Prominent contemporary African anarchist writers

Submitted by Rob Ray on September 4, 2016

Hey all, so I was wondering whether anyone had any recommendations, specifically living authors and suchlike? No arguments about Schmidt and Walt please.

Rob Ray

7 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Rob Ray on September 4, 2016

Oh also on a related note, anyone know who I E Igariwey is and whether they're still active? He co-authored a couple books with Sam Mbah

Edit: Ahh never mind - think I might have found him! There's an Iduma Enwo Igariwey MP, who's a member of the ruling centre-right PDP party, which'd be some political journey...

Mike Harman

6 years 3 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Mike Harman on December 9, 2017

Are you looking for writing on current issues or history? There's some very good history from a subaltern angle on 20th century African history but it's often people who've taken academic positions in history departments and in some cases emigrated to do so, and not necessarily anarchist politics, still a good antidote to Marxist Leninist/trot stuff. On anarchist/ultra-left twitter there are interesting people talking about Africa but they're first/second generation US and UK immigrants often.

That's not a unique trajectory but unfortunate with Igariwey. I can't find anything from the Awareness League after Sam Mbah's death.

I've been meaning to read more about Black Consciousness in South Africa. Libcom has a decent amount on Abahlali baseMjondo but not much on the Unemployed People's Movement. Ayanda Kota who is one of the main UPM people isn't anarchist but due to conditions they're excluded from electoral participation and seem pretty far from Leninism.

There are calls to reform party funding mixed with arguing for strikes and occupations. https://www.pambazuka.org/governance/time-radical-action-unemployment-crisis

https://bolekaja.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/open-letter-to-cosatu-eastern-cape-on-the-cosatu-civil-society-conference/#more-797

Some more via his page on Wikipedia but a lot of dead links even for stuff posted three years ago.

This mentions the UPM a bit.
https://libcom.org/library/mandisi-majavu-unemployed-peoples-movement-degeneration-black-consciousness-tradition-so

The tokologo anarchist collective (offshoot of zacf, not sure the relationship) is publishing pretty regularly https://zabalaza.net/category/tokologo-african-anarchist-collective/

Outside South Africa and some bits from Tunisia and Egypt not that much comes up, but there's a massive student and strike movement in Guinea https://libcom.org/library/strike-upheaval-myth-trickle-down-guinea-edition (this is written by a Swiss academic though)

Massive months long strikes and election boycotts in Kenya https://libcom.org/news/interview-100-days-kenya-nurses-strike-21092017

Most of this gets zero coverage outside local media (and the local coverage is like coverage of strikes here, incredibly shit) so a project to make better links with people would be really worthwhile, twitter makes it easier to find local activists these days.