Guerrilla History - Intro to African Revolutions and Decolonization w/ Leo Zeilig

Episode Date: February 5, 2021

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we do a survey on African revolutions and decolonization movements so that we can dive deep into individual African movements/revolutions in the future, and call back to this episode for the broader regional/continental historical context.  For this herculean task, we bring on Leo Zeilig, an editor of the Review of African Political Economy, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the School of Advanced Study University of London, and an Honorary Research Associate at the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Leo's books include Thomas Sankara (HSRC Press), Frantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Third World (I.B. Tauris), African Struggles Today: Social Movements Since Independence (Haymarket), and Congo: Plunder and Resistance (Zed Books).  You can find his website at https://leozeilig.com/ and follow him on twitter @LeoZeilig.  Also, follow the Review of African Political Economy on twitter @ROAPEJournal and their website https://roape.net/ . Guerrilla History is the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history, and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.  If you have any questions or guest/topic suggestions, email them to us at [e-mail]. Your hosts are immunobiologist Henry Hakamaki, Professor Adnan Husain, historian and Director of the School of Religion at Queens University, and Revolutionary Left Radio's Breht O'Shea.   Follow us on social media!  Our podcast can be found on twitter @guerrilla_pod, and can be supported on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory.  Your contributions will make the show possible to continue and succeed! To follow the hosts, Henry can be found on twitter @huck1995, and also has a patreon to help support himself through the pandemic where he breaks down science and public health research and news at https://www.patreon.com/huck1995.  Adnan can be followed on twitter @adnanahusain, and also runs The Majlis Podcast, which can be found at https://anchor.fm/the-majlis, and the Muslim Societies-Global Perspectives group at Queens University, https://www.facebook.com/MSGPQU/.   Breht is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio, which can be followed on twitter @RevLeftRadio and cohost of The Red Menace Podcast, which can be followed on twitter @Red_Menace_Pod.  Follow and support these shows on patreon, and find them at https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/.     Thanks to Ryan Hakamaki, who designed and created the podcast's artwork, and Kevin MacLeod, who creates royalty-free music.                                  

You remember Den Van Boo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history. Gorilla History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history,

and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm your host, Henry Huckamacki, joined by my co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you today? I'm great. Glad to be with you, Henry. Always nice to see you. And Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast, Brett, how are you?

Hello, it's early, but I'm doing great. It is early. That's because we've got a great guest today who is based in the UK. So the time difference makes it kind of essential for us to do this in the morning. Our guest today is going to be Leo Zilig, who's a writer and researcher on African politics and history. He's the editor at the really tremendous journal, the review of African political economy, R-O-A-P-E. So if you hear us say Rope, that's what we're referring to. You can find that at rope.net.

He's also senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London. His books include Thomas Sankura from HSRC Press, France Fanon, Philosopher of the Third World from I.B. Torres. African struggles today, social movement since independence from Haymarket and Congo, plunder and resistance from Zed Books. the episode that we have today is going to be a very broad survey essentially something that we in the west really misunderstand or under understand is Africa it's a massive continent we were just looking at how big Africa is in terms of geographic size it's almost double the size of Russia or put another way it's bigger than China India the United States States and most of Europe plus Japan combined. Or another way of looking at it, if you look at the

map, Greenland looks pretty big, but Africa is actually 14 times larger than Greenland. And in terms of population, it's the second most populous continent in the world. It has almost as many people as Europe and North America combined. But yet despite the tremendous size, both geographically as well as population, not to mention the diverse cultures across the African continent, we really don't understand Africa particularly well in the West. Now, Africa's had a lot of really interesting struggles over the years, decolonialization struggles, independence struggles, mass movements all across the continent. And again, in the West, we just don't understand these things. So before we do individual episodes that really look specifically at these individual

movements to get really deep views and on the ground essentially with the people who are fighting in these movements. We thought it would be useful to have a very broad survey of African struggles and decolonialization more broadly. And that's what we're bringing Leo on to talk about. So I guess let's open up guys, Brett Noddanon. Let's open up with why do you think that despite the massive, massive size of Africa and the diverse cultures and the fascinating history, it's never talked about in the West, at least not with any sort of special. sufficity. I don't know who wants to take that question first, but why do you think that we don't cover Africa nearly as much as we should? Yeah, I mean, I think it's absolutely a product of

colonialism, of a global narrative that always emphasizes European narratives and perspectives to the exclusion of, you know, non-European, the victims of colonialism, etc. I think even today we can see how these narratives or these lack of narratives manifest and things like the 23 and Me, where, you know, they'll parse out a bunch of different ethnicities in northern Europe, but lumped together people on the outside of the imperial core and these huge sort of absurd groupings. And it's a reflection of how many of these places were carved up by European powers after World Wars and other conflicts. So, I mean, the fact that we don't hear these narratives, the fact that, I mean, countless peoples and cultures and language are homogenized as well. one singular group speaks to the European colonial chauvinism and anti-black racism, at least,

you know, plus many more things, which we'll get into throughout this episode. But I think that's a good place to start thinking about why we don't hear those narratives. Yeah, I think I'd like to just pick up on that, what Brett said, particularly the anti-black racism, of course, here in the Western Hemisphere, our populations and societies were built on slave labor. the whole process of enslavement involved, the erasure of those people's culture, traditions, and knowledge about their societies in order to dehumanize them to justify and maintain a system of labor that involved slavery, that was a racial slavery, racialized slavery system. So I think it's not accidental, it's really a product. And that's

why a lot of liberation in North America and the Caribbean by groups that, you know, we're seeking equality, the end of slavery, and then equality after the end of slavery, struggles for liberation and anti-racism involved, culturally speaking, a kind of afrocentricity to try and recover some sense of their identity and connection with this continent from which they had come because that knowledge and that experience had been suppressed and instead stereotypes, you know, were substituted and replaced that helped justify colonialism and continuing imperialism. So I think this knowledge is absolutely crucial that has to be corrected in our historical understanding for liberation today. We really have that consciousness is so important

to really understand one's history, which is, of course, why we have this podcast to do so. Before we get into the interview with Leo, I guess let's spend the rest of our time talking about kind of what we're hoping to get out of this interview and kind of set the episode up. So, like I said earlier, this is really going to be a broad survey of the continent as a whole.

So this really is taking that overly simplified, homogenized look at Africa that we typically get in the West, where the entire continent is lumped together in one sitting, as opposed to taking the time to really contextualize the different regions of Africa and the different perspectives of who was colonizing these different areas. But I think that we're in agreement that we do need this surface level sweep of the continent first so that we can look back to it when we do get into this specific episodes down the road of specific struggles. Let's say Burkina Fossa with Thomas Sankara,

or I know that we were talking about having an episode on Ethiopia and Eritrea perhaps and, you know, anti-apartheid movements in South Africa, the Algerian independence struggle. We are going to look at all of these struggles individually in the future, but really getting this baseline knowledge will be very helpful for both us as well as the listeners in the future so that we can kind of harken back to this conversation that we're going to have. But what are some of the things that you're hoping to get out of the conversation and kind of set up these future conversations that we will have? Brett, I'll let you start. Sure, yeah. I think I want to definitely do a broad survey of the countries involved in colonialism, right? The European countries that partook in colonialism at different periods in different regions of Africa.

I do want to parse out. Maybe we can get to this in the interview. the nuances right between imperialism, neocolonialism, colonialism, settler colonialism. These are words that are thrown around a lot, often sometimes lazily used as synonyms, but they're obviously not. So parsing out where they overlap and where they diverge, I think is an important part. And then something we haven't talked about yet, but something I think towards the end of the conversation I'm going to try to get in there is the coming impact of climate change on the equatorial band, which runs right through Africa. You know, how will that,

exacerbate that the colonialist legacies in those areas, how will the European and imperial powers react when the depravity of climate change descends on those regions first and foremost? I think that that reaction is going to be inseparable from the entire history of colonialism on that continent. And so I'd love to get Leo's perspective on how he thinks that's going to play out. Adnan, before I let you come, I just want to commend Brett on making that connection with climate change. That was a really excellent point that, you know, I hadn't thought about in my preparation for this interview, but it's something that absolutely

is right. I had done previously some independent research on the effect of climate change on Mozambique specifically. And there's so much more than you would think that's in terms of the effect of climate change on the populace there. So that really excellent connection, Brett. That was really fantastic. Well done. Adnan, I'll let you take over now. think that that is a great point. And I think the broader environmental exploitation of Africa certainly fits into colonial development, underdevelopment, de-development, and is going to be exacerbated certainly by climate change. But if we think, for example, of overfishing in the Red Sea and off the East African coast, why are Somali pirates considered, you know, so dangerous?

and part of it is response to overfishing by European powers. They had fishermen who then became pirates because their livelihoods were stolen from them. So I think that's a really important point going forward. Look, what I'm interested in in this history is partly to understand the difference between forms and kinds of colonialism that took place on the African continent and how that affected and shaped the decolonization process. So the difference between settler colonies where there was a European settler population versus other places on the continent where there were business, commercial, and military interests and control, but you didn't have a substantial settler population and whether that affected how decolonization was shaped.

And also the post-colonial histories of these nations once colonialism in a formal sense ended. Also, a lot of this happened pretty rapidly in the post-war period, mostly in the 60s and through the first half of the 70s. So one would wonder, is there some integrity or unity between these struggles? What are the intersections and interrelationships between, you know, liberation struggles on the continent? And then lastly, I think I would be interested to find out from Leo more about the different strands between these movements and the way they conceived of their goals and objectives and projects. Some that might have been just nationalist. We need to have our own nation free from colonialism versus others that we're looking for some form of pan-African

unity or affiliation in the post-colonial period. And yet others that really understood the economic conditions of colonialism that might, you know, even if you freed yourself politically, what were going to be the outcomes economically if you didn't have a socialist perspective. And, you know, where does that figure into the different kinds of movements that emerged and their outcomes? I think that would be an interesting thing for us to learn a little bit more historically. Well, I guess I'll just say one thing that I want to make sure that we get out of this interview and then I'll turn it back over to you guys for any additional. thoughts before we wrap this up and invite Leo on. But one of the things that I want to get out

of this interview is kind of the shared successes and shared failures of these movements across the African African continent. So like I said, it's a massive continent with a ton of people, a multitude of cultures, but there were movements all across the continent. Some were successful. Some were failures. We need to understand why some were successes and why some were failures, but we also should look a little bit deeper than that, even in this broad survey, insofar as even in the successes, there are going to be some failures that they had within their successful movement. And in movements that were unsuccessful, there was certainly things that worked in their favor, despite them not ultimately being successful. So being able to interconnect

these successes and failures across different movements from different cultural contexts, maybe under different colonizers in these different regions, being able to understand the things that were successful in different contexts and things that were failures in different contexts would be really helpful for understanding decolonization and anti-imperialism and independent struggles more broadly even than just in Africa. By taking these is basically lessons as this was tried multiple times in multiple different contexts and it was successful,

well, basically every time, and this is the effect of this specific action, or this was tried multiple times in multiple different places, and it didn't work out any time that they tried it, but yet people decided to keep trying it anyway. Why is that that they kept trying it? Why is it unsuccessful? And that's something that we should really take to heart when we're analyzing different struggles from history, as well as formulating how things should be going in the present in our constant struggle globally against colonization. imperialism. I think that that's something that will be particularly important for us to try to get out of this because it will help us understand these other struggles. Adnan? Well, I think that your question also raises perhaps even a more fundamental question about what was success, you know, imagined and was there any success? There may be on certain levels

of political liberation, but then I think the points that Brett raised about neo-imperialism and neocolonialism that we might be able to take up with with leo really does raise the question about whether africa has been decolonized that might be something we might ask or has it metamorphosed into different forms um so that's a really key question is that within a certain horizon of political liberation what was successful what wasn't but then in the broader sense of being able to achieve larger goals of development of justice of equality of a society that's capable of actually meeting the needs of its people, obviously there are larger systemic problems that even the end of formal colonialism has not achieved

or solved on the continent. So it will be good to have his perspective on that question as well. Listeners, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with Leo Zieg to talk about broadly the struggles and resistance across the African continent. it's decolonial struggles. We're back on guerrilla history, and we're joined by our guest, Leo Zilig. As I said, Leo Zilig is a writer and a researcher on African politics and history. He's an editor of the review of African political economy, and I highly recommend everybody

check them out at rope.net, R-O-A-P-E. dot net and senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London, as well as the author of many, many books, which I'll mention again at the end of this interview, in case any of you are looking to pick up some of these books to get a deeper look into the topics that we're discussing today. So Leo, it's a pleasure to have you on guerrilla history. Wonderful to be here, and good to me, you all. Pleasure is all ours. So let's get into this interview. And again, let's keep in mind that we're going to be looking very broadly. I want the listeners to understand that this really is a survey.

That way we can get kind of a baseline knowledge for future exploration and very individualized topics. But I'll pitch it over to Adnan now. Adnan, why don't you get us started in this interview here? Thanks so much, Henry, and thanks so much, Leo, for joining us today. I think we want to really focus broadly on the context of decolonization movements and struggles across the continent in the modern. in the modern period. But for our listeners who are not very familiar with African history, perhaps some sense of the colonial background

that immediately precedes the struggles against colonialism on the continent would be useful. Could you give us a little bit of a sense of a thumbnail sketch of the history of colonialism on the continent, the various powers that were involved and when they established their colonial control over different parts of Africa. And perhaps as you go forward, I might want to ask you a little bit about which ones were settler colonial projects that involved a population that came and settled from Europe

and which didn't have that form or structure. What were the forms of rule in those non-settler colonial colonies in Africa? Okay, I'll have a go at answering that. It's a big question. Many researchers, much better than me, have lost sleep on them. But I would say the first and the most important thing to say is that formal colonization of Africa took place after the continent had been pulverized by hundreds of years of intrusion, invasion, and of course the transatlantic slave trade. It wasn't even, it wasn't all the continent. Certain areas were more affected than others, West Africa in particular. But nevertheless, on the coast and in the hinterlands, the whole of the continent prior to that

formal colonisation, control and occupation of the continent in the late 19th century, society communities, peoples, cultures had been fundamentally altered in large measure by that pull of slavery. So that's, you know, the number one important thing to say, in my opinion. Then what happens in the famous Congress that divides Africa in 1884 and early 1885 in Berlin is, the formalization of the division of control of territorial land mass on the continent between the major European powers. And it's as crude and as ghastly as that sounds. So the major players, of course, were the UK, Germany at that point, interestingly as well,

because, of course, it's forgotten German colonialism because of what? happened after their defeat in the First World War, the French, Belgium of course, you know, who played a very big role in Central Africa in the Congo. So you see this horrendous and violent division of the continent, you know, on top of that long history of slavery that formally chopped up the continent. I've got one of those dreadful colonial maps behind me, as you can can probably see. And one of the striking things in that map, in all maps, contemporary maps of Africa, the straight lines that were drawn in Berlin and also settled afterwards. It wasn't all a gentleman's agreement. They also fought each other over that division. The major players that we've outlined

was seeking control over the major resources, which had been identified, both during the previous period of occupation. And we have to be clear that the colonial division of the continent had been taking place for decades before it actually happened in Berlin. So the French, for example, in Algeria, were there in the 1830s fighting these long-running battles to suppress national and local insurgencies against that clonal occupation. So, you know, the continent is being softened up for what happens at the end of the 19th century. I would also say another absolutely vital point is that at every stage of that division of the continent

and that occupation formerly under colonialism, there was resistance. This, of course, has been well documented, perhaps not as much as it should be. So those first two or three decades see extraordinary wars taking place. I mean, if you take Zimbabwe, for example, the celebrated first Chimaringa, the first uprising, was an anti-colonial uprising in the late 1880s, 1890s, and only finally put down, you know, at the end of that century. And then, of course, you see elements of what could be described as colonial development, you know, the railways, some infrastructure, and, of course, mining.

So you get a new type of political economy that is fixing the continent and its resources, drawing them out as exports, primary sector exports for manufacturing and transforming in the global north. So those are the, you know, very broadly speaking, those are the, you know, that's the big picture. That's what we, you know, that's what the continent was looking like at the turn of the 19th century. There were certain settler colonies that might have had a little bit of a decision. distinctive history as a result, even starting with the Dutch, I wonder, is that the first real settler colonial or were the French? I think the Dutch go back quite a long way in southern Africa. Yeah, and it's interesting, isn't it, that my response to your first question,

Adnan, was not even to mention South Africa, partly because in the story that we tell of the continent. Often South Africa is taken as a separate category. You know, its history is slightly distinct. And I think that's problematic for all sorts of reasons that we can go into later. So you're absolutely right to pull me up on that. I think so. You know, the early Dutch settlement in what is now known as South Africa was absolutely vital. Those Dutch Africana settlers who'd lived in, you know, already by the end of the 19th century, the turn of the 20th century, had lived in southern, different parts of southern Africa for generations, then find themselves confronting the military might of the British, of course, and there are wars which

have fought. So yes, the Dutch, of course, who have a very problematic history, a dreadful ideology that arises, identifying a kind of subhuman category of Africans. This develops in the 20th century into apartheid, since of course the politics of that hardline Africana community. But if we were to take the case, often Algeria's mentioned, I've spoken about it already, but Algeria, you know, already by the late 19th century, had reasonably developed towns and cities, colonial ones, with a substantial French population. And what we have to understand, which makes this all slightly peculiar in the French system, is that the French didn't even regard Algeria as a colony.

It was a department of the mainland, so it was literally just another part of France. And that large and growing community of French settlers who became known in the 20th century as the Piedneur were loyal to the French state, but also saw themselves as kind of real French men as opposed to those living on the mainland who belonged to this French Algeria. and they had sunk deep roots into this colonial state. Other countries abound. You could look at Kenya, for example, another country in which there was substantial settler populations. And in each of these countries, and this is the vital thing for me, you see the process of decolonization taking place at a different pace,

often far more violent, so they're harder to uproot as a consequence of the foundations that they've laid in these countries. Rhodesia, for example, Zimbabwe, another example, where that population, the unwrattled Rhodesian elite, as they were described in the 1980s and 1990s. So those settler, white settler, Rhodesians, who hang on, largely unrattled by Mugabe, which is a whole other set of questions, after independence in 1980. So yes, it plays an important part, those different types of colonial manifestations to the struggle to uproot the colonial force on the continent.

So now that we have a generalized understanding of the broad history, some of the major countries involved, some of the settler colonial instances, before we move deeper, I was hoping that you could maybe just talk about the definitions of terms that people are familiar with, certainly our listeners are, but might sometimes get confused, which are imperialism, colonialism, and neo-colonialism. So how do you think about those three different terms and where they intersect and diverge? It's a great question. You know, one of the figures that I'm doing a lot of work on at the moment is the extraordinary, revolutionary and radical, Walter Romney. And he was a theorist in large measure on imperialism. So I suppose for the African continent, we can understand imperialism as the process in which European power, both military and financial, were able to penetrate and control large swathes of the continent. And the experience, and they did it, of course, you know, through those colonies, which we've

talked about, the transition to the period of decolonization, which is literally that period in history in which those colonial roots begin to be shaken. on the continent and uprooted by popular movements, by nationalist struggles. And it has a huge cultural and political impact. When, and I don't know when the first reference to neo, it'll be an interesting question when the first reference to neo-colonialism takes place, but probably in the work, in the great and valuable work of Kuan Krumer, the first leader of independent Ghana, the first country, in fact, in sub-Saharan Africa that achieves independence from the British in 57,

in 57, heroic and important struggle. All sorts of contradictions, though, which we can probably talk about. So he describes in probably the mid-60s this process of neo-colonialism. And he says that despite formal independence, flag independence, that has seen an end to the open control of continent by European powers. We have enforced something called neo-colonialism. So the tentacles, the economic control of the continent from Europe are still very much in place. That we haven't managed to upturn those economic systems of control, of subordination, and that this is the second stage, stage of any true decolonization, any real struggle for liberation on the continent.

And it becomes a slogan, which is used powerfully by some of the left and radical movements in the 1960s and 70s. So you mentioned Walter Rodney. So let me take a page out of Walter Rodney's book. Or rather, let me just take the cover right off of Walter Rodney's book. Leo, how did Europe underdevelop Africa? Rodney's book, I mean, it's a kind of great. call out to how Europe underdeveloped Africa, I think still perhaps one of the great books

of the post-war period on Africa. I mean, I find it hard to pinpoint another of the numerous great pieces of work. But this was a book written for the movement. 1962, Rodney had been working on it for a number of years. He's in Daira Salam, this country undergoing radical change and reform under President Julius Nairi. And he writes this one. volume history of the control and pulverization of the continent by European power. So it's astonishingly cheeky. It's incredibly audacious, you know, written by a man who wasn't even 30. His command of history and the details and nuances. So nothing is left to chance. There is no area of inquiry that he doesn't investigate. We're not left simply with a

feeling of a great and straightforward and united Africa before the European arrived. It's much more complex, of course, like all human society is. So what Rodney does in this astonishing book is present this picture of an incredibly varied and incredibly and unevenly. developed continent that is dragged into underdevelopment by the experience of European penetration. And there's a whole number of examples that he uses, which I can refer to a couple of them. Algeria again, largely literate society by the time when the French arrived in the 1830s, 40, fast forward, 40 years, and there's massive illiteracy, schooling system, widespread, decimated by French intrusion.

The same goes for, of course, all major health indicators. So on a continental scale, what Rodney is doing is saying the experience of European intrusion has been to drag a continent back from its own and organic parts of development to a state of immiseration, being receiving the dividends and the pat on the back from European power. So Rodney was using the tools of development and underdevelopment. which were very fashionable in the 1970s, championed by people like Andre Gunda Frank and a range of other writers, Samir Amin, and also by journals like Roeb. But in Rodney's hands, there's much more originality, much more flexibility and much more brilliance in his use of those tools for understanding the processes of colonization. Well, I think that's such an important point to realize and that work clearly was responding to one of the ways in which colonialism by these European powers kept being justified so late even after World War II, after the UN, after League of Nations and all of these earlier moments where the free determination of peoples was supposed to be a goal of the international system.

But, you know, it was often represent, colonialism was so often represented as a necessary, you know, husbanding of people who couldn't rule and govern themselves and that there was a humanitarian dimension of it. This was, you know, of course, important, you know, in the Congo supposedly, Leopold, you know, presents this as a sort of aid society. So actually, in that context, I'm wondering. if you could tell us a little bit about how this decolonization process begins. You mentioned Ghana as the first independent country in the late 50s, but it seems to really take on energy over the course of the 60s and into the 70s. And so, you know, how did this start? And since there's so many different movements at roughly the same time emerging,

whether you see any intersections between them, how you would characterize, you know, this process as a whole, any features that you would want to point out historically of the decolonization process as a whole. Yeah, excellent question. I mean, a couple of things I want to say, because I was, as you were talking about the justifications of, colonialism which continued and you're absolutely right long after colonialism had ended and in fact you know there's a lot of hand rubbing after they were forced the european powers were forced out of the continent with the chaos and the mayhem the clues the wars that um that led as a consequence often of western intervention as justification of why the continent had been colonized in the first place you see you hear those arguments which barely cover racist assumptions today still.

I mean, there was a wonderful mass public meeting in the late 1950s that Patrice Lumumba, the first leader of independence, the first Prime Minister of Independence in 1960 in the Belgian Congo. And he's addressing a meeting of supporters of the MNC, the mass organisation that he led. And he's talking about what he's talking about what he. plans and what the MNC plan to do after independence, which was going to take place a few months later.

And he receives a question from a Belgian journalist who says, how do you expect to achieve anything in independence? You don't have a single trained doctor. There aren't any lawyer. Congolese lawyers. And the member, of course, says, you know, and he was a man of extraordinary intelligence and political force. He says, and you have been here for how many decades and have failed to train a single doctor or journalist? Do you think that we should tolerate any

more of this humiliation? The story related to me, one of the activists that I research from that extraordinary period of decolonisation in the Congo about 15 years ago. So how does decolonization actually take place? Well, I think one of the key moments, really, is what happens, to some extent, off the continent. So there's an incredible sharing of experiences. One, of course, is the large number of African troops that fight in the Second World War.

This has an impact, of course, in raising political awareness and consciousness. You know, war ostensibly fought for freedom and democracy, yet that's remained in which the colonial empires remained in place. So this heightened political consciousness, but also connected people. So there were huge and very important post-war struggles that took place around the continent, the Saitif massacre in Algeria in 45, almost as the victory in Europe is announced. French troops suppress a anti-colonial rebellion in Algeria and kill tens of thousands.

So all of this starts contributing to an anger at at colonialism. Then, of course, in 54, you have the launch of the extraordinary struggle in Algeria, but that struggle to some extent in November, when it's launched, the insurrection of November, takes place after the French are defeated in Indochina. And this is incredibly important. So they suffered French, suffer a humiliating defeat in Vietnam. by nationalist forces, essentially forced to withdraw. The impact of this, and Suez, of course, in Egypt in 56, you know, where the French, in a similar and humiliating way in North Africa are forced to withdraw after attempting to seize control

of the Suez Canal, after NASA, as nationalizes it earlier, all of this sent shockwaves around the continent. Farnan describes the extraordinary, Franz Fanon, who was the Algerian revolutionary Liberation fighter and writer of the most magnificent books on African independence and liberation. He explains how the impact of seeing the humiliation and the defeat of white European forces, both in the war, of course, and then, of course, in the 1950s, was enlivening, was inspiring. Here was not mighty colonial empires, but troubled and flailing systems of brutal power and control, which could be defeated and could be resisted. So there was a, and there was

fantastic sharing of this politics, which is the key point of your decolonisation question. And there were pan-African, incredible pan-African conferences. I mean, I often play this game when I'm doing work and research, as I often think, where would I most like to be in the past? And I think probably it's the pan-African conference that took place in 57 in Ghana. with the amassed leaders of newly independent states and those who are fighting for independence. You know, they gather on Ghanaian free soil and they draw in movements that are still struggling against the colonial beast, including activists like Patrice Lumumba, who managed somehow to get permission from the Belgians to travel to Ghana. They regretted that.

So these were astonishing gatherings of activists and revolutionaries. The point to say, of course, which has been key to all of my writing, is that they were incredibly divided these forums and the politics. And Fallon wrote in exasperation at the end of his life of the failure of ideology. So these were great, there were great forces fighting against the British and the French, the Belgians, but there was still a struggle for ideas and alternatives. What would national liberation really look like? What would that freedom that we're seeking mean in practice?

And those were questions, of course, which were absolutely central. So we're talking about kind of the origin of these decolonial struggles. And I'm just wondering, and this is going to be an unfair. question. It's kind of a what do you think question. So just be prepared for that. But I'm wondering if you think that having these long burning embers of the humiliation of colonization generally are a bigger driver of decolonialization movements or if kind of, you know, a stick of dynamite like the Theroy massacre where colonial West African soldiers were massacred by the French Army after World War II because of pension demands that were not being met by the French.

And, you know, of course, there's dispute. The French say that there was 30-some West African colonial soldiers that were massacred by the French, whereas the individuals who were there claimed that there was over 300 that died. And, of course, France tried to hide this for a very, very long time. But I'm just wondering if the humiliation of being a colonized area, Like you said, you know, we've been under your colonial power for decades and we don't have any of our own doctors still as a result of you being a colonizer. Is that longstanding but kind of subtle humiliation, a bigger driver of kind of a decolonial revolutionary spirit in the individuals? Or is it these really egregious actions like this massacre of probably hundreds of West African soldiers who were killed because the French didn't want to pay them what they had promised to pay them?

Well, Henry, that's an interesting question, and I would say it's probably all of those things, and I know that's a cop-out. But let me try and explain. I think that there were also severe economic crises that affected colonies and, of course, their patronage across the continent in the late 40s and 50s. So a lot of the struggles, and this is an important and forgotten point in that period were bread and butter ones. So if you look at the great railway strike in 47, 48 in Senegal, Mali, in French West Africa, these were largely inspired, of course, by some of the things that we've already talked about, both the humiliation that you mentioned and I think you're absolutely right about that inevitably appalling racial division which had quite clearly placed Africans as subcategory who were humiliated on a daily basis but also real material concerns those wedding butter issues that are often

informed strikes no matter where they take place so those were you know motivated factors. In terms of that question of humiliation, if you look at the class of evolue, as they were described in the Belgian Congo, so literally a term used to describe those Africans who'd been hand-picked by the Belgian colonial state as being more cultivated, more evolved, literally. They had a whole category, including certificates for graduation for being able to use knives and false and to be able to live in a European home. So you'd receive an accreditation of Evalue.

These were very complex systems, intentionally designed to pick off an elite who could be used essentially as a class, petty bourgeois class, who could run colonial affairs for the metropolis, whose interests and motivations were fundamentally aligned with the state. It was among this class in particular, in the Congo, for example, who were deeply humiliated and aggrieved. But I think that sense of humiliation was felt much more acutely at that level.

You know, they felt that they were excluded. You see this again and again. It was an important political impetus for decolonisation, but they felt the struggle for, to some extent, and figures around Mobutu particularly, who launched the first coup against Lwumba in September 1960, feel that humiliation and want to raise the demands of their class to some extent. parceled as a struggle for independence or for decolonisation. So that much more nuanced picture is really important because that class element within the struggle for national liberation and independence

is absolutely key, is often forgotten. Because they do something with independence, which was a lot less than the strikers on the railway, the Bamako, Dakar, railway in the late 40s or the general strike in 48 in Zimbabwe in Buradija wanted. So there were real differences and those differences, you know, fantastically summarized in a quote which I've conveniently got in front of me that Lumumba makes in 1960. And he describes the relationship between the mass politics, the rank and far politics,

powering decolonization, and the leadership, far more cautious. And he says this, the masses are a lot more revolutionary than us. They do not always dare to express themselves in front of the police officer or make their demands in front of an administrator. But when we are with them, it is the masses who push us and who want to move much more rapidly than us. That's a wonderful sense of the tension within those mass-based nationalist organisations like the MNC, but we can name them across the continent in many different varieties. So that's dialectic, if you like, between the struggle and the interests of those at the base.

And if, you know, it's using your language, Henry, the humiliation, the aggrieved sense of exclusion felt by those often leading those organizations. And the interaction of those two forces often created something completely different for both groups. So one thing that I've tried to do in my writing is to examine that complex medley of political forces that made up the social movement in general, as Marx described it, of national liberation. That's absolutely wonderful and fascinating. And it's worth pointing out that the same tensions that you just mentioned there were explored by France Fanon and Wretched of the Earth. And I was

actually reading into this a little bit because one of the most dangerous people to be in this entire period is a black revolutionary leader. And Fanon and La Mumba actually were born and they died in the same exact years at both at age 36. Sancara and Walter Rodney were both killed at age 38. So being in this line of revolutionary work puts a cap on your lifespan. Absolutely. We've done entire episodes on Sankara and Rodney and Fanon on my other shows. And I was hoping we could maybe drill down on Patrice Lumumba specifically here. Just because, I mean, there's a million different individuals we could focus on and dive deep into. But I think adding this human element, telling a little bit of the human stories and the individual,

behind these movements add a layer of humanity to this entire history. So I know you're a fan of Lamumba. You've written on Lamumba. Could you talk a little bit about his life, his contributions, and his untimely death? And in some respects, Lumumba is the most, I mean, no, there's no bloody hierarchy, of course, but is an absolutely astonishing figure. And he represents all of the contradictory. that we've just been talking about, both the glorious highs of the national liberation struggle,

the extraordinary learning curve of decolonization, and the brutality of neo-colonialism in its most ruthless forms. So the Congo, to some extent, and Lumumba's life in particular, is prefigurative of much of what happens. very early in terms of decolonization on the continent, but what was going to happen, what was happening, what independence and independent power would look like in the decades after 1960. So Lumumba was born in 1925. He was an incredibly poor family, you know, living in a rural, area, receiving primary education, making his way as a young man with really just a few coins in his pocket to Stanleyville, where he forces himself into public libraries. And there's great descriptions of him in the 40s and 50s, literally going at the end of his

working day and moving through shelves of the library and it was an appallingly censored library. I mean, what we must remember about the Belgian Congo is that it was ruthlessly controlled and censored. So you couldn't get, I mean, don't think, you know, as you could do in probably South Africa in the 1970s and 80s, you know, under the special sections in the library. books by Marx and other radicals. It's incredibly sensitive, but nevertheless, he hovers this up.

He teaches himself French, having received really the most basic instructions, and he becomes part and parcel initially of the, as an incredibly bright man, of the Evoluei productions, production line. So he becomes committed to pursuing a career in the low levels of the civil service. He's in the post office initially. He's transferred to Leopoldville, the capital, present day in Chassa. And he becomes increasingly disgruntled with what he sees. And his politics

are driven to the left. But the nationalist left. So he And of course, you know, his head and shoulders smarter than that very narrow group of the Congolese Evolue and those nationalist figures, people like Chombay, Moses Chombay, who lead the breakaway in Katanga in 1960, of course, who he has, who eventually kills him along with the Belgians. So he becomes this astonishing figure, championing independence, but also wanting for its pure autonomy. and economic independence, political as well, for the Congo, not radical socialist transformation, not an international revolution. Let's be clear about that. And what happens, of course, in the course of 1960,

more than I think any of the other radical and extraordinary figures, murdered as you said, Braid, is he develops at a breakneck speed. So events of extraordinary, very ferocity have thrown at him. So he wins the election for the MNC, becomes the Prime Minister, which is a compromise, Kasavibu, the president,

and those elections are held in May, independence on the 30th of June, within days of independence, that autonomy, that real independence that he sought from the Belgium starts breaking away. So Katanga, that mineral-rich, copper-rich province,

And most of Belgium wealth, of course, came from extracting more materials from the Congo, as we know. In the south, the Katanga separates within, I think, 10 days of independence. So the Mumba is dealt with the fracturing, not over years, but within days of independence being achieved. And does he respond to that by seeking compromise with the colonial power? No, he tax left. he challenges the colonial the ex-colonial state he takes it on he's advised by other independent leaders including his comrade and friend quorum krumer in ghana who actually gives him terrible advice which i'll mention in a minute he he then struggles traveling around the country in those first

two months to piece together that independence that has just been one and is now just fracturing into neo-colonial states. So he tries to hold the Congo together. He's eventually unseated in a coup, which gets rid of him in Casabuga at the beginning of September. He organises a Pan-African Congress in late August, 1960, where he brings together those who can help around the continent and the world who can help defend and strengthen African independence.

The UN he calls in, which is, of course, a grave mistake. The UN playing its historical role as the defender in last resort for imperial power, backs up the coup, takes back control of the radio stations, which in September, Lumumba had been using to speak to his supporters around the country, holds him under house arrest after the coup, the Mobutu coup in the war. the middle of September. So plays an absolutely central role in defending the interests of ex-colonial powers, America in particular, and of course it's what's increasingly looking like a puppet regime in the Congo. To each of these challenges, Lumumba moves to the left. So by the end of the year, he says the struggle now is not simply against the ex-colonial power and the curse of independence, the Mumba's terms, but also against the puppets who have been installed in the place of real transformation.

So within a very short period of time, knowing actually in December, I mean, this is of the many astonishing things to celebrate and to keep celebrating until we have not a word left in us, the Mumba's life and struggle, is how extraordinary he responded when he was. knew he was going to die and when he's arrested after he tries to flee leopoldville at the end of November and he's brought back by the UN who refused to intervene in his illegal arrest brought back to Mobutu's forces and knows that he's going to die he keeps fighting so he makes this incredible turn where he starts unpicking this thing called independence It's a national liberation, which he, of course, had been a great champion, seeing its problems and its faults.

It's class cleavages that divide off those who are ready to do a deal with the colonial powers and those who are prepared to fight. So there's a radicalisation, which is incredibly exciting in Lumber. Now, of course, then what happens after he's murdered with two comrades, Morris Mopolo and Joseph Okito, which should also never be forgotten, killed on the 17th of January, 1961, so months after independence. There's this incredible Lumumbist revolt that lasts for three or four years. It doesn't come to an end until 65 really, or 64, 65. And then there's a second coup at the end of that year by Mabut, who puts himself in power, institutes the new order. But you see the open occupation of the continent again by European power, by essentially

Belgians and Americans, and using racist, Rhodesia and South African mercenaries to suppress this struggle, this numbs struggle, the Mumbus ex-forces, ex-support base, struggling from their capital in Stanley Mill to fight. that encroachment once more of colonial power, neo-colonial power. So the Congo tells a story for me of what was unfolding across the continent, an independence which wasn't worthy of its name, and national liberation which enslaved people as soon as it liberated them. These are, of course, the insights that Fallon provided, I think, with the most astonishing brilliance in his final book in 61, The Richard of the Earth, which you read today.

I mean, you mentioned it, Brett, you read it today, and, you know, it's hard not to jump off your chair. It reads with the same sparkling brilliance and excitement as if it might have been written yesterday. I mean, how many books can claim that? I'm so glad that Brett asked you about Lumumba and also that you put the CODA to it in Fanon's analysis in Wretched of the Earth and those chapters on the pitfalls of national consciousness where perhaps he was thinking about the case of Lumumba and also foreseeing

the larger structures that might turn political liberation into just a different form of dependence. And so that raises a question that I'm wondering about is about the post-colonial conditions. So you have these struggles, sometimes militant ones, sometimes these are negotiated, you know, ends to colonialism. Maybe there are different paths that, you know, different parts of the continent were undergoing.

and I'm wondering if those different paths and the trajectories out of them into the post-colonial situation led to different kinds of outcomes were some more successful in attempting to achieve at least some respite from recolonization in various forms what would you suggest about the different histories out of the colonial condition. Since it seems like in Lumumba's case, you were able to see so many of the different possibilities of recolonization and why he had to keep adjusting and moving so quickly.

And so I'm wondering, were different kinds of movements, did they have different sorts of outcomes in that post-colonial condition? Yeah, I mean, that's just, I mean, that hits the nail on the head in so many ways. And I think, and he also gets us to the 1970s and the foundation of Rome. So what you say, of course, starting with Fanon, is very important because what Fanon says in the Richard of the Earth.

And he, you know, and I remember in, I think 2010 being in Algiers and speaking to some of his old comrades, including a remarkable man called Pierre Shulay, who was a FLN, who recruited Fanon. the FLA, died a few years ago, terribly. And he said, you know, we were never able, Phallon would read, and he wrote the thing in a, wrote the Wretch of the Earth in a frenzy, you know, last year, knowing that he was dying, and he would read it to his comrades. And of course, he makes wild claims.

And Pierre says, you know, well, we didn't dare correct him, because how can you correct a man of that brilliance who was quite clearly wrong in some ways, and who was dying? So one of the wild claims, of course, which I, you know, in deference to Fallon's brilliance, but I criticise in the book that I wrote on France Fanon is, is Fallon does make a distinction, which people like Rodney and Walter Rodney take up in lectures in Hamburg in 1978,

a distinction between the different types of liberation, just as you said. So there's the negotiated settlement, often not completely negotiated, but largely speaking, you know, agreements. And, you know, you can look at countries like Cote d'Ivoire in West Africa, Senegal to some extent, who were definitely anti-colonial struggles in those places of huge significance. But nevertheless, there wasn't the armed resistance and struggle. that we saw in other parts of the continent. So Fallon makes this distinction. And in the book, he seems to say that real liberation,

which is his term, only really can take place in conditions where there's been a struggle. That that struggle, that violent struggle, in some senses, is what's necessary to achieve the radical mutation, is the term he uses. of people's consciousness. So in a real fight for independence, which often will involve arms,

that will, that needs to be a physical one. Now the question then, of course, is were there, which is your question, were there real differences between those two, ultimately between those two types of, of independence and national liberation. One thing we can say is that discontent in the 60s and early 70s with that first wave of independence

takes place across the continent, and you see huge struggles. And Khruma, students demonstrate in Ghana, for example, after the Krumas removed by coup, even if students come out in Dakar in Senegal, supporting Enkrumas presidency, residency, so all sorts of complex forces. There's an African 68, in Senegal in particular, but in South Africa as well, that takes place.

So that independent settlement breaks down very quickly. What happens in the early 1970s is there become radical, increasingly radical movements of those countries largely still under Portuguese control that enter second independence struggle in the late 60s and early 1970s, and they to some extent learn and criticize the earlier period. So great figures from Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, Amicale Cabral, for example, the great Marxist says, the secret of the failure of the African of independence is the state itself. So there's a real thinking about how we have failed so far and what we need to do in the struggles that are taking place on the continent now to ensure that we don't fail again.

So that second liberation in 74, 75, 76, which dovetails with the revolution that takes place in Portugal against the dictatorship in Portugal, that merges to some extent colonial white Portuguese forces that had been sent to Africa to fight liberation movements, but sees increasingly those struggles converge. Liberation and struggle and resistance in Portugal and a socialist empowered largely radicalized movement for a second liberation on the continent, which will not repeat the mistakes of the past.

And then you have a whole history. history, fascinating, exciting, important of Mozambique, Angola to a less extent. And what happens with Frilemo ruling party in Mozambique, when they win independence and begin that transformation, which takes a radical and socialist direction initially, this is a topic for another discussion, very problematic in lots of ways. But that further radical localises independence, explicitly taking up, I would say, although not resolving the questions of the limitations of national liberation, the pitfalls of national liberation as Fahler would have it. However, the confrontation with global capitalism, with the extraordinary intervention

of occupying forces and wars that were, that those countries were faced, particularly, Mozambique, South Africa in the States, supporting Renamo in Mozambique, mean that even that second liberation struggles to maintain its and sustain its force and its radical energy. So this transitions us into, I guess, the second to last topic of the interview that we're going to have time for, which is something that I think that the listeners are going to be particularly interested in successes and failures. So perhaps could we start off by maybe just bullet pointing a few of the successful movements decolonial struggles and a few of the unsuccessful decolonial struggles, you know, things like the successful like the PAIGC and

you know, Nauri's movement Sankara, and then maybe some unsuccessful ones that you think that people, if they want to look more into these individual movements before we do individual episodes on these in the future, like the Mao Mao uprising, for example, but what are some of these movements that people should be aware of? And then transition us into some of the shared successes between these different regions, different cultural contexts across the African continent. What were some of the things in these movements that were successful in multiple struggles? And what were some of the tactics, perhaps, that were unsuccessful in some of these struggles, or what were some of the impediments to success

or things that held back successful struggles from being more successful? I guess I'll let you take the question however you want it, but really what are the take-home lessons from these struggles across the African continent that we can then dive deeper into on an individual basis in the future. Henry, can I get back to you on that question

in about a week's time after I've researched it? Yeah, it's a big question, but, you know, just in broad strokes, it's a broadstriest. It's a great question. I mean, I, you know, as you were speaking, the thing that the area that I've been working on recently has been, and this isn't exactly the powerful movements for decolonization, any of them I would have liked to have participated in or been around to witness. However, the work that I've done recently on Tanzania, And this, of course, is then the post-independence period.

So we're talking in the 60s, and specifically late 1960s. So Tanzania emerges from independence as the regarded in East Africa as the Cinderella of East Africa. So largely poor and underdeveloped compared to Kenya, very low level of infrastructure, a terrible schooling, and it is led to independence by Tannu and Julius Nairi. And Nairi is an astonishing figure, really. Whatever you think about him, and of course I'm very critical, as most people who experienced that period in the 60s and 70s were, but nevertheless also astonishing in his way. And he was committed to trying to transform Tanzanian society, essentially delinking it from those exploitative linkages and tentacles that were still very much controlling Tanzania or Tanganyika after independence, breaking with the West, breaking with British.

control. And as the 1960s progress, he starts introducing with supporters and with encouragement from below, increasingly radical reforms. These are reforms which we have to understand were implemented from above. So, but still, still impressive, collectivisation of farms, nationalisation, which happens actually around the continent. So let's not be nostalgic about nationalization, but nationalization of major companies, textiles, firms, a few car assembly plants, and a number of other industries. And that's important, but he does so in a spirit of openness, which I think is astonishing on the continent.

in the late 1960s at the University College of Diasalam as it was called then, the hill, as it was known, it becomes an amazing hotbed of alternatives, and it isn't immediately broken, and there are attempts to later on by the ruling party and binary. So incredible debates about, you know, how far can these projects that Neherry is trying to introduce? And he introduces in 67 this document announcing this turn called the Ehrusha Declaration, which is, you know, radical and exciting to read, flawed, problematic, a kind of reform socialism from above, but nevertheless very interesting worth thinking about. And what that does is it unleashes this flowering of criticism and debate and radical and Marxist thinking in Tanzania, the sort of thing nationally that I don't think, you know, any country really has experienced, had experienced for decades. out of that, you know, emerges the Dar School, but also the incredible international

activists and lecturers who turned up to support and to occupy posts in Tanzania. People like Walter Rodney, John Saul, of course, it's now based in Canada, Peter Lawrence, huge numbers of others. And it becomes this center point, both to connect the black power struggle in the United States. So Angela Davis comes and speaks, CLR James is invited by Rodney. So it becomes this fascinating incubator for alternatives and medical thought. And that still needs to be examined and looked at because there's much that can be learned from that period.

That is a success. I just wanted to say, I think I had a whole question I wanted to ask, but I think it's a whole episode, as you just alluded to, which is the black, you know, anti-black racism, struggle in the Western Hemisphere, the Atlantic world, and the intersections and transnational connections on the African continent. Ghana becomes a city that, you know, so many black radicals from the United States and elsewhere come to, and as you're pointing out, also at Umburman, and also there are visitors from there who come, Malcolm X hosting, you know, Osman Babu, and other figures.

So we should have a whole episode someday on that, I think it would be so fast. I would love to participate in that discussion. Very important. So as a way to sort of end this wonderful discussion, and thank you so much, Leah, this has been inspiring and informative and at times. tear jerking when you're talking about figures like Lamumba and how they came to an end. So thank you for all of this. But the way to end this is to sort of maybe look forward.

And the focal point I want to end this with is climate change. As we know, climate change is already wreaking havoc around the world, particularly around the equatorial band, which runs through the continent of Africa. And I'm wondering what your thoughts are on climate change, but specifically how the legacies of colonialism and imperialism on the African content have and will continue to manifest through the emergency of climate change, specifically in those areas and the response to that from the Western world, particularly up higher on the bands where they don't have to face the initial onslaughts like the Equatorial band has to. I just want your general thoughts on that looking forward.

Yeah, I mean, they're really important points and questions, and I would say there's not been actually a huge amount or sufficient research on this, particularly. You know, and you can read Walter Rodney's how Europe underdeveloped Africa with an eye on environmental and the climate emergency. He speaks very specifically

about how pre-colonial African societies, the great states, the smaller policies, created forms of sustainable livelihood and infrastructure and human development, which, and he makes this point explicitly, stand in contrast, writing in 72, mind you, to the environmental destruction that is typical of the development of capitalism. So these are important historical questions, you know, that the experience of capitalism has been twinned with the, of course, as we know, the climate emergency, but also the smashing of human societies and autonomous communities around the world. If you look

at the, if you look at the terrible bloodshed that's taking place in Ethiopia, a country, of course, which deserves its own discussion and meeting, and also a revolutionary history that needs to be recovered, given that, you know, there were astonishing struggles there in the 70s, and also the recent Roma protests, which actually brought in many of the different groups in society. But the crisis of the Ethiopia faces in the whole region is the crisis of drought and climate change.

And many people have written about it. So that whole area is being affected dreadfully by and disproportionately by climate change. And to understand its impact, we have to look to people like Rodney and others. And to some extent, who unpicked the devastating and uneven role that capital, and the integration of African societies and economies into the global economy and into global capitalism. And that that was lobsided and uneven, that these were largely societies despite all the celebration of industrialization and development, which were organized for export of primary products

and goods. So there's massive undevelopment sources and human capital. There's huge suffering on a massive scale and the in the last 30 years a decimation of health systems and emergency provision that could have provided the sort of support to those people now who are fleeing areas which are suffering from drought and flooding caused by climate change. So we have to have an approach that can link both the history, a criticism, a critique of global capitalism, a history of the continent and its integration into capitalism, and understand that as a key tool in our analysis. One thing I would say, actually, perhaps a lot, the final thing, is that I'm speaking from

the miserable UK, the murder capital of Europe for Corona. victims in the last year, thousands, tens of thousands dead. I know you're in the States, so you know what I'm talking about. But the government now celebrated rolling out the vaccine. But of course, it's going to be handled to private companies. So committed are they to neoliberalism and their cronies? The mass vaccination program carried out in 86, I think it was, by Sankara of a largely meningitis and polio vaccines within three weeks vaccinating something like two and a half million

two and a half million bikinnabees this is a question linked to climate change because what of course is tragically missing is a politics that can power transformation in a way that would be able to tackle the climate emergency on the continent and also the health emergencies that are connected to it. Leo, this was tremendous. I know that we put you in a basically in a possible situation trying to cover all of Africa in, you know, maybe a little bit more than an hour, but I'm going to give you another impossible task.

This topic was so broad and, you know, we're trying to hit so many different varying topics in such a short period of time. I'm going to give you just, you know, a minute or two to give kind of a take-home message to the listeners in terms of how. should people be thinking about Africa? How should people be thinking about decolonization in Africa? And what's something perhaps that you want people to always just keep in the back of their minds when they're presented with stories from the region that might not have this deep historical context? Well, I think, well, the first thing to do is to say to anyone

listening this and to the three of you who've organized this brilliant initiative. my apologies you know and you know you probably discount everything that I've said I you should avoid speaking in you know as a Marxist I can't possibly say this but you should probably avoid speaking in too many generalisations that it's the roughest outline that the most important thing of course is to drill down from some of these headings that we managed to outline and that is you know that's that's that That's important and vital work. So that is what needs to take place.

There's another question on decolonisation that you raise. Tragically, and this was a question in the late 60s and 70s, in the Black Power Movement around the world, particularly in the Caribbean and North America. And again now for the Black Lives Matter movement, is who is raising an answer and asking these questions? Where is knowledge production? And tragically, and it is a tragedy, and it is one that has its roots in colonial and imperial control of the African continent, it is North American and European white scholarship.

So the process of decolonization has to include, you know, renewed again, this. the celebration of and the foregrounding of black and African voices and where at all possible. And that we need to unpick some of those routes which go deep into our research and our study and find ways that we can challenge them. The Black Lives of Bata movement, for example, which has been a tornado, of course, in the States, as we know, but also in the UK, has started raising these questions. I think what we need to remember is that it was in the struggle, partly against the South African government, but essentially against institutions of higher learning in South Africa in 2014 and 15, where this movement was born. So once more, we have to see the origin of our struggles that we fight earnestly and importantly, you know, in parts of the North, have as their inspiration, what students and workers are involved in Africa, in South Africa, in particular in this case. Excellent. Leo Zilig, thank you so much for coming on the show. Like I said, this was really an impossible task, but we really did want to. get kind of a broad historical context that way in the months and years to come on guerrilla history we

can really drill down into these individual events movements individuals and hopefully we'll be able to bring you back on to talk again with us about you know a specific individual or specific movement because this really was an amazing conversation and i really do want to thank you for coming on the show and i know i speak for ad non and brett when i when i say thank you and we hope to have you back. So how can our listeners find you other than by going to R-O-A-P-E.net, Rope.net? Everybody should check out Rope. It's an excellent journal. I've been following it for years. But how else can the listeners find you? And what are you working on right now that they should be aware of? Well, that's great. And it's been a real pleasure and a privilege as well. Of course,

always a privilege to talk about, you know, some of our species' greatest struggles for liberation, and those have taken place, in my opinion in Africa, led by Sankara and Numbra and others, and of course, the huge movements that they've often led. A grey source, as you said, Henry, is the review of African political economy, and in the last six years, we've been online largely, so we have blogs, we have interviews with activists. One part of the project of Rope.net is to tell those hidden stories of activists and movements and perhaps more obscure political questions of political economy. From a resolutely radical and frequently Marxist perspective, to show that the traditions of the journal set

up in 74 are still very much there, revived, of course, as they need to be in the current period. So it's a great resource. Go there for some of these questions, which we try and deal with historically and also contemporary developments. I also, you know, working, you know, you haven't mentioned it, perhaps because they're not very good, but I also write novels. So I've got a third novel coming out based to a large extent on the continent, fictionalized story of a movement for radical transformation in the context of the climate emergency. And I'm also finishing a book, and it's taking me a long time, and even to say it or exhausts me. I'm finishing a book, a study of Walter Rodney, who is really the most astonishing and inspiring revolutionary of the Black Atlantic.

Excellent. So listeners, make sure to go to Arope.net. You can check out Leo's work at Leozilig.com. That's L-E-O-Z-E-I-G.com. Find him on Twitter. He posts relatively frequently on Twitter. Yeah, definitely check out Leo's work. He's excellent, and yeah, thanks again, Leo. And listeners will be right back with the wrap-up to the conversation here on Gorilla History. We're back on Gorilla History.

That was really an excellent conversation that we had with Leo Zilig. Again, Leo is a writer in research. on African politics and history, an editor at the review of African political economy, senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London, and an author of many books as well as, as he said at the end of the conversation,

a few novels as well. This was a really thought-provoking interview, and it really does help ground the future conversations that we're going to have on individual struggles, movements, individuals on the African continent. And I think that it was really important, in that way. I'm going to pitch it over to you guys to talk about your impressions of the interview,

but first I just want the listeners again to check out Leo's books. He has a lot of books that cover various topics within the African continent. And if this was an interesting conversation to you, definitely make sure that you pick up these books and give them a look through. And if you do let them know that you heard about it through the show here. But again, some of his books includes Thomas Sankara, Franz Fanon, philosopher of the third world, African struggles today, social movement since independence, and Congo, plunder and resistance. You've really got a wide variety of topics within Africa here with Leo's work. So do check those out. And hopefully this conversation was as enlightening to you as it was to us. But Brett Adnan, what did you guys

think about the conversation that we just had with Leo? Sure, I'll start this off. You know, all of our guests just continually impressed by the breadth of knowledge of these folks, particularly Alia. As you said in the interview, we're giving him impossible questions and he just takes it all in stride and it's inspiring and it's informative and I loved it. One thing that jumped to mind is the way underdevelopment is often used as a way to dehumanize and blame Africans for their own conditions, right? The underdevelopment is sort of shrouded by ideology and the narrative in the West is that the problems of Africa are the results of the failures of African peoples, African nations, etc. And this certainly blows that up. And there's a parallel with socialist history,

right, in that the U.S., the Imperial Corps, throws everything they have at any attempt to restructure an economy outside of the confines of global capitalism. And then when they overthrow the government and coup the leaders and plunder the resources and that country is divided and destroyed, it points to it and says, see, socialism doesn't work. And that is the chauvinistic sort of evil of imperialism and colonialism. And just how colonialism has shaped the entirety of the planet and the geopolitical nature of everything we're dealing with and how things like the pandemic and the climate change are not only in some ways results of those apparatus but also going forward will continue to play out the legacies of colonialism and imperialism,

as we mentioned at the end of that interview. And the last thing I just wanted to mention is we're recording this in early December 2020. By the time folks here, it'll probably be a month or two out. But right now in the Supreme Court, there is a lawsuit against big multinational U.S. corporations like Nestle and Cargill because of child slavery used in their supply chains. and so this has not been decided yet it'll probably be decided by the time people hear this but it's a very interesting just continuation a little focal point that's happening right now which is of course a legacy of colonialism and imperialism and in this in this case it says

that the that their complaint and the applicable law permits such cases against individuals but not corporations so these corporations are arguing that you can't actually sue us as a corporation you can only sue sort of individuals and this points out the hypocrisy of like citizens united when it's like oh corporations are people when it comes to free speech they can throw money around as a form of free speech right so the supreme court considers corporations people but then when it comes to taking responsibility the corporations say no no no you can only do that to people you can't do that to us right and so this is this is how law is structured around corporate rule and their interests and has nothing to do with justice or truth or anything like that i just want to

add one quick thing since, as you said, this will have been recorded a few months before the episode drops. So this episode of Nestle and Cargill being in the Supreme Court trying to defend the usage of essentially slave labor and trafficked children on cocoa plantations, this might be well out of the public consciousness. It's hardly in the public consciousness now because these sorts of things are basically intentionally withheld from public consumption. but by the time we're a couple months out from now, this really will be at the very back of people's minds. But I just want to remind the people that the people that are in charge,

regardless of what the party is that's in charge in these imperialist nations like the United States, no matter who's in charge and no matter what color that individual is, the difference doesn't really, there's no real difference if the mindset is the same. So one of the people that's defending Nestle's usage of slave labor, essentially, is Neil Kittial, who is Solicitor General under Barack Obama. So, again, we have high-ranking officials from the Obama administration, essentially defending slave labor. I just thought that that was worth re-raising in case people either hadn't heard it or have forgotten by the time that this episode comes out that, again, the Solicitor General under Obama is currently defending Nestle's usage of slave labor. Anyway, sorry for that aside. Adnan, what were your impressions of the interview? Well, no apologies at all, Henry, because that really relates to one of the themes that I think came out of this broad overview.

And, of course, we just want to think of this as an introduction to future discussion and study of more of the specifics. But it was a great overview. And when we talk about the issue of environment and climate change and the exploitation of Africa, we realize, I think from the this history that we already talked about, but going forward is, has Africa been decolonized? What does decolonization mean? We were discussing a historical process that takes place, broadly speaking, late 50s to, you know, mid-1970s, so a period of 20 years where the political, you know, environment of Africa changed dramatically from formal colonial control to independent post-colonial states. But as we learned, political liberation has textures and nuances. It isn't always as

full in the world system as we might imagine national liberation really leading to, you know, independent sovereignty in a full sense. And then subsequently also to understand how the world economic system continues to exploit and suppress the people on the continent. So, Has it really been decolonized? That's a continuing question, depending on how you think of it. But I think one of the other themes that I thought was very important and interesting that I hope we'll have a chance to explore in the future is not only was it a tall order to talk about the whole continent and a transnational perspective, pan-Africanism, and to try and give some coherence to this 20-year process and its longer history as an overview, like what were. the shared kind of dimensions of this. But in fact, actually, once we started talking about it with Leo, a lot of the trans-regional and global connections immediately come out. We haven't pursued all

of those strands, but this is important because of the intersections between the anti-racism struggles in places like the U.S., North America, Caribbean, Europe, and, you know, anti-colonial movements in Africa. There's lots of intersections and connections between those things. And what it tells us also is how important solidarity and globalizing these struggles can be to support both those sides of the struggles in their different contexts. Those connections need to be made. So I hope we'll have a chance to talk a little bit more about some of the diasporic black intellectuals and scholars and theoreticians, some of whom we mentioned today in our conversation, people like Fanon, we could have had Césaire, Du Bois. You know, there's so many

that come from North America Caribbean, but theorized anti-racism and anti-colonial struggles that were significant and important. And likewise, there were a lot of solidarity movements, and even if we think about the end of apartheid, the way in which a global movement came together to try and pressure the last settler colonial state on, you know, in Africa. So I think those are things that will be valuable, not only historically, but also because they're models for how we, in our own positions, can contribute and assist and show solidarity for the liberation of people around the world. So, yeah, it was a fantastic discussion.

I'm looking forward to future follow-up discussions. I just want to remind the listeners before I give you each the opportunity to have any final words that you want to have on the conversation that we had and the prospects going forward for the show on African related topics and movements that I just want to remind the listeners that this was so broad that there's there's a lot of information that's going to be lost here just due to the constraint of having to cover such a broad continent with so many different cultural backgrounds cultural contexts in such a short period of time to cover this this topic and the detail that it needs, it would take years of extensive study. And we had

just over an hour of a conversation with Leo. So I do want to emphasize that this is overly broad, but we want to give you the cultural context for the future conversations that we're going to have with Leo and other experts talking about very specific cases. Because as I said in the intro of this episode, in the West, we don't really get that historical grounding that we need to get on African issues, the African historical context. And without that grounding, that historical grounding in our education systems on these topics, when we see individual movements, we don't understand the broader context, how they relate with each other, how the cultural context of that area ties into the success or failures of that

movement. We don't understand. There's a lot we don't understand because we haven't been exposed to it yet. So what the aim of this conversation was, was to kind of give us a little bit of that background context of African movements as a whole, again, an overly broad grouping. That way, when we do get into the individual episodes on individual, very highly specific episodes, that you'll be able to go back to this and remind yourself of some of that historical context. And it'll let you know maybe some other sources that you can read you know read walter rodney how europe underdeveloped africa to get more of that historical grounding so that when we do talk about individual movements and go very deep within them the individual events that took place within those movements

makes sense in a broader historical and cultural context within the continent of africa so when you listen to this episode i want you to take that as the message that this really is a survey and a grounding from where we're going to be leaping off from and that when we listen to those future episodes this is something that you can always call back to to remind yourself of some of that context. So guys, I'll leave it to you now. What are your final thoughts on the conversation that we had with Leo and the prospects going forward? Well, I would just say that one interesting little nugget that we got was how important the defeat of the French in Indochina was in inspiring Africans on the continent to be able to imagine that they

could liberate themselves. And so to quote Malcolm X again, we remember Diem B'am Fu. And clearly, Africans struggling for their liberation took a lot of inspiration. And that's a model of the transnational global source. of approach that this history has to bear on contemporary struggles, is remembering this history is inspiring for us as it was for them. Yeah. And for my final words, you know, although, as Henry said, these are broad general sweeps

so that we can do deep dives and have that context already in our back pocket, there were still so many interesting little times when you drilled down. And one of those times was on Patrice Lumumba, who, you know, is a giant in these discussions and needs to be brought up, so I was glad to address that. And I'll just end my part with a quote about him from his friend Thomas Kanzah, who was, like I said, a friend and a colleague of Lumumba, and he said, quote, despite his brief political career and tragic death, or perhaps because of them, Lumumba entered history through the front door.

He became both a flag and a symbol. He lived as a free man and an independent thinker. Everything he wrote, said, and did was the product of someone who knew his vocation to be that of a liberator. And he represents for the Congo, what Castro does for Cuba, Nassir for Egypt, Nekrumah for Ghana, Mao Cetung for China, and Lenin for Russia. Excellent. Now, listeners, before I have the guys remind you of how to find them on social media, I have a task for you. Well, the three of us have relatively similar political ideologies.

I think it's fair to say, Adnan Brett, that the three of us have relatively similar political ideologies. I think that these conversations that we're having on this show, including the one we just had with Leo, have a great importance to anyone, regardless of their political ideology. I think that, especially for people that are living within the Western Imperial Corps, that these undercovered, underdissused, misunderstood histories, different cultural contexts, I think that it's very important for people regardless. of their political ideology to at least be exposed to these sorts of conversations. So do us a favor and let people that you know, regardless of their political ideology, know about the show. Let them know about this episode. You can find us on any podcast app slash platform that you use.

Otherwise, you can just send them the episode page. But do send these episodes out to people, regardless of political ideology. And if we want to help the show even more, rate the show. give us a review. It helps people find us organically through the podcast app. So that's something that I think that I want to emphasize for you to do to help get these kind of conversations out there to more people because it is really important to educate people on these issues and it might help bring some people around to seeing things through an anti-imperialist lens that might have never thought about it before. So Adnan Brett, thanks as always. This is so

much fun doing this with you. How can the listeners find you, Brett? For me, you can go to Revolutionary LeftRadio.com. You can find Rev. Left Radio, and you can find Red Menace. And on Rev. Left Radio, particularly publicly on Patreon, I've been doing more work on one of my other interests, which is Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist spirituality and practices. And I've also been conducting several guided meditations to help people get into the practices of Buddhism. So if that is at all interesting. I know it sort of diverges from what we cover on this show and a lot of what we cover on RevLeft. But if you're at all interested in that, definitely check that out. It's public on our Patreon. But yeah, anything else, Rev. Left or Revolutionary Leftradio.com.

Excellent. Adnan, how can the listeners find you in the work you're doing? Listeners can find me on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussein, 1-S-A-I-N. And I'd also encourage, if you like listening to podcasts, I also co-host another podcast called the Mudgellis, which is an outgrowth of the Muslim Society's Global Perspectives project that I direct at Queen's University, and you can find it on all the usual platforms, but if you go directly to anchor.fm slash T-H-E-M-A-J-L-I-S, you can find us. Excellent. I do recommend the listeners check out Brett's two podcasts, RevLeft Radio, as well as the Red Menace and Audin's other podcast, The Muddilist.

They're all great. I listen to every episode of all of them. For myself, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995-H-2-C-K-1995, or check me out on Patreon. I do science and public health breakdowns for people, particularly COVID-related stuff. You can find that at patreon.com forward slash Huck-1995. For the show, Gorilla History, you can find us on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A underscore pod, and we have a Patreon as well. Patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history.

Again, two R's, two L's. That's going to help the show run, make sure that we're able to keep putting out this really excellent content. So thanks again, guys. It was a pleasure doing the episode with you, and listeners will be back again very soon with another episode of Gorilla History. So, you know, so,

Thank you.