Africa in Struggle: National Liberation and Proletarian Revolution

AFRICA IN STRUGGLE takes a fresh approach to African history. It chronicles and analyzes African liberation movements and counter-movements -- from initial African resistance against European colonial invasion to the major political upheavals since 1945. Fogel shows how the aborted revolutions in Algeria and Kenya set back African history by reimposing repressive rule under a post-colonial regime. The civil wars in Congo/Zaire and Nigeria, abetted by competing imperialist interests, set back African history even more by aggravating ethnic tensions and resentments. On the other hand, victorious workers' and peasants' revolutions in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau provided tantalizing vistas of freedom and creative social initiative.

Fogel brings a sharp theoretical perspective to the complex and often confusing array of people's revolts, military coups and civil wars that have shaped much of African history since the second world war. He exposes how emergent African ruling elites often disguise their class and ethnic oppression of the people with pseudo-liberating slogans drawn from socialist and communist theories. He examines pan-African nationalism in the light of African liberation movements on the ground. He deals in depth with the theories and practice of Kwame Nkrumah, who took over the colonial state in Ghana from the departing British rulers and tried to reorient it to serve the people -- and of Amilcar Cabral, who patiently prepared a grassroots revolutionary movement in Guinea-Bissau that, after ten years of armed struggle, broke Portuguese colonial rule.