In a report on a recent conference in Dakar on the Revolutionary Left in sub-Saharan Africa, Adam Mayer celebrates a gathering of activists and researchers, which could not have been more different from the mega-conferences of academia today. The conference examined the extraordinary vibrancy of left politics and movements across the continent in the 1960s and 1970s....
Concluding her discussion on the revolts in Sudan and Algeria, Emma Wilde Botta argues that we are seeing a new surge of global revolt against authoritarianism and austerity. Revolutionaries are grappling with questions of strategy and organization as the forces of conservation come into conflict with the forces of transformation....
Baba Aye describes the birth of an impressive new movement in Nigeria. He sees the #RevolutionNow campaign as a spark around which national structures are being built. The blogpost draws lessons from earlier popular struggle in the country and argues that the new movement is fanning the embers of revolts, as part of the revolutionary struggles sweeping across the world....
On the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Frantz Fanon’s 1959 classic, A Dying Colonialism, Ken Olende considers Fanon’s complex relationship to class and Marxism. Fanon wrote during a period of intense anti-colonial struggle where links with Marxist ideas were taken for granted. Olende argues Fanon’s work was grounded in a deep understanding of capitalist society....
Algeria is undergoing a period of dramatic popular resistance to an authoritarian regime in power for decades. In Emma Wilde Botta’s second blogpost, she focuses on the construction of Algeria’s political order, the dynamics of the current crisis, and an assessment of the ongoing impasse. ...
Examining the recent and brutal attempts to suppress the Sudanese revolution, Magdi el Gizouli looks at the efforts by the regime and its various factions to seize the initiative from the streets. In recent months the ruthless figure of Mohamed Hamdan Daglo (aka Himeidti), the leader of the infamous Rapid Support Forces, has moved into the centre of Sudanese politics. However, will the ‘neighbourhood committees’ be able to translate their revolutionary zeal into mass political action that can unite rural and urban discontent and challenge the regimes hold on power?...
In ROAPE’s final Connections workshop in Johannesburg in December last year we discussed the dynamics of resistance and transformation on the continent. In this blogpost we publish interviews with participants which provides an extraordinary account of the workshop and the struggles, politics and research of the activists who attended....
In a blogpost drawing attention to the large number of suicides by immolation in Tunisia, Habib Ayeb explains that there has been an average of between 250 to 300 suicides per year since 2011. These desperate political acts are intended to draw attention to the dire social and political conditions experienced by millions of Tunisians in the years since the revolution (and the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi in December 2010). Translated by Max Ajl, the blogpost looks at the origins of the Tunisian revolution, and broken promises. ...
To discuss the extraordinary events in Sudan and Algeria that have shaken these countries – and the continent – to the core in recent months, roape.net has asked some of our contributors to debate the significance and meaning of these revolutions. Both countries are confronted by a challenge: are the movements pacified in the interests of the local and global ruling classes or do the revolutionary movements successfully take-on and overturn these deep-rooted and brutal states. The contributions below look at the challenges faced by these revolutions and the possibilities of creating lasting and fundamental transformation....
Njuki Githethwa discusses a recent workshop in Nairobi of activists and researchers on social movements in East and Southern Africa. The workshop set itself the task of asking a number of questions. How do social movements build and sustain resistance? What should the relationship between scholars and activists look like? What role can universities play in building and sustaining connections among social movement scholars and activists? Githethwa argues that the analysis and understanding that came out of the workshop provided rich ammunition for scholars and activists to transform protests across the continent into struggles for radical and lasting transformation. ...