Revolutionary traveller: freeze-frames from a life, by John S. Saul, Winnipeg, Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2009, 436 pp., CDN$ 26.95 (hardback), ISBN 9781894037372
John Saul's book is a riveting memoir that chronicles Southern Africa's liberation struggle and John Saul's activism in that region during its quest for independence. John Saul proved to be a revolutionary traveller of note by actively participating in struggles in Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa through his formidable scholarly writings and activism in these countries. Even during longer spells in his native Canada between the 1970s and 2000s, John Saul invested immensely in Southern Africa's liberation struggle by forging links between the events in Canada and Southern Africa. He admirably did this through his active participation in the Toronto Committee for the Liberation of Portugal's African Colonies (TCLPAC) and later under the Toronto Committee for the Liberation of Southern Africa (TCLSAC). In his stints as a member of both committees, John Saul was able to expose Canada's duplicity and inconsistency in its policies towards the oppressive white minority regimes in Southern Africa.
John Saul's main argument is that Southern Africa's liberation struggle has proven to be disappointing and unfulfilling because all the Southern African countries experienced a form of false decolonisation that has failed to shake off neoliberalism's continued oppression of the majority of people in Southern Africa, namely the peasants and the ranks of the working class. In a powerful and persuasive fashion, John Saul posits that real emancipation in Southern Africa, and indeed the whole of Africa, can only be realised if a path of democratic socialism is pursued.
In the first part of the memoir, the author ‘cuts his teeth’ as a revolutionary activist at the University of Dar es Salaam in the latter part of the 1960s and early 1970s, when he becomes a part of the ‘group of nine’ lecturers that endeavour to change the university's course content. The idea of the group of nine to design a ‘common course’ in socialism for all the students was in line with the revolutionary Arusha Declaration which proclaimed that Tanzania's guiding ideology would be socialism. However, John Saul's unwavering commitment to the genuine ideals of socialism proved to be too radical to stomach for the Tanzanian state that purported to be socialist, and the university authorities, which would terminate Saul's teaching contract in 1972.
Before returning to his native Canada after the termination of his teaching contract by the University of Dar es Salaam, John Saul enhanced his reputation as a liberation movement supporter by agreeing to visit the war zones liberated by the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) in Mozambique's Tete province. That visit exposed John Saul to FRELIMO's brand of socialism that put the collective first, ahead of the individual. This phenomenon would leave an indelible impression on John Saul's life as a revolutionary activist.
Upon his return to Canada, John Saul continued his revolutionary activism by becoming a member of the TCLPAC which later became TCLSAC after the former Portuguese African colonies obtained independence. As a member of these committees, John Saul brought to the fore the duplicity of the Canadian state in its dealings with the white minority regimes in Southern Africa. Saul argued that this made Canada complicit in the oppression of the black people in Southern Africa. The Canadian bank loans to the apartheid regime in South Africa were also exposed in Saul's no-holds-barred articles.
John Saul's revolutionary travels to Southern Africa would continue through the 1980s and into the 2000s as he visited Mozambique and South Africa on a number of occasions to assess the levels and pace of socialist transformation, or lack thereof, in these countries. Unfortunately, and to Saul's great disappointment, the neoliberal project had taken firm root in the whole of Southern Africa and was deeply entrenched in the economic policies that were being pursued in this region even up to the time John Saul penned his revolutionary memoir in the late 2000s.
John Saul's memoir is a gripping read that is aptly titled, with the ‘freeze-frames’ capturing the author's steely determination and almost unrivalled passion towards obtaining socialist societies in both the global north and south that are democratic and just. The book's strength also lies in the author's candidness in accepting that the pursuit of a truly democratic socialist project in Southern Africa, and anywhere else for that matter, might be idealistic. John Saul reveals this when he acknowledges:
It is true, for example, that by 2000 it had become apparent that I had, in effect, hitched my wagon to a somewhat fading star; the hopes, dreams and analyses that led many of us to see in the struggles for liberation in southern Africa a promise of genuine liberation and development for the populations of the countries in the region that had felt forced to fight, courageously and dramatically, for their freedom, were now visibly waning. (p. 245)
The memoir could, however, have discussed in greater length the liberation struggles in Zimbabwe and Namibia. Saul of course makes fleeting references to the not so encouraging outcome of the liberation struggle in the two countries. Overall, the book exposes John Saul as a revolutionary activist/academic par excellence whose imprint on Southern Africa's liberation struggle is undoubted. A definite must-read.