|
|
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS, July-August 2010
World in View
Guinea's election
The world press is hailing Guinea's "first free election in 52 years." These elections come after decades of dictatorial rule in Guinea--the first vote not under the bayonet of the army. A run-off is scheduled for mid-July between the two leading candidates--one, Cellou Dalein Diallo, long-time Prime Minister under the previous dictator, Lansana Conté; the other, Alpha Conde, long in exile, and supposedly close to French interests, the one-time colonial occupier and exploiter.
While free elections are welcome, we are far from the great promise of a new pathway opened toward social liberation during the African Revolutions in 1960, "the Year of Africa." Guinea stood out in both its concrete actions and at projecting an emancipatory vision. In 1958, two years before the year of the African revolutions, tiny Guinea had dared to say "No!" to De Gaulle's France, seized its independence, breaking fully from France's "benevolent" neo-colonialism. De Gaulle's response was to cut off completely any support for Guinea. It was left in an isolation of deep impoverishment.
In those first moments of independence, Guinea's leader in the struggle, the revolutionary Ahmed Sékou Touré, espoused a Marxism joined with an African humanism: "It can...be said that African unity offers the world a new humanism essentially founded on the universal solidarity and cooperation between people, without any racial and cultural antagonism and without narrow egoism and privilege." Raya Dunayevskaya characterized the African revolutions as opening "a new page in the dialectic of thought as well as in world history." However, Touré separated himself from the creativity of the African masses, betraying any emancipatory vision, and ruled Guinea with a dictatorial hand.
What occurred in Guinea has been repeated throughout Black Africa. It is of course not the end of history. But more than "free elections" will be needed for new beginnings in Guinea and in Africa.
--Eugene Walker
|
Subscription for one year
$5
|
