NAIROBI CONFERENCE. AN ANTI-IMPERIALIST OPPORTUNITY. AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE FUTURE.
The history of the African continent in the modern and contemporary eras has been shaped by plunder, the slave trade, and the tragedy of the division of its original inhabitants. This formed the basis for interventions by European powers which, on one hand, served the primitive accumulation of capital and, on the other, led to the degeneration of lands that had been cultivated with care and knowledge by groups of inhabitants dedicated to agriculture, who exchanged their surplus crops for other products through caravans that had their own markets and meeting places.
Due to its riches, Africa became the prey of all European colonialist powers. They employed the most savage methods to seize the most precious goods and slave labor, which would be utilized as a productive force in the original formation of capitalism within the aggressive metropolises. They did not just seize material goods; they also attacked the productive forces, diminishing them de facto and directly resulting in lower surplus value, which painted a future that was more negative than uncertain. The high productivity, which had been guaranteed by the time spent on various tasks, has also been a hindrance to the economic and social development of the African continent.
Verified data estimates that between 1550 and 1850, around 100 million Africans were enslaved to be sent to the American continent. It is estimated that only 30% reached their destination. These data are framed within the Atlantic trade toward the lands of the American continent, excluding the numbers of young people who worked for enterprises during the physiocratic stage of the nation-states in the first centuries of the Modern Age, serving the interests of the “East India Companies.”
The narrative shamelessly spread by the colonialists was established for domestic protection and to foster a culture of acquiescence and socially absorbed complicity. The colonial pretense hid a hypocritical consideration that relied on absurd animist postulates, which Christianity had established through its Vatican Catholic base, or on positions more pragmatic for capital, such as the Protestant and Calvinist currents.
These religious manifestations accompanied the pillage, looting, plundering, and the breakdown of the existing social framework. Beyond the clash that occurred with indigenous rites and habits, the colonial forces employed violence to impose creeds alien to the people’s sentiments in order to diminish resistance and an organized response.
The use of physical violence is the conquerors’ method of “conviction.” For capitalism, war is not an exception, but an indispensable instrument of submission and subjugation. We must state, without any possibility of error, that Peace is the authentic enemy of capital, which, in its final phase of insolent concentration and centralization, takes the name of imperialism.
The process that imperialism is developing is a consequence of its historical exhaustion, due to the great contradictions that capital experiences within its own dynamics. Conceptually, the crises of capitalism have occurred within the economic-financial framework due to the inability to maintain the rate of profit, a law that experiences a downward trend making its regeneration impossible. Hence, war is a constant, and the removal of social items from the budgets of capitalist governments results in more precarious conditions primarily in education, healthcare, and public housing services.
The depressive phases of capitalism are now so constant that the use of old methods attempts to recreate past successes that once served to neutralize the revolutionary consciousness harbored within the most advanced subjects of the working class. The construction of this false social edifice is carried out with the unstable mortar of the middle sectors (the misnamed “middle class”) that succumb to the internal tensions all constructions suffer, attempting to keep it upright with the exceptional “buttresses” of governments that fall into vassalage to the debt contracted with the international organs of capitalism; running into debt implies a loss of sovereignty, and this leads to the limitation or elimination of political freedom.
In all processes, dialectics helps us find solutions. Capitalism long ago entered a phase of inability to share even a small percentage of wealth with the most impoverished classes and sectors. Scientific and technological development has created the material conditions for socialism. Conquering this knowledge for humanity will ensure that the enormous problems existing among a large percentage of the world’s population are eradicated and sent to the dustbin of history. Hunger, safe drinking water, child malnutrition, and endemic diseases, among others, would become “horrors” of a past that must never return.
This minimal diagnostic of the problems generated by the “correct” functioning of capitalism expels, by itself, any mystical exit from the situation of the class struggle in almost all states of the African continent.
Following the end of World War II, efforts were made to articulate an international process that postulated the independence of African and Asian countries that remained caged by their metropolises, most of which were part of the Allies. For this reason, the Bandung Conference was reached, initiating its sessions in April 1955, and succeeding in proclaiming and encouraging the proclamation of independence for all territories subjected to colonial powers. It was not simple, because the demands for independence were accompanied by anti-capitalist positions, thereby clashing with US imperialism, which has carried out excessive instances of intervention to paralyze these yearnings for true independence.
When the clash contains elements of criminal harshness, Lenin always comes to light to obtain the correct answer to: What is to be done? Well, many processes have been undertaken since then. If Bandung had attempted to coordinate the struggle through the Non-Aligned Movement to carry out its combat outside the framework of the Cold War confrontation, African countries attempted to organize themselves around the Organization of African Unity, which ultimately led to the African Union (AU), established in May 2001 with the participation of 54 African states.
Arduous work was and is undertaken by this continental organization. Some countries gained independence through inspiring processes, politically speaking, which later slowed down after their initial momentum. It is certainly true that former colonies found support in political processes that took place within the metropolises. Mention must be made, without a doubt, of the Portuguese colonies that were stimulated by the Carnation Revolution led by the Captains of April Movement. Angola and Mozambique had to fight a hard war against the racist vestige of the South African regime, which harassed these countries until its defeat. Beautiful internationalist pages were written in this war, with the solidarity and participation of Cuban troops who had a brilliant intervention in the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale (1987-88).
Later, the racist South African regime would also find its political grave. Having been supported politically by USimperialism and Zionism, the strength of the African National Congress first achieved the release of Nelson Mandela and, following the 1994 elections, the defeat of the apartheid regime became a fact.
Similar situations had occurred in the countries of the Sahel. The assassination of Thomas Sankara in 1987 frustrated the socialist project in Burkina Faso. Before that, Patrice Lumumba suffered a coup d’état in 1960 while serving as Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, only to be assassinated the following year.
Today, Ibrahim Traoré constantly deals with treason and assassination attempts within the project developing in Burkina Faso, involving Niger and Mali in the Alliance of Sahel States, which is expelling US and French imperialist forces from their territories, confronting true independence through the defense of the natural resources their states possess. Hidden from the tabloids of the Western mass media, the Alliance marches forward with the strength of its just anti-imperialist cause. Nairobi, with its Conference, must find the instruments to approach the struggle, which can only be interpreted: until victory!