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(ANC) Lessons from Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth: 50 years on...

Lessons from Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth: 50 years on...

‘History teaches us clearly that the battle against colonialism does not run straight away along the lines of nationalism’ these are the prophetic words which open the famous chapter on ‘Pitfalls of National Consciousness’ in Fanon’s classic book The Wretched of the Earth.

The book became a treatise for revolutionary consciousness and remains one of the most outstanding critiques of both the colonial and neo-colonial edifice that shaped African society since the 20th Century. Fanon analyses the role of class, race, national culture and violence in the struggle for national liberation.

The year 2011 marks the 50th Anniversary of the book’s publication. The history of the ANC is intertwined with both anti-colonial and post-colonial struggles, Fanon touches on matters ranging from the role of the middle classes within developing countries (or the comprador bourgeoisie), the importance of national culture, questions of violence, the role of native intellectuals and more importantly how issues such as Xenophobia manifest themselves throughout the periods of colonization and post-colonization.

Fanon cautions against racial essentialism and bigotry by referring to the wider community of oppressed people and not exclusively to black society, an issue the ANC emphasizes by pursuing the goal of a non-racial society. The post-independence moment in Africa has brought with it numerous contradictions and challenges many of which centre around the structure of economic systems and the challenges of uneven development.

The triumph of the liberation movements of the 1950s and 1960s signified the beginning of a new dawn for Africa. However, the postcolonial states still had to battle the hegemony of the bourgeois of the former colonial countries. The consolidation of the capitalist elite combined with the active participation of the ‘national bourgeois’ perpetuated this historically parasitic relationship.

In a remark that remains strikingly relevant even today Fanon says:

“The young national bourgeoisie is often more suspicious of the regime that it has set up than are the foreign companies. The national bourgeoisie refuse to invest in its own country and behaves towards the state that protects and nurtures it with, it must be remarked, astonishing ingratitude” (Wretched of the Earth; 139).

This should sound very relevant to ANC cadres particularly as both our industrial and macro-economic policies should be geared towards growing our economy in South Africa while also increasing development.

In that process, do we still need to look at the question of the growth of a local bourgeoisie that is not inherently parasitic in its relations with the state? Does our current policies promote the growth of such a localized bourgeoisie? In interfacing with international Capital, is there an explicit goal of ‘localizing’ capital in order to ensure future sustainability and relative sovereignty of our society?

If we are considering all these issues the next (and logical) question is how do such discussions inform the broader discussion of building a National Democratic society in South Africa?

Political parties in Africa have long been criticized for losing ‘touch’ with the masses or developing a ‘distance’ from the masses. Commentators often overlook it that Fanon explicitly views the orientation of political parties as essentially Western, resulting in the contemptuous attitude towards the masses.

In his own words he says; “In order to arrive at this conception of the party, we must above all rid ourselves of the very Western, very bourgeois, and therefore very contemptuous attitude that the masses are incapable of governing themselves. In fact, experience proves that the masses understand perfectly the most complicated problems”.

ANC branches are a clear expression of this direct contact with the masses not just for procedural reasons but also as an important part of participatory democracy. This is why the ANC teaching that branches are ‘the basic unit of the organization’ is so important.

The African Renaissance would never be a possibility if the masses are not conscious architects of their own destiny through their own purposeful and conscious actions. There have been protracted discussions amongst scholars about the ‘consciousness’ of the masses and the need for revolutionary parties to insert political ideology to their actions.

This discourse can be traced as far back as the writings of Vladimir Lenin in 1922 on the ‘Role of Trade Unions: Under the New Economic Policy in Russia’ and Rosa Luxembourg’s 1906 piece on ‘Mass Strike, a Historical and not an artificial product’ in which she seeks to clarify the importance of the diversity of the working class.

Interestingly Fanon departs from the traditional Marxist focus on the industrial proletariat as the class that is sufficiently conscientised to lead the revolution. Instead Fanon maintains that it is the working class outside of industrial production and outside of the cities that has sufficient independence to successfully lead the revolution!!

Recent developments in North Africa are a stark reminder that popular resistance and mass mobilization still remain relevant tools of confronting pervasive undemocratic and authoritarian regimes many of whom have been buttressed by the active support of Western powers. What is largely unsaid but can and should be read between the lines is that the popular uprisings in North Africa cannot be narrowly defined along the dictum of ‘left’ and ‘right’ wing politics.

A wider confluence of social and class forces has emerged to oppose the basic character of undemocratic regimes in that region. However, it is the outcomes of such popular struggles that requires more attention because even such revolutions can reproduce reactionary social phenomenon if not guided by a progressive political ethos embedded within values of social solidarity and African unity. This is what brings me to another important aspect of Fanon’s writing, the issue of ‘National Culture’.

Fanon also concerned himself with the central role of national culture and how it contributes to the struggle for freedom. Fanon refers to three phases in the development of a national culture. He says in the first phase: the native intellectual gives proof that he has assimilated the culture of the occupying power.

This phase Fanon refers to as ‘unqualified assimilation’; in the second phase the native is disturbed and decides to remember what he is. Past happenings of the bygone days of his childhood will be brought up out of the depths of his memory; and in the third phase that Fanon calls ‘the fighting phase’ the native turns himself into the awakener of his people (pg: 178-179). It is within this discussion of ‘National Culture’ that Fanon reminds us that the role of the intellectual is to use the past in order to open the future as a basis of hope.

A consistent thread in The Wretched of the Earth is a critical debate about neo-colonialism a process which Colin Leys defines as ‘essentially a sys­tem of domination of the mass of the population of a country by foreign capital, by means other than direct colonial rule. By its nature such dominance requires the development of domestic class interests which are allied to those of foreign capital, and which uphold their joint interests in economic policy and enforce their dominance politically’.

Within the neo-colonialism process the middle classes of the homeland become the intermediaries between the national bourgeois and the bourgeois of the ‘mother’ country. Students of dependency theory would realize that Fanon’s analysis is seminal in the understanding of post colonialism and the notion of dependency between the ‘core’ and the ‘peripheral’ countries.

The revolutionary consciousness encouraged by Fanon in Wretched of the Earth should be a reminder to activists across the political spectrum that the goal of national liberation was to strive for true freedom of the masses of our people and their emancipation from social bondage. The period of the publication of the Wretched of the Earth was followed by publications of other books that built on Fanon’s arguments throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s such as ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’ by Walter Rodney and ‘The West and the Rest of Us: white predators, Black slavers, and the African elite’ by Chinweizu.

The real question that should be posed by ANC cadres after reading such literatures is: how do we characterize anti-imperialist struggles in the present conjuncture of globalisation and integration of economic systems? And what meaning do we attach to the notion of economic freedom in its wider sense?

By answering such questions we may be able to go beyond Fanon, Rodney, Chinweizu and others and posit new questions for anti-imperialist struggles in the 21st century. It is my hope that in the year of the 50th Anniversary of this important work we may look to Wretched of the Earth to heed the warnings made by Fanon and confront all forms of oppression wherever they manifest themselves.

>>Siphelo Ngcwangu is the interim convenor of the ANC Ward Task Team in Ward 70 Centurion

Labels: FRANTZ FANON, LIBERATION, POVERTY

posted by MrK @ 3:21 PM