Published by Counterpunch, December 12, 2013
On Thursday December 5, 2013 the people of South
Africa lost one of the foremost freedom fighters and revolutionary who
made his mark on humans everywhere. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born
in South Africa in 1918 and matured as Africans in South Africa rose to
the challenges posed by the most brutal social and economic system of
that moment, the system called apartheid. Mandela has now joined the
ancestors and he has left his mark beside those great humans (such as
Mahatmas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, Umm Kulthum, Che
Guevara and Rosa Luxemburg) whose greatness emerged from the movements
that created them. The forms of struggle that emerged from South Africa
inspired the refinement of the philosophy of Ubuntu. This is a
philosophy that says one’s humanity is being enriched by another’s and
that as humans we are linked to a wider universe and spiritual world.
Mandela had said clearly of Ubuntu, “The spirit of Ubuntu – that
profound Africa sense that we are human beings only through the humanity
of other human beings – is not a parochial phenomenon, but has added
globally to our common search for a better world.”
The philosophy of Ubuntu challenged the ideals of individualism,
greed, unhealthy competition, obscene self-enrichment and those
destructive forms of human association that have brought the planet to
the brink of extinction. When the movement elevated Nelson Mandela to
the position as President of a politically free South Africa in 1994,
after 27 years of incarceration, the political leadership of South
Africa sought to give practical meaning to the philosophy of Ubuntu by
establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). In all parts
of the world, the international media remember Mandela and his
contributions to peace and reconciliation but the same corporate media
seeks to confuse the youth by marketing Mandela as an unusual
individual who performed the ‘miracle’ of ending apartheid. In the
process of the wall to wall media coverage of the celebration of the
life of Nelson Mandela, it is important that the voice of Africa is
clear on the meaning of Mandela. Mandela was against racism and the
dehumanizing social system that created hierarchies.
As peace activists it is vital that we remember Mandela as a defender
of peace and social justice and the fact that he was an extraordinary
human being. What is important to remember is a product of a social
movement; the extraordinary circumstances of the oppression of apartheid
created this Mandela. Mandela joined a social movement, the
anti-apartheid movement and for a moment in history, he became the
symbol of the struggle against war and apartheid. His freedom came from
the sacrifices of millions, especially the youth of Soweto and the
workers from the Mass Democratic Movement who laid down a marker for the
new tactics of revolution. While he was the President of South Africa,
Mandela worked for peace in Burundi and Central Africa and worked hard
to end the western manipulation of who can be branded as a terrorist.
Those who branded Mandela as a terrorist are seeking to program the
minds of the youth to see Mandela as some sort of visionary leader
“dropped from heaven” without links to real struggles for peace. Mandela
was very clear that his life was linked to the collective struggles of
humans everywhere, and when he was released in February 1990 he said,
“Amandla, Amandla … I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and
freedom for all. I stand here before you not as a prophet but as a
humble servant of you, the people.”
This media coverage of Nelson Mandela challenges contemporary freedom
fighters to contemplate new tactics, new tools of struggles and new
networks for peace in order to complete the tasks of ending global
apartheid. The African National Congress in government had been trapped
by its inheritance of the social capital of the apartheid state. New
forms of organization and new ideas will be needed as humans gird
themselves to fight against the nefarious forms of racism, exclusion and
oppression that have been refined by global capital as unbridled
capitalism seeks to turn our youths into mindless consumers. It is up to
the youth to gird themselves for the new phase of internationalism and
peace activism so that we can create the conditions for the inspiration
presented by the life of Nelson Mandela to be grasped in all corners of
the globe. Mandela lived a full life and we want to add to the tributes
as we celebrate his life of struggle.
The society that created Nelson Mandela
As soon as it became clear that the most obscene forms of white
supremacy could not survive after the massive resistance of peoples in
all parts of the globe, international news programmers began to present
Nelson Mandela who, as a visionary leader, single handedly ended
apartheid. Books, films, documentaries, blogs and other mainstream media
seek to present the changes in South Africa without reference to the
reality that Nelson Mandela always represented a liberation movement.
Inevitably, as the movement mobilized around the release of Nelson
Mandela when he had been incarcerated for 27 years, Mandela became a
symbol of the anti-apartheid struggle. As the struggle matured in the
final phase after his release from jail on February 11, 1990 the myth
making was developed as part of an election campaign. It is this
mythmaking that ensured the positive and the negative in the
representation of Nelson Mandela to a generation that was not yet born
when the liberation struggles were at the peak.
When Mandela was born in the village of Qunu, in the province that
was called Cape Province, the Union of South Africa had been formed
eight years earlier. The Union government had celebrated the crushing of
the Bambata rebellions and in the face of the failure of open military
rebellions by regional military forces, the African National Congress
had been formed in 1912. Mandela grew up in South Africa in the
turbulent period of the 1930’s capitalist depression. It was in the
midst of this depression when the capitalists of South Africa refined
the repression of black mine workers and inculcated in white workers the
idea that they (whites) were not workers but from a superior race. With
the villages of South Africa and the wider region of Southern Africa
providing cheap labour for the mines, mining capital reaped super
profits at a moment when the instability in the international monetary
system required a steady supply of gold from South Africa.
The royal families of the pre –Union society could not escape the
effects of the deformities of segregation and dehumanization.
Missionaries were deployed to teach sons of chiefs and it was from one
of the missionaries that Mandela received the name Nelson because the
missionaries had difficulties saying Rolihlahla. After this missionary
education Mandela was sent to Fort Hare University and it was in this
University where the other famous anti-apartheid and anti-colonial
stalwarts were groomed. Z. K. Matthews, Govan Mbeki, Oliver Tambo,
Joshua Nkomo, Walter Sisulu, Robert Sobukwe, Desmond Tutu and Robert
Mugabe were some of the notable students in the forties at this
University. As an activist he was expelled from Fort Hare and he went on
to study Law at the University of Witwatersrand.
Nelson Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1942 and
in 1944, along with Walter Sisulu, Robert Sobukwe, and Oliver Tambo,
they formed the Youth wing of the ANC. This youth wing joined the
hundreds of anti-colonial movements all over the world and when the
repressive legal structures of apartheid were formalised to support the
social divisions, the peoples responded with a Freedom Charter. The
Sharpeville massacres of March 21, 1960 foreclosed all possibilities of a
peaceful non –violent opposition to apartheid and in 1962 Mandela was
dispatched to the independent states of Africa to gain support for the
armed wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe (abbreviated as MK, translated
as “Spear of the Nation). Mandela was one of the co-founders of MK and
he received training in many African countries before he returned to
South Africa. Mandela participated in the debates about unity and
struggle that were at that time raging in the Pan African Freedom
Movement for East and Central Africa (PAFMECA).
Self Organization of the Youth of Soweto
South West Johannesburg (Soweto) was one of those dormitory towns
that were a reservoir of cheap labour for the rich and middle class
whites in the suburbs of Johannesburg. Mandela was arrested in 1962 for
planning “sabotage” of the government and was branded a terrorist by the
South African state. The US military and intelligence agencies worked
hand in glove with the apartheid military to crush opposition from the
African majority. From 1973 the workers of Durban had given notice that
there would be new organizational forms to oppose apartheid and the
youth of Soweto followed with the massive uprisings of 1976. These
rebellions are central to the kind of politics that developed in the
period when Mandela was incarcerated after the Rivonia trials in 1964.
The sacrifices of the youth and their determination had created new
alliances and these alliances matured in the Mass Democratic Movement
and the United Democratic Front (UDF). While Nelson Mandela as a lawyer
had been groomed to focus on the legal questions of the apartheid laws,
the social questions of health, education, housing, police brutality
placed the fight against apartheid on a new terrain as the ANC worked to
remain alive in the heat of the conservative push of Ronald Reagan and
Margaret Thatcher. The formation of the UDF had provided for an
alternative source of political power at the grassroots and strengthened
the capacity of the resistance to transform their conception of the
long term struggles to create an alternative to the social system.
Forward planers for the investors in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange
were sufficiently alarmed when the rebellions of the youth rendered
South Africa ungovernable and apartheid unworkable. After the killing of
Steve Biko, the planners sought out the brightest from among these
rebellious youth to send them to be trained as future leaders in North
American and European Universities. Those educated in the schools of the
West became the experts after return to South Africa to be at the
forefront of the negotiations for the form of society to be built after
apartheid. Free Mandela Committees were an integral of the global
antiapartheid struggles. In response to these local, regional and
international alliances to end apartheid the South African Defence
forces (SADF) spread death and destruction in the townships and across
the region of Southern Africa. The terrorism of apartheid along with the
killing of more than 2 million in the neighboring states did not break
the will of the people. If anything, international solidarity
intensified with the support of the Cubans assisting the Angolans to
fight the apartheid army at Cuito Cuanavale.
The importance of Cuito Cuanavale
One of the many tasks of western propaganda organs has been to
downplay the sacrifices of the peoples of the region of Southern Africa
for the independence of Namibia 1990, the release of Nelson Mandela, and
the negotiations to end apartheid. The epic battles at Cuito Cuanavale
between October 1987 and June 1988 changed the history of Africa. The
SADF had invaded Angola with the plan to impose Jonas Savimbi in Luanda
and to defeat the freedom fighters from Namibia of the South West Africa
People’s Organization (SWAPO). The apartheid army became bogged down at
the crossroads of two rivers in Southern Angola. In order to intimidate
the peoples of Africa the SADF had manufactured tactical nuclear
weapons with the assistance of the Israeli state. When the South African
army became bogged down the President of South Africa, P.W.Botha flew
to the frontlines of the battles in Angola to broker a debate between
the generals on whether South Africa should deploy and use its nuclear
capabilities.
The international isolation of the white racist regime meant that
there was no sympathy for this option, even from the conservative Reagan
Administration. The racist army had to fight against a confident
Angolan military with Cuban reinforcements. After nine months fighting
the SADF was roundly defeated with the remnants of the SADF retreating
on foot to Northern Namibia. In order to rescue the SADF so that the
military would not be routed as the French army was routed at Dien Bien
Phu in 1954, in stepped the US Assistant Secretary of State for African
Affairs, Chester Crocker to broker the decent withdrawal of the SADF
from Namibia. This battle was episodic and Fidel Castro rightly
asserted that the History of Africa will be written as that of before
Cuito Cuanavale and after Cuito Cuanavale.
Nelson Mandela and the South African struggles after Cuito Cuanavale
Nelson Mandela’s walk of Freedom out of incarceration in 1990 had
represented a major step in the peoples of the world for a new system
after apartheid. However, those who owned the banks, the mines, the
insurance companies and the land were planning for a post-apartheid
society where the capital remained in the hands of the white minority
along with new black allies. International capital had grasped the full
implications of black partners in societies such as Kenya, Zimbabwe,
Cameroons, Algeria and Nigeria. Hence even while the negotiations were
on going for the New Society in The Convention for a Democratic South
Africa (CODESA,) the more far sighted elements such as the Oppenheimer
family of Anglo-American Corporation worked to support those within the
movement that believed that the end of Apartheid was for the development
of a class of black entrepreneurs under Black Economic Empowerment
(BEE). The nature of the inequalities in South Africa today demonstrates
the success of the plan to create black allies. Cyril Ramaphosa is the
poster child of a militant trade union leader of the anti-apartheid era
who became a mining magnate after apartheid, exploiting the very workers
he had vowed to defend. The image of Cyril Ramaphosa who had escorted
Nelson Mandela out of Prison in 1990 operating and multibillionaires was
one sign of the class formation in South Africa. In 2012, the
political leaders of the ANC oversaw a government that shot 34 Marikana
workers who were striking for better conditions at the Platinum Mines in
South Africa.
It was a proper clarification of the politics of
transformation when Ramaphosa, a multibillionaire, emerged as the
spokesperson for the owners of the Platinum Mines in rejecting the
demands of the workers for better working conditions and better wages.
The ANC and its tripartite alliance of the Communist Party, the Congress
of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) had fashioned a theoretical
basis for the enrichment of a few by arguing that before South Africa
could enter the phase of transformation beyond capitalism there had to
be the development of the productive forces. Nelson Mandela was caught
in 1994 in the midst of the alliance and within five years sought to
extricate himself by stepping down as President of South Africa in 1999
after one term.
Ubuntu in practice, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)
One of the sterling contributions of the South African struggle was
to be able to clarify the differences between restorative justice and
retributive justice, based on Ubuntu. In fact, Mandela not only embraced
Ubuntu, under his political leadership, there was an attempt to bring
the ideas of Ubuntu from its philosophical level to the level of
practical politics in ways that helped avert bloodbath to form a better
society, however imperfect. And this was in part done through the
establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
In the three years after the release of Mandela, the international
media was predicting a bloodbath in South Africa if Blacks were to
emerge victorious from the first democratic elections in 1994. Those
with strategic control over the means of violence sought to make this
bloodbath a reality right up to the moment when Mandela was inaugurated
in May 1994 as the first Black President of a Democratic South Africa.
One year after Mandela became President, the Parliament of South Africa
established the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, No.
34 of 1995. This became the legal framework for the establishment of the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Mandela threw his international
weight behind the process of Reconciliation. While the TRC was holding
sessions under the Chairperson Desmond Tutu, Mandela made a number of
public gestures to demonstrate the fact that he supported full
reconciliation between the oppressed blacks and the oppressors. Of the
two most public of these gestures were the visit to have tea with Mrs
Betsie Verwoerd at Oriana in 1995 and donning the jersey of the
segregated South African rugby team in the World Cup in South Africa.
Mrs Verwoerd, the widow of the architect of the most brutal apartheid
structures had retreated to the town of Orania in the Cape seeking to
establish an all-white town because the whites could not live under a
black political leadership. The extreme Afrikaners around Mrs Verwoerd
had chosen the small community to set up a laager and the whites in the
town did not want any black around, not even black servants. These
whites did not recognize Mandela as the legitimate President of a Free
South Africa. Mandela took the bold step of travelling to this all white
town of Orania to demonstrate to Mrs Verwoerd that the new South Africa
was based on forgiveness and willingness to share, core principles of
Ubuntu. This gesture was relayed all over the world by the local and
international media as Mandela sat down to have tea with the people who
were responsible for arresting and incarcerating him. Two months earlier
Mandela had orchestrated another public act by going to the Rugby World
Cup Match and putting on the jersey of the South African team. Sporting
activities had been one of the strongest bases for segregation in the
society and in all areas of sporting activity Mandela inspired South
Africa to rise above the structural violence that had become part and
parcel of South Africa.
At the legal level, South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution is one
of the most progressive in the world, and it draws on Ubuntu to
enshrine equal constitutional rights for all – black, white, colored,
women, youths, elderly people and same-gender-loving persons.
This effort at Reconciliation at the legal level and at the public
level went side by side as the TRC started hearings in Cape Town in
1996. The mandate of the commission had been to bear witness to, record
and in some cases grant amnesty to the perpetrators of crimes relating
to human rights violations, as well as reparation and rehabilitation.
Witnesses who were identified as victims of gross human rights
violations were invited to give statements about their experiences, and
some were selected for public hearings. Perpetrators of violence could
also give testimony and request amnesty from both civil and criminal
prosecution. Witnesses who were identified as victims of gross human
rights violations were invited to give statements about their
experiences, and some were selected for public hearings. Perpetrators of
violence could also give testimony and request amnesty from both civil
and criminal prosecution.
A new politics was being developed in the context of seeking
restorative justice beyond the Nuremberg Model of winners’ court. The
Healing power of the process was manifest in the rituals that emanated
from victims and oppressors, creating a space that could be the basis of
holding the society together. This ritual of the TRC with the spiritual
underpinnings of forgiveness and healing was a powerful antidote to the
three hundred years of white racist oppression. Malidoma Some had
written a book on the Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Life Purpose Through Nature, Ritual, and Community.
It was in the TRC where one saw some of the ideas being worked out.
During the Hearings of the TRC there were public hearings as the
narratives of perpetrators and victims moved in a constant motion
across time (from present to past and present to future) and space
(spiritual, social, physical, emotional) in a movement that may be
called recursive.
Here was a profound moment in the history of South Africa as the
African people offered a crucible for healing the society. Nelson
Mandela and Desmond Tutu will go down in history as individuals who
opened up the possibilities for another form of society. This healing
process offered by the TRC, despite its imperfections, placed Ubuntu on
the philosophical map breaking the ideation baggage of individualism,
greed, competition and revenge.
If the Black people and the oppressed majority were willing to turn a
corner, international capital was not. Plans for the Reconstruction and
transformation of South Africa were shelved in the face of the timidity
of the political leadership in calling for the cancellation of the
apartheid incurred debt. The repercussions of managing the neo-liberal
programe of international capital cut off the top leadership of the ANC
from the rank and file. Questions of the social reconstruction after
apartheid had to be shelved until new emancipatory formations arise in
South Africa. International capita took the lessons of South Africa to
heart and sought to promote a neo-liberal agenda where a small minority
collaborated with international capital in the new template for the
exploitation of the majority. This form of class rule came to be
understood as the globalization of apartheid without its racial baggage.
Mandela and Ubuntu overseas
Mandela was opposed to the Western designation of states as
sponsoring terrorism and openly supported Fidel Castro of Cuba, Yasser
Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) the Saharwi Arab
Democratic Republic and the political leadership in Libya. As one who
had been placed on the US list of international terrorist, Mandela in
1992 had made a clear statement about the standoff between Libya and the
West over the downing of the 1998 Pan American Airways flight 103. This
plane had exploded over Lockerbie Scotland and the West accused two
Libyans of planting the bomb. This is despite the fact that at the
precise moment of the bomb, western media had blamed Iran for planting
the bomb.
In 1998 Mandela travelled to Libya three times within one week to
mediate between the British government and the Libyan authorities. After
travelling back and forth between the western leaders and Muammar
Gaddafi the head of the Libyan state, Mandela struck a deal where
Gaddafi handed over the two suspects in return for the lifting of
international sanctions against Libya. Gaddafi accepted the offer of
Nelson Mandela and offered to pay US $2.7 billion , approximately $10
million for each of the victim’s families. Gaddafi went further to open
up his economy to western oil companies and in 2004 dumped his plans for
the acquisition of Chemical and Biological weapons. Despite this
opening and the intense investments of the West, International capital
was not satisfied and in 2011 orchestrated the invasion, bombing and
destruction of Libya under the banner of Responsibility to Protect.
Gaddafi was executed and humiliated as the West sought to roll back all
ideas of African Unification and Liberation.
Mandela as a Peace maker
After Nelson Mandela was rid of the responsibility of managing the
structures of the apartheid economy, he became even more outspoken
against inequalities. He was assertive on the question of the need for
health for all and the provision of retroviral medicine for those
affected by HIV AIDS even while other leaders of the ANC were equivocal
over the response of the government of South Africa to this pandemic.
Outside of South Africa Mandela shamed the leaders of the Organization
of African Unity (OAU) who had stood by while the fastest genocide
unfolded in Rwanda in 1994. After the passing of Julius Nyerere in 1999,
Nelson Mandela engaged the peace process in Burundi and threw his
considerable international stature behind a tough process of
negotiations to end the decades of warfare in Burundi.
Mandela was opposed to the deployment of US military personnel in
Africa and he spoke out firmly against the Africa Crisis Response
Initiative (ACRI), the forerunner to the current Africa Command. When
George W. Bush started his buildup for the war against the peoples of
Iraq Mandela offered himself up as a peace maker to be a human shield
against US bombs. In an interview with Newsweek Magazine in 2002 prior
to the invasion, Mandela called the USA a threat to the peace of the
world.
“If you look at those matters, you will come to the conclusion that
the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace.
Because what [America] is saying is that if you are afraid of a veto in
the Security Council, you can go outside and take action and violate
the sovereignty of other countries. That is the message they are sending
to the world. That must be condemned in the strongest terms.” As a
peace activist, Mandela took issues personal with George Bush over the
decision to invade Iraq. Addressing the International Women’s Forum in
Johannesburg in 2003, a visibly furious Mandela stated unequivocally:
“What I am condemning is that one power, with a president [George Bush]
who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to
plunge the world into a holocaust. … If there is a country that has
committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States
of America. They don’t care.”
The legacies of Nelson Mandela
The differing legacies of the political leadership of Nelson Mandela
were on full display at the massive memorial event held in Soweto on
December 10, 2013. There the mass of people expressed themselves in the
admiration and warmth of Nelson Mandela and at the same time expressing
their opposition to the corruption of the top leadership of the ANC. The
people booed the current leader of the ANC, Jacob Zuma, every time his
face appeared on the giant TV screens in the stadium. Mandela had
always remarked that he was a disciplined member of the ANC and his
membership of the organization pointed to the differences between the
promises of the anti-apartheid struggles and the realities of the
enrichment of a new class of African exploiters. It was appropriate that
this celebration of the life of Mandela marked a new stage for the
corrupt leadership of the ANC.
In the period of the anti-apartheid struggles, funeral ceremonies
were occasions for mass mobilization and education The entire
proceedings played out before over 90 heads of states and governments
reflected the new relationship between the ANC and the mass of the
poor. Despite the fact that this occasion represented a huge logistical
challenge, one could negatively compare the planning of the leadership
on this occasion with the World Cup in 2010. Hence, for one of the most
important public events in the history of South Arica, for most of the
time the stadium was half empty. The ANC did not provide transportation
to the stadium as promised. The poor travelled from near and far by
train only to find that there were no buses to take them up to the
stadium. Even those who braved the downpour of rain to make it to the
stadium was not allowed to celebrate the way South Africans are used to
celebrate at such events. Instead they were expected to sit and listen
like little children. At such events people would sing and dance. In
fact, before each speaker someone would raise a song and people would
follow and sing until the speaker was ready to speak. Even Zuma would
start a song and dance before he spoke. Jacob Zuma, the leadership and
Cyril Ramaphosa wanted the people to forget the kind of mass
mobilization that was engineered to end apartheid. They are afraid that
this mass mobilization will sweep the billionaires from power.
The political leadership of Nelson Mandela in the anti-apartheid
struggle had both focused attention on him as an individual and released
the energies of various groups whose task was to clarify the details of
the real meaning of transformation beyond apartheid. In this and in
many other ways, Nelson Mandela symbolized the dialectic of resistance
and transformation. His own life has mirrored the way in which a social
movement shaped individuals. Hence, the youth who are hearing the
tributes to Mandela are faced with the contradiction between focusing on
great leaders and the kind of media coverage that is geared towards the
depoliticizaion of the youth. Richard Falk summed up very lucidly the
place of Mandela for humans everywhere when he wrote,
“It was above all Mandela’s spiritual presence that created such a
strong impression of moral radiance on the part of all of us fortunate
enough to be in the room. I was reinforced in my guiding belief that
political greatness presupposes a spiritual orientation toward the
meaning of life, not necessarily expressed by way of a formal religious
commitment, but always implies living with an unconditional dedication
to values and faith that transcend the practical, the immediate, and the
material.”
In his earthly life, Mandela could not escape this tension between
the spiritual and the material. The spiritual energies of the peoples
had been unleashed to fashion a non-racial democracy. Liberal conception
of democracy could not understand this attempt to transcend the ideas
of the Western Enlightenment, which itself built on human hierarchies
that carved a supreme space for the enlightened white man. Nelson
Mandela had been reared in these ideas at Fort Hare and as a lawyer but
the struggles elevated him to be special human beings among
revolutionaries. The world salutes Nelson Mandela and we join with those
who are sending tributes to his family.
We will also add that the people should not mourn but organize for the next round of struggle.

Horace Campbell is Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University. His recent book is Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya. He is author of: Rasta and Resistance From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney; Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation; Pan Africanism, Pan Africanists and African Liberation in the 21st Century; and Barack Obama and 21st Century Politics. Follow on Twitter @Horace_Campbell.
- Order Horace Campbell's recent book, Global Nato and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya
- Welcome to horacecampbell.net. Horace Campbell is Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University, New York. His recent book is Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya. He is the author of: Rasta and Resistance From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney; Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation; Pan Africanism, Pan Africanists and African Liberation in the 21st Century; and Barack Obama and 21st Century Politics. Follow on Twitter @Horace_Campbell.