Zeilig - Voices of Liberation

Acknowledgements

I read Frantz Fanons final, greatest book The Wretched of the Earth , when I was living in Dakar in Senegal. I was working at the countrys main university, named after historian Cheikh Anta Diop. The university, like the country, seemed to be in an advanced state of collapse. The students I taught studied hard, but knew they would struggle to find work after graduation. The promises of independence forty years before, which had briefly offered the continent the prospects of real freedom, development and an escape from poverty, had been cruelly lost. For much of the continent, the dreams of African unity and socialism had crashed on the rocks of national liberation.

Reading Fanon in my small study at the university, with the overhead fan slicing into the thick, humid air, was a revelation. Fanon described the failures of liberation and decolonisation; he described the degeneration of the leaders of the struggle for independence, a group he labelled a caste of profiteers, who took control of the new states. With astonishing, even prophetic foresight, he spoke of the national bourgeoisie, that avid and voracious class who would turn national liberation into a curse and a burden. In my slightly fevered reading of Fanon, I would find myself flipping to the first pages of the book to check the date of publication. How was it possible for someone to write with such sheering, disarming insight about postcolonial power and failure in 1961?

During those weeks I was witness to something else in Dakar. In 2000 the Socialist Party, which had held power since independence in 1960, was defeated in a peaceful, democratic election. Before the elections it was students, many of whom I taught, who had mobilised behind the movement for political change. This was a national mobilisation that pulled in school and university students with the poor and the working class calling for political liberation. With the election of Abdoulaye Wade there was going to be an end to corruption, poverty and underdevelopment. Wade was to prove a cruel and terrible disappointment, but the movement brought to me the realisation that, despite the defeat of the radical promises of independence the continent was still rocked by boisterous, extraordinary protest movements that contained the potential for transforming the world.

As I continued to read Fanon, moving on to his second book, written in 1959 during the Algerian Revolution, I found a writer who captured the empowerment or mutation, as Fanon would write of ordinary people involved in political struggle. Using irresistible language, Fanon spoke about how an oppressed people were recerebralised in the process of changing their conditions. The anvil of revolution could restructure consciousness, reversing an oppressed peoples long-held sense of inferiority and self-doubt. Here was Fanon as a champion of revolutionary change.

I decided to investigate the circumstances of his life and write about this incredible man. In the course of my research I discovered that, although Fanon wrote for the oppressed and poor of the Third World, he understood that real liberation could only be secured if it were accompanied by political and economic transformation across the world, north and south. Fanon was an internationalist. Independence, for him, was the indispensable first stage of a global struggle for human emancipation, for a new humanism. In 1961 he cautioned his readers, those who had fought for and won this liberation, telling them that they must wage a ceaseless struggle against the national bourgeoisie, before this class could lay their hands on the spoils of the new nation.

My investigations led me to meet an extraordinary array of generous people who devoted much time to this project. Some, like Pierre and Claudine Chaulet, were Fanons close friends, his struggle brothers and sisters. Others have written brilliantly about his life and legacy. I met Fanons leading biographer, David Macey, in Leeds, a year before he died. We spent the day talking about Fanon. An edited extract of the interview is included in this volume. David and I exchanged cigarettes and talked about Negritude, Algeria, postcolonialism. It was a heady, moving delight to be in Davids company, a man of such gentle erudition, insights and kindness. This book is dedicated to Pierre and David, both of whom died before I could finish the work.

Many other friends, comrades and colleagues have helped develop my understanding of Fanon. Ian Birchall, historian and socialist, has been a companion since the start of the research in my attempt to understand Algeria, Fanon and the French left. For me he has long been a model of an engaged, determined and brilliant researcher, writer and activist. Fanons daughter, Mireille Fanon-Mends-France was patient and generous with her time, agreeing to meet me in France and to write the Foreword for this collection. Her work on her fathers legacy is deeply embedded in an understanding of the continued relevance of his work. Others need to be mentioned: Andy Wynne, Kim Wale, Gillian Zeilig, Maurice Caplan, Martin Evans, Hamza Hamouchene, Philip Murphy, Lila Chouli. While I was working in Algiers I was inspired by conversations and interviews with veterans of the Algerian war against the French, particularly Miraoui Smain and Moutif Mohamed.

Finally, this collection was possible because of the incredibly professional team at HSRC Press. Jeremy Wightman and Fiona Wakelin were both passionate about Fanon. They commissioned the volume and made invaluable comments and suggestions. Jeremy has been an immensely supportive and engaged publisher who saw the relevance and necessity of this addition to the Voices of Liberation series and to debates taking place in South Africa. Charlotte Imani and Kholeka Mabeta have also been extremely helpful. Samantha Phillips has been a pleasure to work with, calming my occasional fits of enthusiasm with pointed, practical questions and deadlines.

It is my fervent hope that this volume will help a new generation of readers, as well as those already familiar with his work, to engage with Fanons writing and life in a spirit of political engagement and criticism. Fanon would have wanted nothing else.

Acronyms

ALN Arme de Libration Nationale (National Liberation Army)

AML Amis du Manifeste et de la Libert (Friends of the Manifesto and Liberty)

BSO Baloch Student Federation

CNRA National Committee of the Algerian Revolution

FLN Front de Libration National (National Liberation Front)

GPRA Gouvernement Provisionel de la Rpublique Algrienne (Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic)

IMF International Monetary Fund

MNA Mouvement National Algerien (Algerian National Movement)

MNC Mouvement National Congolais (Congolese National Movement)

MRP Mouvement Rpublicain Populaire (Popular Republican Movement)

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

PCF Parti Communiste Franais (French Communist Party)

POUM Partido Obrero e Unificacion Marxista (Workers Party of Marxist Unity)

PPA Parti Populaire Algeriene (Algerian Peoples Party)

SFIO Section Francaise de LInternationale Ouvrire (the French Socialist Party)

WTO World Trade Organisation

THE LIFE OF FRANTZ FANON