 Welcome, good evening. Welcome everyone to the lunch of the second edition of Claim No Easy Victories, the Legacy of Amnicar Cabral. It is an honor and a pleasure to welcome you all at SOAS this evening. My name is Oro, and I'm a PhD student here within the Department of Politics, but also under the Pan-African Frontiers Project, which hosts the Center for Pan-African Studies. Before I go on to introduce our amazing speakers, I'd like to say a few words about the book, but also about Cabral being a student of Cabral myself. I'd also like to say a few words about the Center for Pan-African Studies. So the Center is a platform for promoting interdisciplinary research, policy dialogues and public engagement on issues related to the African continent and its diaspora. For this reason, it is our honor to be able to contribute to ongoing celebrations worldwide. For the centenary year of Amnicar Cabral and to create spaces for reflection on his enduring legacy. The reintroduction of the book provides a unique opportunity for the introduction or reintroduction of the life and work of Amnicar Cabral, particularly here in the UK, where his work and that of his contemporaries from across Luciferna Africa remains obscured. It is our hope that by shedding light on Amnicar Cabral, we can bridge historical narratives of the Luciferna African region within broader contexts of Pan-African history and politics. For one of Amnicar Cabral's often forgotten legacy is that his work, his thought, his practice were fundamentally built through a collective process. One which started in his early years as a student in Portugal with the likes of Agostino Neto, Mario D'Andrade, Marcelino dos Santos and Alda do Espirito Santo to only name a few who would also go on to lead the independence movement in the respective Angola Mozambique and São Tomé Principia. The second edition of claim no easy victories brings together an impressive selection of 41 essays from radical thinkers, from community organizers, historians and practitioners, many who have been honored to have met Amnicar Cabral in their lifetime. In this unique collections of essays and personal reflections, it is not hard to understand why Amnicar Cabral is considered as one of the greatest leaders of all time. To see his legacy as extending beyond the shores of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, shifting and reframing the meaning of liberation and unity as far as in Harlem or in Brazil, influencing the likes of Angela Davis who is a contributor to this book, but also the likes of Paulo Furry and his work on the pedagogy of the oppressed. Cabral was a man ahead of his time, his contemporaries tell us on agronomist he was ahead of his time when he cautioned against the dangers of monoculture and colonial extractivism in his native Guinea-Bissau before the threats of climate change were right by our doors. He was ahead of his time when he envisioned a world where women's role would go way ahead and beyond the spheres of caretaking and domestic life. While he did not leave to see an independent Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde or even Angola or Mozambique, the Abbas sacrifice reminds us that so as long as the work of decolonization remains unfinished, so will his legacy. It is now my pleasure to introduce you to our speakers. We're very honored to be joined by co-editor Dr. Feroz Manji for tonight's discussion. So I'd like to first introduce him. Dr. Feroz Manji is a Kenyan with more than 40 years of experience in international development, health, human rights, and he's the publisher of the Rajapress. He's currently an Ajang professor at the Institute of African Studies at Calton University. He's also the founder and former editor-in-chief of Pambazooka News and Pambazooka Press. He has published widely on health, human rights, development, and politics. He is co-editor with Sokari Ikine of African Awakenings, the Emerging Revolution, and he is a member of the editorial review board of Global Critical Caribbean Thought and of NoCocoa Journal of the Institute of African Studies at Calton University. Welcome, Professor. We're equally honored to be joined by Professor Mireille Fanon-Mendez-France, a scholar of decoloniality, UN expert and former chair of the UN Working Group on People of African Dissent, Jurist, and Human Rights Activists. She has been involved with the solidarity and struggle of the people of Palestine, political prisoners, and issues of reparation to only name a few. She has taught at Paris Descartes University and was a visiting professor at the University of California Berkeley in international law and conflict resolution. In 2009, she received the Human Rights Prize from the Council for Justice, Equality, and Peace. She is also the eldest daughter of France Fanon and the founder of the France Fanon Foundation, which she chairs. Welcome. Last but not least, we are joined by the amazing Dr. Alida Borges, who is a visiting lecturer at the African Leadership Center at King's College University, where she leads the grassroots women leaders research stream at the Global Institute for Women's Leadership and teaches on decoloniality in the global South. Dr. Borges is also the chair of the African Politics Specialist Group at the Political Studies Association, also known as PSA UK. As a scholar of decoloniality, her research offers critical perspective at the intersection of politics, gender, and decoloniality to examine the multifaceted dimensions of inequality within political, social, and organizational context in Africa and parts of the global South. She has previously researched everyday practices of youth political participation in Luciferne Africa and also consults as a country expert for Cape Bird. Welcome. We will kick off the evening with a presentation by Dr. Manji, followed by some words by Professor Fanon Menace-France. We'll then jump in into a conversation moderated by Professor Borges and we'll then open the floor for questions from the audience. So without further ado, the floor is yours, Dr. Manji. Thank you. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for coming tonight. It's a real pleasure to be here. I should say something about the origins of this book. Here you see the front cover of the first edition. You know, it was a strange thing. I thought it would be nice to bring together a few essays, five or six, maybe 10 essays, just celebrating Cabral's contribution to the ideas of emancipation and liberation. So I sent out 12 emails and got back something like 60 propositions, which were published, and it was very difficult to say no, and indeed to manage such a large number of contributions. Its origins lie in a very strange thing. I really became politicized when I was at university at Newcastle in the north of England. And when Soon After Cabral was assassinated, we organized an event at what was then called the Polytechnic. We took over the old Polytechnic, and over the weekend we organized film shows, people talking, discussions, all kinds of music and so on, all about the struggle in the Portuguese colonies. But the entrance fee to this event was a pint of blood. Okay, we said to people, listen, we've had a request from Frelimo in Mozambique who need contributions of blood. So we organized, we collected more than 120 pints of blood, and we arranged to have this shipped over to East Germany. It was freeze-dried and then sent to the front lines and of Frelimo. Can you imagine, we all thought we'd come lads for the revolution. And in a sense, that was really, for me, Cabral was the sort of beginning of my political, really true political awareness. We had a lot of contributions. And in second edition, we've included essays of those comrades who sadly passed away in that time. Samir Amin, Perry Mars, Carlos Schwartz de Silva, Helme Charawe, and Jean-Pierre Benoit-Douff. As a Kenyan, I mean also have to acknowledge that same year, last year, when we were preparing this book, we lost Mukami Kimati, Amater Aidu, Mishire Gathai, Mugo, Muthoni, Wakirema, and this book is dedicated to their memory. We were fortunate, it's such a large book, we couldn't find having additional papers to include. We had one from somebody called Firoz Manji, but we can ignore that one. From Matt Maier, from Denver, was our D'Ambella revision of his original piece, and from Sonia Vaz Borges, and afterward by Quessitafari Fabio Gomez, and an extended bibliography. Let me try and summarize what I want to get across this evening. I wanna talk about the book, but I wanna talk about Cabral, and I think some of the most important ideas that he came up with. And I think I want to militate against the idea that Cabral's writings, his thoughts, his thinking was only relevant to Africa. It is as relevant, I would argue, to the global north as to every other part of the global south. We're holding this meeting in an occasion where there is an ongoing genocide in Palestine. And much of what I have to say is of relevance to that struggle as well. I wanna discuss what does it mean to be African? This is a period where we are very obsessed with the whole issue of identity. And it's African became a synonym for the non-human or the lesser human, which was the justification for enslavement, slavery, colonialism, exploitation. And I will discuss how the word African will evolve from being a derogatory term to becoming one linked to the idea of human emancipation. And this was, this happened in the period of the appropriation of this word in the struggle for independence across Africa. Unfortunately, that idea of linking what African means to the idea of human emancipation got lost somewhere after independence. And the term became disarticulated from any idea of liberation. And consequently, being African became just a taxonomic term indistinguishable from the individualistic identity politics that we see so prevalent today. I'll argue that it is not possible to understand or even recognize African people's humanity without talking and taking into account their long history of struggle for emancipation. This is only possible, I suggest, if the politics of African histories are understood and transcended to reveal their fundamental contributions to the universal human condition, experiences that, as Cabral put it, belong to the whole world. I'm going to talk a little bit about a speech that Cabral made to the party, the PIGC. And he talks about, you know, we talk a lot about Africa, but when our partners remember that before we were Africans, we were human beings. Such an important statement who belonged to the whole world. And therefore, he says, we cannot therefore take any, allow any interest of our people to be restricted or thwarted because of our condition as Africans. And then we must put the interests of our people higher in the context of the interests of humankind in general. And then we can put them in the context of the interests of Africa in general. There are three elements there which I want to structure this presentation about. First of all, this idea that before we were Africans, we were humans. The term Africa, people, there's a lot of hypothesis about the origins of this particular term. There's Afri, which in Latin refers to people in the region south of the Mediterranean, which is really around Carthage, Tunisia area. The Phoenician origin, it's speculated from the word Afar, meaning dust. Ifriqia, the Arabic name for the region that's roughly Tunisia today. And there are a whole number of different hypotheses about that. But the reality, and I think something that is rarely accepted, is that the term Africa was an invention of Europe. It originated in the 15th century and was associated also with the destruction of the Andalusian Empire in 1492. An empire that had lasted for 700 years in Southern Europe, most of the Iberian Peninsula. And it was an area where Europe at that time called it a place of savages, disease, constant war. They invented the term Africa to refer to the entire land mass or where they were intent on depriving it of its human content. And in doing so, we must remember that in the 15th century, Europe did not exist as a concept also, okay? So by inventing Africa as the place of the non-human, they invented what Europe would become, that which makes others lack their humanity. And as Fanon put it, just as those who, just as the whites invented the Negro, so in this process, they invented the whites. And it's really important to recognize the link with the French Revolution as well. You know, in the Thermidor, after the French, at the end of the French Revolution, anyone who resisted the turn to, intended to re-establish slavery and the regime of white supremacy in the colonies was branded what? An African, you're an African, huh? And I think it's really important because that has been a continuity for ourselves. So the African non-human justified the capture and enslavement of humans, the destruction of major societies, major empires across the continent, the transportation across the Atlantic, the mass killing genocide. Howard French in his recent books points out that 20 million people were killed in Africa in the process of enslavement, not just talking about those who were then transported across and may have survived the transatlantic train. And they became hereditary chattel slaves in America. So this was, you know, the justification, the non-human, the less than human, allowed the colonization, dispossession of land and subsequently the neocolonization and the neoliberal dispositions that are going on today. So an important issue. What we are seeing today in Gaza may be extreme in terms of the ferocity over a very short time, but it is not anything new. It is not new. It is a fundamental expression of liberalism, which was born of the loins of enlightenment and as such has never ever been able to distinguish itself, liberalism from racism. It is a fundamental feature of liberalism that it divides the world into two, into the sacred space, which is those where the white supremacists can rule. Remember when democracy was born in the USA, only white male slave owners were allowed to vote. Every concession since then has been the result of struggle. It has not been a function of the niceness of democracy. And the genocidal nature of liberalism. You look at last 500 years across the world, you will see genocide has been a signature of liberalism. So what we are seeing today is an expression in Palestine of that liberal ideology. It is really important to see that this is not exceptional to the liberal ideology or its neoliberal version that we see today. I think that's one of the points that Cabral makes, that when imperialism arrived in Guinea, it made us leave our history. And that is the really crucial thing. We were told we had no history. Hegel was quite clear in saying, Africa has no history. And the use of violence became a fundamental feature of colonialism to dominate a people. And that's Cabral puts it above all to take arms, destroy and at least neutralize and paralyze their cultural life. For as long as people that have a cultural life, foreign domination cannot be assured, which is why we have seen the destruction of universities, of hospitals, of cultural centers, of all kinds of cultural aspects in Palestine as we saw across Africa in the colonial period. So he argues that culture is not a mere artifact or expression of aesthetics, custom or tradition. It's a means by which people assert their opposition to domination. I think this is a really crucial aspect of understanding what Cabral talks about in terms of culture. It's a means to proclaim and invent their humanity. A means to assert their agency and the capacity to make history in a word culture is one of the fundamental tools of the struggle for human emancipation. And it talks about a reconversion of minds being necessary, that it is indispensable to the true integration of people in the liberation movement. And a really important point he makes here is that it is in the struggle itself, in engagement in struggle, that actually the reconversion of mind takes place. Especially in academia, there's this belief that you have to think first before you act, where in reality all of us know who've been engaged in struggles, that it is through engaging in struggles that we learn how to think. And that's a really crucial thing. And I think that's one of the things that Cabral had a real profound understanding of. Just wanted to just very briefly touch on the Haitian Revolution because this issue of seeing and understanding what happened in Haiti was not merely a successful slave revolution, but was one of the first major revolutions of African people. I never say very specifically African people. The survival rate on the Haiti sugar plantations, the survival rate was five years. That's how long slaves could live because of the horrendous conditions. And they had to be constantly replaced. And it was an African revolution in that sense. But above all, it was the first revolution that proclaimed a humanity, that it was not about the color of the skin, it's not about what it means to be Haitian. Toussaint Louverture was very clear. Even those Spanish or other people who fought in the revolution were declared humans and therefore Haitians. And I think this is the thing about national liberation and culture. And it's just some lovely stuff that Cabral talks about. And it really reveals his background as a negronomist. And he talks about it as a phenomenon of socioeconomic, where the socioeconomic hold rejects the denial of that historical process. And that liberation is about regaining the historical personality. And that's an old expression I have, that history is more about the future than it is about the past. It is what helps us define what we could become, what it means to be human. And he argued it has a material base. It isn't just about songs and dances. And he talks about the product which is just as a flower is the product of a plant. And like history or because it is history, culture has its material base in the level of productive forces. Culture plunges its roots into the physical reality of the environmental humus in which it develops and reflects the organic nature of society. I think it's that so beautifully put. And so, you know, what we saw was the rise of the, in the post-Second World War period in particular, we saw the rise of all these independence movement, mass mobilization from Cape to Cairo, from Dhaka to Djibouti, all across the continent without exception, mass mobilizations. And it was a movement that sought to say we want to be free. We are human too. We want to invent what it means to be human. And so the term Africa was appropriated to become something that was associated with being free. And it was therefore a political definition of the term, not a racial or ethnic one. And I think the important point Cabral makes is to make a distinction between people and the population. It was very clear in Guinea-Bissau that he said, the people are those who are involved in the struggle for liberation. The population is more general. And I think it's a really important distinction to make. And he insisted that, you know, this is the definition of people depending on the historical moment that the land is experiencing. And I think there are some resonances here in relation to Palestine and how the struggle there defines what it means to be human. And I think one of the striking things that people think often ignore is the nature of the Palestinian resistance has constantly been that of claiming a humanity, a universal humanity. It isn't saying we are just Palestinians. It is intimate to, in a sense, our own freedoms in understanding that the struggle there does something for our freedoms as well. So, you know, national culture is no folklore. This is resonance with Fanon, which Mireille will talk about shortly. And it's a collective thought process of a people to describe, justify, and extoll the actions whereby they have joined forces and remain strong. What a beautiful definition of culture. And to fight for national, first of all, means fighting for the liberation of the nation, the tangible matrix from which culture can grow. One cannot divorce the comeback for culture from a people struggle for liberation. So here we have Cabral and Fanon speaking almost in exactly the same terms. Let me move on to the second part of his statement. We cannot therefore allow any interest of our people to be restricted or thwarted because of our condition as Africans. We saw the rise of the neo-colonial regimes which was a movement for emancipation of freedom. But it became, after independence, developmentalism. It became no longer a struggle to invent what it means to be human. It was about development. So the oxfam, boxfam, socksfams of the world could come with a little bag of tricks and provide water and provide this and provide that. And the neo-colonial governments said, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're not yet ready, mimicking exactly what the colonial regime said. And that Uhuru freedom, all of this, it's got nothing to do with it. It's about development. And the occupiers of the state fear these strength, centrifugal force, which has emerged out of those struggles. And so you saw the rise of the single party state, the elimination of the opposition, the killing of people and civil and political rights just become seen as a luxury. There's a really great report by Sarendra Patel, part of a UN-wide report, about the extraordinary achievements that were made in the short period from independence to the rise of neoliberalism. And I would strongly recommend you have a look at it, that in this very short period, there was in a population 10 times larger than that of the development, huge transformations in health parameters and education and so on. So the real things that were possible in that period. But the real problem, I think, was the emergence of the neocolonial state. And by that I mean that what Cabral made quite clear, he did not think that the independence movements would take over the colonial state apparatus and use it for its own purpose. You can't expect a tank to be turned into a hospital. You have to change the whole thing. And he argued that it was not the color of the administrator, that was the issue. But the fact that there is an administrator and that he was absolutely convinced that you cannot do this. You have to burn down. You have to destroy completely the colonial state and reconstruct something that is owned by and populated by ordinary people who have their own aspirations, their own way of looking at things. And that you have to destroy it. And unfortunately, every attempt to try to do that, including his own attempt to do that, led to violence against political leaders and their removal. And all these governments, and particularly in Africa, were asked to become part of the colonial state, which was a continuity. And so you get this strange thing that neoliberalism always produces. It's a bifurcated society, a society in one that the sacred space, the elite, which accumulates at huge space, and you have the rest. One has the right to rights. Those who live in the ghettos have no right to rights as Hannah Arendt put it. You know, if the police want to enter a house in the bourgeois sectors of Nairobi, they have to get a court order. When they go down to Karyobangi or to the ghettos of Nairobi or wherever, all they do is kick the fucking door down. They beat up people. They brutalize them. They murder them, and they're with complete impunity. And there are two rules. So you see in Palestine, the Israelis have one rule for the sacred space and it's genocide and murder for the other. That is what liberalism has been about. And that's what unfortunately was reproduced in the period after independence. And I think there was a very fundamental issue here and that it was an ideological decision not to destroy the colonial state. It became something that was really important for accumulation. It was the honeypot. And its ideological deficiency was one major weakness. And as he put it, that's true, the revolution can fail even though it has nurtured a perfectly conceived theories but nobody has yet successfully practiced a revolution without a revolutionary theory. And I think this is one of the important things about Cabral was his attempt to try and develop not out of books but out of daily practice organically what it means to create the conditions for a new world, for building a new world, not using the structures that the state had created. It's really important to emphasize that prior to his assassination, two thirds of Guinea-Bissau were liberated areas. They had abandoned, and unfortunately the literature talks about they had abandoned Portuguese currency. No, there was no other currency. They abandoned money. And as many have written about, and John Holloway recently, an excellent book talked about, that money is the heart of it. If you abandon money, you change everything. And the banding of money meant there were new social relations, there were new ways of exercising power. There were the ability of women to take control of and create new organs of control of the liberated areas. So there was a major transformation of the liberated areas. And so once the term African no longer became associated with the idea of emancipatory struggles, it became merely taxonomy. Culture was no longer considered the major of liberation. It said it was disarticulated from any political notions and the culture became something you show to white tourists who dance in all sorts of ways just to reinforce the concept that the white have of the African. And just continues the idea of the African as the savage. And again, here again, we come back to Fanon. Culture never has the translucency of custom. Culture eminently eludes any form of simplification. It is in essence, very opposite of custom, which is always a deterioration of culture. Seeking to stick to tradition or even reviving the eclectic traditions is not only going against history, but against one's people. I think really something we ought to really reflect a great deal more about. So what we see is the rise of the new fundamental connection between liberalism and racism become part of the discourse. So in many of our countries, it's no longer, there isn't such thing as African. They are Lua, they're Kikuyu, they're whatever, Kalenjin. There's all this breakdown of identity which has nothing to do with the idea of liberation, of freedom. And it is an essentialization of identity. Finally, he says, we must put the interests of our people higher in the context of the interest of humankind in general, and then we can put them in the context of interests of Africa in general. And I think this is where he talks about the necessity for the struggles to reinvent ourselves as human, just not merely asserting ourselves as being human, but actually saying, our oppression, our experience, the destruction that they've caused on us gives us an understanding of what actually it means to be human and that it is possible to invent what it means to be human, because certainly the imperial world is unable to define what it means to be human, because in the process of making most of the world less than human, they have dehumanized themselves. So the task that we face as Africans is not only our own liberation, but the liberation of humanity. And I think this is a really crucial point. It is not merely us. It is humanity that is at stake in our liberation. And it's exactly the message that I hear day after day from Palestine, and that their struggle is our struggle. It cannot be their loss is our loss. Their gains will be a way in which we will free ourselves. And I think this is something I'd really like to emphasize here. And it's not about harking back to the past, but using history as a basis for understanding possibilities. And the courage to invent what it means to be human and to define that in a clear way. So so long as the experiences arising from emancipatory struggles are perceived as merely African or merely Palestinian, it's not possible to understand their contribution to universal humanity. That is only possible if the politics of that experience are transcended and considered as part of the human condition that as Cabral puts it, belong to the whole world. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Okay, great. Thank you, heroes. To your present for your presentation. I have just a short information to give you before to present. In fact, for those who will buy the book, you will find my name and my bio. But I don't know how it's possible, but I did not write anything in this book. It's a mystery. And even for heroes, it is until now, it is a mystery. Because it is, there is a first edition, my name in it. And the second edition, my name is still there. Yes, this is one hero. No, no, no, it is what you think is not me. It's just a joke. And the second thing I have to confess, I'm not specialist in Cabral history. I read it as a lot of people, but I'm not specialist. I know better France Fanon. Not because I am the daughter of, because I work for the France Fanon Foundation. And it is totally separate. But preparing this paper I found because I bought a book on Cabral. And I discovered there is some similarity. First of all, they are on the same generation. Cabral is 1924 and my father is 1925, for example. And also there is more than that. And already heroes demonstrate some of them. And then as English is not my favorite language, I will say by elegance, it's just because it is a colonizer. I prefer to read my presentation. And I apologize because it is less sympathetic for the audience. But anyway. And I will begin by two quotes, France Fanon Foundation from Warchief of the Earth. Finally, a third stage, a combat stage, where the colonized writer, after having tried to lose himself among the people, with the people, will lose the people. Instead of letting the people's lethargy prevail, it turns into a galvanizer of the people. And I found this quote very relevant for Fanon and Cabral. What does it mean to be galvanizer of the people? And I think in the context where we are now, we need to get some galvanization of the people. And not to be abruti. How did you say abruti? Abruti, abruti. Okay, you can find. Or to get a sleep with what we are watching every day. We need a galvanizer and galvanization. Second quote, the collective struggle. Presuppose a collective responsibility from the rank and file and a collegial responsibility at the top. Yes, everyone must be involved in the struggle for the sake of the common salvation. There are no clean hands, no innocent bystanders. We are all in the process of dirtying our hands in the quiet matter of our soul and the terrifying void of our minds. Any bystander is a cohort or a traitor. Second quote. And you understand what could be the next. The next quote. The reader of the wretched of the earth are familiar with the often seated sentence each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it in relative opacity. End quote. It has been more than 60 years after the publication of the wretched and 63 years after Phanon's passing, yet this sentence reads as relevant today as it reads then. It might indeed be a timeless sentence, but one of those gifts with perennial value from that intense era of decolonization movement towards the middle of the last century. And when I said, I tried to explain why, it's because what's happened, I could say more than you, what's happened in Palestine and what is coming very soon in 80. It's only the chaos, but this is coming genocide in 80. And Palestine and 80 are our future. And if we don't understand that, we are lost, totally lost. That's the traditional empire based juridical political colonialism of several centuries was largely but not totally conquished last century. It does not mean that colonial relations and then. By the time that European empire fell, nation state had already assumed the duty of preserving institution, values and form of social organization that reproduced and extended the racial logic that characterize the age of modern Western colonialism and that continue to characterize the discourse of modern Western civilization. And I could say the capitalism is founded because the instrumentation of race, the creation of race, our need to justify the capitalist system. And until now we are still living on this paradigm. The conceptualization and treatment of indigenous and specialized population in Europe, including black gypsies and Muslim, anticipated the formation of a new model of global power that became the cornerstone of new nation state in the former colony. The gold spells of discovery brackets and civilization, legitimate vast genocide, dispossession and racial enslavement. All of which solidified racial thinking in Europe and became cornerstone in the birth of new nation. Notable examples include United States, South Africa, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Argentina and Australia. But the lease is too long to make it just this year. While empire-based colonialism largely ended, nation-based and corporate-based colonialism, as well as local and global coloniality, endure, endure. Whether formally democratic or dictatorial, nation-state reproduced coloniality. And I make difference between coloniality and colonialism, of course. The struggle against coloniality continue, even as the context has changed and the form of domination have often morphed. It is in this situation of relative opacity that Fanon continue to call us to discover our mission 63 years after his death. While many today have turned to celebrate liberal tolerance, cooperate in efficiency, inclusive excellence and our resilience in face of climate disasters or evidence of systemic and structural racism, we find that the struggle against coloniality demands first and foremost a combative attitude. We also take this idea from Fanon and Cabral who were careful enough to distinguish combativity from male denunciation as end critic. As much as critic and criticism are often praised as a counter-liberal attitude or action by excellence, they are often mobilized to take attention away from coloniality and to openly or surreptitiously support the myth of the connective superiority of modern Western civilization. Critic is as necessary as insufficient and it can easily align itself with conservative attitude if it is not deployed in a combative decolonial direction. Different from critic, combativity emerged when racialized subjects started to address other racialized subjects in the effort to generate the sense of a collective struggle. While critic draws its power from crisis, decolonial combativity addressed the catastrophe of modern coloniality moments of the struggle. Combativity, no, sorry. The address the catastrophe of modernity, coloniality, combativity goes beyond cries of protest, laments and appeal. Even at this may be necessary moment of the struggle. And I said that because when we are listening what is said on 80, it's always laments crying. The people are crying for 80s, poor people, so beautiful country and the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's not what 80 needs because Asian people are really resistant and combative people. And we are really now, right now, we need to express our political solidarity to these people because they are really in danger. Combat is danger because hegemonic neighbor, the US. Combativity is about the path from individual to collective responsibility. And it requires the will and ability to connect with other and to engage in collective movement against coloniality. The combative attitude is like combative literature resolved situated in historical time. And it is what Fanon said about results situated in historical time. And it is dedicated to the effort of building the world of view. And it is also a quote of word of view. It's referred to black skin, white mask. The trajectory of Fanon's life indicates that combativity calls for transcending the role of the medical doctor and the scholar. And I made some parallel with Cabral because it transcends the role of engineer as engineer. This position can offer important tools for the process of decolonization. But they can also turn counterproductive if they remain isolated and disconnected from collective movement and struggle. Fanon went so far as resigning from this position in the effort to connect with a collective of racial and colonial subjects who were struggling for their liberation and independence. Combativity requires similar acts of transgression and resignation from the established standard of recognition and merit. Because recognition as we know depends on who recognizes you and how you recognize you and when they decide to stop to recognize you, you are again subhuman, non-being. And it is exactly what the modernity or the white supremacy are doing. It's enough, okay. Let me finish, I almost finished. Okay, thank you. Do you want to stop here? Oh, I'm joking. I don't know where I am. Independence. Liberation and independence. Combativity requires similar act of transgression and resignation from the established standard of recognition. Combativity transcends desire for recognition. It is rather about the possibility of maximizing the possibility of connection between the condemned, the richer of the earth, and between their various struggles. Since the struggle against dehumanization continues, how should we then conceive of our combative mission today? And how to pursue this mission without betraying it? I was spoken of by the French Foundation. I invite reflection on the nature of combativity and contemporary example of combativity and on the most important combative task of our day. This includes consideration of our doctors, scholars, writers, and professionals like Fanon and Cabral can assume the challenge of connecting with people in other positions and help generate a sense of collective struggle. It is important to consider how can medical, artistic, and scholarly training best contribute to struggle for decolonization and decoloniality, as well as how this activity can and should be enriched, redefined, and sometimes even set aside as part of this process. What sort of transformation and practice medicine will create out and or will engage in scholarship need to undergo when working with communities and collective that come together in the effort to promote change? How can those who work within hegemonic institution participate in a process of unlearning and relearning with those who work outside this institution? There is much to learn from those who produce knowledge through organizing and through educating others to organize. How do we support work with and learn from those who do not count with institutional resources? How can we effectively counter the extraction of ideas from social movement, community organizer, and social movement leaders? How do we transform medical, artistic, and scholarly training and direct them to oppose extractivism in all its forms? How do we transition to more relation forms of engagement, communication, and collaboration in support of movements that combat systemic racism, systemic institutional racism, coloniality, and anti-blackness? What can everyone learn from existing combative movement and what combative movement do we consider particularly critical from our own situated position and point of view? These are urgent questions that are very familiar to combative decolonial movement and community organization across the globe. Also crucial are questions about the challenge to combativity and combative organizing in the context of the state-sanctioned violence against social movement leaders and protesters. The eradication of free time as well as the co-optation, mistranslation and ensuring domestication of movement-based, anti-colonial, decolonial and abolitionist terminology in state, corporation, and academic project. This is occurring in the context of the renewal of anti-racist and decolonial movement in multiple parts of the globe and as a response to demographic shift in the North that are perceived as a threat to the interest and worldview of normative population. Anything is done to contain the impact of this movement and this demographic shift. Everything is mobilized to limit the possibility of dissenting voices and projects to find a fertile ground. The reinvention of apparently benevolent but not less modern colonial liberalism and neoliberalism through the extension and proliferation of the diversity, equity, inclusion state and corporate industrial complex is one of the most pervasive efforts in this direction today. How to engage in combative struggle when the faces representing the forces of benevolent liberalism are increasingly diversified and when terms like black and blackness are mobilized to support liberal and neoliberal initiative and projects. In this vein, how to respond to black and other racialized intellectuals who are sometimes conveniently positioned as brokers in discussion about racism and colonialism by state leaders of the North while settling combative social movement in the North and South. I'm thinking about Ashilbambe learning about our respective view regarding combativity and what we consider to be urgent and necessary combative struggles of our time can be of a great assistant in bringing more clarity to the task of discovering our mission and doing our best not to betray it. This is a concern and that is why we are keeping Pannon's decolonization spirit of combativeness alive by learning from each other, loving each other and together contribute to the unfinished project of decolonization and decoloniality today. Thank you. I don't know how I follow up from that but I would like to start by thanking the organizers Daniel and Paul for having me here. It's really exciting to be part of this event. So this was my home for three years so it feels like coming home really. I'm only down the world at King's and so yes I'm very excited also because Claim No Easy Victories is one of the things that I do to my readings when I was doing my PhD. I'm not really a Cabral expert but I do a lot of work on post-colonial and especially looking at youth mobilizations and political participation and it's really difficult to do that without considering the legacy of Cabral and that's how I end up engaging with a lot of work on Cabral and I also teach a module just highlight a few of the themes that stood out to me in the book and then hopefully that will form the basis of an interesting discussion. So I would say that the first theme that stood out to me in this book was the effort to situate the relevance of Cabral's life and practice within a context of unfinished decolonization which very much shapes these renewed anti-imperialist struggles and discussions previous to my intervention have highlighted some of those aspects and when we consider Mangini's new essay which interrogates the role of identity politics in the building of today's revolutionary movements it's quite crucial to recognize that it's a contested space and a difficult space indeed we talk about polarization in politics so it's really difficult to think about political manifestations today without considering the role of identity politics. Also Carlos Schwarz's essay for me really stood out quite centrally in terms of contextualizing the background that Cabral had before his activism and before leading the PSGC sorry I always have to be careful not to say PSGC because that's my subsequent context in Cabral and so this practice in agronomic that Cabral had is often not necessarily highlighted in light of the better known context that he had in terms of his political thought and practice but this paper by Schwarz is really interesting in demonstrating how that earlier work that Cabral did his experiments around Guiné-Bissau and his agricultural knowledge that he guarded by traveling around different parts engaging with different communities and really getting that on the ground knowledge equipped him with valuable understanding because he got in contact with communities, community leaders, young people and women across Guiné-Bissau and that in turn gave him unprecedented access to these people and understanding of their lived experiences which informs a lot of how Cabral thinks or thought and of course this also informed his focus on agriculture as the center for his vision when it comes to development in post-colonial Guiné-Bissau and it's interesting also that this very approach that he took and the experience that he accumulated also ended up getting him in trouble with the Portuguese and this is highlighted in this chapter as Cabral was eventually deported for exercising conspirational activities and so ultimately he had to leave and so I thought that this was a really good contribution to the book because it gives a different side to Cabral and his work and his expertise. A second team that stood out to me is not a surprise given that I work on gender equality, the emphasis on gender and on gender equality women's social and political liberation in Cabral is something that always stands out and this edition has two essays focusing on that it's always good to see more of that but two essays that actually represent the ideas quite centrally and so Urdang who was present in the previous edition highlighting the notion around the fact that women in Guiné-Bissau were actually fighting two colonialism on the one hand they were fighting Portuguese colonialism and that joint struggle with everyone in Guiné-Bissau but on the other hand they were also fighting men they were fighting oppression and they were fighting that in equal status quo that characterised their life and experience and so this paper alongside the one by Gormash in the book really gives us a better understanding of how Cabral had a good recognition of the importance of including women in the struggle and this recognition in turn translated into practices and environments which allowed women's roles to go beyond just the traditional private sphere and as a result the PAGC actually had women being elected in local councils, schools as educators, as militias, students and much more and indeed Urdang's paper highlights how there was a quota system in the PAGC liberated areas that ensured that when it was for elections in tribunals and councils there needed to be at least two women for every five leadership positions that's the minimum that was expected and they had to be occupied by women's dispositions and so it was interesting to see in Cabral's thinking already in the 60s that notion that oppression actually goes beyond race that it was beyond just that focus on the Portuguese and I thought it was fabulous as highlighted in Urdang's paper that he famously declared that anyone who imposes forced marriages on women and girls is actually worse than the Portuguese I thought that was quite revolutionary at the time that he was really focusing on oppression and not just Portuguese oppression so oppression from those traditional gender roles that many take for granted because we are so used to them and they've been normalized and so in addition to Urdang's paper it's interesting because it highlights that despite the many successes that we've highlighted in the PAGC and incorporating women and really promoting that space for women and their leadership to be recognized it's important to also recognize that beyond this military field the party structures of the PAGC actually didn't necessarily reflect this equality it's that they were inevitable overlapping challenges when it comes to traditional structures in relation to recognizing women's political leadership so as much as there was promotion when you look at the party structures there was also resistance and there was resistance from party members that were not necessarily as supportive of this revolutionary approach that Cabral certainly had and it's not surprising therefore for us to then see what happened in post-colonial Cabo Verde and Guinea-Bissau in that women were very quickly sidelined and forgotten as if they had never taken part in that process and it's still political today to argue for better recognition for the role that women played in independent struggles in both Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau and in fact the party structures were part, core of the nation-building that took place in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau after 75 didn't really recognize the leadership or presence of women and so all of that focus emphasis didn't really translate into better representation of women in post-colonial Cabo Verde and Guinea-Bissau and I find that that to be an interesting thing to highlight as we think about the power that Cabral had in terms of conveying those very important priorities a third team that I also identified and is very close to the work I do is the central role of culture and education in Cabral's thought and practice the essay from Miguel Barros and Reddy Wilson-Limer both Verde colleagues or with whom I work closely and very much respect their work is interesting in showing how culture has manifested through language as we all know that we both speak in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau or artistic mediums such as rap are really important for urban youth in Cabo Verde and Guinea-Bissau to keep the memory of Cabral alive going back to that call that we already did to emphasizing the importance of Cabral still today and not seeing Cabral as something of the past and so Cabral and his thinking is used up until today as a tool for public contestation and that's important and interesting and I find it impressive that in Cape Verde, especially in the island of Santiago which is the biggest, every year in January you have a group of people who are dedicating to ensure that there is a Cabral March and this March we remember Cabral, his memory, his legacy and this in turn reflects that notion from Milan Kundere that is highlighted in the introduction of the idea that the struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting and I think that that's an interesting thing also to highlight and reflect upon so for young people in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau Cabral, as we say, he's not dead and he's not dead because he's much more than a revolutionary he actually encapsulates an ideology Cabral is a dream and as highlighted in Rodin's paper even for women in Guinea-Bissau how they thought about their relationship with the party and with the movement they often highlighted that before Cabral they never really thought about their condition in relation to the Portuguese and that domination but after interacting with Cabral they realized that there could be a different future just that realization there, that there can be something different and I think that's what also inspires young people in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau today this realization that there can be a different world so that's why through that we recognize that his dreams, his ideas continue to inspire young people today and that's why he's not seen as having perished because his ideas and his projects are very much alive and I personally had the privilege of working with many youth-led organizations in Cape Verde that call themselves Cabralistas and in that they see a mission to continue the decolonization efforts that Cabral had because they don't see Cabral Verde as being a place where the colonization as a process has occurred, yes it's no longer a Portuguese colony but the colonization is a much deeper process than just that territorial independence in its constraints because even territorially it's not necessarily a given and so they see themselves as a TV socialist who work very closely with the mission of teaching the next generation of young people the lessons of Cabral and so that they continue to inspire and link that legacy to the history of that nation and as well to their identity and it's a constant play in terms of identity, the connection with the African continent and who they are in this increasingly confusing world and so as I mentioned education is therefore quite core to the work that they do and to be a Cabralista for them is also by association to reflect about their mission in terms of Pan-Africanism is how they link to Pan-Africanism Cabral is a very useful tool for young people in Cabral and Guinea-Bissau to link to their ideas of Pan-Africanism and so in the book Sonia Vash-Borgish has a groundbreaking essay on the Peugeot series Militant Education a new and deeper understanding of Cabral's militantism in this edition in her detailed account of the Militant Education project we find that the pages his pedagogy to be concerned with more than just memorizing historical facts or going back to a past history but rather to also be about thinking of developing critical consciousness through a deeper understanding of the material conditions imposed under colonialism and those offered by the party in its new liberated zones becomes quite crucial and they also stress the importance of pedagogy not only shaping intellectual and political thinking but also behaviors and values and values is also a core idea here with the connection with Cabral and just lastly the selected bibliography I thought that it was very helpful because you know as Filosia said not everything will fit on a volume like this but at least pointing towards other works that can also link to the thinking around Cabral I thought it was a very good initiative to expand that because it gives us an opportunity to seek further knowledge and in particular Antonio Tomas a book on Amilka Cabral by a reluctant nationalist published in 2001 stands out and so overall I found that it was particularly interesting and useful that there was a critical reflection and framing in the introduction around the idea of the preservation of Cabral's memory in Guinea-Bissau I thought that that had similarities with the context of Cape Verde especially in terms of this ambivalence between deliberate remembrance and deliberate forgetting and how these attitudes actually coexist in postcolonial Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau I myself have often reflected about this ambivalence especially in the context of independent celebrations in Cape Verde always a very awkward affair I was surprised when I was doing field work in Cape Verde in 2019 that, you know, 5th of July came I was very excited I was like oh my god this is going to be super great we'll have great events and so I went around and I said quiet nobody's talking about it and so I went around asking what are we going to do for Independence Day because I grew up as a diaspora person and that was the day I got to show who I was, diaspora I'm keep writing and I would have the flag and so it was always a very exciting day and so it was very strange that I would be in Cape Verde and no one would be celebrating something I celebrated my whole life and then yeah there's just no excitement and then I was getting further confused and so I asked family members why were we not celebrating Independence Day but then my aunt asked me back what did independence give me and I thought that that was an important reflection that, you know, this ambivalence which perhaps is felt more strongly in Cape Verde than other places for historical reasons which we don't have time to develop here but there is no doubt that for the majority of Africans there is a deep disappointment with the lack of material improvements in their lives after over 60 years of the so-called independence of their countries and in your presentation you mentioned the rise of neoliberalism in the former neoliberalism and where states really have focused on big agendas like the Washington and post-Washington consensus which are very much driven by conditionalities imposed by international financial institutions and in turn these have resulted in not only the improvement but also the worsening of human development indicators across Africa and other parts of the global south and so this in turn reminds me of my absolute favorite quote by Cabral which says always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas or for things in anyone's head they are fighting to win material benefits to live better and in peace to see their lives go forward to guarantee the future of their children and I think that goes core in the mission that Cabral had but unfortunately that's something that was lost to our independence movements and I think that ultimately it reminds us this idea that this position of memory affected by ruling elites across Africa who have airbrushed from history their own betrayals have in turn also shaped the process of political disposition whereby the newly founded African governments became more accountable to international organizations and corporations than to their own citizens and this in turn speaks to a crisis that we live in the continent and it takes us back to the very idea defended by Cabral and again reminded we were reminded of that by it was in your presentation that independence movements could not afford to simply take over the colonial state apparatus and use it for their own purposes but rather there was a need to totally destroy it to break and reduce it to ashes in order to make something new and that's unfortunately not what has happened leading to a fail in an important transition from colonial subject to citizen and I think that goes core to a lot of the challenges that we have in the continent but also goes core to a lot of the thinking that Cabral had and so I think I'll just wrap it up there Thank you so much All right I think we've heard enough from the panel it's good to just go straight to you and be some of your questions I managed to make this mic work we'll open the floor for questions so while we figure out the mic if anyone has a question please stand up or project your voice because I'm not sure if we'll be able to make them work but anyone has a question for our panelists Oh it's working Oh perfect Sorry for my pain No Alayda I don't know if you answered one's question Not here Thank you I was curious to know My name is Juan-Linx Thomas Jones Hi everybody What did independence give you or what did you do with independence after hearing that question Are you collecting questions? Maybe I was trying not to answer your question No I think it's a difficult one and I think it is what I was trying to highlight almost this feeling of the hijack of the state and of state resources after independence because I think people, there were a lot of promises made in my research around youth movements and youth mobilizations in Africa you can see that there were stages, only people had patience you had independence happening in the 50s and 60s well obviously in Lucifer and Africa happened much later but then we had the promises of democratization in the 90s promises of liberalization later and none of those things have actually made any material difference to the lives that people have in the continent so when people question what has independence given me it's something that is quite difficult to answer I mean I was in Santa May in principle also for my field work and indeed often I was told there that it would be better if the Portuguese had never left because there was a sense that after the Portuguese left everything was abandoned you know promises were made about big projects and how you know we were going to change and bring good things for you ask about said it is ultimately about material changes to people's lives and I mean that has not necessarily materialized some people yes but not the overwhelming majority and so what do you argue when someone tells you something like that because you know the statistics don't lie it is a big challenge am I going? oh yeah perfect sorry I didn't see you thank you and thank you so much this was really good and I'm one of how would I put this I'm a big fan of Cabral and I think this is really timely given the present circumstances with the Palestinian struggle and the like and what I'm thinking about is now how do we construct let's say emancipation or decolonization in this sense is it a material struggle or confronting a particular psyche or Western consciousness I would say you know should we see let's say emancipation as something that has to do with confronting Western consciousness because just I'm just trying to put this into context because looking at it when the Russia-Ukrain conflict erupted realize that there was like a lot of media narratives saying that oh these are blue-eyed people these are blonde people that we need to protect and and I could see the reverse of that happening with the with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and this has to do with with this has to do with the dualism of humanity whereby a particular racial group is given humanity and another or the other racial categories are kind of dehumanized in this sense and I believe this consciousness has been feeding into many things that we interact with consciously or subconsciously for example the Hollywood movies that we watch for example how is the black person kind of represented in these movies let's say recently I watched this Mia Cooper I'm not here to kind of interrogate that movie but what I saw is like I was not happy with certain kind of racial how Hollywood kind of even fits into this kind of racial stereotype these are things that we don't question for example how the black woman is seen as a sexually promiscuous being and also how the black man is seen as a sexual predator or let's say a white person is seen as a saviour and I think I think for me that's why I believe let's say emancipation has to do with tackling let's say a particular consciousness of psyche yeah thank you I don't know if this was a quick comment thank you I think there are a number of important points being raised here emancipation in my view has to be a creative process it's about inventing what it means to be human it cannot be reduced to either economics or any just words okay it has to be transformative and I think one of the big problems we face internationally on the left is there is so much oppositional talk and too little propositional talk it's what we want to create that we seem to have lost in our imagination because it is necessary as Cabral made it very clear in his praxis that we have to create today the world we want to live in tomorrow tomorrow is too late it has to be be today the second part is I think we have to take ownership of our own role our own histories people keep saying to me well Eday killed Cabral no no no no they may have made like all imperial power taking advantage of divisions and whatever but he was killed by his own comrades Kuma was betrayed the same way so was Thomas Sankara so were numerous others betrayal by definition comes from within and we have to take ownership of that because if we don't take ownership of it we will never understand what it is that makes betrayal awesome that comes to the point that you raised a moment ago about conditionality look it's not the IMF and World Bank which is imposed all for us no we have a class of people in our countries who have a vested interest in because they are now richer than they ever could have been without structural adjustment programs without austerity they are the thieves they are the ones these oligarchs have a vested interest they are the betrayers they are the killers of Sankara they are the killers of our revolutions that's I think really important to understand because we have to take ownership they are our betrayers and unless there's anything about it we will always blame over there the way Cabral put it is yes imperialism has a lot to answer for but you must remember rice only cooks inside the pot okay the other thing I think that you raised is also an important one when you talk about the blue eyed people it's very clear and I think very important to go back to that he said look he said to the British and the European bourgeoisie he said you all have Hitler's in you why you were so outraged with what Hitler did was because you had the audacity to do it to white people to do it in Europe but it is something that you've been doing for 500 years to the rest of us okay and so don't give me your crocodile tears this is the thing that we are facing racism and liberalism the ideology of capital are fundamental and they continue and what is happening in Gaza today is that there is no representation of that same racist ideologies so I think these are things we must take ownership of hi and thank you so much for all the knowledge you've shared with us in the insight of Cabral in his life as you mentioned a few names like Cabral and Krumasankara and the fact that this very talk is organized by the SOA center for Pan-African studies the spirit of Pan-Africanism within them the question I'm going to ask is along the lines of the fact that I do engage a lot of people who live permanently in Africa and people who also are of the diaspora and I can't help or feel as though there's a huge disconnect sometimes between people of the diaspora and people who live in Africa like I do on a permanent basis and it makes me feel as though the spirit of Pan-Africanism I'm also someone who believes strongly in Pan-Africanism and I share Krumas' thought and the thoughts of Gaddafi that a united Africa would have been a very strong entity to combat the West but the spirit of Pan-Africanism on the African continent I feel as though it isn't very strong I feel as though the spirit of Pan-Africanism is something that is more embodied by black people who do not reside in the continent but I think it is something that people who live in the continent should also embrace so I don't know your thoughts but what do you think people who reside in Africa who also embody the spirit of Pan-Africanism can do to rekindle the spirit of Pan-Africanism on the continent Pan-Africanism was always invented from outside we have to acknowledge this all the founders of Pan-Africanism many from the Caribbean and that's not a bad thing what has happened to Pan-Africanism is this belief that the state can actually deliver okay it's an illusion because once these people occupy the state they realize it's such a honey-pot they have a vested interest in continuing the hierarchy between the state and the people and we lost out in creating peoples Pan-Africanism but it is happening I mean unfortunately it's not reported on very much but for example the connection between the Shack-Dweller's movement in South Africa the Abkhaili Burst Mojandolo and the Social Justice Centers in Kenya is a live link and what they're doing is they're saying we have a common struggle Pan-Africanism is about building a common struggle but it has to be from the ground it has to be articulated in the way the people who are most dispossessed believe needs to be done it's not for the intellectuals and the oligarchs to define what Pan-Africanism is it is a real live thing and I think it's important that there is a at last how long is it taken to have a Pan-African sense here so that's the heart of empire you know many congratulations for that you know I'm just sorry it's taken so long but we have to build that we have to make a choice to say are we going to be the amplifiers of the voices of the dispossessed or are we going to speak on their behalf and that's really important distinction we have because of our privileges where we are we have the capacity to link with these people and give them the platform to give voice we're the facilitators of that it is they who will create make the revolution not us I think that's important we can help overthrow what's happening here like the Pan-African studies are doing here so you know there's hope still thank you we'll take a few more questions I'll just ask for questions to be brief so we can take as many as possible so anyone who has questions I'll go to you now thank you very much for these beautiful presentations I have a question regarding sort of the movement of ideas so to what extent were like Fanon and Cabral like in conversation with one another at the time given that they were a similar generation and I ask that because I can't help to think sometimes that there's still kind of like this divide even in contemporary day like Africa the literature that comes out of Portuguese Africa and they're not always in conversation with one another it really kind of depends on what part of the world that kind of dictates what literature you're exposed to and a lot of works still haven't been translated etc so I'm wondering if that is just a lingering divide from that era or whether that was something that was transcended in this era and kind of still but you know but hasn't happened now or like is this kind of reversing now I mean I think the idea of a conversation between these these two would be quite an interesting thing to try to make happen as it were but I think I do think that there is a breakdown happening between the different regions and it happens it happens best when there are explosions of struggles when Tunisia exploded when Egypt exploded my email box was filled by my compatriots writing to me to say well when is it going to happen here I mean it is something that I think is there there are periods where there isn't massive struggle then it gets lost and I don't think the media helps us the stenographers actually help us understand what is going on but a Pan-African studies program like this is one way in which that conversation can take place and I think it probably is amongst you you can go ahead thank you hi my name is Mack Mesa all the way from Scotland I came to really meet wonderful speakers and also learn a few from 2015-2016 I was part of the National Union of students, the black students movement here in this same room we had a long and awful talk about what is happening to black movements at the time some of the conversations were definition of blackness within the movement there were discussions and people of all colors but after all that I think the National Union of students actually sidelined the black student movement now it is no part of that so after all that I went away that they were crying there was a professor I am not going to mention the name because how is the African intellectuals impacting the grassroots movement or the people in terms of education and sensitization of the people and the example was said like Kwamin Krumer was able to speak in a language where the people actually understand like we have heard today Kabra himself went to the grassroots and met these people work with them for now when you listen to him he is speaking to the people you can hear clearly even if you are not educated you can hear and understand what they are saying so at the time if we talk about Ghana being the first independent country what happened at the time that even when Krumer was arrested it was the grassroots people who were demonstrating in the streets of Accra fighting and insisting that he should come out and lead them and so the colonial system had no chance but to yield to the people's cry now our intellectuals or African scholars today think we are missing that we are missing the scholars who left Africa came abroad and realized actually the white man is not better than us we can manage our own affairs and went back to educate their people in rural language that they could understand and say oh this is what the white person is doing to us or the colonial system is doing to us and so they listened to them and supported even though some of them were betrayed by their own people as you said so my question is am I right to say that the African intellectuals of today or scholars are failing us or have failed Africa and if so what can we do talking about the professor I said was sitting there she said it is important for some of them to be in those hierarchy in the room on the board to make the changes that needed to be done behind closed doors that we can see and we cannot be there we cannot come out and be fighting right so we have to fight now how do you relate to that so my challenge to African scholars is what are we not doing right that African as my brother there said there is a disconnect between the African living on the continent on the motherland and the African in the diaspora it is all about education and information sharing so how is African intellectuals trying to simplify in mere terms and languages that the ordinary farmer can also understand that this is what it means when the IMF says this and they do this against our leaders and our leaders become part of them how do we fight them thank you I think the problem with African intellectuals and I had to say this in an academic institution but it is like the mining companies it is an extractivist profession they go out and get their PhDs from that and the question has to be posed what is that doing to how is that supporting the generation of people and it is often based on the premise that our people are unable to think our people think people do think they think emancipatory thoughts only we don't listen to them because if we do listen to them it is not they who need educating it is we because unless you can get through that transition that you are missing something you can't produce anything that will contribute to their ability to free themselves I think that is the dilemma we have and we don't listen as a rule it is mostly extractivists your contribution has been really interesting I will keep my question short I wanted to know how you think Cabral's thought can apply to new movements in Africa now the new military governments in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso as well as movements in South Africa with the EFF and the new MK party thank you I think what is happening in this breakaway from ECHO us is really important I think this is an action that has huge potentials the weakness of it is that it is a state oriented project it varies in the different countries to some extent there is mass movements popular but they are not in control in a sense responding to those actions and I wait and see what is emerging out of those struggles of those popular mobilizations which is giving birth to something new my fear is it is not giving birth to something new it is yeah but maybe I am being too pessimistic we watch but at least they have said to the French well that is the start we will take two last question because of time again keep them as short as possible thank you so much my question is I see a lot of resonance in the incompatibility of a liberal system with emancipation since it is constituted through and on racism and speaking of the false promises of independence and suffrage as well the failure of coalition politics we threw out all the speakers you were mentioning the deconstruction and abandoning that and destruction and catastrophe as necessary for true emancipation and I am wondering how do we bring this on and not fall into the trap of self delusion and ultimately what was mentioned the unwitting betrayal of yourself I think that is a great question thank you very much for those wonderful presentations which raised new and old questions that we have been reflecting upon in this very so as I can see colleagues who have been in this room 14-50 years and we have been going round and round these same questions and we feel in their material reality and it's not always even over time their pushbacks, their advances and people have been struggling people have lost their lives and controversies when all the arms struggle and people struggle every day to survive so it's not a simple matter of anism but they are pushbacks as we've seen in Black Lives Matter we thought would finish all these struggles for feminist emancipation we are back, we are now being asked to push back critical race theory which is a way of thinking about Blackness, it's being banned we are disallowed freedom of speech so it's not a linear matter and people have agency and it's not true the media in Africa is very important the radio, the television even the tiktoks talk there are more means of people to get engaged and I know the women's movement for example in Africa has always been multi-lingual I know that the young people's pan-African movements are multi-lingual they work in their languages across boundaries and they are in the streets marching against injustices I live here in the diaspora and I live in Africa but there are gaps and when the urgency comes the solidarity arises all over the world the march is all over the world none of you before have been thinking about Palestine the Palestinian question has been around for a very long time but I think humanity is pushed to these intolerant moments like the genocide that we are experiencing that we feel we must come out in solidarity and we saw that we saw that with South Africa so solidarity but also human self-information there is so much lack of knowledge about Africa generally it's not taught here the last course on history which Hakim Adi is trying to set up is about to be closed down there's no significant institutions or buildings or monuments here that tell you that this was the largest empire on earth you cannot find them the buildings have gone the commonwealth you can't even see them so it's pushed back forward two steps back but we must always keep hope as you said and the immediacy of the present culture is the lift as you said in your speech look at all these people who came in the evening to listen to this wonderful talk we have to keep hope alive we unfortunately have to there's another booking right after this but we'll close with some words by Professor Fanon we'll have to leave this space but thank you so much for coming there are books that we are selling right next door so feel free to continue the conversation as well but please you can close, thank you just I would like to make some one or two remarks if I understand there is some people willing to change the world or the context where we are living and if we want to do that we need to work on rupture do we accept to just get some change in this liberal racist capitalist system or do we want something else to be created, to be seen and that is I think there is some ambiguity for me that's why I did not intervene because for me it's very clear if we are upset or tired exhausted and wounded but what is happening in this world we have to change and the only thing we have to change is the paradigm of domination I don't understand how we can live just in change some things, there is no happy globalization it's not true, it is what devils try to convince us but we know now since years and years there is no happy globalization there is just multifarious and misery globalization what do we want for people do we love enough people to say it is enough that's the question of love and if we don't love the people or just something like that, oh it's okay take care, we are with us, with you know what kind we have to think about what kind of structure we have to introduce and put down this racial-liberal system and it is all the questions we raise are very important but the main problem is this how do we think about the change I have no particular idea but I know we need this structure and it is exactly what Fanon said that there is not rupture that is why colonization was not a success because they will produce the model of colonizer do we want to just change something or do and I think one of things we have to do one of things we have to do one of things we have to do for me as a fluorescent I understood if we want to change the world we need to go back what happened in 1492 the so-called discovery and it was just catastrophe for humanity it was not discovery or great discovery but it was a great catastrophe for humanity and if we want to change the world one thing could be I am convinced but could be to work on reparation political and collective reparation and not to get individual money but to change the paradigm of domination it is the beginning to change this paradigm of domination and to stop the racialization of people and all what you mentioned about racism white people it is coming from that we have nothing to invent it is coming just from that how the capitalist system was built on our racialization the white are better than the black and if as black people are African descent if we want we have to to affirm and every time we have to affirm the capitalist system destroy us as they are destroying Palestine because Palestine is considered now I am surprised because the people are claiming for Palestine but it is not new it is 75 years who did that it is a system just one day after the new UN signed in San Francisco they decide to the Nagba they decide the beginning of the Nagba for Palestinian people and until this day they never stopped the genocide today is just the continuation of what was done in 1948 it is not new we have no surprise we can't be say oh my god it is so unbelievable but what is coming for 80 is not new since the day after they declare black republic the white system decide to put on arm on them and to kill them exactly what's happened how the US is interfering in the sovereignty and the self-determination of 80 how could we explain that there is no sense just a sense of domination and it is particularly easy to dominate black people because the system always dominates black people and it is absolutely normal be quiet there is nothing new it's normal and we accept that that is why it is so important to assure to ensure our dignity to not let them take our dignity and in our believing there is something else could happen to this world from the roof to the roof you said that thank you thank you our speaker we can continue the conversation outside and the books are still available for sale again thank you thank you thank you thank you