Pio Gama Pinto: Assassinated Hero of the Anti-Imperialist Struggle in Kenya, 1927=1965, (original) (raw)

1987\. I am barely ten years old. But I am fixated, intrigued by the conversation, a heated debate, between my mom, an elementary school English and music teacher, and her younger brother, my uncle who was then a Bachelor of Arts student at the University of Nairobi. The topic was a book that sounded quite scary for a ten-year old. Caitani Mutharabaini (Devil on the Cross, 1987). Besides the scary graphic of what I assumed to be, well, the devil on the cross, I quickly surmised that it must be scandalous and heretic. 1 Of course, it was not. Rather, according to the author, the novel was about the historical reality of Kenya, "a neocolony." 2 After all, this talented author and scholar-activist understood quite well that a 1 Over thirty years later, over a telephone conversation, my mom vividly remembered this conversation as if she had had it yesterday. She recalled the book having caused "a great controversy" in Kenya, and the government of the day, a lot of trouble just like Thiong'o's play, Ngahika Ndeenda had. When I placed a call to her back in Kiangigi Village in Gatanga, from my Queens, New York office on 10thJanuary 2018 she explained, "You see, writers are very clever people." She continued to inform me that although she was keen to read Caitani Mutharabaini, my uncle never delivered on his promise to lend her his copy especially considering that, having caused a lot of wariness for the powers that be, it was a hot potato bordering on treason to own a copy or read it. Nonetheless, despite what she thought was a grotesque book cover drawing of a bloodied Devil on the Cross, she knew the book was a caustic take on the hidden political and historical reality in the country. Caitani Mutharabaini was reminiscent of her A Level Fasihi (Swahili literature) set texts that she read including Mashetani (1971) by Ebrahim N. Hussein and Duniani Kuna Watu (1974) by Muhammed Said Abdulla. For her, all these books had one thing in common. They were cleverly written, and Thiong'o's Caitani Mutharabaini was particularly subtle and sarcastic of the government. These many years later, she believes that political leaders must have needed and used interpreters to understand what it was really about.

Introduction: The Life and Legacies of Kenneth Kaunda in Introduction: The Life and Legacies of Kenneth Kaunda in Southern Africa Southern Africa

Zambia Social Science Journal, 2023

The Life and Legacies of Kenneth Kaunda in Southern Africa Although UNIP demanded immediate independence, Kaunda's radicalism was tempered by strong Christian beliefs. Lengthy negotiations with the British Government and the white settler government resulted in elections in 1962 and 1964 in which UNIP won a huge majority. Kaunda became president at independence in 1964. However, Kaunda soon faced both internal political challenges borne from discontent with the results of independence (Larmer, 2006) and external security threats from neighbouring white minority states. Kaunda consequently made Zambia a one-party state, banning other political parties, centralising power around the presidency and imprisoning opponents. Opposition to the one-party state intensified with Zambia's economic decline in the 1980s (Mushingeh, 1994). There were huge protests over food prices in 1986 and again in 1990, the latter of which was followed by an unsuccessful coup. Rather than attempting to hold power in the face of growing opposition, Kaunda agreed to hold multiparty elections in 1991 and lost by a wide margin to the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD). Kaunda accepted defeat and committed to a peaceful transition of power, which became an important precedent for subsequent political transitions. Kaunda was politically marginalised in the 1990s and the MMD government briefly tried to strip him of Zambian citizenship to prevent him standing in the 1996 elections (Ndulo & Kent, 1996: 273). However, his reputation was rehabilitated in the 2000s and he came to be widely regarded as a respected founding father of Zambia and credited with establishing a peaceful and united nation. His exhortation of 'One Zambia, One Nation' is still widely remembered and repeated. Many participants in Zambia's independence struggle wrote autobiographies, or became the subject of biographies, including Dixon Konkola (Vickery, 2011),

A Tiny Spark. History and Memory of the Angolan Anticolonial Struggle in José Luandino Vieira's Papéis da prisão

Luso-Brazilian Review, 2022

From 1961 to 1972, the Angolan writer José Luandino Vieira was incarcerated by Portuguese colonial authorities because of his participation in the anticolonial struggle of Angola. In prison, he wrote most of his literary works, alongside a series of notebooks in which he reported his thoughts, feelings, literary and political considerations, etc. In 2015, after more than forty years after Vieira's release from prison, the notebooks were published in a volume titled Papéis da prisão. Apontamentos, diário, correspondência (1962-1971). In this article, I focus on how the book contributes to the debate on Angola's past by influencing how the years of the struggle for independence are perceived today and how they will be remembered in the future. I argue that Papéis is not simply a collection of the writer's intimate and personal memories as it bears witness to the experience of a larger community, a community that Vieira identifies with the Angolan nation. Briefly considering the political uses of memory, I show how Papéis stands apart from a crystallized official narrative of the anticolonial struggle, contributing to renewed discussions around Angola's past. These discussions aim to restore complexity, depth, and diversity to a narrative that is oversimplified and partisan. However, restoring complexity also implies showing the contradictions, conflicts, and tensions that emerged during the struggle. In this sense, the book is not a nostalgic tribute to the past, but rather a call to reflect on what the past still has to say to the present.

Introduction to Revolutionary Movements in Africa

Revolutionary Movements in Africa. AN Untold Story, 2023

The process that made this book possible started in December when a call for contributions for a conference planned for October in Dakar, Senegal was written and made public by Ndongo Samba Sylla, Leo Zeilig and Pascal Bianchini. Ndongo Sylla is senior researcher at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, well known for his radical economic writings, especially on monetary issues, social movements and democratic mobilisations in Africa. Leo Zeilig is an editor of the Review of African Political Economy and its website who has published on student movements and class struggles in Africa, and is also the author of several biographical works on Fanon, Lumumba, Sankara, and recently, Walter Rodney. Pascal Bianchini is an independent researcher who has written books and articles on the sociology of education and social movements, especially student movements in Africa, and for a decade has conducted research on the revolutionary left in Senegal. About proposals were received, and among them were selected by a committee and the organisers. Then, for three days (and October and November) about contributors, activists and discussants gathered in Dakar. During the first day, after the opening session, former members of Senegal's revolutionary left (including one from Mauritania) presented intimate testimonies and debated and discussed their former activism. During the following two days, the selected papers were presented and debated. It was an exquisite mix of academic discussion and militant memories. This particular and unique atmosphere motivated us to publish this volume. We must thank all the participants who contributed to the success of the event. Among them, we dedicate the collection to Eugénie Rokhaya Aw and Moctar Fofana Niang, who took part in the discussion on the first day and unfortunately have since passed away. In the same vein, Lila Chouli, a friend