The Enemies of the People of Africa: Imperialism, Zionism, and Reactionism

Conditions across Global Africa must be noted. Why do we produce what we do not consume and consume what we do not produce? Why is the force that is expanding across the African continent (US Africa Command, AFRICOM) supports the genocidal entity and has used its dollar hegemony to sanction the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court? And are we doomed to be confined to this vortex of violence or is there a revolutionary potential at this multipolar moment? Regardless how close or far, physically and intellectually, an African is from these articulations, they speak to symptoms found across much of Global Africa and therefore they necessitate a renewed analysis to better tackle such conditions through a revolutionary vocabulary. 

According to Western Mass Media (WMM), these conditions are discrete and are not caused by a remnant of colonialism nor are they proliferated by the peripheral conditions the masses exist in. This is why the relaunch of Pambazuka News at this moment in time is much needed for it to be the avant-garde of Pan-African analysis. Since its hiatus in 2019, a void has been filled by aggressive liberal campaigns bankrolled by imperialist forces thanks to the US dollar hegemony. So, how can we understand the aforementioned conditions of Global Africa with a revolutionary Pan-African vocabulary? 

“Imperialism Walks on Two Legs: Financial and Military”

Pambazuka News’ special issue on imperialism and multipolarity is timely because it pegs us to situate these terms because of their relevance to historical and present-day conditions of Global Africa. Take the case of Mali, which is extremely rich in gold, to have drastically fewer gold reserves than its former colonizer, France — a country with no gold mines of its own. How did this come about? Why does it persist? And is Mali an anomaly in this political-economic condition? 

Since the independence of Mali, the country has been mired by a financial contradiction, which is the lack of monetary sovereignty, imposed by France through intimidations, destabilization campaigns and even assassinations and series of coups d’état to its neighbors who use the CFA. Furthermore, the country has been engulfed by colonial agreements where the mines are owned by foreign countries while the Malian people are used as cheap labor for extractive purposes. And when the question arose that the Malian people should revolt against such system, WMM launched a media campaign that these foreign enterprises are providing jobs to impoverished Africans, while neglecting the fact that the profits are deposited in French and other European banks^[i].

This condition of raw material extraction to the core of imperialism only for it to be remunerated in pittances is not confined solely to Mali. Other countries are forcibly subjected to such conditionalities. Being an export-dependent country for national development leaves economies prone to the whims of sanctions on exporting countries and recessions of the importing countries. The post-colonial states were not able to access the needed technology of industrialized economies to extract the natural resources and produce them in their final form as consumer goods. Ghana exports cocoa, yet the biggest chocolate producers are spread between Germany, Belgium, France, and Switzerland. Botswana extracted arguably the world’s largest diamond only for it to be shipped faraway across the Atlantic to Canada and the profits usurped by the Canadian transnational company, Lucara^[ii]. Libya, the holder of the continent’s largest oil reserves extracts crude oil, ships it to Europe to be refined, and then buys it back. When Africa sought to launch a golden-backed currency, NATO bombed the country for spearheading that effort^[iii]. Then imperialism persevered the lack of technology and industry transfer through its monopoly capitalism that gatekeeps the deterritorialization of technology because of so-called patents and copyrights. The African people and Pan-African leadership to fissure from this system are fiercely met with sanctions, thanks to financial monopoly, bombed, thanks to militarism, and coups d’etat instigated by imperial forces as exemplified in the overthrow of Lumumba, Nkrumah, Sankara, and Qaddafi. 

Imperialism and monopoly capitalism go hand in hand with militarism as a necessary component to maintain the subjugation of African people. Since the destruction of Libya by NATO forces because of its revolutionary politics and Pan-Africanism, the country has been buried by an avalanche of arm flows that the so-called rebels have sold or trickled to its southern neighbors to instigate the destabilizing violence in the Sahel. This destabilization legitimized the self-invitation of France and other NATO countries to begin operating across much of the Sahel states. The US-Africa Command in 2011 operated in a few countries that can be counted on a single hand. But since the destruction of Libya and its sanctioning, the country’s contributions to the African continent and the African Union are circumscribed, and AFRICOM has expanded to nearly fifty countries. It must be also stated that AFRICOM is not a friend of the African people: it has killed numerous civilians in Libya and Somalia with complete impunity^[iv] and  carried out an act of piracy and imperialist gangsterism by kidnapping a civilian airplane in Cape Verde just because it has a business contractor associated with Venezuela^[v]. AFRICOM’s expansion in Africa is an invitation for the USA to expand its oppressive police state to the African continent through camouflaged rhetoric of fighting terrorism and promoting stability, democracy and freedom.

The Intersecting Triad of Imperialism, Zionism and Reactionism

The loss of human life at the hands of imperialism just to maintain its hegemony is not something happening mistakenly and randomly like the WMM would tell. Look at what is happening in Palestine. In the West Bank, the worst application of surveillance, apartheid and ethnic cleansing is taking place while the settler colonial entity is using the Palestinians as a human laboratory to experiment on them the most inhumane technologies of oppression^[vi] which gets then transferred and practiced on African people globally, including in the US^[vii]. Meanwhile in Gaza, even the usual pro-West organization, Amnesty International concluded that the settler colonial entity is committing genocide against the people of Palestine^[viii]. The whole collective west and its mantra of the sanctity of human life and protecting civilians not only turned a blind eye towards the genocide, but they sent weapons, money, logistics, and joined the propaganda warfare to legitimize the genocide. And even when the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against the Prime Minister and Defense Minister of the Zionist entity, the US have put the prosecutor on the sanctions list^[ix]. This is happening because a steadfast people rose up to liberate themselves from the shackles of apartheid, which the settler colonial entity has been ascribed to^[x]. The liberation of the people of the Global South, be it in Africa, Latin America or Asia threatens imperialism, and this is our fate; if we do not consolidate our efforts, financial and military to combat this barbarism, we will be next.

Unfortunately, many Africans see this national liberation through a religious lens, a battle between Muslims and Jews, or worse a fight between Arabs of “North Africa” and a “Jewish state”. These two groups of people have lived peacefully for centuries; the Islamic caliphate defended Jews’ persecution after the fall of Andalusia, and they coexisted in Palestine through numerous epochs. Until the Europeans committed the most horrendous crimes against Jews in Europe through the Holocaust, the British Empire decided to forcefully implant a settler colonial entity on Palestine that does not recognize borders and serves as a military outpost for the US army. The existence of this entity in its current imperialist fashion is a threat to Global Africa. When South Africa was under apartheid, the Zionist entity supported them financially and militarily; they also funded the separatists in Nigeria. Further, the Zionist entity has an ever-expansionist aspiration, that infringes on African borders too. The idea of the “Greater Homeland” expands the entity’s borders until they seize the Nile River. They attempted to materialize this when they colonized the Sinai Peninsula in 1967. In addition, this entity is contributing to the exploitation of the people of Congo by supporting the onslaught by the Kagame regime of Rwanda, which the US enables through ease of sanctions on the entity’s transnational exploitative companies^[xi]. The Zionist entity’s existence is an extension of imperialism as long as Palestine is occupied by such an entity. 

And the masses ought not to be fooled by the divisive language of imperialism that attempts to separate the people of Africa through racial lines, with the lighter skinned Africans as “Arab” or “North African” while the rest is “Sub-Saharan”. This racist articulation did not include South Africa when it was under apartheid; after 1994, South Africa became part of this “Sub”^[xii]. This separation attempts to de-Africanize^[xiii] northern Africa from the rest of Africa, while making the rest of Africa disassociated from its northern neighbors. If the fate of Africans were to be indeed separated as such, then the US-Africa Command (AFRICOM) would be divided and called “Sub-Saharicom” and “Arab-Fricom”. But just as imperialists consolidate their military operations across the continent, we must strive for continental unity that counters the imperialist division. 

Given that imperialism and Zionism have inflicted so much harm to the people of Global Africa, it would be remiss to present this as solely foreign actors conducting these acts against the people. We must recognize the national bourgeoisie and the reactionary leaders who are worried more about appeasing the collective west while using their militaries to oppress the people. The reactionary regimes across many African states enable this form of imperialist maldevelopment — cheap labor coupled with raw material extraction in return of regime protection to stifle the people’s revolution. These reactionary leaders of Malawi and Kenya have gladly substituted exploited Palestinian workers in the Zionist entity’s farms by sending their own people to satisfy the Zionist economy’s demands^[xiv]. Kenya’s Ruto has taken his country’s army thousands of kilometres away to oppress the people of Haiti and their struggle for liberation, awarding his country the shame of becoming a Non-NATO Major Ally. 

Pan-Africanism or Barbarism!

This is not just merely an issue of leadership and governance that the WMM tries to present; it is an issue of Pan-Africanism or barbarism. It is a matter of political consciousness, knowledge of history, and will. The people of South Africa are being demonized today because they themselves felt the brunt of apartheid and have launched the case against the genocide in Gaza, Palestine. It is for this growing political consciousness amongst South Africans, in terms of local policy (á la the land question) and the international positionality of the country as a member of the BRICS alliance, that they are being attacked by the tech oligarchy and the transnational Boers emboldened by Elon Musk. Despite the pressures of cutting aid by the US South Africa remains steadfast and principled on being on the right side of history^[xv]. 

Similarly, the people of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have learned from history’s abundant lessons of African liberation. Since the destruction of Libya that consequently destabilized the Sahel countries, these three countries carried out a people's revolution that led to the consolidation of efforts against imperialism and reactionary leadership, while espousing Pan-Africanism. They face the same fate, and they act in unison in response to the common fate and common threats. Through national liberation and the kicking out of foreign troops (AFRICOM and French troops), they formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES, Alliance des États du Sahel), erasing colonial divisions between the same people as an initial step that Pan-Africanists hope to see it spread. 

This confederation leverages the multipolar moment that we are witnessing. The hegemony of the US-led imperialist system is diminishing while a new pole is rising. With its technology and knowledge advancements without practicing monopoly capitalism, this new pole views the Global South as a partner and not as a potential geographic space to be exploited. The AES is addressing Africa’s major contradiction of being arguably the richest continent with the poorest people through such leveraging, where they are contracting various countries from BRICS to construct power plants to provide electricity to the masses and contribute to the industrializing demands of these newly liberated countries while revisiting their farming policies^[xvi] — necessary steps for self-reliance and escape from dependency. 

Imperialism, Zionism and reactionism are the ultimate enemies of the people of Global Africa. While the lessons of history are endless for us to forge unity, we must engage with this unprecedented multipolar moment by reading, writing, organizing and fighting for Pan-Africanism against reactionary analysis bankrolled by the west and performed by mercenary journalists. It is Pan-Africanism or barbarism!

Endnotes