African Nonviolence and the WRI

Hujambo!

I greet you with the Swahili phrase so common in East Africa, taught to me by my mentor and colleague Pan African pacifist Bill Sutherland as we travelled through Tanzania to engage President Julius Nyerere in conversations for our book Guns and Gandhi in Africa. One of the things which Nyerere and Bill helped teach me was that—like the village-based collective farming experiments known as Ujamma—it was not at all that nonviolence in Africa had failed to bring about radical change. The truth was that Ujamma, like unarmed revolution, had never really been tried.

Now, many years since that interview, a new truth is emerging from the continent so often thought of only as a war-torn place: From Egypt to South Africa, from the Western Sahara to the Congo to Kenya and beyond, nonviolence is being tried! Through innovative grassroots campaigns and inspiring initiatives large and small, civilian resistance campaigns are growing at an amazing pace.

Consider these examples:

• The roots of the so-called “Arab Spring” lay in the 20,000-strong Saharawi “tent city” set up less than two years ago;
• The Spring 2011 upheavals in Tunisia, Egypt, Djibouti, Sudan, Somalia, Cameroon, Cote D’Ivoire, the Gambia, and elsewhere have led to continuing struggles in each of those countries for greater democracy and people’s power;
• The West African Network for Peace-building continues to intensify its regional work, including the launching of a new Peace Monitoring Centre in Ghana and celebration of International Women’s Day in several locations;
• Despite widespread repression, Congolese civil organizations like “Human Rights Without Frontiers” have held nonviolence trainings centering on youth empowerment, governmental transparency, and an end to political violence;
• In Rwanda and Burundi, peace educators and nonviolent activists work for deeper reconciliation in their countries using indigenous cultural techniques—and have been working to spread their successes throughout the region;
• Just earlier this month, leading political philosopher and Ugandan commentator Mahmood Mamdani—considering the possibility of African-based movements based on Gandhi and King—noted that “we have seen that armed struggle delivers monopoly of power…and there is agreement that monopoly of power is part of the problem;”
• Despite recent tragic military manoeuvring in Mali, the rich and long history in that country—including the 1991peaceful revolution and the extraordinary late 2011 summit against land-grabbing (which I report on in the current issue of WRI’s Broken Rifle)—will hopefully lay the basis for a brighter future.

In July, War Resisters' International—in conjunction with our South African affiliate Ceasefire and other groups— will be holding a special meeting of African nonviolence trainers and practitioners, to review successful techniques and to strategize about how best to build an ongoing Pan-African network. We have also been invited by members of the African National Congress, including Ela Gandhi (grand-daughter of Mohandas and a former ANC Parliamentarian) to present at a conference on the “roots and fruits” of nonviolent practice. Together, we will be giving shape to the next major WRI conference (formerly Triennial), to take place in South Africa in 2014.

In fact, many WRI contacts and allies are centrally involved in the events cited above—as well as countless others. And WRI’s history working with African groups and leaders is deep and rich.
It was 1953 when Bill Sutherland, a WWII conscientious objector active with WRL in the USA, moved to the Gold Coast to begin work for WRI, in close association with Kwame Nkrumah, called the “Gandhi of Africa” at the time.

WRI Chair Michael Randle and WRL Executive Secretary Bayard Rustin joined Sutherland and many others to form the Sahara Protest Team, which worked from 1959-1960 against French nuclear testing in West Africa. With Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda, Tanzania’s Nyerere, A.J. Muste, Michael Scott and others they helped form the Pan African Freedom Movement.

Belgian pacifist Jean Van Lierde was a close associate of the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba of the Congo—and continued his whole life to work in solidarity with Congolese and African peoples.

In 1968, WRI published Violence in Africa, a series of reflections by Pierre Martin on the causes and possible solutions to the militarism experienced in many parts of the continent. One year later, at the WRI Triennial in Haverford, Pennsylvania, Bill Sutherland, India’s Narayan Desai, and Vietnam’s Vo Van Ai reported on and proposed ongoing work regarding “nonviolent revolution and developing countries.” Narayan continued that work in his South-South nonviolence training initiatives, continuing throughout his own term as WRI Chair, and since his very active “retirement.”

In the mid-1980s, at the height of South Africa’s State of Emergency and illegal detentions, Howard Clark and I strongly backed by the WRI network, were amongst the first non-Africans to provide direct aid to the burgeoning End Conscription Campaign movement of young whites who were combining their refusal of forced military service with their objections to the racist apartheid regime.

At WRI’s last major conference, we were able to hear first-hand reports of the work of Burindi’s Elavie Ndura, the Congo’s Justine Masika Bihamba, and Ellen Chademana of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe; Alan Ahvee informed us about the ongoing campaigns against the military base at Diego Garcia, WRI Council member Abrham Mehretab reported on conditions in Eritrea, and a multi-generational team from South Africa helped get us exited about the prospects for future collective work.

So we are ready to build upon all these initiatives. We have the contacts and the conviction. The only thing we really lack is the money.

Funds are needed to help our South African colleagues host this July’s training and the 2014 conference. Funds are needed to subsidize travel for participants throughout Africa. Funds are needed to produce, publish, and distribute the outcomes of the training to all those who could not attend. And funds are needed to staff the proceedings.
This is where WRI relies on you—our faithful and generous supporters. We believe that this project comes at an essential time for both the movements in Africa and for the global nonviolence movement. WRI is in a special place to play a special role. We thank you in advance for your generous contribution.

Asante!

Matt Meyer
WRI Africa Support Network Coordinator