Binghamton University The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB) Graduate Dissertations and Theses Dissertations, Theses and Capstones 6-2018 UNCOVERING HIDDEN FRONTS OF AFRICA’S LIBERATION STRUGGLE: BLACK POWER, BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS, AND SOUTH AFRICA’S ARMED STRUGGLE, 1967-1985 Toivo Tukongeni Paul Wilson Asheeke Binghamton University--SUNY, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://orb.binghamton.edu/dissertation_and_theses Part of the Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Asheeke, Toivo Tukongeni Paul Wilson, "UNCOVERING HIDDEN FRONTS OF AFRICA’S LIBERATION STRUGGLE: BLACK POWER, BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS, AND SOUTH AFRICA’S ARMED STRUGGLE, 1967-1985" (2018). Graduate Dissertations and Theses. 78. https://orb.binghamton.edu/dissertation_and_theses/78 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations, Theses and Capstones at The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB). 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UNCOVERING HIDDEN FRONTS OF AFRICA’S LIBERATION STRUGGLE: BLACK POWER, BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS, AND SOUTH AFRICA’S ARMED STRUGGLE, 1967-1985 BY TOIVO TUKONGENI PAUL WILSON ASHEEKE BA, Earlham College, 2010 MA, Binghamton University, 2014 DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in the Graduate School of Binghamton University State University of New York 2018 © Copyright by Toivo Tukongeni Paul Wilson Asheeke All Rights Reserved Accepted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in the Graduate School of Binghamton University State University of New York 2018 June 15th, 2018 William Martin, Chair Department of Sociology, Binghamton University Michael West, Faculty Advisor Department of Sociology, Binghamton University Thula Simpson, Member Department of Historical and Heritage Studies, University of Pretoria Arianna Lissoni, Member History Workshop, University of the Witwatersrand Leo Wilton, Outside Examiner Department of Human Development, Binghamton University iii Abstract Many scholars have argued the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM)’s principal contribution was as an intellectual/student movement, and its main shortcoming the limited degree of active political and military opposition it was able to offer the apartheid regime. My dissertation, ‘Uncovering Hidden Fronts of Africa’s Liberation Struggle: Black Power, Black Consciousness, and South Africa’s Armed Struggle, 1967-1985’, broadens our understanding of this movement and moment in South African history by unearthing the little known history of BCM’s unrelenting engagement with armed struggle as a form of resistance to apartheid rule during the 1970s and 1980s. The first part of my dissertation charts the evolution of Black Consciousness (BC) inspired organisations such as the Azanian People’s Liberation Front (APLF), the Isandlwana Revolutionary Effort (IRE), and the South African Youth Revolutionary Council (SAYRCO) from 1974-1982 as they organised for armed confrontation with the apartheid state. It then moves to a discussion of the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania (BCMA) and its armed wing the Azanian National Liberation Army (AZANLA) that emerged in the 1980s as the BC alternative to the non-racialist nominally socialist African National Congress of South Africa (ANC-SA) after previous movements failed to consolidate themselves. Their failures are less important than examinations of why they failed, which reveals their struggles were mostly caused by BCM being outmanoeuvred and betrayed by the ANC-SA and the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) in exile. The second part of my dissertation excavates how many new recruits of the Soweto generation attempted to radicalize Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK) from within. While this is acknowledged by most MK scholars, they do not link this drive for radicalization with the iv politics of BC that a number of these recruits carried with them into the movement. From this perspective, the mutinies and internal suppressions that wracked MK during the 1980s need to be viewed as an internal ideological struggle for what the future of South Africa would look like. Although my work offers a careful historical reconstruction of previously under- explored events, my thesis suggests BCM’s vision of a future South Africa/Azania, where land and resources would be redistributed to the masses, was outmanoeuvred and defeated by bourgeois liberal-democratic and South African Communist Party (SACP) forces of the ANC-SA. Returning to this history helps frame contemporary struggles South Africa finds itself in as current movements strive to find answers to continued racism and economic inequality. While BC did not have all the answers, it offered a different vision of freedom that Black activists today have rediscovered. v This dissertation is dedicated first and foremost to the working people who fought and continue to fight for the liberation of the Pan-African world from racial capitalism and all its institutions. It is also dedicated to my parents and grandparents/aunts who were unable to receive a PhD given the racist and sexist nature of the societies in which they lived. Lastly, this work is dedicated to, and has been animated by, the lives of Tynesha “Jenny Keys” Davis and Ty Tumminia who were called to glory on July 29th, 2017 and November 5th, 2017 respectively. vi Acknowledgements and Inspirations My parents are unquestionably the major inspiration behind this work. My mother, an Afro-American from Washington, DC, worked on Capitol Hill for a number of years fighting the Regan regime’s support for apartheid South Africa. As a child of the Black Power era she raised me to respect the revolutionary praxis of Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, and most importantly Malcom X. Armed self-defence was embraced in the Asheeke household and is a lesson I have carried with me ever since. My mother also taught me the importance of fighting for social justice, enslaved Africans were not given emancipation, it was taken by force of arms from those who sought to deny it from us. My father was and is another central influence on my life. He was a South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) activist during the 1970s in Namibia and at Fort Hare in South Africa. In the early 1980s after escaping Namibia and undergoing guerrilla training in Zambia, he was assigned by SWAPO to work in the United Nations and the wider United States to mobilise support for the liberation movement. Through his organising with radical Afro-Americans like Prexy Nesbitt and Elombe Brath, to name but a few, he met my mother, a union not uncommon across the Black Atlantic. Although dad was always reticent with sharing information about his experiences as a SWAPO guerrilla, my two younger sisters and I always listened attentively when he spoke about the importance of the struggle of SWAPO against apartheid. His experiences of racism in Namibia and South Africa, like those of my mother’s, were constant lessons in the Asheeke household. While at Binghamton University, in addition to being exposed to amazing faculty and brilliant graduate and undergraduate students, I came across an event I knew little about vii while growing up, the Haitian Revolution. I had always heard about Haiti, whispers of some revolt that had taken place there, but mostly that it was poor and corrupt, a similar narrative given by western media about Africa. Although Professor Michael West had suggested I read CLR James’s masterpiece Black Jacobins over the summer of 2012, which I did, it was not until auditing a class with Professor Horace Campbell at Syracuse University during the Fall 2012 semester that I grew to truly appreciate Haiti’s importance. Campbell and then again West and William Martin’s respect for the Haitian Revolution energised me. I threw myself into Black Jacobins and Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past with reckless abandon, reading them perhaps four times each that semester. Learning its many facets and internal struggles gave me a rubric for revolution independent of the French, Russian, Chinese, or Cuban revolutions. It enabled me to look at the numerous problems confronting the African people today through the lens of our anti- colonial struggles with Haiti as a locus point. As I left the studies of the Haitian Revolution and searched for a topic for my dissertation, I fell back on my own independent political groundings with Black Consciousness. As I wandered in the South African history section of Bartle Library I stumbled across Mosibudi Mangena’s autobiography entitled On Your Own. I thought I knew all there was to know about Black Consciousness but reading Mangena’s autobiography showed me how wrong I was. It was through reading his work on BCM and its numerous conversations internally about armed struggle that I decided to embark upon the research found in these pages. The growing #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements in South Africa around this time served as a final inspiration to embark upon the study of this dissertation. It also helped me think through ways to connect my study of viii the Black Power Movement with the African Liberation Struggles as I had just submitted a critical book review to The Black Scholar on Peniel Joseph’s biography of Stokely Carmichael. I was also, and still am, deeply influenced by Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition and Walter Rodney’s numerous works, chiefly, The Groundings with my Brothers and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Most importantly, much of my time at Binghamton University has been taken up in struggles for social justice against Babylonian forces in the area, as well as those nationally and internationally. The Confronting Racism Coordinating Committee (CRCC), Students for Change (SfC), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and the Frances Beal Society (FBS) were central to the development of my Black radical praxis, perhaps more so than my more formal academic instruction.