here and here.
In January 2024, Makerere University in Kampala hosted a two-day conference to reflect on 40 years of neoliberalism in Uganda. Writing on the conference, Serunkuma reminds us that, 40 years on, Uganda remains an epicentre of neoliberalism – or what he terms the ‘new colonialism’ in Africa. Consequently, neoliberalism and its many ills must remain at the forefront of scholarly and activist discussion and analysis.
In January of this year, the Uganda’s Neoliberalism at 40 conference took place at Makerere University in Kampala. Put together by comrades Rose Nakayi, Sarah Ssali (both from Makerere University), Jörg Wiegratz (University of Leeds), and my teacher, Guiliano Martiniello (presently at the International University of Rabat in Morocco), the conference attracted a wide variety of papers and comments from scholars and activists from across the world.
The profiles of the presenters and participants were telling enough of the direction of this conference: renowned anti-exploitation, anti-capitalism scholar-activists, and self-described socialist-communists. The keynote that was delivered by Professor Yash Tandon, a socialist who was full of stories of grand encounters and nostalgia – with Milton Obote, Julius Nyerere, and one with Vladmir Putin during his time as a KBG agent in Berlin. Legendary activist Kalundi Serumaga was there; unionist Professor Jean John Barya, and activist Agartha Atuhaire, who delivered the closing comment. That credentialed scholars from Makerere, the UK, and Napoli seamlessly and respectfully mingled with on-ground activists was a sight to behold.
Dr Sarah Ssali, Dean of the School of Gender Studies at Makerere University, welcoming keynote speaker Professor Yash Tandon
And for the gawkers, activist and former politician, and current UNAIDS boss, Winnie Byanyima, was in the audience, and described herself as old communist-socialist of the Julius Nyerere type. Her son, Anselm Kizza-Besigye delivered a brilliant paper on the ‘ethnoprenuership’ (his term) on oil with Bagungu as the case study. Byanyima challenged her son to try and step out of the scholarly closet and be an activist. I was there. Tasked to read all those brilliant papers and make some comment on all of them. It was an honour.
The papers, crafted from the vantage point of neoliberalism, touched sectors and subjects including the fish industry, civil society organisations, oil, sugar cane growing and trading, labour exportation/externalisation to the Middle East, housing crises, the 2021 election, mental health, and several others. These papers, despite being drafts, were a great deal of learning.
Neoliberalism as Double Jeopardy
In the course of reading these papers, one quickly realises that Uganda is trapped in a double catastrophe. On the one hand, it is capitalism — with all its commodity fetishism and anthropogenic ruins — and on the other, neoliberalism as an ‘imposition’ of a set of policies meant to benefit ‘former’ colonisers.
As we know it, capitalism is dated to have begun in the English countryside in the 1600s. That could mean, exploiting labour and the environment and mild forms of ‘commodity fetishism’ was here before 1980s. (Not that it was all good). But the IMF and World Bank enforcement of structural adjustment programmes — privatisation, financialization and devaluation — did not only come from an ugly place; it added another layer of complication.
Conference participants, Uganda’s Neoliberalism at 40: Taking stock of the operation of an exemplary market society in East Africa
Or a series of layers. As Jason Hickel has demonstrated in his recent book, The Divide, these policies came from the diabolic jealousness that the independence of African countries had deprived Euro-America of cheap raw materials. Comparatively, one can actually argue that capitalism in itself would not be the problem for the African continent if the continent were exploiting her resources and getting maximum benefits.
Consider the exploitation of own natural resources in Russia, Iran or Qatar. It could be communism and capitalism combined. Slovenian theorist Slavoj Zizek recently argued that China and Russia — two of the biggest and most stables economies in the world — have actually combined both: “they work like capitalists, and enjoy like communists.” Of course, they have oligarchs and Sheikhs, but the public is sufficiently provided. Africa’s problem, then, becomes singularly describable as neoliberalism.
Open and Structured Violence
In fact, one of my little disappointments during this conference was that most papers — not all of them — didn’t call neoliberalism exactly what it is: ‘new colonialism.’ That Africa has been dealing with 40 years of raw power and violence from Euro-America disguised as myriad technicalities — and oftentimes, openly as coups. Kalundi Serumaga stressed this point of violence many times.
Consider the technical language of new colonialism – the big debates: Developmentalism; democracy and human rights; conservation and preservation; free trade, and so on. All these have myriad institutions pushing them onto the African continent, yet these are the things through which colonialism reproduces itself. There is nothing more cynical and dangerous on the African continent as Western funded groups and discourses pushing these things. As Palestine has continued to demonstrate in record time, these terms have always been instruments of power.
Seeing Through the Ruins
As the epicentre of neoliberalism — where it is still rabidly promoted — one ought to narrate the forty years of imposition of things, especially privatisation and handing them over to individual businesspersons. This meant removing the government from investing and or running key aspects of a country’s existence, from public education, public transport, cooperatives, the hospitality sector, coffee trade, and telecoms, to banks, industries, ranches, tourism projects, and electricity distribution.
In Uganda, all these ended up in the hands of foreign monopolists. Other were simply left to collapse. Consider that before the 1980s, the government was the entrepreneur, started companies called parastatals, and generated income from exploiting its natural and human resources. These profits would be put to the development of other sectors of the economy including offering subsidies to others such as public health and education. Because of the size of these businesses, with no local businessmen to buy them, but with the IMF and the World Bank holding the Ugandan government at gunpoint, governments were forced to lose their revenue, and also their importance in the lives of their subjects.
Social and political commentator Kalundi Serumaga, contributing to the exchange.
If the country was a body, some of its parts have been organ-harvested, some are cancerous, and others are dead. The neo-liberalised state in Africa is a walking zombie. Through these ruins, many things come into context. Consider the collapse of the farmers bank, the Uganda Commercial Bank (UCB), and the deliberate closure of indigenous banks in Uganda. With a banking regime dominated by foreign-owned banks, this is outright violent banking colonialism.
Banking colonialism explains the mental health crises among young adults in Kalerwe market, whose businesses cannot benefit from any loan schemes. It explains the surge in labour/slave exportation to the Middle East (before we even discuss the gendered nature), because there is literary no money in the economy. So are the results of the government collapse of cooperatives (East Mengo, Busoga, Ankole). Because the sugar, coffee, dairy or tea farmers are left to the mercy of thieves from the big cities, it has resulted in a rise in rural poverty, thus rural-urban migration, and thus the pressure on housing in Kampala.
The irony of all this is that while we discussed the scourge of neoliberalism in Uganda, Kampala was hosting something called the Non-Aligned Movement.
A version of this blogpost was originally posted in The Observer.
Yusuf Serunkuma is a columnist in Uganda’s newspapers, scholar and a playwright. In 2014, Fountain Publishers published his first play, The Snake Farmers which was received with critical acclaim in Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda. He is also a scholar and researcher who teaches political economy and history, and writes regularly for ROAPE.
ROAPE’s Rama Salla Dieng writes that the current political crisis in Senegal is neither a symptom of ‘democracy dying in Africa’ nor the country being ‘on the brink’ as some headlines from the western media would have it. On the contrary, Dieng argues, this illusion does not hold when one considers the country’s political history stained by state and police brutality and human rights violations since independence.
By Rama Salla Dieng
From 1960, Senegal has experienced four long periods of non-military rule: Léopold Sédar Senghor (1960–80), Abdou Diouf (1980–2000), Abdoulaye Wade (2000–12) and Macky Sall (2012–April 2024, pending elections). Yet, the recent parliamentary decision to postpone the February 2024 presidential elections is considered by many to be an institutional coup by the incumbent president. Rejected by the Constitutional Court, the decision catalysed mass uprisings in major Senegalese cities in which four protestors died.
This essay takes a longue durée approach to explain that the pre-electoral period has always been a trying time for the Senegalese democracy. All incumbent presidents have attempted to remain in power through manipulating electoral laws. This is well-illustrated by Macky Sall’s postponement of the February elections to 2 June by mobilising a parliamentary vote backed by the majority of coalition MPs and the intervention of the police on the street to subdue the protest. This moment is comparable to the major institutional crisis of 1962 which resulted in Senegal adopting a presidential regime. In addition, the prevailing state and EU-sponsored police brutality is reminiscent of the crackdown against the May 1968 mass protests that erupted for similar reasons. Finally, the government’s Amnesty bill related to the deadly protests between March 2021 and February 2024, which is being discussed by the Senegalese Parliament on 6 March 2024, is comparable to the 2005 Ezzan law.
Momar Coumba Diop rightly reminds us that in reconfiguring forces in Senegalese society, the ruling elites were not successful in asserting ‘lasting moral and intellectual leadership over the society’. Consequently, groups challenging the legitimacy of the ruling class have developed a ‘riot culture’.
The current 2024 political crisis which started with the March 2021 citizen protest has led to the highest number of killings (over 60) and unlawful imprisonments that the country has known. But I argue that what we are currently witnessing in Senegal is neither ‘democracy dying in Africa’nor the country being ‘on the brink’ as per some catastrophist headlines from the British media. On the contrary, the roots of the current crisis are to be found in the highly centralised Senegalese political system which allows for extreme concentration of powers in the hands of the president. Senegal’s home-grown model of democracy from below explains the historical struggle against constitutional coups.
An unprecedented parliamentary crisis?
The institutional crisis which started on 5 February 2024 is not an unprecedented. It was under President Léopold Sédar Senghor that the young Republic experienced its first major crisis in December 1962 resulting in the arrest and life imprisonment of the then Prime Minister Mamadou Dia. A few days later, on 19 December 1962, the parliament approved President Senghor’s decision to merge the functions of Prime Minister and President, thereby confirming President Senghor as the new head of government. It was following this internal coup, orchestrated by Senghor, that the referendum organised in March 1963 sealed the adoption of a presidential regime in Senegal.
Remember May 1968!
On 3 February 1967, with the assassination of the MP Demba Diop in a parking lot in Thiès followed by the attempted assassination of President Senghor, two people were caught, tried and executed the same year. Senghor was re-elected in 1968 against this background after which his government passed an austerity package affecting student welfare programmes. This prompted unprecedented strike actions at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar. The strike, which constituted the twilight hours of revolutionary politics in Senegal according to Pascal Bianchini, became generalised when major labour unions joined in, later amplified by peasant organising, leading to student and worker arrests and deaths. To address the political crisis a cabinet reshuffle was introduced followed by a state of emergency, declared in May 1968.
In a similar fashion, the 2021 protests resulted in at least 60 un-investigated deaths, including students, and the closure of the main university sites. As was the objective of the May 1968 students, workers and peasants, the protests were aimed at fighting the high costs of living in rural and urban centres.
How to get away with murder?
The outgoing president and government’s proposed fast-track Amnesty bill related to the deadly protests between March 2021 and February 2024, is being discussed by the Senegalese Parliament on 6 March 2024.The proposed Amnesty bill which would cover ‘all acts likely to be classified as criminal or correctional offences committed between February 1, 2021 and February 25, 2024, both in Senegal and abroad, relating to demonstrations or having political motivations’. This would open the door to impunity and would be the ultimate affront to victims and survivors of protests and their families according to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
The Amnesty bill is comparable to the 2005 Ezzan Amnesty law which was contested by the opposition and the civil society. The Article 1 of the Ezzan bill granted a ‘complete amnesty for all crimes committed in Senegal and abroad, relating to the general or local elections or committed with political motivations between 1 January 1983 and 31 December 2004, whether the authors have been judged or not.’ As for the law’s article 2, which was found unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court on 12 February 2005, it sought to grant a similar amnesty for all crimes committed in relation to the death of Babacar Sèye.. Sèye, a judge and then Vice-President of the Constitutional Court, was assassinated on 15 May 1993, the day after the results of the legislative elections (won by the Senegalese Socialist Party-PS) results were announced.
Despite the case being still unresolved, three men including Cledor Sene were condemned in 1994 for murder and arrested. Both human rights organisations and the local civil society have indicated their suspicions of a political killing and pointed to the responsibility of activists in the Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) then led by Abdoulaye Wade. Abdou Latif Coulibaly, an investigative journalist and former minister (who resigned during the February events) also suspected that Judge Sèye’s assassination was a contract killing and the liberation of Sene and his co-accused in 2002 by Wade, two years after he became president fuelled the suspicions on his involvement.
Considering this past and the fact that the first Amnesty law in Senegal was introduced by President Senghor to ‘pardon’ his former prime minister Mamadou Dia in 1976, and the 2005 Ezzan Amnesty bill introduced by Wade, the question must be asked: is history repeating itself in 2024 with Macky Sall proposed Amnesty?
Legacies of 23 June 2011
President Sall has been testing the quality of the Senegalese institutions, which he has spent two terms undermining. The illustration here is the lack of separation between the executive, the parliament, and the judiciary. The current coup by Macky Sall reminds many of his predecessor Abdoulaye Wade’s attempt to change the constitution for a third term, despite his promise of Sopi (radical change) which saw him elected in 2000 in a tide of popular support but led to extreme confrontations between citizens and the police within and outside parliament on 23 June 2011.
Similarly, we witnessed how on 5 February, a majority of coalition MPs forced a vote to delay the elections until 15 December despite the opposition MPs’ disagreement. This push was forced through with the intervention of the police inside parliament. We also witnessed the release of at least 300 unlawfully imprisoned protestors and political opponents since 16 February 2024 and the unconstitutional decision by Macky Sall to propose an amnesty law that would liberate the remaining political prisoners such as opposition leader Ousmane Sonko and the candidate of his party Bassirou Diomaye Faye.
Despite the president’s constitutional meddling aimed at postponing the elections, the decision of the Constitutional Council to overturn Sall’s decree was met with joy and celebrations from most Senegalese citizens. This euphoria was short lived with the president’s decision to unilaterally hold a national dialogue on 26 and 27 February and the subsequent announcement that the government approved Sall’s proposal to hold new elections in June 2024.
Citizen mobilisations against democratic backsliding
There is much to fear from the political instability in the region, more so now after Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger decided to leave ECOWAS. There is fear of a ripple effect with political instability dominant in the region, and ECOWAS’s failure to become an ‘ECOWAS of the people’ as opposed to a tool that furthers the control of its Heads of States. Therefore, with persisting security challenges for Senegal at its borders, including with Mali, Senegal needs to strengthen its institutions from within.
The role of the EU-funded Rapid Action Surveillance and Intervention Group (also known as GAR-SI) in violently crushing Senegalese protestors revives questions of accountability on the one hand and sovereignty from former imperial powers on the other, within the struggle of Senegalese citizens rethinking their social contract with the ruling class. As Mamadou Diouf reminds us, the 2000 and 2012 political transitions were marked by the same seal: rejection of the political and economic status quo and lack of accountability.
Senegalese women are not second-class citizens!
Senegalese citizens have always been politically educated. As a result, they have a desire to establish more equitable and mutually beneficial relations with political leaders on the one hand, and the powers of the North and South on the other. With regard to the social contract, citizens have mobilised restlessly in defence of the constitutional and Republican order, against state violence. These incidents include the murderous repression of the defence and security forces and riot police in Dakar, Ziguinchor and other towns, as well as arbitrary detentions and unlawful torture.
Senegalese women especially are treated as second-class citizens whose bodies have historically been weaponised as a battlefield in political struggles. This is illustrated by the arrests of Yewwu Yewwi activist and journalist Eugénie Rokhaya Aw under Senghor and under Macky Sall’s regime, the Adji-Sarr and Ousmane Sonko case, the rape case in which former minister Sitor Ndour was implicated in the assault of a pregnant MP at the National Assembly.
Recently, journalists, among the few stakeholders publicly involved in the debate and coverage of the elections, have also not been spared. The recent arrests and violence against Absa Hane, a journalist with Seneweb, and the stabbing of Maimouna Ndour Faye on her way home from recording a programme are just two examples.
In a pre-electoral landscape dominated by the words of men it is urgent to collectively rethink our project for society as well as the future. To quote Ndèye Khady Babou of the Senegalese Feminist Network: ‘we are entering the month dedicated to women’s struggle sad and angry. We were dismayed to learn of the assassination attempt on journalist Maimouna Ndour Faye of 7tv, and we hope that justice will do its job to ensure that the guilty parties are punished’. Gender-based violence is not just a women’s issue. It’s a societal problem that only together we can eradicate.
Conclusion
At odds with voices presenting the parliamentary decision backed by the president as an unprecedented crisis for the ‘Senegalese-exception-in-the-troubled-Sahelian-region’, I argue that such a narrative does not hold when one considers the country’s political history in the longue durée, stained by state and police brutality and human rights violations. There is a strong belief that with the resiliency of its institutions, and with adequate in-depth institutional reform such as the rethinking of the hyper presidentialist regime which lacks clear separation of powers, Senegal will emerge stronger from this crisis. Citizens understand that this heritage is at stake, hence the urgency to rethink the social contract, especially in the run-up to presidential elections.
An earlier version of this post has been published on African Arguments and can be found here.
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 Kadihine party. 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 Kadihines and the National Democratic Movement.
Pascal Bianchini: Cheddad, thank you for this interview. Just before we start, a few words, perhaps to introduce yourself. Are you a former militant of the revolutionary left in the 70s?
Cheddad: Well, at the time, I was a pupil who entered school a bit late as we used to do in those days. First, I was an activist at Rosso secondary school, then at the national high school in Nouakchott.
So that was at the end of the 1960s…
I went to the Collège de Rosso in 67 perhaps. Then in 71-72, I went to the Lycée National for a few months. The situation was intense in terms of the school movement. I was expelled in January 72 with almost a third of the school’s staff, because all the students were involved in the strike movement.
Can you explain the reasons for these strikes?
Well, first of all, it has to be said that there was a ferment around independence, with Arab and Black African nationalist movements. Well, I was too young to be influenced by that. It was from Rosso that I began to evolve. It was the most modern town in Mauritania. There was a church in Rosso, with a large library of general literature, French newspapers, and cultural magazines. I read a lot of books by Rousseau, Diderot and Balzac. Having experienced certain dramas linked to racism when I was still very young, accelerated my maturity and enabled me to overcome these situations. Then, there were a number of events that were to have an impact on me. First of all, the 1967 war.
In Palestine?
Yes, when the Arab armies were defeated by Israel, and Nasser withdrew. Although I’m not an Arab nationalist, I was attached to Nasser’s personality, with the nationalisation of the Suez Canal and the achievements he had in mind. Then came 1968 with the workers’ movement that had called a strike in Zouérate and the army firing on them. They killed around ten workers.
For people who don’t know Zouerate…
Zouerate is the town around which Mauritania’s iron ore mines are operated, in the far north of the country. It was practically the only place where there were workers, and also in Nouadhibou, with the dockers, and at the same time, there were building sites and construction work. In fact, the movement never presented itself exclusively as an ideological movement but as a liberation movement. Liberation was incomplete during the 60s. It was an illusion. People realised that. There were people who engaged in a new struggle against neo-colonialism. In 1968, the poet in front of us got together with his friends to create a movement in a village in Gorgol called Tokomadji. One of them was assigned there as a teacher. As for me, I joined the movement in 1972.
What did your movement do?
Our action focused mainly on the economy, in particular the need to nationalise the mining companies, for example, copper in Akjoujt, iron in Zouerate and fish in Nouadhibou. There were also other demands, such as education, which called into question the French system that was imposed on us on the basis of agreements between France and Mauritania. I remember that when we demanded education reforms, we were told that we couldn’t touch the French system under the cooperation agreements.
At the time, however, there was limited teaching of Arabic. How was the system organised then?
There have only been hours of Arabic in the education system since independence. Generally speaking, in a primary school, there were six French teachers for every two or three Arab teachers. So they taught several classes, whereas the French teachers taught one class. At the lycée, the teaching staff was mainly French, with a few black Africans or Moors. Initially, the baccalaureate was taken in Dakar or Saint Louis in Senegal, at a time when we still had cooperation agreements.
So there were French aid workers too?
Almost all the teachers were French development workers. When they came to the beach in the 60s and 70s, you’d have thought they were in Nice or somewhere in France.
And Moctar Ould Dadd’s regime was, you might say, pro-French?
Yes, at the time of independence, there were two parties, roughly speaking The first elements came out of French schools. They were interpreters, people who had just finished primary school. So they weren’t trained. They were low-level people, academically speaking. Moctar was targeted by the French. He completed his secondary education. In 1957, he was one of five Mauritanian baccalaureates. Then they trained him to become a lawyer.
So, these baccalaureate holders went to Senegal to take their baccalaureate.
Yes, he passed his baccalaureate in Senegal in 1957. What I’m getting at is that some of these interpreters had close ties with the French, which was normal given their position as interpreters. There were also teachers and nurses, who were more independent from the French. They were the ones who started a youth movement that led to the formation of a party called Ennahda (Awakening), which was one of the first to demand independence.
But what was Mokhtar Ould Daddah’s party called?
The PRM, Parti du regroupement mauritanien. Then, in 1961, the Nahda party and the PRM party merged to form the Mauritanian People’s Party (PPM).
So there was no longer any opposition?
Well, strictly speaking, there was no longer any opposition. But there were often clashes between the pro-French and the anti-French, for example when Air Mauritanie was set up. The company was entrusted to a certain Bouyagui Ould Abidine who was the Minister of Transport at the time, the former leader of the opposition having joined the PPM. He did not agree with the French. He left to buy the first planes in Spain. He was sacked as a result. The fact remains that all Mauritanians were marked by a certain nationalism in economic terms. Even those who were close to the French wanted to do something, even without upsetting the French. Well, there were also those who were against the system as a whole. Until 1972, it was said that it was the French ambassador who ran Mauritania. From 1972 onwards, the movement gained momentum and was able to bring the regime to heel. This could have led to an armed struggle, as happened in Chad. To avoid this, Moktar denounced the cooperation agreements in 1972. This paved the way for the nationalisation of MIFERMA and the creation of the ouguiya, the national currency, as well as reforms to the education system to pave the way for further decolonisation.
Coming back to the political parties, before the Kadihines, were there any other left-wing groups that existed underground?
First of all, the group that formed the Kadihines included pro-Nasser Arab nationalists. With the failure of the 1967 war, they were disappointed, like most revolutionaries in the Arab world. They no longer saw nationalism as a prospect for liberation. They turned to Marxism, as they did everywhere else in the world. However, others continued in Arab nationalism, either pro-Iraqi or pro-Syrian Baathists, but they were not combatants. We occupied all the space from the end of the 1960s until the overthrow of the Mokhtar regime in July 1978.
Was there a party equivalent to the African Independence Party (PAI) like there was in Senegal?
I think there were attempts in the 1950’s. There were black African elements, including two survivors Ladji Traoré and Daffa Bakari. Before joining the movement, they had their own party, a Marxist party, the Mauritanian Workers’ Party (PTM). They were linked to the African Independence Party (PAI).
Did the movement publish a newspaper?
Yes, in the manner of Lenin’s Pravda, which was intended to channel a general movement throughout Russia, we had a newspaper that was distributed throughout the country. It had to be read throughout the country at the same time. So we created Sayat El Madhloum. It was distributed all over the country, in French and Arabic.
What does Sayat El Madhloum mean in Arabic?
In Arabic, it’s the cry of the oppressed. At the same time, there was poetry, because Arabic and popular poetry was in a way the traditional press. That’s why practically three-quarters of the literary production at the time was linked to the movement. Even in music, All the songs were transformed into militant music.
So, The term Kadihine in Arabic means?
The working masses – those who live off the fruits of their labour.
And there was a manifesto, a founding text?
Not as such. In fact, the founding text was the publication of the first issue of Sayat el Madhloum. The Kadihine party, which published the newspaper, existed in total secrecy, so much so that the intelligence services were unaware of its existence. In October 1973, it was decided to declare the party’s existence. So we had to prepare for several months, distributing the proclamation leaflet. I remember a sub-prefect in the Hodh region in the east of the country who, when he saw the leaflet proclaiming the party, sent the information to his superiors as if the movement had started in that region. The intelligence services were completely unaware of this. Even when they arrested people, they didn’t know that there was an organised party. They thought it was just a movement.
Was there a lot of repression?
A prison was set up in a district of Nouakchott in a building that had been used as a prefecture in colonial times, where up to 400 people were held. At the time, there weren’t even fifteen thousand inhabitants in Nouakchott.Can you imagine? Our poet friend here was one of them. He was detained there! I remember an issue of Le Militant, which was the party’s internal organ. It said that out of 400 detainees, there were only five party members. The party was clandestine. They usually arrested teachers and intellectuals whom they thought were the inspiration behind the movement, when in reality the real pillars were the students, like me at the time. The dozens of students expelled from school who made up the fighting elite of the movement. In fact, the regime’s mistake was to expel all these students for going on strike because they were the backbone of the movement. In fact, they were old enough to be students because most of them had gone to school late. But there were also younger generations with them.
There were also students, but who were outside?
Well, there were students who went on strike in 73 to support the students and workers on strike, but their grants were cut off. There were also civil servants who went on strike. And they were fired from the civil service. That was the peak of the movement, in 72-73. That’s what prompted the regime to denounce the cooperation agreements.
It’s often said that the Kadihines were Maoists. Is this true?
Well, internationally, Beijing was helping and the Eastern European countries were helping us. They were the socialist camp. It was normal to have sympathy for them. In the past, it was the great Western nations that oppressed us. So it was normal to distance ourselves from them and their Western democracy. The reference to Marxism was like a universal ideological reference against the arbitrariness of the West. We were slaves. We wanted to free ourselves. We used all the experiences of all the ideologies. We used everything to free ourselves. That was the case with Amilcar Cabral in Guinea-Bissau. This was the case with all the Arab nationalists. Even Nasser was willing to cooperate with the West, but he was not forgiven for nationalising the Suez Canal. He was pushed to become a socialist. It was all part of the Cold War. So, it has to be said that we were very much inspired by Mao because we were in an underdeveloped country and our society was peasant. We saw ourselves as closer to the Chinese revolution than to the Soviet or French revolution because it was a peasant movement. Reading Mao’s writings inspired us much more about this reality. We were thinking of carrying arms and Mao Tse Tung’s military writings were references for all revolutionary movements. That’s what Maoism was all about at the time. I remember Mao Tse Tung saying in the introduction to his military writings: “You learn war by waging war. You learn revolutionary war by waging revolutionary war. You learn revolutionary war in China by waging revolutionary war in China…”. So, Mao is inviting you to adapt. He’s not inviting you to be Maoist or to copy from others.
At the same time, there is another liberation struggle going on nearby, the Polisario, the Saharawis…Were there any links?
More than links. If you don’t mind, the Polisario was a creation of the National Democratic Movement (MND). There were Mauritanian elements who originated from or were related to the Sahrawi populations, the Reguibat and others. It was these elements that inspired the Polisario, which was created in Zouerate, in the far north of Mauritania. When their movement was launched, the Polisario newspaper was printed in the Sayat El Madhloum printing works. It was then sent to the Polisario camps. Their main support in the beginning was the MND. We collected money and medicines. The regime let it happen. In the beginning, it wasn’t hostile to the Polisario. It just lets them get on with it. Even when we were campaigning to raise money or resources for them, the regime didn’t punish us for that. It was only afterwards that the French and the Moroccans pushed it into a confrontation with the Polisario. So they dragged it into the Sahara war. With the war in the Sahara, the regime was dependent on weapons from the West and the Moroccan army. It no longer had any autonomy. At one point, the Polisario was encouraged to reach an agreement with Spain, just as Mauritania had sought support from France to avoid Moroccan demands. But that’s when Hassan II had the intelligence to sabotage this agreement, with the Green March. The man was super-intelligent to effectively drag Mauritania into this war and sabotage the agreements between the Polisario and Spain. So, the link between Mauritania and the Polisario was direct.
In relation to the term Kadihines, how do you situate the term National Democratic Movement (MND)?
Ahmed Salem El Moctar, aka Cheddad
At the beginning, we were talking about the National Democratic Movement. But that gave rise to a debate. The D before the N meant that, given our feudal and tribal reality, we had to democratise our society. The term democratic didn’t mainly refer to democratic freedoms and so on, but it meant democratising society, overcoming slavery, abolishing slavery, involving women and so on. In our minds, that was democratisation. But other comrades had said that we were a society under occupation. Therefore the most important task was the national task. We had to liberate the country. Then we have to develop democracy in all its aspects. After a debate lasting several months, people agreed on the term MND rather than National Democratic Movement. In other words, it wasn’t the Marxist or ideological or Maoist option that took precedence. The first concern was that it was Mauritanian.
But was the MND a creation of the Kadihines?
Of course, it was. In terms of chronology, it comes after. 1968 was the start of the Kadihines
Yes, practically, it was the beginning of the Kadihines. The Kadihines was a bit of a pejorative! The movement was called the National Democratic Movement in Arabic. Now its militants were called the Kadihines, which had an ideological connotation.
And the MND was broader than that?
Exactly! All the movement’s militants were called the Kadihines.. In fact, that was also the name of the party. But nobody knew it existed. The Kadihine party in Mauritania was clandestine
But how did the MND develop its activities?
The MND began with regional, local and sectoral structures, and so on. You had movements of revolutionary action committees. For example, here in Nouakchott, you had a local revolutionary action committee (CARL). In the North, I was active in another structure which covered Zouerate, Nouadhibou and Akjoujt, which was still a big mining town at the time, the Comité d’Action Révolutionnaire du Nord (CARN). In the east, there was a Revolutionary Action Committee. Moreover, within this structure, there were young people, there were women with a very strong presence. I remember a report on Radio France Internationale in 1992 about an opposition demonstration at the time of the UFD. It was said to be the biggest demonstration in Nouakchott since 1972. It was a gigantic demonstration: on 29 May 1972 we commemorated the massacre of the Zouerate workers. It was commemorated every year. Nouakchott was still a small town: young people were invited to gather in one neighbourhood, women in another, workers in another. There were at least three or four thousand women present at the women’s rally. The working-class neighbourhoods were called quartiers libres (free neighbourhoods), where the police couldn’t dare wander in. The high school in Nouakchott, the national high school, was also called a “liberated zone”.
So Moktar Ould Dadda’s regime had to take steps to distance itself from France?
Yes, that’s right. There was the denunciation of the cooperation agreements, then the nationalisation of MIFERMA in 1974, which operated the iron mines, and before the creation of the ouguiya in 1973.
And from then on, were there internal differences within the movement in relation to this new situation?
Yes, initially we thought that the regime would never give in. As elsewhere, we were of the opinion that we had to prepare an armed struggle to make the regime give way and that we even had to sweep it away. There may have been differences of opinion on the issue, but the general tendency was to take up arms. But from 1973, there was a tendency among us to take up arms against the regime, while there were more moderate people who thought that things were beginning to change. We pushed the regime into a confrontation with France. The poet here and I were among them, and we thought that in this context, we had to support the regime in this confrontation with France, to radicalise this effort. But for the others, it was all smoke and mirrors. I even remember an article in Sayat El Madhoum that read? “Down with the new CFA! So to say that there was nothing new and that we were deceiving public opinion and that there were no real concessions, that there had been major negotiations on details.
As a result, the movement no longer has the same momentum as before.
For me, the movement’s historic mission was coming to an end. Our raison d’être was to complete the decolonisation of our country, to fight against French neo-colonialism.Now, of course, there were militants fighting. There were structures in place. All that was going to be affected and the movement broke up. Strangely enough, most of those who denounced the regime’s support ended up getting closer to it. Those who were most virulent against the regime became agents of the regime or disbanded or disappeared from the scene. Some rushed to study abroad.
But which regime? Because there were several regimes afterwards.
I’m talking about the regime of Mokhtar Ould Daddah. But in fact, it’s a bit more complicated. I was a bit hasty. In 1973, we had a debate but we managed to close ranks.
Forthose who don’t know much about history, when the Mauritanian state went to war against the Polisario?
There was a secret agreement between Morocco, Spain and Mauritania to divide the Western Sahara, one part for Mauritania, and one part for Morocco. In fact, Mauritania only got a small part of the Sahrawi territory. When the agreement was signed, there was a meeting of the national assembly, which at the time was in fact a rump parliament. Officially, we voted to elect deputies, but in reality, the members of the assembly were appointed. However, there was one Soninke parliamentarian, Camara Seydou Boubou, who dared to raise his finger. Mokhtar Ould Daddah, who was capable of irony, said: “A Soninké always has something to say! Go for it! Comrade. Talk!” He said it reminded him of a story their elders used to tell them when they were little. The lion, the hyena and the jackal got together to go hunting. In the evening, they must share the booty. But when evening came, only the hyena managed to bring back a cow, a sheep and a rat. The others had spent the day sleeping. The lion then asked the jackal: “What do we do?” The jackal said, “It’s obvious: the cow for you, the sheep for me! And the rat for the hyena!” The audience burst out laughing. Well, the important thing is that during that period, the war plunged the country into another situation, which was then exacerbated by the drought. It was truly catastrophic! So I remember well at a tea party, when we heard Mokhtar’s speech announcing the start of the war, it was the start of new differences for us on the question of support for the regime. It wasn’t the debates on reforms that separated us. It was just the war.
So, some of your people supported the war?
Absolutely. Some were looking for justifications for the war. There’s one element that we’ve perhaps overlooked a little too quickly, which will resurface in contemporary history, and that’s the tensions between the Black Mauritanians and the Moors. These tensions are not new. At the time of the colonial administration, the Moors were still nomads and there weren’t many of them who went to school.
So, the administration’s auxiliaries were often black Africans, often even Senegalese. In one school, almost all of the five or six teachers were Senegalese. Only the teachers who taught Arabic were Mauritanians. At independence, most Moors didn’t go to school. They were nomads. It was the drought from 1968-69 onwards that prompted the Moors to accept schooling. However, long before that, some Moors had attended school and Moors were beginning to emerge as managers. But they were up against an administration of black Africans who they tried to push around to take their places. So that’s how it started. With the drought, school became the only way out. There were no more cattle, there was no more farming, and there was nothing left. You had to be a civil servant or an employee to survive. So the Moorish world switched over to the school system. And as the administration was still run by black Africans. So that made the confrontation worse. We, on the other hand, managed to mitigate it because we brought everyone together in the same framework.
How did you achieve this?
The united objective was the liberation of the country. And in neighbouring Senegal, there was a movement similar to ours, which also helped. It should also be said that Maoist ideology and the writings of Frantz Fanon and many others helped us. We gave people perspectives and solutions to their concerns. That eased the clash. There was a first clash in 1966 at the Rosso College and elsewhere over teaching in Arabic, but just after that, in 1968, came the events in Zouerate, which strengthened national unity. Finally, there was the MND, which brought everyone together. Now, the new exogenous dividing factor has been the war in the Sahara.
Can you explain why the problem has resurfaced?
When the military took power in 1978, it weakened the movement and its unitary ideas. Divisionist ideas began to flourish because the military had no political training. Most of them had a tribalist or regionalist ideology. They were not in a position to create a climate of unity in the country. Everyone came to get their piece of the pie, which created a climate conducive to communitarianism. You have to unite your community, your tribe, and your region, to get your share of the cake. It wasn’t just us. It was a universal backlash that existed everywhere.
We’re coming to the end of our interview. Is there still a memory of this period? Are there any commemorations? Has anything been written about it?
Well, I’ve had the advantage of having developed independently. Initially, as a student, I even led the movement in Rosso completely independently. I wasn’t structured. People would send me their leaflets and statements and I would distribute them. Well, when I joined the movement, I kept this independence of mind and of observation and synthesis. This has helped me today to think about the situation and defend this heritage. The others have practically disappeared into thin air. With my friend Jemal Kaber, who has a huge library that you met yesterday, we keep track of everything that is written and that is of some importance about that period.
And aren’t there any historians who have taken an interest in that period?
From time to time, students and lecturers at the University of Nouakchott ask me to write about that period. But I mainly see foreign visitors who are interested in the MND.
I only started talking about the Kadihines when I became interested in Senegal with And Jëf activists because there were links at the time I suppose…
Yes, very close. At the time, And Jëf used to send its activists to us for training. They would spend months or even a year with us. In organisational terms, we were further ahead of them. I remember at university in Dakar when Mauritanian students spoke, there was complete silence when they listened, unlike many others.
Finally, how did this revolutionary experience end for you?
That’s a chapter in my book that I call “the painful break”. I was following national and international events, and I was beginning to doubt our ideological references, particularly Marxist, socialist and others. And in 1979, after the end of the war, I decided to break with the movement on that basis, while maintaining relationships of friendship, contacts with everyone and exchanges. kept a militant side, working in the field on national issues and at the same time deepening my reflection on current international phenomena, including the evolution of ideologies.
This interview with Cheddad took place on 10 June 2023, in Nouakchott, in the home of the great poet Mauritanian Poet Ahmedou Ould Abdelkader.
Born in the 1950s, Ahmed Salem El Moctar, aka Cheddad, was a leader of the Mauritanian student movement in the early 1970s, as well as an underground activist with the Kadihines. For several years now, he has been writing articles and memoirs about this revolutionary period (notably Les cris des sans-voix, published by Editions Joussour Abdelaziz in Nouakchott).
Featured Photograph: Mauritanian youth protesters in Nouakchott on 25 April 2011 (Wiki Commons)
Owei Lakemfa and Salvador Ousmane write about a vibrant conference held in Abuja on the politics, life and ideas of Lenin. The conference involved a rich array of discussion and debate about socialist and working class politics in Nigeria, Africa and the world. Students, researchers and activists, discussed the relevance of Lenin’s revolutionary ideas for the deep and on-going political and economic crisis in Nigeria.
By Owei Lakemfa and Salvador Ousmane
A major international conference from January 22-23, 2024 was held in Abuja on the 100th anniversary of the death of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the leader of the first socialist revolution.
The two-day conference with over 300 attending discussed the legacy and continued relevance of Lenin’s ideas. This included a number of international participants, veteran socialists and labour leaders in Nigeria, but importantly a number of young students.
The chairperson of the International Lenin Centenary Coordinating Committee was Owei Lakemfa a well-known commentator on current events in Nigeria and former Secretary General of the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity (OATUU), the umbrella trade union centre in Africa.
Lakemfa said that the conference would, among other topics, examined Marxism-Leninism as a tool for analysing neo-liberalism, multilateralism, the rise of bodies like the BRICS, globalisation and the contemporary world and why the so-called socialist countries collapsed in 1989-1991 and if Marxism-Leninism can be used to analyse, understand and tackle the current challenges of democracy and underdevelopment in Africa and whether it is still emancipatory and relevant today.
The organisers stated that:
Lenin’s example, led to the explosion of revolutions in the world including those in Vietnam, Kampuchea, North Korea, Laos, the Chinese Revolution led by Chairman Mao, the Castro-led Cuban Revolution, the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua and the Venezuelan Revolution led by Hugo Chavez.
In Africa, the defunct USSR which provided training, logistics, arms and funding, was crucial to the success of the liberation movements and independence for Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa.
Lenin, lawyer, theoretician, strategist, tactician and organiser was perhaps the greatest advocate of working peoples’ power in the 20th Century and one of the greatest thinkers and intellectuals of that century.
The keynote address on the “Labour aristocracy and the denouement of democratic politics in Nigeria” was provided by Nuhu Yaqub, the former Vice Chancellor of universities in both Abuja and Sokoto.
Solidarity messages were presented from a range of organisations, including the Nigeria Labour Congress. Joe Ajaero, its president, said “It is clear that without the work of Lenin and his group, all the beautiful Marxian postulations may not have found traction in the real world economy…” He went on to say: “Leninism’s emphasis on the class struggle and the need for a revolutionary vanguard to address the concerns of the working class remains relevant. In the face of transnational corporations and global economic disparities, Leninist ideas encourage us to scrutinise power structures and advocate for social justice.” He added: “The Leninist lens, with its focus on imperialism and the exploitation of the working class, remains a potent tool for analyzing the root causes of social inequality…The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few is a challenge that transcends borders, and Leninist principles encourage us to explore collective solutions that address the systemic issues underlying global disparities.”
Twenty six papers were presented at the conference. In the first session, these included introductory papers from two veteran socialists, Dipo Fashina, former President of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the university lecturers trade union and Edwin Madunagu a former lecturer in mathematics and a prolific writer. These were followed by a paper by Drew Povey, on “Lenin supported strikes as seeds of working class self-emancipation” and one by Issa Aremu a former textile workers leader.
Other papers presented at the Conference included Biodun Olamosu’s “National question and the quest for social change”. Olamosu is a researcher, writer and publisher, and has appeared frequently in ROAPE. He talked about the need to unite the working class of Nigeria and to counteract those fanning the flames of ethnic chauvinism.
Saleh Mari Maina spoke on “Globalisation, imperialism and the fate of the Nigerian working class” a paper which emphasised that the Nigerian left is fragmented and needs a unified platform to guide its socialist transformation by the working class and other oppressed classes. While Adelaja Odukoya presented a paper on “Escaping underdevelopment: charting a new path for Africa’s development in times of neoliberalism”..
The final session on focused on the way forward and was chaired by labour leader, Huawa Mustapha. Benson Upah of the Nigeria Labour Congress, noted that the left had been on retreat and asked what we could do to re-invigorate the it without romanticising the past. He argued for the need to connect Leninism with the local environment while avoiding mutual blame by labour, students and civil society.
Femi Aborisade called for change from the current catastrophic state of Nigeria. He argued that the current President Bola Tinubu is the worst in history from the point of view of the working class. Aborisade said there is the need to invest in full-time organisers to build a vanguard party.
Osagie Obayawana, a veteran lawyer, called for a committee to agree on a minimum program and to get workers, farmers, traders and students to work together in workplaces, schools and communities towards capturing state power.
The conference ended with rousing singing of solidarity songs.
Owei Lakemfa and Salvador Ousmane are Nigerian socialists who have spent years involved in activism, socialist organising and the development of radical organisations and ideas for an anti-capitalist future in Africa.
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.
Leo Zeilig: Comrade, can you introduce yourself to ROAPE’s readers? Many of us know your work, and writing on roape.net, but please outline your activism and research.
Florian Bobin: I am a researcher in history at the Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar, and my work focuses on liberation struggles and state violence in Senegal under the rule of President Leopold Sedar Senghor (1960-1980).
I believe in going beyond the confines of academia and making radical histories, buried by national myths, accessible to a wider public as part of the toolkit of those fighting injustice today; by making my publications open access and available in French and English, by trying to disseminate their content through multimedia formats on social media platforms, and by participating in various non-academic events.
In recent years, I have also been active in promoting the life and work of revolutionary philosopher Omar Blondin Diop. In 2023, on the 50th anniversary of his death in custody, we published, with his family, his selected writings, which resonates tremendously with contemporary struggles and are now available in Dakar. The biography I wrote about him will be published later this year.
Can you give us a quick overview of the situation, and the background to the political crisis in Senegal?
At the heart of the current crisis is President Macky Sall’s desire to retain power for his clan. He sought a third term in office, but popular mobilisation forced him to renounce it. Sall then named Prime Minister Amadou Ba as his candidate for the upcoming presidential race, but Ba’s unpopularity with the public, even within his own party, has created a crisis within the ruling coalition of Benno Bokk Yaakaar (BBY).
And while Sall’s regime has sought to eradicate the opposition (‘reducing it to its simplest expression’, as he put it in 2015) and successfully disqualified his main opponent Ousmane Sonko from running, Sonko’s number two in his party African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics, and Fraternity (PASTEF), Bassirou Diomaye Faye, was ruled eligible to run and is now considered one of the favourites. If free and fair elections were to be held, the current regime would likely fall and cede power to PASTEF. In such a case, Macky Sall and his clan would risk being prosecuted by a party built on the fight against corruption, which could deviate from the usual impunity that prevails after party changeovers in Senegal.
So Macky Sall had to find a way to keep his coalition – or at least an objective ally – in control. On 3 February, a few hours before the start of the presidential campaign, he announced the annulment of an earlier decree “convening the electoral body”, on the pretext of an alleged institutional crisis following unsubstantiated allegations of corruption in the Constitutional Council by Karim Wade (son of former president Abdoulaye Wade, for whom Macky Sall was a leading collaborator in the 2000s before taking his place in 2012), who had been disqualified for falsely declaring that he had renounced his French dual nationality.
Two days later, on 5 February, the government coalition of BBY joined forces with Karim Wade’s Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS), despite the latter’s official status as an opposition party. After calling on the gendarmerie [a military police force] in the chamber of the National Assembly to expel MPs who opposed the move, BBY and PDS voted unanimously in favour of a law cancelling the election and calling for a new vote 10 months later, in December 2024. In a sense, this sealed the reunification of the extended liberal political family, whose aim is to ensure the survival of the “neo-colonial pact” by eliminating serious contenders and selecting acceptable heirs.
On 15 February, however, the Constitutional Council declared this decision unconstitutional and called for elections to be held “as soon as possible”. Since then, the president has refused to respect the electoral calendar (the first round was originally scheduled for 25 February), calling instead for a “national dialogue” to reach a “consensus”.
The gap between Macky Sall’s rhetoric – in part directed at his international partners – and the brutality of his rule is profoundly Orwellian. How can there be a “dialogue” with a president who has violated the Constitution by illegally seeking to extend his term in office, and who has then violently suppressed the voices denouncing his institutional coup? As a result of this crisis of the president’s own making, at least four young men have been killed by the police since 9 February.
Members of the gendarmerie in the chamber of the National Assembly after expelling opposition MPs opposing the vote cancelling the 2024 presidential election – Dakar, 5 February (D.R.)
For more than two years, at least since 2021, there have been major disturbances, and unprecedented repression and killings of opposition supporters and opponents of the Macky Sall’s government, and the ruling Benno Bokk Yaakaar (BBY) coalition. Can you please talk us through what has been going on, and efforts to record who has been killed?
Senegal has a long history of political repression, dating back to Leopold Senghor’s regime, itself an heir to the violent colonial administration. After a relative political opening under the Abdou Diouf and Abdoulaye Wade administrations – repressive in their own rights – Macky Sall has significantly strengthened the security apparatus.
Over the past four years, Senegal has witnessed the systematic persecution of dissenting voices, epitomised by the bloody repression of the March 2021 and June 2023 protests (over sixty people have been killed). The judiciary has been instrumentalised, journalists harassed, TV stations broadcasting protests were switched off, and internet access via mobile data cut. Demonstrations, almost all of which were banned in the past year, have been met with tear gas and sometimes live ammunition (much of it manufactured by French corporations), with the police backed up by plainclothes militiamen marauding through the streets. The main opposition party, PASTEF, has been dissolved; hundreds of national and local opposition figures have been imprisoned alongside demonstrators and bystanders in appalling conditions, some of them tortured. One of Macky Sall’s legacies is undoubtedly the dramatic decay of fundamental rights in Senegal.
Together with journalists, cartographers, and data scientists, we launched an initiative last year called CartograFreeSenegal to keep an accurate record of those killed in the government crackdown, and to put faces and stories behind the statistics. What we have found is that many are young, working-class men living on the outskirts of Dakar or in the southern region of Casamance. The authorities have not launched any official investigation (Macky Sall announced on 22 February an imminent amnesty law, presented as a measure to appease the opposition, but more likely an attempt to cover up his administration’s involvement in the killings from 2021 to 2024), but the victims’ families, along with collectives and organisations such as Amnesty International, are fighting for justice.
You have written about the closure of the main university in Dakar, and the student’s struggle. Can you tell us a little about the role and involvement of students in the current action? I am always inspired by the solidarity, daring and action of students in Senegal. What are the links and connections between campus politics, and city, countrywide action?
The students at the University of Dakar have been a key force in social mobilisation, from independence struggles of the 1950s to the strikes of 1968 and 1988. The past four years have been no exception. Recognising that the campus was central to blocking the major roads of the capital and posed a serious political threat in the pre-electoral context, the authorities decided to close the university in June 2023, resulting in the dispersal of tens of thousands of students across the country and significantly weakening their mobilising potential.
This closure, together with the suffocating blockade of the southern region of Casamance through the suspension of the ferry line from Dakar to Ziguinchor (of which Ousmane Sonko is mayor), is undoubtedly an expression of the current regime’s desire to dismantle the politicised student body and of the class war being waged against the most disadvantaged sections of society. Many students have since abandoned their studies and sought low-paying jobs to survive; others have already taken the dangerous routes of exile to Europe and North America, some at the cost of their lives.
On 9 February, the violent death of Alpha Yoro Tounkara, a student at the Gaston Berger University in Saint-Louis, in the north of the country, who was killed by a policeman during a demonstration on campus, sent shockwaves throughout the country (another student, Prosper Clédor Senghor, who had been in a coma for ten days, died of his injuries on 21 February). Despite the blockade in Dakar, student unions from all the other universities immediately announced the suspension of classes for several days, joined by high school students who also organised walkouts.
A wall at the Gaston Berger University in memory of students killed by the police on campus, which reads: “Justice for our martyrs Fallou Sene, Alpha Y. Tounkara, Proper C. Senghor. RIP brothers” – Saint-Louis, 21 February (D.R.)
Can we talk about the left in Senegal? There are several important figures and associated coalitions, the principle anti-government leader is Ousmane Sonko, who has a great deal of support. Sonko’s party African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics, and Fraternity (PASTEF) has been very active – can you tell us about his politics, and positions? Then there is also FRAPP (Front for an Anti-Imperialist, Popular, and Pan-African Revolution), led by Guy Marius Sagna, who is the group’s administrative secretary. What does FRAPP represent? What sort of connection is there between Sagna and Sonko?
As Ndongo Samba Sylla pointed out at the recent Dakar book launch of Revolutionary Movements in Africa (Pluto Press, 2023): “In francophone Africa, we have the colonial legacy of ‘hold elections, but don’t go outside the box’, and the left cannot exist from an electoral point of view. We have left-wing problems, but they cannot be solved by the parties in power because they form coalitions that pander to metropolitan or neo-colonial interests or pursue a neo-liberal agenda”. A related phenomenon analysed by Pascal Bianchini, another co-editor of the volume, is how historic left-wing parties that fought underground under Senghor’s one-party regime later formed alliances with neoliberal parties and suffered internal divisions over personal struggles for leadership. Today, most of these parties survive because of their alliance with the ruling coalition. A few voices have cautiously expressed their disagreement with Macky Sall’s annulment of the election, but none have come out to break their collaboration.
In the face of what Amadou Kah calls “the transition from class struggle to the struggle for seats”, the Ousmane Sonko phenomenon has undoubtedly contributed to the politicisation of a youth – especially urban and poor – that had hitherto been excluded from political discourse, including that of the institutionalised left. Just look at the number of working-class Senegalese – from students and street vendors to tailors and bus drivers – wearing bracelets to show their support for his party.
PASTEF is a mix of several ideological currents, some conservative, others progressive and openly left-wing. In 2021, the party changed its name from “Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity” to “African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity” in a merger of some 14 parties, including Yoonu Askan Wi (a split from the historic Maoist party And Jëf, now an ally of the ruling coalition) and the National Democratic Rally (a pan-Africanist party founded by the scholar Cheikh Anta Diop).
The newer generation is best represented by Guy Marius Sagna. Sagna, who was Sonko’s campaign director for the 2017 legislative elections and was elected as an MP in 2022 under the PASTEF party, is one of the founders of the FRAPP movement (Front for an Anti-Imperialist, Popular and Pan-African Revolution), which campaigns on a pan-Africanist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist platform.
The struggle of working people has always been central to political change in Senegal. How active and what role have trade unions played in recent mobilisations?
On the whole, trade unions have expressed their concern about the crisis, but have played a minimal role in the recent mobilisations. Since the mass strike of May 1968, the watchword of “responsible participation” has contributed to the weakening of unions, which have become even more fragmented since the first political change of power in 2000.
Today, they tend to express their dissatisfaction through statements and local actions linked to their sector (teachers on the blockade of the University of Dakar, students on the assassination of their comrades, telecommunications workers on the recurrent Internet cuts, etc.). As we see in Ndongo Samba Sylla’s definition of forms of protest, trade unions have become more “corporatist” and civil society platforms “republican”, rather than “proletarian”.
Protestors demanding the liberation of political prisoners – Dakar, 17 February (Florian Bobin)
How would you assess the development of radical alternatives emerging, and developing in Senegal, and connecting these to a wider region and international anti-capitalist politics?
Some grassroots organisations, such as FRAPP, are at the crossroads of these protest logics, campaigning against the rising cost of living and for workers’ rights, and against Macky Sall’s planned third term and now institutional coup d’état. They have also developed pan-African networks through initiatives such as festivals and retreats with progressive movements from other West African countries. However, the ferocity of state repression has hampered the expansion of such initiatives.
Amid the current crisis and in its immediate aftermath, it seems crucial to assess its main cause: the extraordinary powers granted to Senegal’s head of state – a lasting legacy of the presidential constitution of 1963 installed by Senghor – who can rule the country as an omnipotent monarch by militarising the police and instrumentalising the judiciary. How can leading opposition figures be accused of serious crimes such as “threatening state security”, “conspiracy against state authority” and “criminal association in connection with a terrorist undertaking” and then be released at the stroke of a simple presidential decree?
Without a deep, systemic re-foundation of the governing institutions – one that includes all the segments of society that have been excluded from the social contract since 1960 – the next president coming from the ranks of the opposition will have at his disposal the same powers that oppressed him. As we have seen with the examples of Abdoulaye Wade in 2011-2012 and Macky Sall today, it is one thing to seize power in the midst of a public rejection of the incumbent regime; it is another to exercise it within the current inherently repressive institutional framework.
Artwork depicting Macky Sall heading a carriage inscribed “France-Africa plantations”, which is being led by a policeman and a judge, both of whom are charging a young Senegalese boy draped in a Senegalese flag – March 2023 (Madzoo TRK / Radikal Bomb Shot)
Florian Bobin is a researcher in history at the Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar who studies liberation struggles and state violence in 1960s-1970s Senegal. He is the author of a forthcoming biography of revolutionary philosopher Omar Blondin Diop.
Featured Photograph: A protest calling for the release of political prisoners – Dakar, 24 February (Florian Bobin).
The year 2025 will mark the one hundredth anniversary of Frantz Fanon’s birth. ROAPE intends to mark this occasion through reflections, arguments, and analyses of his life, his philosophy, his activism, and his political legacies today. For this issue, our call for papers is proposed in the belief that Fanon is an indispensable thinker for addressing Africa’s past, present, and future.
The editors welcome abstract submissions that address Fanon in a variety of ways. We are particularly interested in:
Proposals that address political situations and movements in Africa today
Proposals that address Fanon’s legacies and influence in North Africa and the MENA region more generally
Proposals that situate Fanon and his reception within lesser studied geographies
Proposals that situate Fanon in comparison to other political activists and intellectuals
Proposals that address understudied topics such as Fanon’s gender politics, his medical research, and his diplomatic travels during the late 1950s and early 1960s.
We especially welcome submissions from scholars based in Africa and activist-intellectuals beyond academia. We seek gender balance among contributors as well.
Frantz Fanon at a press conference during a writers’ conference in Tunis, 1959 (Frantz Fanon Archives / IMEC).
Deadline: April 1, 2024, for 300-word abstracts. Space and selection will be limited.
For 50 years, ROAPE has brought our readers pathbreaking analysis on radical African political economy in our quarterly review, and for more than ten years on our website. Subscriptions and donations are essential to keeping our review and website alive.
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For 50 years, ROAPE has brought our readers pathbreaking analysis on radical African political economy in our quarterly review, and for more than ten years on our website. Subscriptions and donations are essential to keeping our review and website alive.
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