The Wretched of The Earth

  The young national bourgeoisie, especially the business sector, now competes with these feudal rulers in a number of areas: Marabouts and witch doctors prevent the sick from consulting a physician; the rulings of the djemaas make lawyers redundant; the kaids use their political and administrative powers to launch a trucking business or establish a commerce; the local chiefs oppose the introduction of trade and new products in the name of religion and tradition.

  The young class of colonized businessmen and traders needs to eliminate these prohibitions and barriers in order to grow. The indigenous clientele which represents the exclusive preserve of the feudal overlords and sees itself more or less banned from purchasing new products, constitutes therefore a market which both parties are fighting over.

  The feudal agents form a barrier between the young Westernized nationalists and the masses. Every time the elite makes a gesture toward the rural masses, the tribal chiefs, the religious rulers, and the traditional authorities issue repeated warnings, threats, and excommunications. These traditional authorities, sanctioned by the occupying power, feel threatened by the growing endeavors of the elite to infiltrate the rural masses. They know too well that the ideas imported by these urban elements are likely to threaten the very existence of their feudal authority. As a result, their enemy is not the occupying power with whom, in fact, they get along very well, but these modernists who are bent on dislocating the indigenous society and in doing so, take the bread out of their mouths.

  The Westernized elements’ feelings toward the peasant masses recall those found among the proletariat in the industrialized nations. The history of bourgeois revolutions and the history of proletarian revolutions have demonstrated that the peasant masses often represent a curb on revolution. In the industrialized countries the peasant masses are generally the least politically conscious, the least organized as well as the most anarchistic elements. They are characterized by a series of features —individualism, lack of discipline, the love of money, fits of rage, and deep depression — defining an objectively reactionary behavior.

  We have seen that the nationalist parties base their methods and doctrines on the Western parties and therefore in the majority of cases do not direct their propaganda at the rural masses. In fact, a rational analysis of colonial society would have shown them that the colonized peasants live in a traditional environment whose structures have remained intact, whereas in the industrialized countries it is these traditional circles which have been splintered by the progress of industrialization. It is within the burgeoning proletariat that we find individualistic behavior in the colonies. Abandoning the countryside and its insoluble problems of demography, the landless peasants, now a lumpenproletariat, are driven into the towns, crammed into shanty towns and endeavor to infiltrate the ports and cities, the creations of colonial domination. As for the mass of the peasantry, they continue to live in a petrified context, and those who cannot scrape a living in the countryside have no other choice but to emigrate to the cities. The peasant who stays put is a staunch defender of tradition, and in a colonial society represents the element of discipline whose social structure remains community-minded. Such a static society, clinging to a rigid context, can of course sporadically generate episodes of religious fanaticism and tribal warfare. But in their spontaneity the rural masses remain disciplined and altruistic. The individual steps aside in favor of the community.

  The peasants distrust the town dweller. Dressed like a European, speaking his language, working alongside him, sometimes living in his neighborhood, he is considered by the peasant to be a renegade who has given up everything which constitutes the national heritage. The town dweller is a “traitor, a mercenary” who apparently gets along very well with the occupier and strives to succeed in the context of the colonial system. Hence the reason why we often hear the peasant say that the town dwellers have no moral standards. This is not the traditional opposition between town and country. It is the opposition between the colonized excluded from the benefits of colonialism and their counterparts who manage to turn the colonial system to their advantage.

  The colonialists, moreover, use this antagonism in their opposition to the nationalist parties. They mobilize the population in the mountains and the interior against the urban population. They set the back country against the coast, they revive tribal identities, and it should come as no surprise to see Kalondji crowned king of Kasai or some years back, the Assembly of Chiefs in Ghana hold its ground against N’Krumah.

  The political parties are unable to establish roots in the countryside. Instead of adapting the existing structures in order to invest them with nationalist or progressive elements, they are intent on disrupting traditional existence within the context of the colonial system. They imagine they can jump-start the nation whereas the mesh of the colonial system is still tightly interlocked. They make no effort to reach out to the masses. They do not place their theoretical knowledge at the service of the people, but instead try to regiment the masses according to a pre-determined schema. Consequently, they parachute into the villages inexperienced or unknown leaders from the capital who, empowered by the central authorities, endeavor to manage the douar or the village like a company committee. The traditional chiefs are ignored, sometimes taken down a peg. Instead of integrating the history of the village and conflicts between tribes and clans into the people’s struggle, the history of the future nation has a singular disregard for minor local histories and tramples on the only thing relevant to the nation’s actuality. The elders, held in respect in traditional societies and generally invested with an undeniable moral authority, are publicly ridiculed. The occupier’s services have no scruples making use of the ensuing resentment and are kept informed of the slightest decision adopted by this caricature of authority. A well-informed police repression, based on factual intelligence gathering, is quick to follow. The leaders parachuted in from the outside and the main members of the new assembly are arrested.

  These setbacks confirm “the theoretical analysis” of the nationalist parties. The disastrous attempts at regimenting the rural masses reinforce the parties’ distrust and crystallize their aggressiveness toward this section of the population. After the victorious struggle for national liberation, the same mistakes are repeated fostering the trend to decentralize and self-govern. The tribalism of the colonial phase is replaced by regionalism in the national phase expressed institutionally as federalism.

  But it so happens that the rural masses, in spite of the little control the parties have over them, play a crucial role either in the gestation of the national consciousness or in relaying the initiatives of the nationalist parties, and in some rare cases taking over purely and simply from the parties’ sterility.

  The nationalist parties’ propaganda always finds a response among the peasantry. The memory of the precolonial period is still very much alive in the villages. Mothers still hum to their children the songs which accompanied the warriors as they set off to fight the colonizer. At the age of twelve or thirteen the young villagers know by heart the names of the elders who took part in the last revolt, and the dreams in the douars and villages are not those of the children in the cities dreaming of luxury goods or passing their exams but dreams of identification with such and such a hero whose heroic death still brings tears to their eyes.

  At a time when the nationalist parties are endeavoring to organize the embryonic working class in the towns, we are witnessing apparently inexplicable social unrest in the interior. We can take as an example the infamous 1947 insurrection in Madagascar. The colonial services stated categorically that it was a peasant revolt. In fact we now know that things, as always, were much more complex. During the Second World War the major colonial companies extended their influence and grabbed any remaining land. There was also talk at the same period of the possible settlement on the island of Jewish, Kabyle, and West Indian refugees. The rumor also spread of an imminent invasion of the island by the whites from South Africa abetted by
the colonists. After the war, therefore, the candidates on the nationalist ticket were triumphantly elected. Immediately afterwards, factions of the MDRM party (Mouvement Démocratique de la Renovation Malgache) underwent repression. In order to achieve their ends the colonial authorities employed the usual methods: mass arrests; intertribal, racist propaganda; and the creation of a party with the unorganized factions of the lumpen-proletariat. This party, called the Disinherited of Madagascar (PADESM), and its decidedly provocative actions, was to provide the colonial authorities with the legal pretext it needed to maintain law and order. Such a premeditated, commonplace operation as eliminating a political party, however, here took on gigantic proportions. On the defensive for three or four years the rural masses suddenly felt themselves in mortal danger and decided to violently resist the colonialist forces. Armed with spears, and more often with sticks and stones, the population rose up in a widespread revolt with the aim of national liberation. We know how it ended.

  Such armed revolts constitute but one of the methods used by the rural masses to join in the national struggle. In some cases the peasants act as a relay following the unrest in the towns where the nationalist party is the object of police repression. The news reaches the interior exaggerated out of all proportion: leaders arrested, others gunned down, the city running red with the blood of blacks, the poor white settlers swimming in Arab blood. All the pent-up hatred, all the exacerbated hatred then explodes. The local police station is taken over, the officers hacked to pieces, the elementary school teacher murdered, the doctor gets away with his life only because he is absent, etc., etc. Pacifying troops are dispatched to the field, the air force drops bombs. The banner of revolt is then unfurled, the old warrior traditions resurface, the women cheer on the men who band together and take up their positions in the mountains, and guerrilla warfare begins. Spontaneously the peasants create a widespread sense of insecurity; colonialism takes fright, settles into a state of war, or else negotiates.

  How do the nationalist parties react to this decisive irruption by the peasant masses into the national struggle? We have seen that the majority of the nationalist parties have not written the need for armed intervention into their propaganda. They are not opposed to a sustained revolt, but they leave it up to the spontaneity of the rural masses. In other words, their attitude towards these new developments is as if they were heaven-sent, praying they continue. They exploit this godsend, but make no attempt to organize the rebellion. They do not dispatch agents to the interior to politicize the masses, to enlighten their consciousness or raise the struggle to a higher level. They hope that swept along by its own momentum the action of the masses will not flag. There is no contamination of the rural movement by the urban movement. Each side evolves according to its own dialectic.

  At a time when the rural masses are totally receptive, the nationalist parties make no attempt to introduce them to an agenda. They have no objective to offer and simply hope that the movement will continue indefinitely and that the bombardments will not win the day. We thus see that the nationalist parties do not make use of even this opportunity to integrate the rural masses and raise their political awareness as well as their struggle to a higher level. They stubbornly maintain their criminal position of distrust with regard to the interior.

  The political cadres hole up in the towns and make it clear to the colonial authorities they have no connections with the rebels, or else leave the country. Seldom do they join forces with the people in the mountains. In Kenya, for example, during the Mau-Mau insurrection no known nationalist claimed he was a member of the movement or attempted to defend it.

  There are no constructive talks, no confrontation between the different social strata of the nation. Once independence has been achieved after repression of the rural masses and collusion between the colonial authorities and the nationalist parties, we find this mutual incomprehension exacerbated. The peasantry balk at the structural reforms proposed by the government as well as the even objectively progressive social innovations, precisely because the current leaders of the regime did not explain to the people during the colonial period the party objectives, national policy, and international issues, etc.

  The mistrust felt by the rural population and the traditional leaders toward the nationalist parties during the colonial period is matched by equal hostility during the national period. The colonialist secret service, which is still at work after independence, foments discontent and still manages to create serious difficulties for the young governments. When all is said and done, the government is merely paying for its idleness during the liberation period and its enduring contempt for the peasantry. The nation may well have a rational, even progressive head, but its huge body remains retarded, rebellious and recalcitrant.

  The temptation is great therefore to crush this body by centralizing the administration and keeping a firm control over the people. This is one of the reasons why we often hear that the underdeveloped countries need a dose of dictatorship. The leaders distrust the rural masses. This distrust, moreover, can take on serious proportions. Such is the case for certain governments that, long after national independence, consider the interior as an unpacified region where the head of state and his minsters only venture during army maneuvers. The interior is considered a virtual terra incognita. Paradoxically, the national government’s attitude toward the rural masses is reminiscent in some ways of the colonial power. “We are not too sure how the masses will react”; “We need to use the lash if we want to take this country out of the Dark Ages,” the young leaders are not afraid to say. But, as we have seen, the political parties’ disregard for the rural masses during the colonial period can only be prejudicial to national unity and to setting rapidly the nation in motion.

  Sometimes colonialism endeavors to diversify and dislocate the nationalist upsurge. Instead of stirring up the sheiks and the chiefs against the “revolutionaries” in the towns, the Native Bureaus organize the tribes and religious brotherhoods into parties. Confronted with an urban party which is beginning to “embody the will of the nation” and constitute a threat to the colonial regime, factions are born, and sympathies and parties based on tribe and region emerge. The entire tribe is transformed into a political party in close consultation with the colonialists. Roundtable discussions can now begin. The party of national unity is swamped by the very number of political factions. The tribal parties oppose centralization and unity and denounce the one party dictatorship.

  Later on the same tactics will be used by the national opposition. The occupier has already made his choice from the two or three nationalist parties who led the liberation struggle. The method of choice is typical: Once a party has achieved national unanimity and has emerged as the sole negotiator, the occupier begins his maneuvering and delays negotiations as long as possible. The delay is used to whittle away the party’s demands and obtain concessions from the leadership to remove certain “extremist” elements.

  If, however, no single party emerges, the occupier is content to favor the one which seems to him to be the most “reasonable.” The nationalist parties, which were excluded from the negotiations, then loudly denounce the agreement concluded between the other party and the occupier. The party which takes over power from the occupier, conscious of the danger of the rival party’s vague, strictly demagogic positions, endeavors to dismantle and outlaw it. The persecuted party has no other alternative but to take refuge on the periphery of the towns and in the interior. It attempts to stir up the rural masses against the “mercenaries of the coast and the corrupt elements in the capital.” Any excuse is good enough—from religious arguments to the tradition-breaking innovations introduced by the new national authority. It exploits the obscurantist tendencies of the rural masses. Its so-called revolutionary doctrine is in fact based on the reactionary, heated, and spontaneous nature of the peasantry. It spreads the rumor here and there that the mountainous regions of the interior are on the move, that there is discontent among the pea
sants. It claims that in one region the police have opened fire on the peasants, reinforcements have been dispatched, and the government is about to collapse. With no clear program and no other objective but to take over from the team in power, the opposition parties put their fate in the hands of the spontaneous and obscure mass of the peasantry.

  Conversely, in some cases the opposition no longer seeks support from the rural masses but from the progressive elements of the young nation’s labor unions. In this case the government calls upon the masses to resist the workers’ demands, calling them rash, antitraditionalist maneuvers. The observations we have noted concerning the political parties can now be applied to the labor unions, mutatis mutandis. The first labor unions in the colonial territories are usually local branches of their metropolitan counterparts and their slogans echo those of the metropolis.

  Once the crucial phase of the liberation struggle begins to take shape, a group of indigenous union leaders decides to create a national labor movement. The locals desert en masse the previous organization imported from the metropolis. The formation of this union is another way for the urban population to exert pressure on the colonial authorities. We have already said that the proletariat in the colonies is embryonic and represents the most privileged fraction of the population. The national labor unions born out of the liberation struggle are urban organizations and their program is above all political and nationalist. But this national union born during the decisive phase of the fight for independence is in fact the legal enlistment of dynamic, politically conscious nationalist elements.

  The rural masses, despised by the political parties, continue to be kept on the sidelines. There is, of course, an agricultural workers’ union but such a formation is content to satisfy the formal need for “a united front against colonialism.” The union leaders who began their careers in the context of the metropolitan unions are at a loss when it comes to organizing the rural masses. They have lost touch with the peasantry and are mainly concerned with enlisting steelworkers, dockers and civil servants in the utilities sector, etc.