Pan-Africanism for Content: On the Empty Marxism of Horn of Africa Leftists
One of the lessons that should be drawn from the 1960s is the manner in which COINTELPRO weakened the movement by exploiting divisions. One example of this is the split between Kwame Ture and the Black Panther Party. This split was rooted in real ideological divisions, but such divisions should have remained a private matter to be discussed among the parties involved. Not only were the divisions aired in public, but the situation reached a point where Huey Newton accused Kwame Ture of being an agent for the CIA. Newton himself acknowledged he had no evidence to prove the claim, but he made the claim anyway.
I am reminded of the situation between Newton and Ture because Horn of Africa Leftists is making the mistake which Newton made. They continue to accuse Farida Nabourema of being Ford funded and backed by the State Department, but never offer any evidence because one cannot provide evidence for claims which are untrue — I suspect this is why the group always makes vague references to her without mentioning her by name. Mind you, they are doing this at a time when the people of Togo are protesting against the dictatorship in Togo. Horn of Africa Leftists cannot find time to express solidarity with the Togolese people because they are too focused on denouncing one individual activist. This is the empty Marxism of Horn of Africa Leftists. Rather than an informed analysis rooted in evidence and research, they provide unproven conspiracy theories which are disconnected from the conditions of the strugging African masses.
They accuse me of making posts on Pan-Africanism for content, but that’s truly what they do. They write posts that are not backed by any sort of organizing activity or action. With them, it’s all content that is covered with empty Marxist rhetoric. Revolutionary Pan-Africanism is an empty slogan coming from a group that is not engaged in any sort of revolutionary activity on any level.
I would also add that the distinction which they draw between cultural Pan-Africanism and revolutionary Pan-Africanism is an ahistorical one. True revolutionary Pan-Africanism has always been rooted in the understanding that culture has an important role in our struggle. Assata Shakur’s critique of the Black Panther Party included the fact that members of the Black Panther were taught Mao’s Red Book, but they knew little about Nat Turner or Harriet Tubman. The issue of culture is precisely why Kwame Ture embraced Nkrumahism-Toureism rather than Marxism-Leninism as his ideology. Our revolutionary ideologies must be rooted in our history and culture.
The distinction between culture and revolution is false antithesis which is not actually rooted in the ideological development of Pan-Africanism. As a group purporting to be “scientific” Marxists, Horn of Africa Leftists should know this better than I do, but it seems they are unaware of this or they are simply confused. They quote Huey Newton to make this point, but Newton had explicitly rejected Pan-Africanism in favor of Internationalism and Intercommunalism. In other words, Huey Newton himself was not a revolutionary Pan-Africanist, so using him to promote revolutionary Pan-Africanism removed from culture is just another example of the confusion Horn of Africa Leftists creates. And none of this confusion does anything to advance the conditions of the working class in Africa.
There is no feudal Abyssinia today, so any debates or discusses on the topic are purely historical and academic in nature. What we do see today is that the masses around Africa are rising up and struggling for change. It is my hope that if Horn of Africa Leftists is truly serious about revolutionary Pan-Africanism that they join the rest of us in supporting these struggles for change instead of continuing to rehash ideological debates from the past which Horn of Africa Leftists don’t seem to understand themselves.
