Changes in Africa

During the 1970s a small socialist group in Jamaica produced a journal called the Socialist Review, this article seems worthy of re-publishing on the web.

Capitalism have its own way of dealing with the various reformist movement its conflicting nature make inevitable. It make them obsolete in the most shameful fashion. The Black Power movement have taken quite a battering with recent development in Africa. The most damaging being the visit of Doctor Banda of Malawi to South Africa. Doctor Banda is not the only one showing this new interest in South Africa. Most of the other African countries are expressing their willingness to deal with "white" Africa. President Bokassa of the Central African Republic, have said he is willing to go to South Africa and meet Prime Minister Voster. President Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast have called on other African leaders to join in a new diplomatic approach to South Africa.

Why this change you might ask, is not South Africa still practising Apartheid? The answer to that is what socialists have been saying all along, there are neither stable alliances nor lasting enmities among capitalist nations. Observe the getting together of China and America, and the way of world capitalism is partly revealed.

South Africa is the most developed country in Africa. The other countries are all moving along the same line of capitalist development. They could not ignore for long her purchasing power, and her money for investment. South Africa have agreed to buy the whole of Malawi's rice, and other farm product. She have also invested over J$28 million in the important railway linking Mozambique with the new Capital at Lilongwe. This is what modern capitalism is, it goes on despite the speeches of politicals, or the protest of the mob.

Humans can only be united by their belief in a set of principles. The colour of a man's skin can never be the basis of unity. The Black Power movement although it take different form in each country is set on the premise of the unity of the Black man against White. Black Power followers often express the false assumption, that all White people are united against Black. The truth is that any Black and White capitalist, have more in common between them than all the White workers with the White capitalist, or the Black workers with the Black capitalist. Race have now become a very damaging factor towards workingclass unity. IT IS THE SOCIAL SYSTEM THAT WE LIVE UNDER AND NOT OUR RACE THAT MAKE POSSIBLE THE PROBLEMS WE FACE. Racism only serve to obscure the real enemy, World Capitalism, and in fact help to keep it going that much longer. A man's economic interest determine his action. The capitalist as an individual is not our target, it is the system that we hate and want to change.

The countries in Africa are no different from any other developing capitalist society, anywhere else. They are caught in the web of capitalism, and there is no escape. The civil war in Nigeria illustrate well the meaning of brotherhood in our capitalist world. The choice facing us today, is not Black, against White. but weather we want to continue with this strife ridden system capitalism, or replace it with a system of Common ownership Socialism.
CREMO.
1972