Since April of this year, Roape.net has posted twice and occasionally three times a week. On 20 April we posted an interview conducted by Ben Radley – a new member of ROAPE’s Editorial Working Group – with the Congolese historian and scholar-activist Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja (Nzongola-Ntalaja and Radley 2021). Nzongola-Njalaja explained that the overriding motivation of his work is solidarity with the oppressed and an uncompromising quest for the truth to elucidate the political history of the Congo and Africa generally, from the colonial period to the present.
In the middle of May one of our regular contributors, Florian Bobin interviewed, with Maky Madiba Sylla, an important activist in Senegal (Sagna, Bobin, and Sylla 2021). In March, Senegal experienced unprecedented popular protests. Recently released from prison, activist Guy Marius Sagna, founding member of the Front for an Anti-Imperialist Popular and Pan-African Revolution (Frapp-France Dégage), he argued in the interview that anti-imperialism is gaining ground in the country.
Continuing our strong interview section, we spoke to the Tunisian sociologist Frej Stambouli, who reflected on his teacher Frantz Fanon (Stambouli 2021). Stambouli describes Fanon’s lectures at the university in Tunis in 1959, and his unique conception of psychiatry and promotion of open psychiatry as a ‘pathology of freedom’. Stambouli considers Fanon’s legacy and his anger, reason and kindness, recalling, ‘I will never forget the generosity of Fanon.’ This interview was shared and reposted across a broad network of activist and academic sites.
For the 41st anniversary of Walter Rodney’s assassination on 13 June, Anne Braithwaite spoke to ROAPE’s Chinedu Chukwudinma about her experience as a founding member of the UK Support Group of the Working People’s Alliance (Braithwaite and Chukwudinma 2021). The work of solidarity groups around the world was key to this moment of extraordinary radicalisation and party building in Guyana – this is key oral history, with one of the most impressive organisers in the Guyanese diaspora. Our remit as a radical and Marxist publication, and project, is resolutely internationalist, and we have been breaking down the often-narrow disciplinary boundaries of ‘African studies’.
Our review section has been particularly rich in recent months. Last week we published an excellent and thoughtful review of Hannah Cross’ recent book (Kallon 2021). Baindu Kallon engaged with Migration beyond capitalism, arguing that the book brings a new left-wing response to the narrative around migration. ROAPE’s Hannah Cross, she argues, effectively demonstrates why an internationalist working-class response is the key to defeating neoliberal power and creating a new world.
We published Janet Bujra’s compelling review of Jonathan’s Neale’s new book, Fight the fire: green new deal and climate jobs, which she argues goes beyond the symptoms of climate change and focuses on the causes (Bujra 2021). These are to be found in the scientific facts, but equally relevant, the social relations of globalising capitalism. Neale calls, Janet argues, for a global mass movement that can confront the forces that are destroying the planet.
At the end of April, we posted an introduction by Zainab Haruna (2021) to a new book on African women, In her words. Haruna, one of the coordinators of this powerful collection of essays, argued that the collection was the first attempt to chronicle the diverse perspectives and experiences of African women. Haruna describes the richness and complexity of the contributions to the book and how, in looking at ‘shades and nuances of the conversation on feminism and feminist practice on the continent’, the book asks what liberation for African women looks like.
Peter Dwyer from the Editorial Working Group introduced ROAPE’s new members in two excellent blogposts, written by Chin, Boa, Leona, Njuki and Mabrouka (Dwyer, Vaughn, Chukwudinma, and Githethwa 2021; Dwyer, M’Barek, and Monjane 2021). As Peter wrote, ‘It is fitting that they are the first of the new generation of colleagues introducing themselves as this is as much about uniting activists from the African diaspora with those implanted in Africa. In a personal, political and scholarly sense, they, and others, will irrevocably change the [Editorial Working Group] and ROAPE.’
For Africa Day on 25 May, we posted a piece by Sanya Osha celebrating a real unity of African people and communities living in South Africa (Osha 2021). Osha argues that South Africa bears miracles within that it doesn’t even know it possesses. A pan-Africanism, he argues, is evolving that is practical and realistic and unhampered by rigid presuppositions of state politics and ideology.
We also posted a blog by Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni. Describing in glittering prose the dangers of academic ‘combat’, he triggered important questions and set out to open our eyes to the battle lines, and to the weapons that are available to defeat gladiatorial scholarship – ‘the moment to learn to unlearn is upon us’, he wrote, a period of ‘decolonial love’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2021).
We continue to post pieces which link to articles in the journal. In May we posted a piece by Christoph Vogel on the university as a site where colonial frames survive – whether in financial, linguistic, architectural, political or mental spheres (Vogel 2021). These frameworks are cross-cutting and create, shape and legitimise knowledge. He argues that Western-raised and -educated academics are trapped in self-made intellectual snares, complicating attempts to make sense of politics in most parts of the world. This blogpost derived from a recent article he had published in the journal.
Hamza Hamouchene, in his blogpost, provides a brief historical account of Frantz Fanon’s anti-colonial thought, his critique of the postcolonial ruling elites and the new popular movement (Hirak) engulfing Algeria (Hamouchene 2021). The coverage on Fanon will continue this year – the sixtieth anniversary of his death and the publication of The wretched of the earth.
Other pieces highlight contemporary political and economic developments on the continent. At the beginning of May we posted on the insurgency in northern Mozambique which has been threatening a multi-billion investment in natural gas production. In this, Sara Stevano and Helena Pérez Niño (2021) explained how the violence in northern Cabo Delgado is part of a longer script of capitalist penetration into periphery regions.
Roape.net remains a base for critical posts, from a broad radical perspective, and we have developed a reputation for coverage which is original and vital. Our posts are often reposted across multiple platforms, frequently with credit, sometimes not, and our regular partners include Monthly Review, Africa is a Country, and The Elephant (and many others). Our blogs, interviews, reviews and long-reads are too extensive to give a full picture in this quarterly write-up, so we encourage our readers to visit the site themselves.
