ARS NOTORIA

African Revolutionary Writers, Part 10 Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah   1909 - 1972 Kwame Nkrumah is one of the very greatest of the African Revolutionary writers: independence leader and first democratic president of his country, Ghana. Of the two Nkrumah downloads linked below, the first covers major parts of his “Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism”. At the end of this revolutionary book Nkrumah wrote: “I have set out the argument for African unity and have explained how this unity would destroy neo-colonialism in Africa. In later chapters I have explained how strong is the world position of those who profit from neo-colonialism. Nevertheless, African unity is something which is within the grasp of the African people. The foreign firms who exploit our resources long ago saw the strength to be gained from acting on a Pan-African scale. By means of interlocking directorships, cross-shareholdings and other devices, groups of apparently different companies have formed, in fact,

African Revolutionary Writers, Part 9c Colonel Gaddafi as he was Muammar Gadaffi Muammar Gaddafi led a small group of junior military officers in a bloodless   coup d'état  in Libya against  the pro-Imperialist King Idris on 1 September 1969. By the grace of god he is still the leader of that country. In fact, he is the longest-serving national leader of any country in the whole world at this stage. Libya is a large African country on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, West of Egypt and East of Tunisia, by now much more developed than before. Gaddafi and Mandela Muammar Gaddafi’s 1975 “Green Book”, and especially the part on “Democracy”, is a very useful text for discussion in study circles, because it does not take bourgeois democracy for granted, but interrogates it, criticises it severely and to a considerable extent, rejects it. Gaddafi is certainly and African Revolutionary Writer. In the other, much more recent piece for the New York Times, Gaddafi sets out a plain

African Revolutionary Writers, Part 9b Ahmed Ben Bella with Gamal Abdel Nasser Ahmed Ben Bella Ahmed Ben Bella is an Algerian Revolutionary and freedom fighter, 3 rd President of Algeria (1963-1965), born in 1918, now aged 91. The main document linked below is an interview with Ben Bella done in 2006. Of course it would be preferable to have a political pamphlet, speech, or article for a theoretical journal written by the comrade’s own hand. But this is a good substitute. You will see that Ben Bella interacted with both Cabral and Mandela. Says Ben Bella: “Mr. Mandela and Mr. Amilcar Cabral themselves came to Algeria. It’s me who coached them; afterwards they returned to lead the fight for freedom in their countries. For other movements, which were not involved in a military fight and who needed only political support, such as Mali, we helped in other ways.” You will see Che Guevara was also there at one stage. In 2003, Ben Bella went into action again and was elected to le

African Revolutionary Writers, Part 9a Young Samir Amin Samir Amin Samir Amin is an African Revolutionary Writer born in Egypt, fluent in French, often published in English, and a scholar who has illuminated the revolutionary potential and imperative for half a century in our continent. The downloadable text below, coming from an article in Al Ahram, begins with the following statement, unfortunately no less true today than when it was written in 2003: “ The United States is governed by a junta of war criminals…” This article is a thorough-going denunciation but also a scientific and very well-informed analysis of US society and history, seen from outside, contained in only four pages. It is also a call to arms. Samir Amin is a living example of the moral and humanist clarity that is characteristic of the African Anti-Imperialist intellectual cadre. According to Wikipedia he has written more than 30 books. He remains a stalwart. Please download and read the text via this link

Es necesario recordar, las palabras de nuestro presidente, para abrir nuestros ojitos a la posibilidad de que otro mundo es posible.   Con Allende en la memoria y en los corazones de buena voluntad, con la esperanza de costruir una patria digna, justa y equitativa para todos paz y harmonia, y que  que nos traiga  este añ o nuevo el inicio de la justicia social para nuestra tierra y para toda la gran patria Latinoamericano.  L a América, al estremecerse al principio de siglo desde las entrañas hasta las cumbres, se hizo hombre, y fue Bolívar. No es que los hombres hacen los pueblos, sino que los pueblos, con su hora de génesis, suelen ponerse, vibrantes y triunfantes, en un hombre. A veces está el hombre listo y no lo está su pueblo. A veces está listo el pueblo y no aparece el hombre.Cuando los pueblos sean Gobierno; cuando las masas populares -y no será tarde- adquieran la dimensión de su fuerza; cuando el campesino sepa que le entrega el pan, y el minero la rique

African Revolutionary Writers, Part 9 Issa Shivji Issa Shivji [pictured] has been a professor at the University Dar es Salaam for four decades. He is an African revolutionary intellectual of the first rank. Shivji provides our reading text for today, “The Struggle for Democracy and Culture” downloadable via the first link given below. Shivji has made the anti-Imperialist case very well, reminding us among other things that it is we freedom-fighters who are the humanists now, and it is the Imperialists who are the barbarians (a message that is also reinforced by Kenan Malik’s short, included piece about culture). Issa Shivji’s address on The Struggle for Democracy and Culture explicitly and correctly claims, on behalf of the national-liberation and anti-colonial struggles, that this struggle carries, for the time being, the banner of progress for the whole world. For a long time past, and into the future, until such time as the struggle for socialism itself becomes once again th

Women are the slaves of slaves From Peace News 28th August 1970 ________________________________  AFRICAN WOMEN'S LIBERATION ________________________________  By Eve Hall In the last three or four years, women's liberation movements have mushroomed all over the world, spawned offshoots to the right and to the left and given birth to near lunatic groups like SCUM: The Society for Cutting up Men. It's fairly easy to explain the sudden militancy and vocal demands. Two generations after women wrestled the right to vote from male-ruled society, a hard fact is becoming more and more apparent; that, as votes for men did nothing to shift the power from the Capitalist class to the workers, so votes for women haven't brought the hoped for freedom, equality and better life. Along with Blacks in America, students all over the world, Tanzanians, Cubans and Vietnamese, women realise that the fight is not for equal rights. The fight is for change

The second front of Che in the Congo Signed: to my South African Brother Dominic Tweedie with affection from Jorge Risquet Dedicated to the internationalist Cuban combatants fallen in Africa Casa Editora Abril Published April 2006 Havana

Santa Cruz De Tenerife, Saturday October 23 2010 Hundreds of people marched in Tenerife on Saturday to demand decolonisation and independence of the Canary Islands from Spain. by James Tweedie Two simultaneous demonstrations in Tenerife's capital Santa Cruz and the neighbouring historic city of La Laguna, organised by a raft of left-wing nationalist organisations, attracted about 200 people each. Organisers included the Canarian National Alternative (ANC), People's Unity (UP), Inekaren, youth organisation Azarug and regional trade unions IC and FSOC. La Laguna, or Aguere as the indigenous Canarian Guanche people called it, is the site of the defeat of and death in battle of Grand Mencey Bencomo, then-king of Tenerife, by a Spanish conquistador army on November 14 and 15 1494. The date marked the 46 th  anniversary of the white, blue and yellow Canarian flag, which for the separatists bears seven green stars to represent the seven islands of the archipelago. Marchers chanted: “O

African Revolutionary Writers, Part 8 b Angela Davis Angela Davis is well known but hard to summarise. She is a scholar. She is also a holder of the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union, and she was twice a Vice-Presidential candidate on behalf of the CPUSA.  This link  takes you to an interview that Angela Davis did with Gary Younge of the Guardian (London) in 2007, during a trip which also took her to Johannesburg, as recorded by the  CU here . This link  takes you to the Angela Davis page on Wikipedia, where as usual there are more links, at the bottom of the page. Chapter 13 from Angela Davis’s 1981 book, Women, Race and Class (download linked below) is to a large extent a polemic against the Wages for Housework Movement of that time, led by Mariarosa Dalla Costa in Italy. In this sense, the text represents “African Classicism” for the purposes of ordering this course: it is an orthodox Marxist defence against a kind of anarchism or liberalism. Naturally this does not me