Anarchism in Africa

After the 2001 Black Spring in Kabylie, anarchist organisers have been able to create a moderately sized anarchist community in the town of Barbacha.

The anarchist movement first emerged in Egypt in the late nineteenth century, but collapsed in the 1940s.[2] The movement has reemerged in the early 2010s.

The movement re-entered global view when a number of anarchist groups took part in the 2011 Egyptian revolution, namely the Egyptian Libertarian Socialist Movement and Black Flag.[3] The Egyptian anarchists have come under attack from the military regime and the Muslim Brotherhood.[4][5][6] On October 7, 2011, the Egyptian Libertarian Socialist Movement held their first conference in Cairo.[7]

The Nigerian anarchist movement emerged in the early 1990s, with the establishment of the anarcho-syndicalist Awareness League.

Anarchism dates back to the 1880s in South Africa, when the English anarchist immigrant Henry Glasse settled in Port Elizabeth in the then Cape Colony.[8] Anarchists played a role in the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), established in Cape Town in 1904 and open to socialists of all persuasions. The first specifically anarchist organisations was the revolutionary syndicalist International Socialist League (ISL), founded in Johannesburg in 1915. It went on to establish branches across much of South Africa, excluding the western Cape where the anarchists split from the SDF to form the Industrial Socialist League (IndSL).[9] By mutual agreement, the IndSL operated in the western Cape, while the ISL operated in the rest of the country. The IndSL and the ISL would go on to organise the first trade union among workers of colour in South Africa, the Industrial Workers of Africa (IWA), modelled on the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

Swept up in the atmosphere created by what at the time appeared to be a victorious worker revolution in Russia in 1917, the ISL and the IndSL dissolved into the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) at the latter's founding in 1921, providing many notable early figures until the Comintern ordered the expulsion of the syndicalist faction in the party. Unaligned syndicalists like Percy Fisher were active in the miners' 1922 Rand Rebellion, a general strike-turned-insurrection, and strongly opposed the racism of a large sector of the white strikers. The IWA meanwhile merged into the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU) in 1920, one reason the ICU exhibited syndicalist influence.[10]

The anarchist movement in South Africa only re-emerged in the early 1990s with the establishment of small anarchist collectives in Durban and Johannesburg. The Anarchist Revolutionary Movement (ARM) was founded in 1993. It was succeeded by the more tightly organised Workers' Solidarity Federation (WSF) in 1995. As opposed to the looser ARM, the WSF was in the tradition of platformism. In 1999, for a range of reasons, the WSF dissolved. It was succeeded by the Bikisha Media Collective (BMC) and Zabalaza Books. These two books co-produced Zabalaza: A Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism and were active in the Anti-Privatisation Forum.[9]

In 2003, the platformist Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation (ZACF, or ZabFed) was founded, drawing in the BMC and Zabalaza Books (whose Zabalaza journal became the journal of the ZACF) as well as a number of other collectives that had been set up in Soweto and Johannesburg, including a local chapter of the Anarchist Black Cross. In 2007, in order to strengthen its structures, ZabFed reconstituted itself as the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF, or ZabFront). The new ZACF is a unitary "federation of individuals", as opposed to a federation of collectives like ZabFed, and has recently also come under the influence of especifismo, a tendency which originated within the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU, or Uruguayan Anarchist Federation). While committed to promoting syndicalism in the unions, ZACF work was in practice largely focused on the so-called "new social movements", formed in South Africa in response to the perceived failures of the African National Congress (ANC) government post-apartheid.[11] The ZACF was involved in the campaigns of the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) and the Landless People's Movement (LPM). It has also been involved in solidarity work with Abahlali baseMjondolo and the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign.[12] In addition to such work, the ZACF is active in organising workshops and propaganda.

Anarchism in Uganda, also known as Basheya, first emerged in an organized form at the turn of the 21st century. Uganda was largely stateless until the rise of states, such as Kitara and Buganda, in the 13th century. Thereafter, stateless societies continued to exist within Uganda, particularly among the Lugbara people of the West Nile - a horticultural society made up of decentralized segments, without chiefs or monarchs.[13]

In the wake of the First Congo War, an anarchist insurgency against the government of Yoweri Museveni reportedly began in the Rwenzori Mountains of Western Uganda. The insurgency was led by the Ugandan Anarchist Democratic Forces (UADF),[upper-alpha 1] a militant group operating in leaderless cells that the Ugandan government designated as a terrorist organization. On the morning of September 2, 2000, the UADF launched an attack on the Nkooko Police Post in Kibaale, killing two police officers and capturing another. They also burnt police documents and set fire to the post, publicly addressing the people of Nkooko with chants of anti-IMF slogans.[15] In a communique, the UADF claimed to be struggling for a classless society, with the free and equal distribution of land, against the corruption and authoritarianism of Uganda's successive regimes.[14]

In 2015, it was reported that Ugandan anarchists were fielding a frog in the 2016 Ugandan general election, in protest against both the ruling National Resistance Movement and the opposition Forum for Democratic Change.[16]