Baba,

I started this response but had to cut it short and in the process
mistakenly sent it to the list. Below is a completion of what what was never
meant to see the list:

It is indeed true that in most cases of liberation struggles it is the
middle-class that assumes the leadership role but probably the earliest
and most grass-roots oriented attempt at liberation war from colonialism in
Africa was led by someone that emerged from with the grass-roots. Dedan
Kimathi lead what is commonly referred to as the Mau mau, a rather
derogatory term which historians are still scratching their head as to its
origins.

Freedom Fighters don't come more genuine than the man who led, without much
theorizing, The Land and Freedom Party of Kenya. His message was simple and
to the point: Retake the land. Yet, aside from Ngugi who has celebrated
Dedan from his earliest works as the most genuine Freedom Fighter ever to
emerge from Kenya, the middle-class, from Jomo Kenyatta to Moi has shunned
both the man and his legacy until quite recently when he was finally
recognised as a liberation hero and had a statue raised in his honour and a
Square named after him in Nairobi.

Frantz Fanon, on the other hand was never shamed by the man's methods, of
amongst others simply decapitating the colonialist officers, members of
their families and whoever participated in the oppression of Kenyans in
cahoots with the imperialists.

He defended his actions well; who was to judge that his was more brutal than
that of his adversaries who herded millions of defenceless Kenyans like
animals into reserves where cattle received more humane treatment than
humans? Under who's value system was that judgement to be made?

Yet Kenyatta may never have been had it not been for the fearless Kimathi,
who was finally captured and hanged. To this day, despite tireless searches,
his grave has not been located even though he was buried in the same prison
where he was murdered.

I say Kenyata may never have been without Kimathi because he and his
nationalist party distanced themselves from "...these terrorists, these
throat slitters" as Fonon observed:

"..the leader of the nationalist party... loudly proclaims that he has
nothing to do with these Mau-Mau, these terrorists, these throat slitters.
At best, he shuts himself off in a no-man's-land between the terrorists and
the settlers and willingly offers his services as go-between; that is to
say, that as the settlers cannot discuss terms with these Mau-Mau, he
himself will be quite willing to begin negotiations. *Thus it is that the
rear-guard of the national struggle, that very party of people who have
never ceased to be on the other side in the fight, find themselves
somersaulted into the vanguard of negotiations and compromise - precisely
because that party has taken very good care never to break contact with
colonialism..."*

Each man is the sum of his collective experiences whichever way you slice.
Fanon himself, a psychiatrist posted by colonial France to Algeria practice
his trade, was no different to and even went on to give psychiatry a new
meaning when he extended his medical practice into the Liberation War. Why?

Because according to his reasoning, his patients always returned for renewed
treatment whenever he discharged them because the source and "cause" of
their mental illness did not go away. The cause of their mental condition
was the brutal oppression and subjugation by the colonial power. Men with a
high premium on "honour" found themselves, their wives and daughters being
humiliated daily at the hands of the colonialists. So Fonon, the pragmatist,
recognised that unless that source and cause of their mental condition was
eliminated, all he was treating were symptoms and not the cause. For that
reason he dedicated his life to help liberate Algerians, even refusing to
evacuate for treatment of his leukaemia until it was too late to save his
life on arrival in the US. The internationalist in him recognised that the
struggle to liberate the oppressed was anywhere it found him at any given
time. Fanon canonized violence as a tool for liberation and used it
accordingly.

So did Cabral and both their projects succeeded eventually. Of course The
PAIGC's Liberation War may never have been had Bissau and Cape Verde been
colonised by another colonial power than Portugal, who refused to give up
her colonised, waging brutal wars of oppression from Bissau to Angola and
Mozambique because of abject poverty at home. For them it was a do or die
fight to maintain the right to suck the blood of Africans in order to
nourish her citizens at home.

This brings us to the question: Who is a Freedom Fighter?

Was Kenyatta who eventually hoisted the flag of independence thru hobnobbing
with the oppressor the freedom fighter and Kimathi who took up arms and led
a grassroots army to fight against the oppressor the terrorist?

Would Kenya's fate be the same today if Kimathi's Land and Freedom Party
had succeeded in gaining momentum and and eventually independence from the
battlefiled with large tracks of land still left in tact as under colonial
confiscation?

Kenyatta may have been the Father of the Nation but who was the true freedom
fighter fighter amongst the two considering the fact that they faced a
common enemy. Of course the answer to this question depends on one's
political orientation, weather or not one accepts political violence as a
means of attaining political objectives.

Cabral, Fanon, Kimathi, Nujoma, Mandela, Neto, Machel amongst many were
certainly Freedom Fighters without qualification. I say this because in
the struggles that these gentlemen led there was a clear definition of who
the enemy was and it certainly was not based on skin colour as many whites
supported these struggles. But it clearly defined the enemy as the foreign
oppressor and all his machinery, including Black locals who connived with
them.

In South Africa these Black stooges, referred to as 'dogs' by youth from
townships, were simply 'necklaced,' hanging car tires around their necks,
dousing them in petrol and setting them on fire. Whiles the oppressor termed
this as barbarity, the youth justified their act. Anybody who goes around
informing on groups fighting life and death struggles deserves what the
victims of their informing got at the hands of the enemy when captured. Were
these youth Freedom Fighters or 'terrorist'? They certainly did not give a
hoot about standards of best practice of struggle, or if they did they
certainly believed they were setting it up.

Who is a Freedom Fighter?  Are people who sit behind keyboards and play
holier than thou and have never even joined a political demonstration in
their lives, let alone joined a political party, never undertaken anything
political they are aware involves the possibility of death at the hands of
political  enemies, Freedom Fighters?

There are certainly some Political Activists amongst ourselves but I will
certainly be circumspect about branding them Freedom Fighters even though
many will claim that what they are engaged in is part of fighting for
Freedom.

To some, especially the imperialists Morgan Tsvangarai, is a Freedom
Fighter, to many Africans he is a traitor funded by imperialism in order to
dent the gains of of the struggle of the people of Zimbabwe; just like in
the eyes of Yaya Jammeh and many of his supporters, most of those who oppose
his regime are unpatriotic.

Thomas Sankara, for example, was indeed a very progressive and promising
leader, so was Patrice Lumbumba. Just as Sankara died at the hands of his
own so did Lumbumba but there was a big difference under closer examination.
Whiles Burkina had no natural resources that would cause imperialism to 'to
waste her time' against him, vast mineral resources lies beneath The Congo
soil and the enemies of Africa were not prepared to have remain in power a
leader who's aim it was to work for his own. Their early deaths certainly
etched their names among the heroes of Africa but would that fate have been
the same had they had to chance to remain in power for long?

Would imperialism have allowed them the space to lead their people to
prosperity or push them to the edge so they ended up taking the same
defensive postures, like Nkrumah and Mugabe ended doing and that eventually
listed them among the 'dictators'? in their eyes? What is certain is that
one cannot seriously discuss the future of Africa without including
imperialism in the equation.

As for the horizontal lash-outs among would-be 'Freedom Fighters,' or
Political Activists, if you like, I can safely say that though the
phenomenon is real, it certainly is not confined to them. look anywhere in
our society and it's there, the religious societies especially, even those
abroad suffer from the same malaise.

Time was in Banjul where not only the religious leaders but the elders of
Banjul would not sit for a minute and listen to Yaya Jammeh heap on them
what all have witnessed heaped on today's elders and religious leaders and
they endured with bowed heads. The phenomenon is existent not only among
political parties but in mosques, as witnessed, for example, by the
fragmentation of many mosques into two or more groupings, amongst them The
Gambian mosque in Oslo with one imam claiming those who prayed in the new
mosque had no valid prayer in the eyes of God. It is the same hollier than
thou situation everywhere!

Even Islam it self is not immune to this phenomena as the split began
immediately after the Prophet's passing, between Shi'a and Sunny and later
mushroomed into many denominations. What is interesting is that in many of
these other examples, the horizontal lash-outs sprang even in the absence of
a vertical pressure from above. We witness the same among family members,
paternal siblings engaging in meaningless, bitter 'internecine' struggles.

 So to expect cyber space to be a 'pacified' zone is at best unrealistic,
for here are our same societies represented in miniature form for better or
for worse. Cyber space, especially its unmoderated form, is the most
democratic space that has ever existed anywhere and if all
comport themselves with the respect and dignity that they believe they
deserve, in most cases they receive the same back. On the other hand if one
elects to constantly monkey around and play the fool, making mockery of
issues that others hold sacred and not letting go when advised to do so,
than ones deserves the kitchen sink when hauled at you, just like Muslim
radicals do when confronted with the same dilemma. It is a give and take
situation just like in any other gathering of people and one either stays on
their high horses playing holier than thou, avoiding all direct exchanges
that have the potential of becoming ugly, or, get down and comport oneself
with dignity in one's exchanges and trust that none deliberate provocation
of others shall be reciprocated by others in like manner.




On 4/23/07, Baba Galleh Jallow <[log in to unmask] > wrote:
>
> On Oppression and the Oppressed – Part Two
>
> By Baba Galleh Jallow
>
> A discussion of oppression and the oppressed must inevitably lead us to
> the
> issue of who leads the struggle for liberation from oppression. In most
> cases, such a role is assumed by people who are academically and
> economically better off than the average oppressed person; these people
> step
> forward to assume the mantle of leadership against oppression, to act as
> champions of the oppressed, and as voices of those they consider the
> voiceless. They form political organizations and create manifestos and
> slogans proclaiming their aims and objectives, and set about condemning
> the
> oppressors while at the same time courting the support of the oppressed by
> offering themselves up as better alternatives to the oppressors. The
> interesting thing is that in at least 8 out of 10 cases, these champions
> of
> the oppressed fail in their endeavors; or in the rare situations in which
> they succeed, find themselves proving unequal to their self-assigned task
> of
> ending oppression, becoming instead as bad as, or even worse than, the
> oppressors they dislodge.
>
> While there are undoubtedly many reasons for this failure of leadership, a
> failure to truly identify with the oppressed masses must rank among the
> top
> causes. Coming mostly from middle-class backgrounds, most leaders of
> anti-oppression movements fail to truly identify with the oppressed
> people.
> Rather than view and treat the people as partners to be creatively engaged
>
> and dialogued with in the course of the struggle against oppression, such
> leaders specialize in the ephemeral politics of propaganda, slinging mud
> at
> their opponents on all sides of the political divide and preaching
> endlessly
> to the people on how morally superior they are and what glittering goodies
> they would deliver should they assume positions of power and authority.
> They
> engage in such empty politicking with the erroneous presupposition that
> all
> the people want to hear is how their current lot will be improved once the
> oppressor is removed from power. Sadly, in most cases, these messages,
> because they sound so commonplace and monotonous, fail to register with
> the
> people and these leaders are dismissed as just another bunch of
> power-hungry
> politicians.
>
> During Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde's struggle for liberation from
> Portuguese colonialism, Amilcar Cabral repeatedly taught that those
> intellectuals who wanted to be true and effective leaders of the people
> must
> commit what he called class suicide. They must be able to purge themselves
> of all pretences to superior knowledge, wisdom or leadership skills, and
> identify totally with the oppressed if they wanted to be authentic leaders
> of the people. He argued that a leadership that seeks to lead from
> whatever
> kind of high pedestal is doomed to failure. Once they totally identify
> with
> the people and the people with them, those who assume leadership of the
> oppressed will find, when they assume positions of political power, that
> they are either unable or unwilling to become oppressors because of their
> internalized and assimilated affinities with the people.
>
> The necessity of class suicide aside, it has also been observed that some
> oppressed people tend to be more hostile towards each other than towards
> their oppressors. Many oppressed people tend to assume a fatalistic
> attitude
> vis-à-vis their oppression, blaming their unhappy conditions on divine
> providence and therefore failing to see any connection between their
> sufferings and their oppressors. And the oppressor, through a malicious
> combination of vicious cunning and open brutality, dedicates all his
> energies at keeping things just this way by making the people believe that
>
> the best way to keep out of unnecessary trouble is through a slavish
> regime
> of total, unquestioning submission. This often leads to a situation in
> which
> all the repressed humiliation and rage of the oppressed are horizontally
> unleashed at their fellow oppressed at the slightest semblance of
> provocation. Frantz Fanon observed this curious phenomenon among the
> oppressed Algerian peasants in The Wretched of the Earth. "While the
> settler
> or the policeman has the right the livelong day to strike the native, to
> insult him, and to make him crawl to them," he writes, "you will see the
> native reaching for his knife at the slightest hostile or aggressive
> glance
> cast on him by another native."
>
> But while a certain degree of fear may be excused at the level of the
> peasant – the oppressed person who does not entirely blame his wretched
> plight on the oppressor – the issue becomes tricky when we note that this
> horizontal hostility towards fellow oppressed is also found among the
> ranks
> of those who pose as champions of the oppressed. Indeed, the mutual
> hostility and unhealthy rivalry within and between the leadership of
> opposition and alternative political parties and organizations in Africa
> is
> far more acrimonious than that expressed towards the oppressive regimes
> they
> are out to replace. The oppressor regime can dish out any number of
> demeaning slurs and even outright insults on the heads of opposition
> leaders
> with little or no comparable reaction or response. But one mild word of
> criticism or disagreement from one opposition leader to the other often
> has
> the effect of eliciting a disproportionate barrage of invectives against
> the
> daring culprit. Some scholars like Paulo Freire and Albert Memmi attribute
> this strange phenomenon partly to a certain inferiority complex on the
> part
> of the opposition leaders and partly to an unconscious desire to be seen
> as
> high and mighty as the oppressor and therefore way above being the object
> of
> such petty criticisms from their fellow equal opposition leaders.
>
> But this tendency of the oppressed to be hostile to their fellow victims
> of
> oppression is not limited to the peasant and the leaders alone. It is also
> observed among the ranks of oppressed people located between the masses on
>
> one hand and the leaders on the other. This middle section of "freedom
> fighters" are often observed engaging in a kind of horizontal hostility
> with
> their supposed comrades in the anti-oppression struggle to the extent that
>
> they lose sight of their original objective. Thus in discussion groups,
> Diasporan communities, and internet mailing lists, one observes a
> troubling
> level of horizontal hostility and acrimonious debate between people
> supposed
> to be fighting for an end to oppression. One observes a troubling trend
> towards the creation of acute hostility and enmity within the ranks of
> people who are supposed to be fighting the same monster of oppression and
> for a certain level of tolerance and mutual respect for one another. What
> should happen in such forums is not endless bickering, the assumption of
> rigid, unchanging positions, or the presumption of infallibility, but the
> observance of maximum civility on all sides – a desire to teach and a
> readiness to learn; a desire to convince and a readiness to be convinced;
> a
> desire to prove that one's position is right, and a readiness to be proven
>
> wrong; a habit of always keeping in mind that all human beings are
> fallible,
> that people have a right to their opinions, however contrary to one's own;
> that in building a democratic culture, we must start from within our own
> selves. Intolerance of dissenting opinion, it should be remembered, is one
> of the chief defining characteristics of oppression.
>

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