African Anarchism : The History of A Movement

Chapter 3 : Anarchistic Precedents in Africa

Continental Africa covers about 11,500,000 square miles, running from the Mediterranean Sea to the Cape of Good Hope, and from the Western Bulge (Senegal) to the Eastern Horn (Somalia), together with the offshore islands of Cape Verde, Fernando Po, Madagascar, Mauritius, Zanzibar, the Comoros, and others.

The territory that lies between the Sahara Desert and the tropical rain forest is the home of a variety of peoples. Between Senegal and Gambia live the Wolor and Tukulor, while between Gambia and the River Niger Valley live the Soninke, Mandigo, Khran, Tuareg, Ashanti, Banbara, and Djula. The Songhai dominate the middle Niger area, and the Masai inhabit the Upper Volta basin. Across the river in what is presently northwestern and north-central Nigeria live the Hausa-Fulani, while the Kanuri live in the northeast. Further south and spreading toward the east one finds the Igbo, Yoruba, Gikuyu, Luo, Shona, Ndebele, Xhosa, Bantu, Zulu, etc. To the north of the Sahara lies Egypt and the Maghredb region, which are peopled by African Arabs and Berbers.

To a greater or lesser extent, all of these traditional African societies manifested “anarchic elements” which, upon close examination, lend credence to the historical truism that governments have not always existed. They are but a recent phenomenon and are, therefore, not inevitable in human society. While some “anarchic” features of traditional African societies existed largely in past stages of development, some of them persist and remain pronounced to this day.

What this means is that the ideals underlying anarchism may not be so new in the African context. What is new is the concept of anarchism as a social movement or ideology. Anarchy as an abstraction may indeed be remote to Africans, but it is not at all unknown as a way of life. This is not fully appreciated because there is not as yet a systematic body of anarchist thought that is peculiarly African in origin. It is our intention in this chapter to unravel the manner and extent to which “anarchic elements” are indigenous to Africa and Africans.

African Communalism

Traditional African societies were, for the most part, founded on communalism. The term is used here in two senses. First, it denotes a definite mode of production or social formation that comes generally, though not inevitably, after hunter-gatherer societies, and in turn precedes feudalism. If one accepts cultural evolution, one sees that most European and Asian societies passed through these stages of development.

Communalism is also used in a second, related sense to denote a way of life that is distinctly African. This way of life can be glimpsed in the collectivist structure of African societies in which : 1) different communities enjoy (near) unfettered independence from one another ; 2) communities manage their own affairs and are for all practical purposes self-accounting and self-governing ; and 3) every individual without exception takes part, either directly or indirectly, in the running of community affairs at all levels.

In contrast to Europe and Asia, most of Africa never developed past the stage of communalism. Despite the indigenous development of feudalism and the later imposition of capitalism, communal features persist to this day — sometimes pervasively — in the majority of African societies that lie outside the big cities and townships. Essentially, much of Africa is communal in both the cultural (production/social formation) and descriptive (structural) senses.

Among the most important features of African communalism are the absence of classes, that is, social stratification ; the absence of exploitative or antagonistic social relations ; the existence of equal access to land and other elements of production ; equality at the level of distribution of social produce ; and the fact that strong family and kinship ties form(ed) the basis of social life in African communal societies. Within this framework, each household was able to meet its own basic needs. Under communalism, by virtue of being a member of a family or community, every African was (is) assured of sufficient land to meet his or her own needs.

Because in traditional African societies the economy was largely horticultural and subsistence based, as Horton notes, “often small villages farmed, hunted, fished, etc., and looked after themselves independently with little reference to the rest of the continent.” Various communities produced surpluses of given commodities which they exchanged, through barter, for those items that they lacked. The situation was such that no one starved while others stuffed themselves and threw away the excess.

According to Walter Rodney, “in that way, the salt industry of one locality would be stimulated, while the iron industry would be encouraged in another. In a coastal, lake or riverine area, dried fish could become profitable, while yams and millet would be grown in abundance elsewhere to provide a basis of exchange....” Thus, in many parts of Africa a symbiosis arose between groups earning their living in different manners — they exchanged goods and coexisted to their mutual advantage.

Political organization under communalism was horizontal in structure, characterized by a high level of diffusion of functions and power. Political leadership, not authority, prevailed, and leadership was not founded on imposition, coercion, or centralization ; it arose out of a common consensus or a mutually felt need.

Leadership developed on the basis of family and kinship ties woven around the elders ; it was conferred only by age, a factor which, as we shall see, runs deep in communalism. In Africa, old age was — and still often is — equated with possession of wisdom and rational judgment. Elders presided at meetings and at the settlement of disputes, but hardly in the sense of superiors ; their position did not confer the far-reaching sociopolitical authority associated with the modern state system, or with feudal states.

There was a pronounced sense of equality among all members of the community. Leadership focused on the interests of the group rather than on authority over its members. Invariably, the elders shared work with the rest of the community and received more or less the same share or value of total social produce as everyone else, often through tribute/redistributive mechanisms.

The relationship between the coordinating segments of the community was characterized by equivalence and opposition, and this tended to hinder the emergence of role specialization, and thus the division of labor among individuals. Generally, elders presided over the administration of justice, the settlement of disputes, and the organization of communal activities, functions they necessarily shared with selected representatives of their communities, depending on the specific nature of the dispute or issue involved.

Such meetings and gatherings were not guided by any known written laws, for there were none. Instead, they were based on traditional belief systems, mutual respect, and indigenous principles of natural law and justice. Social sanctions existed for various kinds of transgressions — theft, witchcraft, adultery, homicide, rape, etc. When an individual committed an offense, often his entire household, his kinsmen, and his extended family suffered with him, and sometimes for him. This was because such offenses were believed to bring shame not only upon the individual, but even more so upon his relatives.

In traditional societies, Africans reached major decisions through consensus, not by voting. What Nnamdi Azikiwe says of jurisprudence in communal Nigeria is no less true of the rest of Africa :

It is based on the concept of settlement of disputes by conciliation. It emphasises the need for amicable settlement of disputes by mutual compromise.... In its operation, the machinery of Nigerian justice shuns technicalities but places more emphasis on redress, impartiality, reasonableness and fair play... the positive legal system of Nigeria seeks to prevent the perpetuation of injustice and to enthrone equity, on the understanding that no person should be unjustly enriched or denied the elementary principles of natural justice.

Likewise, religion held a cohesive role in African traditional society. Individuals saw themselves as living in a world controlled by an invisible order of personal beings of whom they had to take account at every turn. “In such a world, the life of social groups, like other things, is thought of as underpinned by spiritual forces.”

Religion, in this sense, was primarily “a theoretical interpretation of the world, and an attempt to apply this interpretation to the prediction and control of worldly events. Thus, there was always a constant dialectic between religious ideas and principles of social organisation and social form, and these, in turn, mutually reinforced and influenced each other.”

The idea of “spiritual forces” translated into a notion of gods, an earth spirit or a powerful guardian spirit that was personal to individual members of the community. “A man’s social field includes not only relations with other men, but also relations with gods, and that the two kinds of relations have significant effects on one another.... In short, the gods are not only theoretical entities, they are people.” These ideas underpinned the existence of secret cults or secret societies in communal societies. As part of the political organization of communities, the roles of elders, age grades, and secret cults were not viewed as divine in this sense.

Among the social institutions that bound communities together were the age grades or age-set system. According to Azikiwe, “Usually, age grading divides adult males into elders and young adults — or more rarely into elders, middle-aged, and young adults. The age-grade system is usually fed by a system of age sets, whose members move from one grade to the next.” The rise of age grades was in itself a response to the need for greater communal solidarity, since age grades cut across families and lineages.

Age grades consisted of cohorts of males who came together to perform certain functions and duties. These included farm work for their members (or other members of society who asked for their services), road building, environmental sanitation, burials, and harvest of farm produce. A female equivalent of the age sets existed, although, as we shall see, their relative importance varied from society to society.

Secret societies — so called because their deliberations were kept secret from the public — performed ceremonial and religious functions, claiming to have links with the guardian spirit of the society. Secret societies also performed judicial functions, deciding the more intractable intra-village disputes. More importantly, it was the prerogative of secret societies to execute a community’s decisions and resolutions. Admission into a secret society was open to adolescent males regardless of lineage.

Robert Horton unravels the mystique of secrecy that attends secret societies’ deliberations and activities, which contrasts sharply with the “open free-for-all” of the age-grade system :

This secrecy counters the influence of lineage rivalries in two ways. On the one hand, it protects those engaged in the deliberations against pressure from their various lineages. This makes it easier for them to consider any situation on its merits and to avoid taking up positions inspired by purely sectional interests. On the other hand, it enables the society to announce its decisions to the public as things collective and unanimous.

Members of secret societies wore masks while executing the community’s decisions, which often involved imposing sanctions on offenders. Horton further explains :

This (wearing of masks) makes immediate sense when considered as a device to ensure acceptance of the harsher sanctions applied by the society to offenders.... Where the executives are masked, it is possible for the public to accept their actions, however harsh, as impersonal manifestations of the collective will. If they were unmasked and identifiable, their actions might cause dangerous resentment through suspicion of sectional interest.

Collective action was the underlying social principle, and often there was collective responsibility and collective punishment of offenders.

Both the age grades and the secret societies performed quasi-military and police functions in the absence of a formal military institution, army, or police force. Every adult member of the community took an active part in the discharge of these functions for the good of the community, as a collectivity. Thus, for example, every adult male member of the community would be expected to participate in the search for a reported stolen or missing oxen, sheep, goat, or cow.

Increased production was achieved in communal African societies with the introduction of iron tools, notably the axe and hoe. According to Rodney, “It was on the basis of the iron tools that new skills were elaborated in agriculture as well as in other spheres of economic activity.”

No less instrumental to the achievement of increased production in the communal economy was the age grade system itself ; members constituted a standing pool of labor in the service of the entire community.

Several sociopolitical changes in the communal economy accompanied the productive increases. The emergence of skilled iron workers created increasing specialization and division of labor, while increases in production opened up opportunities for trade, profiteering, and the accumulation of disproportionate wealth in a few hands. With expanded trading activities, barter began to give way to the use of metallic objects as standards for valuing other goods.

An immediate fallout of these changes was the gradual breakdown of certain features of communalism and the rise of social stratification, albeit at a very low level. By the turn of the 15th century, several African societies were undergoing a transition from communalism to a class system. Social stratification formed the basis for the eventual rise of classes and the development of antagonistic social relationships, culminating in the establishment of empire states with centralized forms of government in some parts of Africa.

It must be emphasized that, on the whole, although slavery existed in different parts of Africa, especially in areas with the greatest erosion of communal equality, African society never really witnessed an epoch of slavery as a mode of production. Feudalism did exist in some places, but as Rodney has demonstrated, “in Africa, there is no doubt that the societies which eventually reached feudalism were extremely few.” Consequently, some features of communalism continued to hold considerable sway in most African societies, as they do to this day under modern capitalist states. This demonstrates the ancient and tenacious roots of the communal way of life in Africa. At the least, Robert Horton observes, a society that has once known and enjoyed the conveniences of genealogical reckoning does not lightly drop them.

The manifestations of “anarchic elements” in African communalism, as we have seen above, were (and to some degree still are) pervasive. These include the palpable absence of hierarchical structures, governmental apparatuses, and the commodification of labor. To put this in positive terms, communal societies were (and are) largely self-managing, equalitarian and republican in nature.

Despite the marked equality and egalitarianism generally associated with African communalism, there existed a degree of privilege and internal differentiation in some communities, made worse sometimes by the traditional caste system. In addition, the high degree of egalitarianism and freedom achieved under communalism was made possible in no small measure by low levels of production.

So, communalism was not an anarchist utopia. Nowhere is this more evident than in the generally low status of women in some forms of communalism. This was made worse, at least on the surface, by the practice of polygyny (one man married to several women, often sisters). In many African communities, however, tradition and custom accorded certain protections to females ; most injuries to them — with the important exceptions of clitoridectomy and infibulation in some societies — were severely punished. And there were some matrifocal communal societies, famous for their tradition of women leaders.

According to Samir Amin, prior to the emergence of empire states in Africa there existed a “village mode of production” which is comparable to Marx’s category of primitive communism. This village mode of production, he says, was characterized by a limited geo-graphical area and was carried on without a central expropriating body, namely the state. Thus, there was no external agency regulating the productive processes.

Similarly, ownership of the means of production was collective, just as social produce was universally consumed. Social surplus was low, and, as Bede Onimode explains, what surplus there was got used up in the reciprocity of gift-giving, which contributed to social cohesion. As the main productive unit of society, each family controlled the use of its own surplus produce. The breakdown of communalism in its pure, undiluted form, and the transition to semi-feudalism in certain parts of Africa, did not substantially alter these facts.

Stateless Societies in Africa

Some historians and scholars have distinguished between two broad groups in pre-colonial Africa : communities that established empire states and those that did not. Anthropologist Paul Bohannan refers to Africa’s stateless societies as “tribes without rulers,” a form of “ordered anarchy.”

Elsewhere, Rodney describes stateless communities as :

Those peoples who had no machinery of government coercion and no concept of a political unit wider than the family or the village. After all, if there is no class stratification in a society, it follows that there is no state because the state arose as an instrument to be used by a particular class to control the rest of society in its own interests... One can consider the stateless societies as among the older forms of sociopolitical organization in Africa, while the large states represented an evolution away from communalism — sometimes to the point of feudalism.

The term “stateless societies” has been used in a pejorative sense by certain European scholars to denote backwardness arising from the inability of African societies to establish their own states. State formation in Africa, says the “Hamitic theory,” was attributable to foreign influence, the belief being that Africans left on their own would never have been able to produce anything more than a “low” level of political organization. Among the stateless societies that existed on the continent were the Igbo, the Birom, Angas, Idoma, Ekoi, Nbembe, the Niger Delta peoples, the Tiv (Nigeria), the Shona (Zimbabwe), Lodogea, the Lowihi, the Bobo, the Dogon, the Konkomba, the Birifor (Burkina Faso, Niger), the Bate, the Kissi, the Dan, the Logoli, the Gagu and Kru peoples, the Mano, Bassa Grebo and Kwanko (Ivory Coast, Guinea, Togo), the Tallensi, Mamprusi, Kusaasi (Ghana), the Nuer (Southern Sudan), etc. — numbering today nearly two hundred million individuals in all.

For the purposes of a clear and retrospective understanding of stateless societies, we shall present case studies of three of them : the Igbo, the Niger Delta people (in present-day Nigeria), and the Tallensi (Ghana). Stateless societies tended generally to be agricultural, sedentary, and homogenous in character.

The Igbo

Oral tradition has it that the ancestors of Igbos (also referred to as the Ibo) originated from somewhere in the Middle East. The earliest settlements of the Igbos were at Awka and Orlu, from which they spread south, pushing the Ibibios to the coastal fringes of the Niger Delta. The Igbo generally followed a segmentary pattern of political and social organization. As against large, centralized political units, Igbo society constructed small units, often referred to as “village” political units without kings or chiefs ruling over them or administering their affairs. “In Igbo, each person hails... from the particular district where he was born, but when away from home all are Igbos.” Among the Igbo, there is a popular saying, “Igbo enwegh Eze,” meaning Igbo have no kings.

The smallest unit in the segmentary political system was the extended family with a common lineage ; several extended families constituted a ward ; and many wards formed a village. The affairs of a village community were controlled by four major institutions : the general assembly of all citizens, the council of elders, the age grades, and the secret societies, that acted as instruments of social control.

There was also the Umuada, a parallel body of women either married into the village or born there. The Umuada played a key role in decision making and implementation processes, as well as in maintaining the social values of the society. It was impossible, for instance, to make a decision on an issue that directly affected women or children without the consent of the Umuada.

Members of the council of elders were usually heads of extended families and were sometimes required to perform priestly functions. To this day, general assemblies of all citizens are a common feature of Igbo society. It is the duty of the town crier, wielding his gong, to go around the village in the evening after villagers have returned from their farms to summon everyone to the village square at a specified time. The purpose of the assembly is often tersely stated. At the village square, elders outline an issue in detail and the people are expected to air their views as forthrightly as possible, until a consensus is achieved. Neither the elders, the secret societies, nor the age grades could drag the village into a war or armed conflict without first consulting a general assembly for a decision. The small scale of Igbo social institutions made true democracy possible. According to historian Isichei, “one of the things that struck the first Western visitors to Ibgoland was the extent to which democracy was truly practiced. An early visitor to a Niger Igbo town said that he felt he was in a free land, among a free people.” Another visitor, a Frenchman, said that true liberty existed in Igboland, though its name was not inscribed on any monument.

Despite the segmentary lineage system of the Igbo, there existed links which brought several groups together as one people. Chief among these links were marriage and trade. [West Africa in general is known for its tradition of women traders — Ed.] Igbo custom and tradition encouraged intervillage marriage. Of the greatest importance in forging bonds of unity among the Igbo were the oracles, who served to bring them together to common shrines.

Being forest-dwelling people, Igbos grew enough food to feed themselves, using communal labor provided by both the age grade and extended family systems. Igbo social organization, like that of the Niger Delta people, Tiv, and Tallensi, manifested a definite inclination toward leadership as opposed to authority. Yet there were a few exceptions in Igboland, like the Onitsha and Nri communities, that had their own chiefs.

The Niger Delta Peoples

The peoples of the Niger Delta can be divided into Ibibios, Ijaws, Urhobos, etc. Slave trade was rife in this area in the 17th and 18th centuries. The people were mostly traders and farmers. The basis of political cum social organization in this area was very small units, referred to as the “house” system, complete with extended families, age grades and secret societies. The latter played an important role among the Ibibios particularly, where control of political institutions was in the hands of members of the secret societies rather than lineage groups, as was the case in Igboland.

A “house” consisted of a farmer or trader, his slaves, his own descendants, and those of his slaves. A number of “houses” comprised a city-state. Inter-house disputes were settled by a city assembly made up of house chiefs and presided over by an elected chief.

The Ijaws were divided into four main clans or city-states : Nembe, Kalabari, Brass, and Warri. The town assembly was responsible for communal policy making. The “Sakapu” secret society exercised both administrative and judicial functions. The mode of organization of the Urhobos was similar to that of the Ijaws in all respects. However, one group in the Niger Delta, the Itsekiri, had a centralized kinship pattern of government, similar to those of the Bini and the Yoruba.

As time went on, in certain areas the house system changed. With increased involvement in the booming overseas slave trade and later in legitimate trade, the house system, previously organized on the basis of lineage groups, was replaced by what was known as the “canoe house system.” Under this system, people from different lineage groups combined to form a corporation for the purpose of trade.

The Tallensi

The Tallensi occupy the northern territories of the old Gold Coast (now Ghana). Today, they are peasant farmers, engaged mainly in the cultivation of cereal crops. The essential feature of their traditional agriculture is mixed farming, involving permanent and stable settlements, which profoundly influenced the social organization which was based on the clan system.

Clusters of homesteads were known as “suman.” A residential aggregate constituted a clan, or a group of clans, members of which were kinfolk by consanguinity. Rights and duties, privileges and obligations were vested in corporate units, and any authorized member could act on behalf of the unit or clan. Each lineage was headed by a senior male member, who together with other clan elders constituted a repository of social and ritual responsibilities. Both the age grade system and the practice of convening mass assemblies to make crucial decisions were prevalent among the Tallensi. Groups and not individuals constituted the source of political authority.

The various clans depended, for the most part, on communal labor. It was possible for large lineages within clans to accumulate wealth based on their size ; however, no social privileges attached to wealth. Socially and politically, therefore, the Tallensi were a homogenous, sedentary and egalitarian society.

* * *

What is immediately prominent in our consideration of stateless societies is the absence of centralization and concentration of authority. For the most part it is difficult to point to any individual as the overall head or ruler of different communities. The exercise of leadership in the sense of full-time authority was similarly unknown. Whatever authority that existed often affected very limited aspects of the lives of individuals. At the same time, classes hardly existed in these traditional societies. It is indeed doubtful whether an equivalent for the word “class” exists in any indigenous African language — and language reflects the thoughts and values of those who speak it.

Increased productivity and specialization in the use of tools, together with increased trading activities between various communities on the one hand, and with outsiders on the other, gave rise to a steady growth of private property, internal differentiation/stratification, and semi-feudalism. Warfare, conquest, and voluntary borrowing were some of the other factors at work during the period of colonial transition.

Early authority patterns were commonly codified in ritualized forms of leadership. Even where systems of social control increased in scope, ritual leaders in many cases continued to exert a moderating influence over secular leaders. Empire states were established at Kanem-Bornu, Songhai, Mali, Oyo, Sokoto, Benin, Zulu, Ngwato, Memba, Bayankole, Kede, Somuke, Hausa-Fulani, etc.

Colonialism and the Incorporation of Africa into the World Capitalist Economy

Africa’s incorporation into the world capitalist economy was preceded by the systematic penetration of capitalist influences into the continent prior to colonialism. But colonialism accelerated and solidified the incorporation process.

Capitalist influences first made themselves felt in Africa during the quest for economic expansion that accompanied and followed the industrial revolution in Europe. One of the first and most important of these influences was the slave trade. Capitalist penetration further increased through mercantilist activities and the operations of foreign businesses in African coastal areas toward the end of the 19th century.

It should be emphasized that the process of penetration and the subsequent incorporation of the different African societies into the world capitalist economy was not an even one, and did not take place simultaneously all over the continent. In the Muslim societies, Islam was an important feature of the incorporation process, as well as a source of resistance to it. On the one hand, Islam provided a source of inspiration for resistance, while on the other it provided a basis for class collaboration between Muslim aristocrats and colonial administrators.

All over Africa, the new gospel of free trade provided the ideological basis for the expansion of British, German, and French trading in the coastal areas. Following the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, a violent scramble for the partition of Africa ensued among the major European powers, marking the beginning of true colonial domination and the enthronement of imperial interests over those of traditional societies. The imposition of colonial governments was an expression of this domination, and economic motives, primarily the quest for markets and raw materials, constituted its raison d’etre.

There were two stages in the process of incorporation, in which the state served as a vehicle for capitalist penetration and ultimate engulfment of production and distribution in the colonies. The first stage was violent conquest, and the next was economic domination and enslavement of the native peoples. Forced labor was prominent among the mechanisms adopted by the colonial powers to eliminate traditional economic organization.

In addition to military actions, conquest involved the forceful ejection of natives from their lands, which were then seized by the colonialists. And this seizure was protected through the violent suppression of all forms of dissent by the coercive apparatus of the colonial state.

The period of conquest was followed by the introduction of new production processes. The fundamental objective of this restructuring was to bind the incorporated economies into the world economy. The critical weapons here were monetarization (the introduction of money), trade, wage labor, taxation, and investment, coupled with the development of appropriate social institutions and infrastructure. This always involved the introduction of incentives aimed at dissuading the local populace from investing in areas of local need, and instead to turn to production of cash crops and related goods and services.

It was primarily to this end that a monetary system was introduced. By a monetary system, we refer to the use of money (that is, inherently nonvaluable objects or tokens) not only as a medium of exchange, but, more importantly, to the elevation of money and its accoutrements to a level of cultural preponderance within both the economy and society as a whole. Money is, after all, the basic prerequisite of a market economy, without which exchange and economic growth are impossible. The process of monetarization thus went hand in hand with the spread of capitalist relations of production.

As noted earlier, a capitalist economy requires the establishment of social and political institutions that reproduce and regulate class relations. The colonial education system served such a purpose. Together with the church, another agent of socialization, it provided ideological justification for the emergent capitalist mode of production in Africa. As well, it’s worth noting that there was no clear cut distinction between the state and the church on the one hand, and the church and the school on the other — they formed an integrated system of ideological support for colonialism/capitalism. Indeed, colonial education was a common basis for class alliance between colonialists and local bureaucrats. Political parliamentarianism was the inevitable result of such education.

Overall, the process of Africa’s incorporation into the world capitalist network started during the latter stages of communalism, lasted through feudalism, and continues to the present day in the form of neocolonialism.

The Impact of Incorporation

The ultimate result of Africa’s incorporation into the world capitalist economy was the destruction of the traditional pre-colonial communal mode of production. As the capitalist mode developed, it confronted the noncapitalist mode, violently transforming various communities, turning their lands, resources, and products into commodities. Countless thousands of able-bodied young men were uprooted from their homes to work in capitalist enterprises, and the remaining population was compelled to grow only those crops that possessed exchange value-cash crops.

The critical point here is that the destruction of the traditional economic system did not give rise to a fully capitalist economy ; the end product was, rather, a distorted, unbalanced capitalist structure. This occurred because Africa’s incorporation into the global system was peripheral. Complementarity and reciprocity between the various sectors of the economy were absent. Misarticulation was further characterized by a lack of vital linkages within the production process. That is, capitalist development in Africa was characterized by lack of integration. Under colonialism, businesses operated to serve external markets, and usually had little connection with each other ; and businesses that would have served internal needs were often systematically discouraged in order to ensure markets for goods produced in the imperial countries. Africa is still suffering the effects of that distorted development pattern.

So, capitalist penetration and subsequent integration of African societies into the global system has generated a culture of dependence — a dependence of the periphery (Africa) on the center (the advanced capitalist countries). Profits and surplus value are constantly being transferred from the periphery to the center. Conversely, economic and social crises in the global capitalist chain are readily transmitted to its weakest links — the highly susceptible periphery. As for the “development” of Africa by the West, Leonard Goncharov notes : “Capital is being exported from the highly developed capitalist countries to the developing countries, not actually with the aim of providing aid to the latter, but with the express purpose of deriving the highest possible profit.”

Finally, Africa’s participation in the global capitalist economy has led to the creation of a local privileged class that appropriates surplus social produce, because capitalism cannot function without the existence of an exploitative, nay parasitic, local class. However, since the indigenous privileged played only a minor role in laying the basic foundations of the post-colonial state, its interests are subordinated to those of the foreign capitalists, primarily multinational corporations. As a result, a class alliance developed between the two, with the indigenous class assuming the role of agents for international capital. Its members live on the commissions they receive as middlemen. The dominance of this social class, coupled with the absence of autonomy in Africa’s role in the world economy, has essentially transformed African states into fiefdoms.

Class Formation in Post-Colonial Africa

To understand the dynamics of class formation in post-colonial Africa, we need first to examine the character of the preceding colonial state. Colonialism left independent African states with a neo-colonial economy, with the capitalist mode of production replacing the pre-capitalist modes ; this entailed the subjugation of local labor and resources to the needs of capitalism.

The classes that developed after this integration do not reflect an autonomous economy, but a dependent economy — they show an artificial and truncated version of the class structure of the developed Western economies. This class structure is not the classical division into capitalist class, petit bourgeoisie, working class and/or peasantry, but rather a simplified division into an administrative class and working class/peasantry. That is, classes in the former colonies are composed simply of those who benefit from neo-colonialism and those who suffer from it.

The local business class effectively became a comprador class of agents, middlemen, and front men for foreign interests. As Franz Fanon put it, the national bourgeoisie of underdeveloped societies is not engaged in production or any creative enterprise, but in intermediary activities. The roles of the local and foreign business classes in post-colonial Africa are complementary, but the latter determine the activities of the former.

The quest to create indigenous industry by African capitalists gives them a nationalist image, but they stop short at the demand for expropriation of foreign capital, upon which they remain dependent. The nationalism of this indigenous capitalist class is the outcome of its desire to appropriate resources (at least for itself) back from the foreign expropriator ; and at the same time its commitment to freedom for foreign capital is necessitated, indeed dictated, by its dependence on neo-colonial economic structures. In any event, the conflicts of interest between indigenous capitalists and foreign capitalists often resolve themselves in accommodations that border on delineation of spheres of influence.

Contrary to the local capitalists’ pretensions to autonomy, foreign capital still holds the key to local economies through control of technology, finances, location of research and development facilities, appointment of technical directors, and, in general, control of decision making.

For example, a typical industrial investment in Africa depends on capital-intensive technology developed to meet the needs of advanced capitalist economies. This facilitates the outflow of resources as profits and payments for imports and services, and ties the investment to the producers of its technology. This, of course, places a considerable drain on scarce foreign exchange resources.

This pattern of investment generates and depends upon an inegalitarian pattern of income distribution. In turn, inegalitarian income distribution creates far more benefits for advanced capitalist economies than for neo-colonies.

The dependent character of the local bourgeoisie restricts its members to servicing foreign capital or to competing among themselves for the limited resources available in the neo-colonial setting. This competition tends to take the form of a zero-sum game, modified by an arrangement in which the competitors define themselves in ethnic and religious terms — each seeking to protect his own interests.

The crux of our analysis is that the process of class formation in post-colonial Africa looks haphazard and incomplete : it took place only in the commercial and distributive sectors of the various economies, while the agricultural and industrial sectors were left out. This should, however, be understood within the following context : while the comprador class is the foremost beneficiary of Africa’s neo-colonial political economy, various other segments of the local capitalist class also benefit through bureaucratic structures which entitle them to privileges.

African Socialism

The global socialist current did not pass Africa by. For the most part, socialist ideas inspired national liberation struggles and permeated the ranks of the anti-colonial struggle — not least of all in the African trade union movement, dating back to the 1940s. The main attraction of socialism at that point was its sloganeering appeal. The prime movers of the anti-colonial struggle had neither a firm grasp of the socialist world view, nor the foggiest mental construct of what a socialist society would look like in the aftermath of the abolition or overthrow of capitalism. This shallow, confused concept of socialism — and the circumstances under which socialist ideas first came to Africa — would later have a decidedly negative impact on the growth and development of the socialist movement in Africa.

The dawn of political independence in the different African states forced the indigenous, nominally socialist political class to come to terms with the daunting task of trying to construct socialism on the continent. The leading lights of the movement in this period were Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Sekou Toure (Guinea), Patrice Lumumba (Congo), Tom Mboya and Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Sedar Senghor (Senegal), Modibo Keita (Mali), and Julius Nyerere (Tanzania).

This crop of leaders would later be joined in their romantic socialism by a second generation of political actors, including Muammar Gadhafi (Libya), Gamel Abdel Nasser (Egypt), Augustino Neto (Angola), and others, who, like the first generation leaders, almost invariably proclaimed their respective countries socialist and proceed to institute “socialism” as a matter of state policy.

Common to all these figures was the notion of an “African socialism,” a unique brand of socialism peculiarly suited to the African in his own environment. It ranged from Nkrumah’s positive socialism to Senghor’s existential and “negritude” socialism, to Nasser’s democratic socialism, to Nyerere’s Ujamaa socialism.

Nkrumah proclaimed the goals of positive socialism as full employment, good housing, equal opportunities for education, and the cultural advancement of all people. In his theory of consciencism, Nkrumah states : “Revolutions are brought about by men... who think as men of action and act as men of thought.”

Senghor saw socialism as essentially a new vision of the world :

Such is the African way, at least, the Senegalese way to socialism. It intends to be a harmonic democracy, in both the political and economico-social fields. Far from rejecting them, it integrates European contributions. But it is quite a different matter from mere repetition, from a policy of blind imitation. These contributions selected with care, shall be integrated into and impregnated by the values of negritude. For negritude is nothing else but the whole of the living values of black Africa.

For his part, Nasser characterized socialism as “the assertion of the sovereignty of the people and the placing of all authority in their hands and the consecration of all powers to serve their ends — the setting up of a society on a basis of sufficiency and justice, of work and equal opportunity for all, and of production and services.” He advocated a two-stage revolution : a political revolution that enables the people to recover their right to self-government, and a social revolution — a class conflict that terminates ultimately in the realization of social justice for all.

African socialism, for what it’s worth, has been variously criticized for lacking theoretical coherence and clarity, and, worse still, for the questionable manner in which it seeks to isolate world socialism from that practiced in Africa. Critics of African socialism have pointed out that exploitation and oppression are universal evils, and that socialism is universal in scope and application (though it can be adapted to suit individual cultures). It’s also worth noting that all of the varieties of African Socialism were state-socialist varieties, and they thus suffered the typical defects of state socialism wherever it appears ; however, largely because of lack of a fully developed party/coercive apparatus, at least a few African “socialist” countries were spared the worst excesses of state socialism.

The balance sheets of the different socialist states and the various regimes that came to power bespeak lack of achievement, and the same, sometimes even worse, authoritarian inclinations that characterized the erstwhile colonial states and colonial masters. All of the reactionary germs of marxist state socialism present in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, North Korea, China and Cuba were present in African state socialism, even in its most primitive stages. And, uniquely, African state socialism elevated ethnic (tribal) and religious sentiments to the level of state ideology.

Despite socialist rhetoric, capitalist relations of production remained dominant for the most part in “African socialist” societies. Corruption and primitive accumulation through use of state powers and resources characterized the dominant political class. Labor repression was pronounced ; in fact, the earlier lot of the worker under colonial and post-colonial capitalism often was better than under the very underdeveloped state socialist structures spawned by self-serving “socialists” and, sometimes, gun-toting soldiers and military officers as well.

Socialism in Africa, for all practical purposes, was based on the Soviet/Eastern European model, and it displayed all the essential features and characteristics of that model. The African experience was, perhaps, peculiar in the sense that the state inherited at political independence was neo-colonial. Expectations that socialism would alter this were never realized ; if anything, socialism truncated development and reinforced neo-colonialism. The pauperization of countries like Guinea under Sekou Toure, Benin under Mathew Kerekou, Ethiopia under Menghistu Mariam, etc., went hand in hand with massive repression and authoritarian self-righteousness. Some of the most backward, most reactionary regimes that ever set foot on African soil were socialist ones, some led by military officers who shot their way to power.

There are many examples of failed socialist states in Africa, the worst probably being Menghistu’s Ethiopia ; others include Gadhafi’s Libya, Kerekou’s Benin, and Sekou Toure’s Guinea. Nkrumah in Ghana and Bourmedine in Algeria made the most thorough, far-reaching attempts to install socialism in Africa ; and both failed. The sole seeming exception to this string of failures is the genuine and credible attempt made in Tanzania under Nyerere to build socialism using the Ujamaa village scheme as a springboard. (It failed all the same, as we shall see.)

We can safely say that long before communism collapsed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, socialism had failed in Africa, provoking in its wake interminable crises and turmoil. The overthrow of Nkrumah in Ghana and the exit of Nasser in Egypt, coupled with the failure of the Ujamaa program in Tanzania, and the popular uprising against Algerian state socialism are symptomatic of this failure.

Is There an African Anarchism ?

Is there a developed, systematic body of thought on anarchism that is of African origin ? Because anarchism as a way of life is in large measure indigenous in Africa, it seems almost certain that Africans had, at one time or another, formulated creative ideas on this way of organizing society. But any such ideas were almost certainly never recorded in written form. It is not surprising then, that many ideas were not preserved. Much of the existing literature on African communalism and traditional African societies is based on the latter day works and writings of European anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, sociologists and, more recently, their African counterparts. Nonetheless, these works and the ideas in them are fragmented and disjointed with regard to anarchist concepts and principles.

The different strands of advanced, nonacademic African thought — from the time of colonial rule to the post-independence period — on the matters of socialism, revolution, and colonialism, are not so fragmented. For instance, in the euphoria that attended Nigeria’s independence in 1960, both the Eastern and Western regional governments enunciated a program of farm settlements designed, among other things, to : a) extend the frontiers of freedom and initiative which the average farmer brought to bear on his work ; b) free farming and agricultural production from drudgery ; and c) lay the foundation for the emergence of agro-allied, medium-scale industries.

The program, a pet idea of the radical, left-leaning faction of Nigeria’s emergent local ruling class — for whom independence meant more than an opportunity for self-government — was modeled on the popular Israeli Kibbutz system and was intended to recreate the traditional African communal way of living, complete with its features of equality and freedom. Under the arrangement, farmers lived with their families in collectives and shared in common the means of production, including farming tools and implements, as well as utilities and infrastructure. Social produce was distributed equally among the farmers and their families, and the surplus was exchanged through the farmers’ cooperatives.

The settlements were intended to be self-managing and self-accounting. Local communities provided land, while the government granted the farmers credit, and allocated the land to individual farmers or groups of farmers. The ultimate decision regarding what to plant lay with the farmer or group.

Scattered in selected villages and communities, the settlements were efficient and made tremendous increases in production, while they lasted. Soon, however, the egalitarian principles that informed the original program were eroded through bureaucratic bottlenecks and corruption ; and the outbreak of the Nigerian civil war in 1967 finally spelled the collapse of the experiment.

Similar anarchic elements are discernible to a lesser degree in Muammar Gadhafi’s famous “Green Book,” which contains the so-called Third Universal Theory. The concept of jamarrhiriyah — people’s collectives rooted in the countryside, making decisions in all matters concerning themselves — seems quite fascinating on paper. In practice, the proposals that Ghadafi set out were generally followed more in the breach than in practice.

Franz Fanon’s unprecedentedly brutal critique of colonialism in Africa also contains grains of anarchist principles which are, unfortunately, sometimes obscured by anti-colonial rhetoric and rage. The full extent of Fanon’s anger comes out when he dwells on the racial aspects of colonialism. Fanon’s pillory of colonialism is at the same time a rejection of corporate capitalism. He advocates revolutionary class war, which is implicit in his two-part theory of violence and spontaneity. Fanon repudiates those who deny that colonial powers derive material benefits from colonialism. His argument anticipates the basic thesis of contemporary underdevelopment theorists that, like capitalism, colonialism was rapacious, exploitative, and above all had precluded colonized societies’ autonomous development.

Fanon’s analysis marked something of a break with classical marxist theory. Although Marx and Engels indicted the moral basis of colonialism and regarded it as “activated by vilest interests,” they nevertheless saw redeeming features in colonial rule as the unconscious tool of history in bringing about revolution.

If, as Marx and Engels seem to be arguing, colonialism provided material benefits to the colonized, Fanon would counter that such benefits were inconsequential compared to the abject poverty and weak material position of colonized societies. Colonialism proved incapable of releasing and generating productive forces that Marx and Engels had hoped would destroy the “Asiatic mode of production.” Fanon argues that colonialism, like capitalism, was preceded, inaugurated, and maintained by violence, and could only be over-thrown through the spontaneous action of revolutionary armed struggle.

Fanon placed responsibility for waging armed struggle not on political parties, trade unions, and urban working classes, but on the masses of all the people, from the peasantry in the countryside to the “lumpen proletariat,” who, in his words, formed the political class often dismissed by marxists as “adventurers and anarchists.”

His tersely articulated vision of the post-colonial period runs thus :

When the people have taken violent part in the national liberation, they will allow no one to set themselves up as “liberators.” They show themselves to be jealous of the results of their action, and take good care not to place their future, their destiny or the fate of their country in the hands of a living god... Illuminated by violence, the consciousness of the people rebels against any pacification. From now on, the demagoguery of the opportunists and the magicians has a difficult task. The action which has thrown them into a hand-to-hand struggle confers upon the masses a voracious taste for the concrete. The attempt at mystification becomes, in the long run, practically impossible.

* * *

It is ultimately in the seminal thoughts of Julius Nyerere that we glean an organized, systematic body of doctrine on socialism that is indisputably anarchistic in its logic and content. Nyerere’s notion of socialism revolves around the concept of Ujamaa, his pet program of “villagization” — where the village is billed as an incubator, a nursery of the socialism of the future. Ujamaa, which simply translates as “familyhood,” represents rural economic and social communities where people live and work together for the good of all ; their governments are chosen and led by the peasants and workers themselves.

Nyerere’s concept of Ujamaa was predicated on the simplicity, egalitarianism and freedom that were the hallmarks of traditional African societies. For instance, the organization of communal societies, especially the production and distribution of social produce, was such that there was hardly any room for parasitism :

In traditional African society, everybody was a worker. There was no other way of earning a living for the community. Even the elder, who appeared to be enjoying himself without doing any work... had, in fact, worked hard all his younger days.... In our traditional African society, we were individuals within a community. We took care of the community and the community took care of us. We neither needed nor wished to exploit our fellow men... every member of the family had to have enough to eat, some simple covering, and a place to sleep, before any of them (even the head of the family) had anything extra.

He explains the concept of African land tenure thusly :

To us in Africa, land was always recognized as belonging to the community. Each individual within our society had a right to the use of land, because otherwise he could not earn his living, and one cannot have the right to life without also having the right to some means of maintaining life. But the African’s right to land was simply the right to use it : he had no other right to it, nor did it occur to him to try and claim one.

Nyerere contrasts the foregoing with capitalist society, which fails to give its citizens the means to work, or having given them the means to work, prevents them from getting a fair share of the products of their toil. “Ujamaa... is opposed to capitalism, which seeks to build a happy society on the basis of the exploitation of man by man ; and it is equally opposed to doctrinaire socialism.” Under Ujamaa basic goods were to be held in common and shared among all members of the unit.

There was an acceptance that whatever one person had in the way of basic necessaries, they all had ; no one could go hungry while others hoarded food and no one could be denied shelter if others had space to spare... a society in which all members have equal rights and equal opportunities ; in which all can live at peace with their neighbors without suffering or imposing injustice, being exploited or exploiting ; and in which all have a gradually increasing basic level of material welfare before any individual lives in luxury.

He continues :

In a socialist Tanzania, then, our agricultural organization would be predominantly that of cooperative living and working for the good of all. This means that most of our farming will be done by groups of people who live as a community and work as a community. They would live together in a village ; they would farm together ; and undertake the provision of local services and small local requirements as a community. Their community would be the traditional family group, or any other group of people living according to Ujamaa principles, large enough to take account of modern methods and the twentieth-century needs of man.

The land this community farmed would be called “our land” by all the members ; the crops they produced on that land would be “our crops” ; it would be “our shop” which provided individual members with the day-to-day necessities from outside ; “our work-shop” which made the bricks from which the houses and other buildings were constructed, and so on...

For the essential element in them (Ujamaa communities) would be the quality of all members of the community, and the members’ self-government in all matters which concerned only their own affairs. For a really socialist village would elect its own officials and they would remain equal members with the others, subject always to the wishes of the people.

Nyerere was not oblivious to the fact that the society he had in mind could not be established by sheer force. “Viable socialist communities can only be established with willing members,” he says. He recognized, though, the importance of action and example ; moral persuasion was not enough :

It would also be unwise to expect that established farmers will be convinced by words — however persuasive. The farmers will have to see for themselves the advantage of working together and living together before they trust their entire future to this organization of life. In particular, before giving up their individual plots of land, they will wish to see that the system of working together really benefits everyone.

Lastly, “how to share out as well as how much to grow, the arrangements for the children, the crippled and old — must be made by the agreement of all the participants. Village democracy must be open from the beginning : there is no alternative if this system is to succeed.”

The fact that Ujamaa itself ultimately failed should not detract from Nyerere’s argument. His thoughts run deep, transcending the drudgery of marxist state socialism. (See Chapter five for an explanation of Ujamaa’s failure.)

* * *

As for outright anarchist movements, there have existed and still exist anarchist groups in South Africa — notably the Anarchist Revolutionary Movement in Johannesburg, and the Durban-based Angry Brigade. South Africa’s pioneer anarcho-syndicalist organization, however — known as the Industrial Workers of Africa — lasted only from 1915 to 1922. It was modeled along the lines of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), and it operated mainly among black workers. It is in South Africa that anarchist currents remain strongest in Africa.

There is also organized anarchist activity in Nigeria. The Axe, in the 1980s, though basically stillborn, was a leftist coalition with anarchist tendencies. It predated The Awareness League, which has existed since 1990 as a social libertarian and anarchist movement. Anarchist currents also exist in parts of Zimbabwe, Egypt, Ghana, and elsewhere.