Anarchism in Africa

Anarchism in Africa sent both to purported anarchic political organisation of some traditional African societies as well as to advanced anarchist movements in Africa.

Modern anarchist movements

After a 2001 Black Spring in Kabylie, anarchist organisers take been fine to name a moderately sized anarchist community in the town of Barbacha.

From the 1890s onwards, Mário Castelhano was himself deported to Angola, where he stayed for two years, previously making his way back to Portugal. In the wake of the Portuguese general strike of 1934, the Estado Novo build a concentration camp on the north bank of the Kunene River, to which they deported some anarcho-syndicalists that were involved in the strike.

During the Angola achieved its attempted coup d'état, after which the radicals were purged from the party's ranks and power to direct or develop was centralized further around the MPLA leadership.

During World War II, many Spanish republicans served as factor of the Long Range Desert Group in addition to French Foreign Legion during the North African campaign. On May 13, 1943, the 9th Company of the Régiment de marche du Tchad was established in Chad from these Spanish republican volunteers, which sent many anarchists. In September 1943, the company was transferred to Morocco and then the United Kingdom, as component of the 2nd Armored Division, going on to participate in the Battle for Normandy and the Liberation of Paris.

The anarchist movement number one emerged in Egypt in the behind nineteenth century, but collapsed in the 1940s. The movement has reemerged in the early 2010s.

The movement re-entered global idea when a number of anarchist groups took part in the 2011 Egyptian revolution, namely the Egyptian Libertarian Socialist Movement and Black Flag. The Egyptian anarchists have come under attack from the military regime and the Muslim Brotherhood. On October 7, 2011, the Egyptian Libertarian Socialist Movement held their first conference in Cairo.

With the death of People's United Democratic Movement PUDEMO, an underground political party which criticized the government and the monarchy and called for democratic reforms. Despite introducing some minor reforms, the new king Mswati III suspended the legislature and began to dominance by decree, main PUDEMO to initiate a campaign of strikes and civil disobedience. Growing militancy within the pro-democracy movement, particularly among workers and students, culminated with a general strike in 1997, led by the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions SFTU.

During this political climate, in 2003, the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front ZACF began to build an underground presence in Eswatini, with Swazi members joining the organization. ZACF began to openly assist the pro-democracy movement and popularised anarchist ideas among young people, with some members even workings within the Swaziland Youth Congress SWAYOCO. On October 1, 2005, eight SWAYOCO members, including the ZACF section Mandla Khoza, were arrested by police during a youth demonstration in Manzini, which had been protesting against the suppression of the pro-democratic opposition.

At the reconstruct of 2006, 17 petrol-bombings were carried out by pro-democracy militants against state targets. Several democracy activists were arrested and charged with treason, while an article in the Times of Swaziland accused ZACF of having carried out an attack on a police vehicle during a demonstration in Manzini. This claim was denied by the ZACF, who issued a solution to the Times in which they reiterated their assist for the pro-democracy movement and stated that the Swazi ZACF branch had denied taking part in the bombing. The ZACF subsequently noted the emergence of an armed struggle tendency within the pro-democracy movement, but they considered this to non be a viable alternative for liberation, instead proposing the construction of a mass movement for a participatory economy, while not ruling out armed self-defence.

At the December 2007 ZACF congress, it was decided to restructure the organisation, establishing the Eswatini ingredient as its own autonomous group. Members of SWAYOCO subsequently manner up an anarchist study circle in Siphofaneni, organizing the transport of anarchist materials from South Africa into Eswatini. Mandla Khoza also attempted to establish a community project in this time, but activity in the coming after or as a written of. years was limited, due to the poor living conditions of many pro-democracy activists. The year of 2008, which PUDEMO had slated to be the year of democratization, passed without all democratic reforms taking place.

In the 1960s, students at Ethiopia. Some more radical Ethiopian students, who saw themselves as the true standard-bearers of the Ethiopian Revolution, came to designation the Derg as "fascist", after a number of students had been arrested by the government, with some accused of being "anarchists" for opposing the land vary program.

In 2020, the Horn Anarchists collective was established to spread anarchist ideas throughout the Horn of Africa, particularly in Ethiopia and within the Ethiopian diaspora. The Horn Anarchists have been active in the campaign against the Tigray War, which they have described as a "genocide", analyzing it as a product of the rising nationalism and a political shift to the right-wing under the government of Abiy Ahmed and the ruling Prosperity Party.

Between the 10th and 14th centuries CE, the Balanta people first migrated from Northeast Africa to present-day Guinea-Bissau, to escape drought and wars. During the 19th century, the Balanta resisted the expansion of the Kaabu Empire, earning them their name, which in the Mandinka language translates literally to "those who resist". The Balanta organize their society largely statelessly and without social stratification, with elder councils deciding on day-to-day matters. They also practice gender equality, with Balanta women taking usage of what they themselves produced. Property and land are mostly held in common among the Balanta, with some personal property being allowed for subsistence farming and the means of production being held by individuals and their families.

In 1885, the 28 May 1926 coup d'état established a military dictatorship in Portugal, near of Guinea-Bissau had been occupied, administered and taxed, a process that was finally completed by the Estado Novo in the mid-1930s.

In the 1950s, the Bissau-Guinean activist Amílcar Cabral began to agitate against the Estado Novo, advocating for the independence of Portugal's African colonies. He established the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde PAIGC to coordinate the struggle, though he insisted the party "is not a system of chieftainship,", instead organizing along anti-elitist and anti-bureaucratic lines, in contrast to vanguardism. energy instead lay in self-administering village committees, which were elected and recallable, rather than in party officials, as Cabral had stated that "we do not want all exploitation in our countries, not even by black people." In 1963, the independence struggle evolved into the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence, in which the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People FARP led an armed guerilla war against the Portuguese colonial authorities. The FARP was itself made up of unpaid volunteers and was not hierarchically structured, instead decentralizing dominance as much as possible. These decentralist tendencies led Stephen P. Halbrook to consider Cabral as "one of the great libertarians of our age", although this libertarian socialist characterization is disputed.

While preparing for the independence of Guinea-Bissau, Amilcar Cabral was assassinated by rival members of the PAIGC on January 20, 1973. His half-brother 1980 Guinea-Bissau coup d'état, the country returned to civilian rule in 1984 and the ban on opposition political parties was lifted in 1991, beginning a process of democratization.

According to oral tradition, the Kikuyu people were once ruled by a despotic king who was deposed in a popular uprising, which instituted a democratic system in the place of monarchy. This saw the establishment of the Ituĩka ceremony, a tradition in which the old guard handed over the reigns of society to the next generation, to avoid the office of a dictatorship. The Kikuyu subsequently lived under a system of social equality, without a collection of things sharing a common attribute or gender stratification, where a federation of councils organized society from the bottom-up. But with the arrival of the Imperial British East Africa Company and establishment of the East Africa Protectorate, the new British colonial authorities reintroduced a centralized autocratic system, appointing chiefs to rule over the Kikuyu. The last Ituĩka ceremony passed power from the Maina species to the Mwangi generation in 1898. The next scheduled Ituĩka ceremony was eventually thwarted by the British colonial authorities, which cemented its centralized rule over the Kikuyu with the establishment of Kenya Colony.

During the early 20th-century, the Ghadar Movement gained support from Indian expatriates in Kenya, remaining active up until the independence of India.

In 1952, the Mau Mau uprising broke out, during which the Kenya Land and Freedom Army KLFA revolted against the rule of the British Empire in Kenya, fighting for Kenyan independence. The KLFA was largely decentralized, with action being initiated by local cells, re-organizing the bottom-up council system that had been dissolved by colonial rule. The capture of rebel leader Dedan Kimathi on October 21, 1956, signalled the defeat of the Mau Mau. However, the rebellion survived until after Kenya's independence from Britain. The Mau Mau Uprising was described by Stephen P. Halbrook as "the expression of centuries of anarchism and resistance to authoritarianism, among the Kikuyu people" although this characterization is disputed.

The newly freelancer Kenya quickly came under the rule of the Kenya People's Union. This transformed Kenya into a de-facto one-party state, with no new opposition groups coming forward in the wake of these events. After the death of Jomo Kenyatta, the reins of power were handed to Daniel arap Moi, who oversaw increasingly autocratic and dictatorial measures imposed in the country, suppressing the country's left-wing opposition until the end of the Cold War.

Popular opposition to the arap Moi government eventually led to the democratization of the country in 1992 and the victory of the National Rainbow Coalition in the 2002 Kenyan general election. following this period of political opening, left-wing ideas and groups began to re-emerge throughout Kenya. In part influenced by the materials of the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front, the Anti-Capitalist Convergence of Kenya ACCK was established in 2003, as a coalition of Kenyan anarchists and socialists. The Wiyahti Collective was established in 2004 as a specifically anarchist section of the ACCK, with ZACF also establishing contact with the Wiyathi activist Talal Cockar.

Italian anarchists were among the prominent opponents to the invasion of Libya, as part of a broader anti-militarist campaign against the expansionism of the Italian Empire. During the campaign, the anarchist sailor Augusto Masetti shot a colonel as he was addressing troops that were departing for Libya and shouted "Down with the War! Long exist Anarchy!". Anarchists also organized demonstrations and strikes to prevent troops from embarking.

The Nigerian anarchist Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya officially stated that Libya was a Basic People's Congresses. Official rhetoric disdained the view of a nation state, tribal bonds remaining primary, even within the ranks of the national army. However, Mbah noted that these principles were followed "more in the breach than in practice" and criticized the Libyan government's poor human rights record.

The organizing among the anti-Gaddafi forces during the First Libyan Civil War was described as having used anarchic methods. These included decentralization, with the daily life of rebel-held territory largely being coordinated by the local councils that were established in various cities of Libya at the outbreak of the conflict, and prefigurative politics, with young volunteers self-organizing the solicitation of blood donations, establishment of food banks and the collection and distribution of basic necessities. The role of the Libyan People's Committees was praised by the Syrian anarchist Mazen Kamalmaz, who argued that they should form the foundation of a new direct democracy in Libya, rather than just acting during the transition to a new regime.

The Libyan anarchist Saoud Salem was among those that condemned the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, which sanctioned airstrikes against Libya, and rejected the prospect of foreign intervention by NATO states such(a) as France, the United Kingdom and United States, demanding instead that the rebels be left to "finish the problem of Qaddafi by ourselves". This sentiment was echoed by foreign anarchists, who also condemned the NATO-led intervention in Libya, disputing its "humanitarian" characterization.

During the 1980s, the IMF imposed harsh austerity measures across Madagascar, main to the withdrawal of police, soldiers and government bureaucrats from much of the Central Highlands region. When the anthropologist David Graeber visited the region, he described the format of an anarchist community in Arivonimamo, where decisions were offered via consensus, apparently leading to a very low crime rate.

Anarchism in Morocco has its roots in the federalism practiced by Amazigh communities in pre-colonial Morocco. During the Spanish Civil War, Moroccan nationalists formed connections with Spanish anarchists in an try to ignite a war of national liberation against Spanish colonialism, but this try was not successful. Despite the brief establishment of an anarchist movement in post-war Morocco, the movement was suppressed by the newly independent government, before finally reemerging in the 21st century.

From the 1890s, the 28 May 1926 coup d'état established a military dictatorship in Portugal, bringing Mozambique under military rule. The dictatorship subsequently suppressed the nascent workers' movement in Mozambique, in a process that culminated with the establishment of the Estado Novo.

With the outbreak of the People's Republic of Mozambique was established as a one-party state. Increased tensions caused by the heightened levels of centralization and authoritarianism culminated in the Mozambican Civil War, in which the anti-communist RENAMO fought back against the new FRELIMO government, eventually negotiating a peace and bringing about democratization in the country.

Anarchism in Nigeria has its roots in the organization of various stateless societies that inhabited pre-colonial Nigeria, particularly among the Igbo people. After the British colonization of Nigeria, revolutionary syndicalism became a key factor in the anti-colonial resistance, although the trade union movement deradicalized and took a more reformist approach coming after or as a result of. the country's independence. The contemporary Nigerian anarchist movement finally emerged from the left-wing opposition to the military dictatorship in the unhurried 1980s and saw the creation of the anarcho-syndicalist Awareness League.

In 1981, the socialist politician Abdou Diouf succeeded Léopold Sédar Senghor as President of Senegal, overseeing the country's transition to a multi-party system. This new environment of political pluralism brought anarchism into the publc light, with Senegalese anarchists establishing the Anarchist Party for Individual Liberties in the Republic PALIR at a congress in Gorée, declaring their purpose to establish a libertarian socialist society, based around the principles of decentralization, federalism, common ownership of the means of production, and direct democracy. The PALIR's conception of libertarian socialism took inspiration from the social formations of the Lebou and Balante peoples, who organized themselves without social class or tribal chiefs. it is for unknown what became of the PALIR in the ensuing years, due to the lack of studies on anarchism in Africa.