Reviews
Apr 18, 2008 - David Hostetter in H-SAfrica
" Publication of this book comes at a moment when a leading contender for the
American presidency is the offspring of one of the Kenyan students who studied
in the United States through the efforts of the African-American Student
Foundation directed by ACOA activist Cora Weiss. Barack Obama's first foray
into political activism, which he recounts in his autobiography, came when he
spoke at an anti-apartheid demonstration during his undergraduate days. "
Mar 29, 2008 - Wim Bossema in De Volkskrant -
Dutch | English
"Probably more Americans than ever are doing something for Africa. ...
Many African immigrants are active. ... Solidarity between Africa and the United
States is not going away. "
Jan 30, 2008 - Gerald Horne in H-SAfrica
"This is a remarkable and often insightful collection of essays and
reflections ... It belongs in every library in Africa--and, most of all,
in South Africa. Still, in its very strength it exposes an entire
realm of research that has yet to be completed."
Jan 23, 2008 - Gerry Canavan in Independent Weekly
"Most of all the book is a testament not to the influence of politicians or
nation-states but to the power of individuals themselves, to the everyday
activists and nongovernmental organizations who made and continue to make
an impact in the struggle for liberation across the globe."
Winter 2007/2008 - Bill Bigelow in Rethinking Schools
"Unearths a too-often-neglected history of grassroots U.S. solidarity and
anti-racist activism. Short sections that focus on individual activists are
easily excerpted for classroom use."
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Review
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-SAfrica@h-net.msu.edu (April 2008)
William Minter, Gail Hovey, and Charles Cobb Jr., eds. _No Easy Victories:
African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950-2000_.
Trenton: Africa World Press, 2008. xvii + 248 pp. Illustrations, maps,
notes, index. $29.95 (paper), ISBN 1592215750.
Reviewed for H-SAfrica (http://www.h-net.org/~safrica)
by David Hostetter, Robert C. Byrd Center for
Legislative Studies, Shepherd University
Chronicling a Half Century of Shared Struggle
The late Samora Machel, the first president of independent Mozambique,
asserted that "International solidarity is not an act of charity. It is an
act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains for the same
objective" (p. 200). The engagement of Americans with African struggles
against colonialism and apartheid is the story of activists attempting to live
up to Machel's maxim. The edited volume No Easy Victories: African
Liberation and American Activists, 1950-2000 endeavors to provide a
"panoramic view" of a half century of solidarity efforts for African
independence and against apartheid in South Africa. The editors,
activist-scholars William Minter, Gail Hovey, and Charles Cobb Jr., have
crafted an account of U.S. activism that celebrates the strengths and analyzes
the weaknesses of solidarity with Africa. The book, much like the movement it
recounts, is an ambitious coalition effort. The 8.5 by 11-inch paperback
combines a foreword by Nelson Mandela with analytical essays, interviews,
personal statements, documents from the movement, maps, and a rich array of
photographs.
The book's title comes from African independence leader Amilcar Cabral, who
said "Tell no lies; claim no easy victories." To that end, the book is
organized into decade-specific chapters that cover American solidarity efforts
from the fifties through the nineties. Co-editor William Minter provides a
valuable overview of American connections with Africa in his introductory
essay titled "An Unfinished Journey." Minter recounts his personal engagement
with the continent while analyzing the solidarity efforts of civil rights,
religious, labor, student, and left-wing activists. The underreported,
underappreciated organizing of the fifties, sixties, and seventies came to
fruition in what Minter calls "the antiapartheid convergence" of the eighties,
which marked the zenith of American-African solidarity and remains a
remarkable accomplishment (p. 39). Minter's introduction provides the context
for the more specialized selections that round out the book.
The essays on each decade are written by a variety of authors, providing a
rich variety of perspectives on the trials and triumphs of Africa-focused
activism. Each essay is accompanied by interviews with and profiles of
activists from the decade described, providing important personal insights on
the context and character of those years. Historian Lisa Brock's contribution
covers the fifties, when solidarity with the anti-apartheid movement began to
gain notice. She deals with the divide between the Council on African Affairs
(CAA) and the American Committee on Africa (ACOA) that first appeared in 1952.
Brock states: "ACOA did not give credit to or claim any continuity with the
CAA. Silences in history speak as eloquently as words, and this omission,
given the times, may suggest if not outright anticommunism on the part of
ACOA, then at least fear of being associated with Communists" (p. 63). Brock
follows her historical evaluation with profiles of George Houser and Bill
Sutherland, both founders of the ACOA, and Charlene Mitchell of the Communist
Party USA, all of whom maintained their Africa-centered activism from the
fifties through the nineties.
Brock's essay is interesting and well argued, but contains a silence of its
own in regard to the reasons for the rift among the then small network of
activists concerned about Africa. ACOA's founders were understandably leery
of the Council on African Affairs' connections to the Communist Party (CP).
Those who formed ACOA's antecedent, the Americans for South African Resistance
(AFSAR), in 1952 in order to support the Defiance Campaign in South Africa
included A. Philip Randolph along with his protégés Bayard Rustin and George
Houser. Randolph had resigned the presidency of the National Negro Congress
in 1940 after the NCC had affiliated with Labor's Non-Partisan League,
effectively aligning it with the Communist Party during the period when the CP
defended the Hitler-Stalin pact. Randolph's Communist-backed replacement was
Max Yergan, co-founder of the International Committee on African Affairs,
which in 1942 became the Council on African Affairs. Yergan's 1947 political
about-face, when he turned to the right and became an advocate of U.S. Cold
War policy, helped to destroy the left-liberal alliance that had previously
characterized the CAA.
During the forties Randolph and his allies successfully pressured President
Franklin Roosevelt to end discrimination by armament manufacturers fulfilling
defense contracts and compelled President Harry Truman to end segregation in
the military. This record of achievement, along with the experience of
Houser, Rustin, and Bill Sutherland in the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE),
is reflected in the strategy and tactics later developed by ACOA. ACOA's
founders acted not out of fear but from principled political disagreement and
long-standing practical experience when they rejected the invitation of
Alphaeus Hunton, once Max Yergan's ally in the National Negro Congress, to
join with the CAA in demonstrating support for the Defiance Campaign. When it
began to champion sanctions and divestment ACOA built upon Randolph's
exemplary pursuit of concrete achievements against segregation in the United
States to support the anti-apartheid struggle. The militant resistance of the
CAA and incremental reform advocated by the ACOA would later be blended to
produce a successful new movement not riven the by the divisions of the old
left.
While No Easy Victories details the evolution of activist strategies, a more
explicit analysis of the role of nonviolence is missing. This is unfortunate
because ACOA's support for the Defiance Campaign arose in large part from the
excitement elicited among its founders by the application of Gandhian methods
to the fight against apartheid. George Houser's 1953 pamphlet "Nonviolent
Revolution in South Africa" expressed hope that the nonviolent precedent set
by the Defiance Campaign would spread throughout Africa and beyond. The grand
plans of nonviolent activists in the fifties to build a pacifist international
rooted in Africa were tempered by the 1960 massacre at Sharpeville as well as
the move away from nonviolence by the first wave of independent African
leaders once they gained state power. Support for economic sanctions,
advocated by the South African liberation movement and adopted by
international solidarity campaigners, took hold after Sharpeville when the
African National Congress and its counterparts determined that nonviolent
resistance was no longer sufficient.
The ACOA, the Washington Office on Africa, and TransAfrica as well as allied
organizations active on the local level are all examined. Another group that
finally gets rightful recognition is the American Friends Service Committee
(AFSC). AFSC, arguably the most indispensable progressive change organization
in twentieth-century America, had a hand in many of the activist efforts
dealing with Africa. The Service Committee made its first connections in
Southern Africa in 1932. During that visit AFSC's delegates were hosted for a
time by Max Yergan, then a Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) official
based in South Africa. Despite many years of internal struggle over the
efficacy of sanctions and divestment, as well as the challenge to pacifism
posed by solidarity with liberation movements engaged in armed struggle, AFSC
helped to foster the cooperation needed for a decentralized, locally led
movement to be successful. Heretofore most historians of anti-apartheid
activism have underplayed the centrality of AFSC's contributions to the
anti-apartheid struggle. No Easy Victories helps to remedy this oversight
by establishing that the Service Committee, through its talented staff,
international network, and local U.S. offices, spread the message of the
movement to many places that would otherwise not have been as connected to
Africa's struggles.
A common thread that runs through No Easy Victories is the emphasis on the
role of activist media in the production of political culture. The stories of
Southern Africa Magazine and Africa News Service provide insight into an era
when the now anachronistic tools of the landline telephone, tape recorder, and
photocopier were essential to disseminating information often omitted by the
mainstream media. In addition, Robert Van Lierop recounts the production and
distribution of his 1972 film on Mozambique, "A Luta Continua.". These
examples of grassroots media helping to build political movements offer
inspirational models for activists to emulate in a time when the technological
options are more bountiful.
Of the many documents and commentaries from movement participants, including
Alphaeus Hunton, Julian Bond. and Walter Rodney, the essay "How I Learned
African History from Reggae" by Angela Marie Walters, a student of co-editor
Lisa Brock, stands out. Walters recounts growing up in New Mexico, isolated
from Africa and African Americans yet connected to diasporic concerns through
the recorded works of musicians from Jamaica. Although brief mentions of the
1986 _Sun City_ album and a section on Miriam Makeba by Gail Hovey are
included, popular culture as a crucial venue for spreading and strengthening
support for Africa is not analyzed.
It is important to remember that at the height of the anti-apartheid
convergence, activists understood that in order for Americans to be moved to
action an issue must gain media coverage and then amplification through
popular culture. The 1984 Thanksgiving eve arrests and subsequent year-long
picketing of the South African embassy, through which TransAfrica launched the
Free South Africa Movement, stands as the textbook example of how to time and
execute a demonstration to maximize media coverage. Books, music, and movies
about apartheid proved elemental in swaying public opinion and increasing the
impact of the anti-apartheid movement on American political culture.
Publication of this book comes at a moment when a leading contender for the
American presidency is the offspring of one of the Kenyan students who studied
in the United States through the efforts of the African-American Student
Foundation directed by ACOA activist Cora Weiss. Barack Obama's first foray
into political activism, which he recounts in his autobiography, came when he
spoke at an anti-apartheid demonstration during his undergraduate days. The
complex connections that have obliged recent U.S. presidents to travel to
Africa and produced a presidential contender with African roots make the
history that Minter, Hovey, and Cobb's book chronicles even more vital.
At a time when a generational divide may be re-emerging in American politics
it is important that No Easy Victories includes testimonials from activists
in their twenties who, too young to have supported the independence struggle
or to have been active in the anti-apartheid movement, are building on the
activist heritage that _No Easy Victories_ elaborates. Along with Connie
Field's recent documentary film _Have You Heard From Johannesburg: Apartheid
and The Club of The West_ (2006), this book makes the story of American
concern for Africa accessible to students while providing sources useful to
scholars and activists. The book's creators have established a website at
htpp://www.noeasyvictories.org to facilitate ongoing discussion of the
questions raised by their work. While there are still no easy victories in
sight in the struggle for justice and peace in Africa, the struggle does
continue, building on the legacy of shared objectives that have been
transformational for Americans and Africans alike.
Copyright (c) 2008 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits
the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online.
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