Africa

The Left in Africa

Indeed, the ideology behind the independence movements varied considerably. Within Angola, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique, the inspiration was radically communist and imported into the continent. By contrast, in the conservative Kenya of Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi, a more culturally linked nationalist ideology emerged after independence, around the Harrambee movement. This was an attempt to harness already existing communal work practices among Kenya's tribes to the goal of nation-building.

Africans involved in the communist “national liberation movements,” spearheaded by the Soviet Union's quest to export Marxist-Leninism, underwent indoctrination in camps with like-minded revolutionaries. From 1976, such Marxist African national liberation movements as the ANC (African National Congress) were receiving training in camps sponsored by Yasser Arafat's PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) in southern Lebanon. Conservative writers like Jillian Becker Claire Sterling asserted that the Soviet Union was funding the training camps. Training camps were also alleged to exist in Colonel Muammar Quaddafi's Libya.

After liberation, some progressive countries in Africa embraced socialism as their guiding force. Quaddafi would bring his own brand of socialism to Libya through his Green Book. But his administration, while supporting terrorism in the Middle East and territorial aggrandizement at the expense of Chad to the south, did not devote its energies fully to socialism at home. Besides, Quaddafi's Green Book presented an imperfect guide; at best, it was an ad hoc socialist manifesto geared toward maintaining his personal power.

Perhaps the most significant, if lesser known, example of socialism in Africa was Senegal during the long administration of Leopold Senghor, who was the country's first president (1960–80). He espoused a philosophy called Negritude, emphasizing the uniqueness of African culture, which found receptive listeners in the United States as well as in France. Senghor cultivated his progressive form of African socialism, which combined socialist thought with the tribal heritage of the country. According to African historian David P. Johnson, [Page 11][Page 12]“in the so-called passive revolution of 1976, Senghor responded to economic and political stagnation by introducing greater political and economic freedom. However, Senegal's economic crisis persisted, and, bowing to popular discontent, Senghor retired from office in 1980, one of the few African rulers to voluntarily relinquish power.” Senghor also brought a sense of unity to a country where both Christianity and Islam were represented next to traditional tribal beliefs. The introduction of new economic planning in 1994 led to a reduction in socialism in the state economy and better economic growth began in 2001.

The continent of Africa has seen its share of leftist movements, some homegrown, as in Egypt, others imported from communist regimes abroad into countries such as Angola and Mozambique. In the 2000s, Africa faced issues of tribal genocide and Islamic extremism, particularly in Sudan—a close geographic neighbor to the Arab nations of the Middle East.

...