Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 23:04:30 GMT
From: Chris Burford <cburford-AT-gn.apc.org>
Subject: M-G: Recent Peoples' Wars in Africa


Recent Peoples' Wars in Africa

The near success of the democratic war led by Kabila in
Zaire, allows us to think of a group of three relatively
recent peoples wars in Africa which have been progressive
and successful and have had different characteristics 
>from other peoples wars. I am thinking also of the 
war in Uganda led by Museveni, and the War in Ethiopia
against the former Soviet leaning regime. (Following
my typos this morning as I rushed to work I am not even
going to attempt to get the names of the organisations 
correct.)

None of these was the sort of People's War of the 
60's or 70's that was clearly directed against
a US aligned comprador regime, and received aid
>from the Soviet bloc. Nor was it the group of 
wars against Portugese colonialism, and the 
war of liberation against settler colonialism
in Zimbabwe.  Nor the wars of 
resistance to the ravages of the apartheid state.

Each of the 3 wars - in Zaire, Uganda, and Ethiopia, 
has been relatively independent of cold war alignment.
On their own they have appeared a detail of history,
but now perhaps we should look at them together.
They have been sustained over a period of time. Kabila's
recent successes have been rapid, but the maturation of 
his movement has taken much longer. The wars have been 
political in that they have required a greater level of 
discipline among the fighters, and a trust-building relationship
with the population, and they have been political in 
being able to build and sustain coalitions of different
broadly democratic forces. They have not been seen to 
depend on a non-African ideology, but have clearly integrated
whatever ideas they got from elsewhere, with African 
conditions. 

The popular forces have not centrally
confronted capitalism, and particularly US imperialism,
and they have adapted to aspects of the neo-liberal political 
agenda economically and in terms of civil rights. Nevertheless
they were achievements of the sustained assertion of an 
armed popular democratic will, that command respect.

South African capitalism may well be looking to become a 
sub-imperialism, but there is a positive aspect to the 
contradiction too. An individual African country
even the economic size of South Africa, has virtually no 
leverage in the world economy. It has begun to have some
success in harmonising its economic relations with 
eastern and southern African countries. If it can lay the 
basis for an understanding with post liberation Zaire
and if sometime in the next 5 years political changes
in Nigeria allow the country to pull its economic and 
political weight in a new African continental politics, 
then underneath a process which inevitably has got to 
include many compromises with neo-liberalism and world 
imperialism, Africa begins to have a democratic chance.
Not chance of total liberation, but a chance of somewhat
greater control over its own affairs.

If it has a framework for handling contradictions within 
its own states, and between its states, then it will be 
able to bargain with a *little* more authority on 
a world stage. Above all it will have to play US imperialism
off against European imperialism. This will remain
a hard task and from the point of view of global imperialism
Africa could still drop off the map. New developments in 
Africa, in which the more recent people's wars however, have 
played a part, start to create a continental framework in 
which the people of Africa can articulate their determination
that they will not drop off any map. 

The reports of recent troop movements by imperialist powers 
are interesting, but the USA was badly burned in Somalia.
It knows that, and Africans know that it knows that. 
If Africa can handle its military affairs itself, and in 
particular if it can become impossible for France to parachute
troops into African countries, this is a small step that by
no means defeats imperialism, but lays the political basis 
for organising some more coherent resistance.

Chris Burford



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