Communism in Africa

[RedGuerilla]

Sorry if this is a stupid question, would a communist society be possible in africa? would it be implemented properly? I for one live in south africa and in my experience we screw up every ideology that's introduced to us.

[Die Rote Fahne]

Sorry if this is a stupid question, would a communist society be possible in africa? would it be implemented properly? I for one live in south africa and in my experience we screw up every ideology that's introduced to us.

Yes, it is possible. Neigh, inevitable.

It takes time. The class conscious needs to awaken, workers need to revolt. This will not happen out of nowhere.

[WeAreReborn]

Communism is possible everywhere, as long as people think Communism shall be present. Unless you are talking Leninism. :lol:

[Magón]

I'm not too sure on how it is in South Africa, but Tribal Religions are something that would have to be overcome, and probably not in an easy way.

[Marxach-Léinínach]

Somalia was socialist under Siad Barre. Tanzania and Libya both had/have their own specific versions of socialism as well I think. Then you had the pro-Soviet African countries like Ethiopia, Angola etc. which ran under the Kosygin-reform system the USSR used after 1965 which, for all its flaws, was still a lot better than straight-up capitalism.

[Armchair War Criminal]

I'm not too sure on how it is in South Africa, but Tribal Religions are something that would have to be overcome, and probably not in an easy way.
What's so bad about tribal religions compared to other sorts of traditional beliefs?

[Magón]

What's so bad about tribal religions compared to other sorts of traditional beliefs?

Um... Did I really have to mention other more traditional religions? I don't think so. I think the more traditional religions, have been addressed many more times on here then African Tribal Religions, so I didn't think I'd have to mention them. Kinda self explanatory in a way.

[bailey_187]

I'm not too sure on how it is in South Africa, but Tribal Religions are something that would have to be overcome, and probably not in an easy way.

what? Most of Africa doesnt follow "Tribal religions" you know....

[yobbos1]

what? Most of Africa doesnt follow "Tribal religions" you know....
True, most of Africa is converting to Christianity and Islam at an alarming rate.

[Barry Lyndon]

Look up Thomas Sankara, Samora Machel, Augustino Neto, Amilcar Cabral, and Kwame Nkrumah. They were probably the most prominent African Marxist revolutionaries.

[Reznov]

Would "Communist"/Socialist/Marxist countries in Africa accept White/European people who are Marxists to immigrate to their countries?

Even given the long history of Whites in Africa (like South Africa for example) oppressing and virtually exploiting them in the past?

[WeAreReborn]

Would "Communist"/Socialist/Marxist countries in Africa accept White/European people who are Marxists to immigrate to their countries?

Even given the long history of Whites in Africa (like South Africa for example) oppressing and virtually exploiting them in the past?
If they were Communist I assume they might be progressive in thought and realize a few imperialistic white men who abuse their power hardly speak for the entire race.

[Axle]

The entire world is required to be on board for a Communist society, so the broad answer to your question is yes.

However, conditions aren't exactly ripe for Communism or even Socialism anywhere in Africa...it could be tried, has been tried...but Africa isn't economically prepared for it yet.

[cb9's_unity]

I know very little about communism in relation to Africa. However from all I can tell, it seems to be the least likely place for socialism to spring up at this point. If your looking for active communists/socialists, Latin America and parts of Asia are the hot spots today.

[Weezer]

I believe Thomas Sankara's Burkina Faso was one of the best models for a socialist state, at least for a third world socialist state. I have yet to hear any right-wing criticisms about Sankara's regime.

[Barry Lyndon]

I believe Thomas Sankara's Burkina Faso was one of the best models for a socialist state, at least for a third world socialist state. I have yet to hear any right-wing criticisms about Sankara's regime.

Yeah- Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Mao, and Fidel are all defendable, but the right has lots of ready made smears against them. Either they don't know about Sankara or there is literally nothing on him.

[Red Lunatic]

I think Africa could have a big marxist revolt. Look at the IMF-dictatorship in those countries, people must once revolt against it.

[bailey_187]

I believe Thomas Sankara's Burkina Faso was one of the best models for a socialist state, at least for a third world socialist state. I have yet to hear any right-wing criticisms about Sankara's regime.

For all the acheivments of Sankara's rule, it only lasted a few years and so was only able to address the immediate needs of the people e.g. hunger, womens rights. It wasnt given a chance to develop into an actual "model".

[RedGuerilla]

The problem is in south africa the majority of the black population are ANC loyalists and in the minds of the people it's either ANC or apartheid

[Obs]

The problem is in south africa the majority of the black population are ANC loyalists and in the minds of the people it's either ANC or apartheid
The majority of the populace in Europe believe communism is a totalitarian, freedom-hating, murderous ideology. Does that mean there can never be socialism in Europe? You gotta think before you type, man.

[revolution inaction]

Sorry if this is a stupid question, would a communist society be possible in africa? would it be implemented properly? I for one live in south africa and in my experience we screw up every ideology that's introduced to us.

acording to Charles Xavier (http://www.revleft.com/vb/member.php?u=17356) your already living in a communist society :D

seriously though, what is it that you think is different about africa compared to everywhere else?

[Barry Lyndon]

Killer Enigma-

I agree with much of what you say, but I don't consider ZANU-PF to be that defensible. When I was in the UK I met a number of people from Zimbabwe who were pretty negative about what was going on there, and these were refugees from poor families. Mugabe's 'land reform' was basically about taking land away from whites and redistributing it to his friends, not to poor blacks. This isn't socialism, this is just thievery. He also uses armed thugs to terrorize people who protest against his lavish lifestyle while most Zimbabweans are deprived of their most basic needs.
Of course Mugabe is not being attacked because he's a corrupt despot(there are plenty of those in Africa that the US, Britain, and France are just fine with), but because he keeps Western businesses out of the country.

Menghitsu in Ethiopia was pretty horrible too, and committed a lot of vicious crimes against his own people- running over women and childen and old people with tanks, starving rebellious regions and so on. It's not really anti-Communist to point this out, because the main resistance force against the Derg were also Marxist, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party.
My main source on this is a friend of mine who has lived in Cuba and has extensively studied Cuban support for African liberation movements as a sociologist.

Don't mean to quibble too much, I agree that socialist experiments in Africa are often downplayed and ignored, even by Western leftists, as a result of left Eurocentrism.
The most positive examples of socialism in Africa would be Mozambique and Burkina Faso IMHO.

[Barry Lyndon]

I wrote this fairly recently:

Thomas Sankara was the Marxist leader of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987, in a brief but brilliant revolution that demonstrated what socialism could accomplish in even the poorest and most backward of countries.


Born in the then French colony of Upper Volta in 1949, Sankara attended military school and when continuing his training in Madagascar he was introduced to Marxist ideas coming out of the May 1968 events in France. Rising through the ranks of the military, he was increasingly determined to use socialism to rid the Upper Volta of the rampant poverty, illiteracy, and disease that stalked its population, as well as free it from the chains of economic domination by France.


On August 4, 1983, Sankara and fellow left-wing military officers seized power it conjunction with a popular uprising in the capital city, Ouagadougou.


Sankara inherited a country that was at the bottom of the scale of development- only 8% of the population could read and write, the average life expectancy was barely over 40 years, infant mortality was 208 per 1,000 live births, and of a population of 8 million there were only 30,000 industrial workers, nearly all of the rest being peasants.
Undaunted, Sankara and the revolutionary party that he headed proceeded to tackle the Upper Volta's problems.


He stripped the repressive landlords and tribal chiefs of their economic power, forbidding them to receive cheap labor and tribute from the peasantry, while seizing their land and handing it over to the peasants.He cancelled all rents to the landlords. He nationalized all the mineral wealth from French corporations and local capitalists.


To combat disease, the revolutionary government instituted a medical program in which 2.5 million children were vaccinated against yellow fever, measles, and meningitis. To combat ignorance. schools were set up all over the country in a mass literacy program modeled on Cuba's.


Sankara also supported women's rights by abolishing polygamy, forced marriages, and female genital mutilation. Women for the first time were encouraged to go to school and work outside the home, and women's brigades were organized to propagate this message and protect fellow women from domestic violence.
Sankara's government was the first in Africa to publicize the threat of AIDs.


With a mind for the environment, the deforestation caused by decades of French exploitation was combated by the planting of ten million trees to halt the advance of the desert and provide a source of income and food for landless peasants.


When in power, Sankara pursued a consistent anti-imperialist foreign policy. He forged strong ties with revolutionary Cuba, Sandinista Nicaragua, and North Korea, and voiced support for the Namibian people's fight against apartheid South Africa, the independence of Western Morocco, and the struggle of the Palestinians against Israeli occupation.


He spoke at the Organization of African Unity about the need for a united African front against paying foreign debt, correctly identifying debt as a new form of imperialism.


Sankara was an incorruptible revolutionary leader who modeled himself on Che Guevara. He refused to drive a Mercedes and exchanged it for a Renault, the cheapest car that was used in the country. He did not have air conditioning where he lived and worked, in spite of the often sweltering heat, saying he wouldn't have such a luxury until it was available to everyone else. Although he was a head of state, Sankara made only $450 a month and his personal possessions were limited to a car, four bikes, three guitars, a fridge and a broken freezer.


The name of the country was changed from the French colonial Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, "Land of the Upright Men".


Within a few short years, these socialist policies were bearing fruit. The mass vaccination program caused the infant mortality in Burkina Faso to drop from 208 to 145 in only three years. The literate population of rose from 8% to 20% in the space of four years. With agricultural land out of the hands of landlords and entirely for public consumption, wheat production was doubled in just four years, and Burkina Faso became self-sufficient in feeding its population. For the first time in history, the people of this poor country had hope for the future.


However, Sankara's policies had made him powerful enemies among the tribal chiefs and capitalists he had taken control from. The French were also afraid of Sankara because his path of independent development and refusal to pay foreign debt might serve as an example to other parts of West Africa and seriously undermine their economic domination of the region.


On October 15, 1987, Sankara and his revolution was destroyed by treachery. A military coup led by his erstwhile friend Blaise Compradore, with French military and financial support, stormed the presidential palace and assassinated Thomas Sankara along with 12 of his ministers. Pro-Sankara military units and militias fought the coup for about a week before they were crushed.
Compradore reversed nearly all of Sankara's policies- he re-privatized the economy and resumed Burkina Faso's economic domination by France.
He remains in power to this day, his Faustian bargain rewarded by him becoming rich while his people remain some of the poorest in Africa and the world.


Sankara is still revered by progressive minded people all over Africa as a beacon of light on a dark continent. As Sankara himself once said in a tribute to Che Guevara only a week before his own assassination- "you cannot kill ideas".


Thomas Sankara, alongside Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Rosa Luxemburg, deserves to be remembered as a great revolutionary and an embodiment of the idea that socialism is the path to a better world and better human beings.

Sources are largely from 'We are the heirs of the world's revolutions-Thomas Sankara speeches from the Burkina Faso Revolution 1983-87' published by Pathfinder Press, 2007.

[bailey_187]

Killer Enigma-

I agree with much of what you say, but I don't consider ZANU-PF to be that defensible. When I was in the UK I met a number of people from Zimbabwe who were pretty negative about what was going on there, and these were refugees from poor families. Mugabe's 'land reform' was basically about taking land away from whites and redistributing it to his friends, not to poor blacks. This isn't socialism, this is just thievery. He also uses armed thugs to terrorize people who protest against his lavish lifestyle while most Zimbabweans are deprived of their most basic needs.
Of course Mugabe is not being attacked because he's a corrupt despot(there are plenty of those in Africa that the US, Britain, and France are just fine with), but because he keeps Western businesses out of the country.

My view on Zimbabwe started to change when some girl from Zimbabwe i know who's uncle is a minister in the ZANU-PF government started posting pictures on facebook with all her uncles luxury cars in the UK. I mean, i knew ZANU-PF members obviously lived better than the rest, but seeing it was different.