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Imperialism and the Liberation Struggle in Southern Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Nzongola Ntalaja
Nzongola Ntalaja*
Affiliation:
Howard University
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Extract

After the victories of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) against Portuguese colonialism, the liberation struggle in Southern Africa today consists of the heroic efforts being made by the black and brown peoples of South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe to destroy the system of racial oppression established in these countries by white settlers. This system, known in its extreme form of economic explotation and political and cultural oppression as apartheid in South Africa and Namibia, is closely tied to the survival of imperialist interests in Southern Africa. This is why any analysis of the difficulties being faced by the liberation movements of Southern Africa must include a discussion of the specific articulation of imperialism and settler colonialism in this area. For it provides the context in which the African liberation struggle must be understood.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 9 , Issue 1-2 , Spring/Summer 1979 , pp. 14 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1979 

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References

Notes

l. Cabral, Amilcar, Revolution in Guinea (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), p. 102 Google Scholar.

2. Lenin, V.I., The Lenin Anthology, edited by Tucker, Robert C. (New York: Norton and Co., 1975), p. 207 Google Scholar.

3. Machet, Samora, The Tasks Ahead (New York: Afro-American Information Service, 1975), pp. 33–41 Google Scholar, who identifies three types of enemy: the direct enemy, the indirect enemy, and the enemy within.

4. On the connection between the expansion of capitalism and European settlement in South Africa, see Luzemburg, Rosa, The Accumulation of Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968), pp. 413–415 Google Scholar.

5. For some of the best analyses of this whole process, see Arrighi, Giovanni and Saul, John S., Essays on the Political Economy of Africa (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973 Google Scholar, ch. 5: “Labor Supplies in Historical Perspective: A Study of the Proletarianization of the African Peasantry in Rhodesia,” and ch. 7: “The Political Economy of Rhodesia”; Wolpe, Harold, “Capitalism and Cheap Labour-power in South Africa: From Segregation to Apartheid” Economy and Society, 1:4 (1972), 425–456 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Legassick, Martin, “South Africa: Capital Accumulation and Violence,” Economy and Society, 3:3 (1974), 253–291 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Gervasi, Sean, “The Politics of ‘Accelerated Economic Growth’,” in Thompson, Leonard and Butler, Jeffrey (eds.) Change in Contemporary South Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), p. 353 Google Scholar, estimates the value of the direct investments of Western powers in Southern Africa to have been around $15 billion in 1974.

7. According to Ann Seidman and Neva Makgetla, South Africa alone (i.e., Government, parastatals and private firms) received over $9 billion worth of loans from transnational banks between 1975 and 1978. See their “Activities of Transnational Corporations in South Africa,” United Nations Center Against Apartheid, Notes and Documents, 9/78, May 1978, p. 93. On the leading role the United States plays in the political economy of apartheid, see Ann, and Seidman, Neva, South-Africa and U.S.Multinational Corporations (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill and Co., 1978)Google Scholar.

8. See the full text of the now famous National Security Study Memorandum no. 39 in El-Khawas, Mohamed A. and Cohen, Barry (eds.) The Kissinger Study of Southern Africa (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill and Co., 1976)Google Scholar.

9. Cited by Edgar Lockwood in his preface to The Kissinger Study of Southern Africa, p. 14.

10. Cabral, Amilcar, Return to the Source (New York: Africa Information Service, 1973), p. 54 Google Scholar.