Book Review: African Americans and African Liberation
REVIEW: Horne on Minter, Hovey & Cobb _No Easy
Victories: African Liberation and American Activists
over a Half Century, 1950-2000_
H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by [log in to unmask]
(January 2008)
William Minter, Gail Hovey, and Charles Cobb Jr., eds.
_No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American
Activists over a Half Century, 1950-2000_. Trenton:
Africa World Press, 2008. xvii + 248 pp. Illustrations,
maps, notes, index. $29.95 (paper), ISBN 1592215750.
Reviewed for H-SAfrica by Gerald Horne, Department of
History, University of Houston
Solidarity Forever?
This is a remarkable and often insightful collection of
essays and reflections, many of which have been penned
by those who played leading roles in the dramatic story
of how a conservative hegemon--the United States--was
compelled to retreat somewhat in its support for
colonialism and apartheid during the second half of the
twentieth century. The numerous photographs alone make
this book well worth the price and underscores how this
book, inter alia, is a valuable document.
It is because of this book that I came to discover that
a man I have known as a friend--Robert Van Lierop, the
attorney and filmmaker who produced the wonderful
documentary, _A Luta Continua _ (1971)--had a
grandfather who had participated in the so-called Boer
War over one century ago in South Africa, while his
father, who was a merchant seaman, visited there. The
Van Lierops, who are of Surinamese descent, are worthy
of a book all their own, yet for the time being his
contribution to this worthy volume must suffice.
In her finely crafted essay in the book, Lisa Brock
reminds us of the legacy bequeathed to us by the
Council on African Affairs, which, beginning in the
1930s until its unfortunate and untimely demise in the
1950s hounded out of existence by the bloodhounds of
the Red Scare, held high the banner of anticolonialism
in Africa. Their leader, Paul Robeson, once shared a
London flat with Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta, while their
intellectual inspiration, W. E. B. Du Bois, was invited
to settle in Ghana by his pupil, Kwame Nkrumah.
It is because of this book that I was made to recall
the enormous contributions that figures like Harry
Belafonte and Peter and Cora Weiss have made to the
cause of progressive humanity for decades. Belafonte,
who is still active at a time when lesser mortals have
chosen comfortable retirement, helped to make Martin
Luther King Jr. the icon he is today and, likewise,
contributed heavily to the success of Hugh Masekela and
Miriam Makeba. The Weisses helped to bring attention
to nations like Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau--and not
least their leaders Eduoardo Mondlane and Amilcar
Cabral--at a time when, sadly, many of their
compatriots could find neither on a map. Peter Weiss,
in addition to being a major philanthropist for African
causes, also has been a pioneering lawyer, creatively
applying international human rights standards in
notoriously parochial U.S. courts. Cora Weiss, in
addition to her humanitarian efforts, has been a
stalwart of the movement against nuclear weapons.
It is because of this book that I was reacquainted with
old friends like Gay McDougall, who still bestrides the
planet like a Colossus and who was standing alongside
Nelson Mandela when he cast his first vote. This book
also reminds us of the gargantuan contributions of
Randall Robinson, who built TransAfrica into a major
force in Washington, D.C., and continues to write best-
selling books that force us to engage with issues that
some would prefer to forget, such as reparations for
the ravages of slavery and colonialism.
This book also reminded me of figures I had forgotten--
sadly enough--such as the late Congressman Charles
Diggs, who was a legislative lion in opposition to
apartheid, and Goler Butcher, who before her tragic
death, was one of the most skilled international
lawyers in the United States. And, this book also made
me recollect the pivotal role played by Julius Nyerere,
who at immense cost to his nation and his own security,
opened wide the doors of Tanzania not only to opponents
of colonialism in Africa but also to opponents of white
supremacy in the United States, a group that included a
host of Black Panthers who continue to reside in
southeast Africa. The priceless memories of the
African American activist Sylvia Hill, recalling in
this book the Pan-African Congress that took place in
Dar es Salaam in 1974, will provide an important
building block for the fortunate historian who chooses
to write about this important ideological turning point
in the history of Pan-Africanism.
This book compels us to recall connections that still
need to be contemplated, for example, that between
Namibians and the Lutheran Church, and the critical
role played by the union of stevedores, headquartered
in San Francisco, whose reluctance to move cargo headed
for the land of apartheid was a turning point in U.S.
labor's engagement with Africa. This book also has
considerable information on the all-important
"divestment" movement that swept U.S. campuses from the
1960s through the 1990s. This decentralized movement
involved students protesting the fact that colleges
routinely included in their endowments investments in
corporations that had holdings in apartheid South
Africa. Forcing them to "divest" was a mighty blow on
behalf of liberation and was also a model of how to
galvanize a national movement in a vast and
conservative nation that stretches three thousand miles
from the Atlantic to the Pacific--then two thousand
miles more to encompass Hawaii and hundreds of miles
more to ensnare Alaska.
Still, as U.S. imperialism continues to play an
outsized role in Africa, magnetically pushing states
away from public sector remedies to deep-seated
problems for fear of angering Washington which has
converted privatization and the mythical "market" into
a latter-day god, it remains important to provide a
critical examination, even of those who so heroically
have opposed Washington's policies. Thus, members of
this list should be alert to the fact that the title
notwithstanding, this book focuses heavily and
disproportionately on the anti-apartheid struggle in
South Africa. Zimbabwe receives short shrift, for
example. This may be part of an inadvertent process of
creating a historic narrative of this topic and this
period with Mandela on one side of the Atlantic,
coupled majestically with George Houser--a Euro-
American founder and leader of the American Committee
on Africa (ACOA)--on the other side. A problem with
this story is that it does not frontally engage the
sharp ideological and political combat that determined
the final outcome.
During the time of the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe,
for example, the party of Robert Mugabe, now the
Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-
PF), received substantial support not only from a
critical mass of U.S.-based Black Nationalists, but
also from many of the Euro-American left who were
heartened by its closeness to China; concomitantly,
many of these same forces were not particularly fond of
Joshua Nkomo's the Zimbabwe African People's Union
(ZAPU), because of the perception that it was overly
close to the former Soviet Union. I recall vividly a
planning meeting in early 1980 to plan a fundraising
concert for Zimbabwe just before the first democratic
elections. There was sharp contestation with a
considerable number of people demanding that all the
proceeds go to ZANU (the eventual decision was a 50-50
split between this party and ZAPU). Inevitably, the
perception that ZANU was close to China and represented
"true" Black Nationalism proved decisive in the minds
of some. Similarly, before these elections,
"activists" of a different sort--Euro-American
mercenaries--flocked to the then Rhodesia in the
hundreds (perhaps the thousands) to combat African
liberation. As private sector mercenary firms, such as
"Blackwater," capture headlines because of their
depredations in Iraq, it would have been informative if
this volume had noted their historical predecessors.
As we now know, Mugabe and Co. emerged triumphant in
these 1980 elections, as did China in its struggle with
the Soviet Union, which has disappeared. Zimbabwe's
present political stance has attracted numerous foes in
the North Atlantic with Mugabe's presence almost
wrecking a summit between the African Union and the
European Union (EU) in Lisbon in December 2007. One of
the reasons that the EU chose not to pull out of this
gathering despite Mugabe's presence is because of the
fear that this boycott would only serve to deepen
Beijing's already ramified ties with the beleaguered
continent of Africa. I think that one of the many
reasons that South Africa has not heeded the cries of
many calling for a crackdown on the Mugabe regime is
because of a justifiable apprehension of crossing
swords with the leading regional ally, Zimbabwe, of the
planet's rising power: China. Clearly, China and one
of its closest African allies, Mugabe's Zimbabwe, will
be major factors, respectively, globally and in
Southern Africa, for some time to come, and it would
have been useful to have received in this book needed
historical background and context on these pressing
matters.
The same holds true for Angola. The authors do make
reference to the mid-1970s crisis in the run-up to
independence from Portugal when some in the United
States opposed the ultimately triumphant faction, the
MPLA, which continues to lead the government in Luanda.
Again, some U.S.-based Black Nationalists and others
influenced by Beijing opposed the MPLA (Movimento
Popular de Libertacao de Angola) because of its
perceived closeness to Moscow. This contretemps helped
to split the then vibrant African Liberation Support
Committee, which had mobilized thousands, particularly
in New York City and Washington, D.C.
Yet, the most lengthy and comprehensive essay in this
estimable collection chastises the "Angolan government"
since it "made little or no effort to reach out to U.S.
civil society or even to Africa activists" (p. 47).
Likewise, it is asserted that "the Angolan government
never established a working relationship with its
potential supporters in the United States" (p. 35).
First of all, Luanda may have had justifiable suspicion
of "U.S. civil society," since a considerable portion
of this amorphous entity backed Angola's mortal
domestic opponents on grounds that, in retrospect, seem
either shady or specious. A little digging would have
revealed that Holden Roberto, one of the key leaders of
these vigorous anticommunist forces in Angola and
responsible for the slayings of countless MPLA cadre,
had enjoyed a long history with "U.S. civil society,"
including some who are otherwise treated heroically in
these pages.
Moreover, I should mention that a casual browser in the
collections of the New York Public Library will find a
pamphlet I edited in solidarity with the MPLA during
these tumultuous times--entitled "The Facts on
Angola"--which was intended to bolster this party in
its struggle against U.S. imperialism, apartheid,
Roberto (and Jonas Savimbi), and, of course, Maoist
China. I had no problem gaining access to the MPLA
representative at the United Nations at that juncture,
Elisio de Figueiredo, who emerged as his nation's first
ambassador to the United States.
Of course, I did this political work in conjunction
with the awkwardly named National Anti-Imperialist
Movement in Solidarity with African Liberation, which
was similarly perceived as being overly close to the
Communist Party in the United States. This
organization, which maintained a special relationship
to those viewed as allied to Moscow--which, as it turns
out, were most of the leading forces in Southern
Africa--goes unmentioned in these pages. Similarly, I
recall a well-attended meeting in Harlem in the 1980s
to hear an address by South African Communist Party
leader, Moses Mabhida. Likewise, I recall hosting South
African Communist leader Chris Hani during a visit to
Los Angeles in the early 1990s. (In retrospect, it
seems that the event in which I hosted Hani was spied
on illicitly by a so-called "rogue" San Francisco
police officer working in tandem with right-wing
forces; this was the subject of major litigation that I
trust South African investigators will note if ever
Hani's assassination is accorded a proper
investigation.) There is no mention of the epochal
1981 solidarity conference at Manhattan's Riverside
Church, perhaps because U.S. Communists were perceived
as playing a leading role, though, in fact, there was a
broad constellation of forces at work led by the
exceedingly competent Trinidadian-American lawyer,
Lennox Hinds, who went on to play a leading role in
Mandela's post-1990 rhapsodically received visit to the
United States.
Neither Mabhida nor Hani are mentioned in these pages
(nor is Hinds), which is fair enough--the book states
clearly that it is not meant to be comprehensive--but
it fudges the issue by sniping at previous histories
for not being comprehensive. The editors assert early
on, "when we began working on this project, we were
motivated in large part by our dissatisfaction with
existing accounts of the period" (p. x). However, for
those seeking to understand contemporary reality--which
is part of the purpose of reading history like this in
the first place--one can close this book unprepared to
comprehend how, for example, Communist-influenced
forces played a pivotal role in December 2007 in
dislodging a sitting president, Thabo Mbeki, as leader
of the African National Congress. Or, for that matter,
one is unprepared to comprehend how Mbeki and his
challenger, Jacob Zuma, are both former Communists
trained in the former Soviet Union with the latter's
Russian reportedly being quite fluent. Charlene
Mitchell, an African American Communist, is
highlighted, but African solidarity was not her primary
portfolio (though it would have been useful if, in the
pages devoted to her, she had been asked about a
journey she made to Congo-Brazzaville during the height
of the Cold War when this nation was going through a
Marxist phase of leadership; indeed, attention to so-
called Francophone Africa is scant in these pages).
The contemporary Russian scholar, Vladimir Shubin, has
written at length about Moscow's considerable support
for African liberation (for instance in his _ANC: a
view from Moscow_ (Bellville, South Africa: Mayibuye,
1999), and, again, as Moscow revives once more under
the leadership of Vladmir Putin and seems destined to
continue playing a major role in global affairs, it
would have been helpful to readers to provide the
relevant historical background for Soviet initiatives
in Africa.
Yet, the activist who receives the fullest treatment in
these pages, George Houser, acknowledges his
anticommunism, and to the credit of this volume, it is
pointed out that his organization--the ACOA--was
propelled into existence not least as an outgrowth of
the fierce governmental assault on the Council on
African Affairs, led by the prodigious leftists, Paul
Robeson and W. B. E. Du Bois. Unfortunately, the
reader does not receive much assistance in
comprehending how it was that socialist-oriented
organizations in Africa came to receive considerable
support in the citadel of anticommunism, the United
States. Part of the answer rests in the fact that
African Americans--who were not as captivated by
conservatism--were the bulwark of the movement in
solidarity with Africa.
Again, unfortunately, this volume underestimates the
support that the anticolonial resistance in Kenya
received during the most frigid period of the Cold War,
the 1950s. We are told that with rare exception there
"was virtually no analysis or criticism of the war" in
East Africa (p. 19). This is simply not true. The
Kenyan labor leader, Tom Mboya, first visited the
United States in 1956 at a time when the Suez crisis
marked the beginning of the end of British colonial
rule, as Moscow was threatening to rain rockets down on
London. Subsequently, Mboya appeared on U.S. national
television--perhaps the first African to do so--and was
on the cover of the major newsweeklies, rubbed
shoulders with both John F. Kennedy (from whom he was
able to obtain considerable sums for an airlift of
students to matriculate at U.S. universities, one of
whom was his Luo comrade, Barack Obama Sr.) and Richard
M. Nixon, and received maximum financial support from
the U.S. labor movement. Mboya also spoke eloquently
and at length about Africans' outrage at the
maltreatment of African Americans--a factor that
separates him conspicuously from the bulk of his
Southern African counterparts who, too often, were
notoriously silent on this bedrock issue. This
synergistic relationship between Africans and African
Americans redounded to the benefit of both, a fact that
too should have received more attention in these pages.
It is evident that another factor which spurred the
existence of the ACOA was the apocalyptic reaction to
"Mau Mau" in the North Atlantic community. There was a
real fear that it might signify a final reckoning when
the myriads of sins committed over the centuries by
white supremacy and colonialism, including the slave
trade and land expropriation, were finally meeting the
retribution they so richly deserved. As things turned
out, thousands of Africans were slain--and a few dozen
Europeans (as they were termed accurately then)--but
that reality should not be allowed to obscure the real
hysteria that put colonialism and white supremacy
decisively on the back foot.
One cannot separate the popularity of the Swahili
language in black America--including the manufactured
holiday that is Kwanzaa--from the resonance struck by
Kenya beginning in the 1950s. Likewise, the confluence
of the Suez crisis with "Mau Mau" led to more attention
to the chief victim of the joint British-French-Israeli
aggression: Egypt. This, in turn, gave a boost to the
Nation of Islam in the United States, an indigenous
nationalist-oriented religious formation that was born
decades earlier but only began to gain traction when
the organized left (Robeson, Du Bois, and others) were
in retreat. Similarly, the U.S.-born philosophy known
as "Afro-centrism" could easily be termed "Egypt-
centrism," which is a direct manifestation of this
growing fascination with Cairo. "Mau Mau" was studied
extensively by Medgar Evers, a leading African American
martyr of the movement for whom a college in New York
City is named; he named one of his children after
Kenyatta, Kenya's leader, and along with his brother,
contemplated the founding of a "Mau Mau" in
Mississippi, the heart of darkness where he was born.
Malcolm X, who was catapulted to prominence as a result
of his association with the Nation of Islam, had called
for a "Mau Mau" in Harlem.
How African militancy inspired the same militancy in
Black America is largely an untold story in these
pages. In part, it stems from the orientation, which
emphasizes the ACOA, students, and religious elements,
and does not give sufficient attention to, for example,
Black Nationalists and Marxists of various stripes.
Thus, when Patrice Lumumba was slain, a group of
African Americans invaded the inner sanctum of the
United Nations in protest. The gripping film, _The
Battle of Algiers_ (1965), is still a staple in Black
America and inspired the Black Panther Party, which
established an outpost in Algeria and continues to have
members exiled in Tanzania.
It would have been worthwhile, as well, if this book
had pointed out one of the major problems with the
solidarity organizations based in Washington, D.C. (as
opposed to New York City): their often problematic
relationship to the political establishment. At times,
activists joked that instead of these organizations
lobbying on our behalf in Washington, D.C., they
lobbied us on behalf of Washington, D.C.--that is, as
if to say, "Congress will not simply accept your
demands, please accept half a loaf." Most of the time,
they would be ignored and would be sent back to
Congress with renewed instructions, but at times, this
"reverse lobbying" prevailed.
Another weakness of this trans-Atlantic movement was
that when movements came to power, instead of tending
to and nurturing solidarity movements that boosted
them, they instead abandoned them, discarding them as
if they were soiled paper napkins, thereby weakening
these newly founded governments' attempt to influence
Washington. This was a strategic blunder of monumental
proportion to the extent that it merits an intensive
study grounded in multiple archives.
Nevertheless, the words with which I opened this review
should be emphasized--this is a highly valuable
volume--and any reservations expressed here are far
outweighed by this fact. It belongs in every library
in Africa--and, most of all, in South Africa. Still,
in its very strength it exposes an entire realm of
research that has yet to be completed.
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