Afrocommunism

by David Ottaway

Book by Ottaway, David, Ottaway, Marina

Genres: Africa

237 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the only comprehensive overview of African socialism yet written. In 1981, Sankara hadn't yet come to power in Burkina Faso, the Derg had only been at the helm for five years of the 25 they would eventually last for, and there had been no famine yet. Rhodesia had only just become Zimbabwe, South Africa was still an assertive apartheid bulwark.

Afrocommunism is an in medias res look at a bygone age. The first wave of African socialist states had lost their shine, either crumbling under mismanagement and utopian expectations (Tanzania, Guinea) or carrying on with much less social intentions (Zambia, Algeria). The torch would be borne forward by a more radical and militarized triad of countries. Angola and Mozambique fought their way through a Portuguese chokehold, the last European nation to relinquish its colonies, while Ethiopia underwent a military coup that turned into the most far-reaching social revolution on the continent. Each in their own way demonstrated the functionalism of the marxist-leninist approach to socio-economic development. A lack of industry, vulnerability to first-world economic whims, ethnic tensions, unfinished state centralization — all of these factors inch open the gate to communist development, and war batters it open in full. The Ottaways meticulously sift through the scarce information on these unfinished revolutions to shed light on the whence, how and wheretos.

Minor remark is the unexplained limitation of the book's scope. Congo-Brazzaville, the first African People's Republic, goes nigh unmentioned, as does Benin, which had undergone a communist revolution in 1975, and Madagascar in 1976. Information on these episodes is today still extremely scarce — no monographs to be found on most, one bare bones treatment of Congo in French. I want to know what happened.

[Don · Rating 2 out of 5]

A truly falsified hypothesis makes this an interesting book. D and Marina Ottaway purport that the erst-while communist states of Africa (Mozambique, Angola, DR Congo, G. Bissau, Benin and Ethiopia) were not mere Soviet client states but genuinely home-grown marxist-leninist regimes. The collapse of Soviet aid provided a superb natural experiment to test this hypothesis and the test results are disappointing for the Ottaways. A review of the 6 "afrocommunist" states today shows that - even in the case of thoses states that have undergone no discontinuous regime change (all but Ethiopia) - none continue to purport to be marxist-leninist and have rather smoothly erased that chapter form their histories.