This article was originally published in early November 2025, in issue #2 of International Marxism, international political journal of International Socialist Alternative. Click here to subscribe or to buy a copy of the full issue.
The death tolls of the genocide in Gaza (reportedly well over 63,000) and of the Russia-Ukraine war (estimated at over 100,000) are both dwarfed by the huge losses being claimed by wars and conflicts in Africa.
Painfully, this fact is chronically under-reported and knocked off the front page headlines. Africa has been ravaged by wars and conflicts since it was hijacked into the world economy in the 15th century by European slave traders, who introduced guns and gunpowder for use as weapons in slave raids. The most “daring” European slave traders became slave raiders – shooting, capturing and carting away Africans to be sold and used as free laborers in plantations in America and in the Caribbean.
European settlers colonized the Cape coast in 1652. The Dutch East India Company, led by Jan Van Riebeeck, laid the basis for all the wars, conflict and hunger for land of the Mfecane (the Zulu word for “crushing” or scattering). This was a period of huge forced displacement, military conflict, colonization and state formation which paved the way for the Great Trek of 1834 – a march inroad by the Boer population (Dutch speaking settlers) from the British-run Cape Colony into the interior.
This was followed up by the 19th century “Scramble” and partition of Africa which saw the European powers of Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, and Portugal employing the advantage of the “Maxim and Gatling gun” to subjugate and conquer the whole of Africa.
Colonialism’s Bloody Legacy
Colonialism in all its facets was war and violence. War and violence were crowned with the whole paraphernalia of the bourgeois state, displacing the existing feudal structure with the coercive instrument of maximum force. Once this was achieved, it imposed a laissez faire economic framework that granted the colonialists the freedom, by every means necessary, to exploit the resources and wealth of the colonized territories. All this to deliver raw materials by the cheapest possible means to service the industrial west and its need for an ever-expanding market for manufactured goods.
The wind of change and flag independence that followed the colonial revolutions after World War II did little or nothing to change the situation of the masses. Colonialism, both in how it was achieved and in the economic structures it established, created the basis for unending conflict.
It did so via the outright imposition of an elitist colonial superstructure of capitalist dependency, which continued to guarantee the exploitation of the wealth of newly independent states to feed the greed of foreign capital for super-profits. Post-independence, the emerging African elites were absorbed into this structure, at the expense of the working masses.
Power was only willingly handed over once the imperialists were confident that their continued pillaging of Africa’s wealth and resources would not be disrupted or displaced. People were divided up against each other. Borders were drawn up arbitrarily. Different peoples and competing political entities previously not contained within the same geographical structures were pushed together by force. This was done without any prior consultation or discussion. The only question that mattered to the imperialist powers was whether it suited their interests – particularly their ongoing pursuit of raw materials and exploitation of human labour. This created many long-running and monstrous disputes around the national question.
Indeed, the greater cause of the unending wars remains the domination and monopoly of the wealth of society by a few, directly imposing mass misery and deprivation on the working masses. Africa’s ruling elites remain tied to the apron strings of financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank, which continue to dictate economic policy and direction. While feathering the luxurious existence of the ruling elites, this has created a huge indebtedness across Africa, currently totaling “over $1 trillion, with debt servicing costs of $163 billion per year.” (Tricontinental magazine)
Debt Trap
This has created a cyclical, inescapable debt trap within the framework of capitalism. This trap has been the pretext for the implementation of austerity packages, of social cuts and of economic deregulation from the early 1980s onwards. This has further weakened the largely underdeveloped means of production, which serves nothing else than to continue to extract wealth from a cash-crunched African economy to tender to the quest for profits by creditors in the West and increasingly in China. A consequence of this is the existence of a huge army of the unemployed in nearly all the 54 countries in Africa, providing a ready human force for conflicts, directly linked to rivalry among competing members of the elites in the battle for power and control over the wealth of society.
There is no better example than Sudan, where currently two military topnotch Generals – Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhanand and Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also referred to as “Hemedti” – are locked in a struggle to be the overall lord of Sudan, with disastrous consequences. The United Nations has referred to this war as the “largest humanitarian crisis ever.” One hundred and fifty thousand have been left dead within a period of two years and 12 million people have been displaced.
This is not counting the cost of the civil war that resulted in the emergence of Southern Sudan as an independent state in 2011 that left 400,000 dead. It also does not count the Darfur massacre of 2003-2005 in which the Janjaweed militia killed an estimated 300,000 people. In Sudan, every war sows the seed for a new conflict. At the center of these conflicts is not merely the question of power, but control over land and the mineral resources trapped underneath the soil. Imperialist and regional powers aiming for access to power and resources are involved in supporting either side. In the current conflict, UAE is a main backer of the RSF and Egypt the Sudanese army.
War for Resources
On the heels of Sudan is the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which since 1998 is undergoing “one of the deadliest conflicts since World War II, with over 6 million lives lost” (panzifoundation.org). Imperialism was directly active in the arrest and killing of the first elected prime minister of the DRC, Patrice Lumumba. This was then followed by a coup that brought about the 27 year-long tyrannical rule of Mobutu Sese Seko, whose overthrow required another war from October 1996 to May 1997.
With only a year’s respite after that, another war was fully on from August 1998 to July 2003. Regional armies from Angola, Zimbabwe, Libya, Uganda and Rwanda were all involved. The M23 forces involved in today’s war have their roots in the last conflict, with backing from Rwanda. Today, they have become a force of their own, laying claim to the territories in the east of the country and control over the mines and cobalt. Recently the Trump regime attempted to broker a peace deal between Rwanda and the Congo, but no peace ensued. Trump is just nosing around on behalf of U.S. imperialism for a share of the huge looting of wealth in the mines.
Rwanda – which drew worldwide attention in 1994 with the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis – is also in the mix in Congo indirectly. The war in Congo more than anything else is a war for gold, and for the huge mineral deposits of cobalt, tin, tungsten and tantalum, which are essential ingredients in the making of smartphones, solar panels, and some electrical items. And everyone wants a piece of the pie.
Wars in the Sahel
The Sahel region which stretches from the border of Libya down northern Nigeria has proved to be fertile for insurgency. Armed groups with a mix of Islamic fundamentalism are drawing inspiration from one another to carve an influence for themselves. They have been aided in their revolt by the climatic factor of desertification that has seriously affected cattle rearing herder communities, who conduct their business on the basis of open and grass grazing for their animals. The claiming of this right for access to free grass and open grazing led directly into clashes with crop planting communities. Without dismissing this as simplistic, we must admit into reckoning the fact that the conflicts in this region have also been a cover for displacing communities to allow for the treasures of minerals to be freely mined.
The Sahel region is therefore a leading theater of wars in Africa that cannot be ignored. It has provided the pretext for a new wave of coup d’états in Africa. In countries like Mali and Burkina Faso, the coups were a direct reaction of military officers against what was perceived as the halfhearted non-commitment by the civilian wing of the ruling elites to an effective military prosecution of the war against the insurgency groups. Other countries like Guinea and Niger have since followed through with successful coups of their own.
Interestingly the emergence of Ibrahim Traoré has given oxygen to the resurrection of a supposedly Sankara-like ghost into the corridors of power. (Thomas Sankara was a Pan-Africanist revolutionary who served as the President of Burkina Faso from 1983 until his assassination in 1987).
While this is not the focus here, it is important to note that a wave of anti-French imperialism has fuelled protest and anger, leading to the withdrawal of French troops in some countries. Meanwhile Russia, represented by the Wagner group of mercenaries, and as well as China have come into the Sahel posing as military experts and not hiding the fact that they are there for business as fronts and contractors for arms deals.
The question of transforming society, and indeed fundamentally improving the welfare of the working masses in the Sahel is not just a matter of winning the wars against the armed groups or sending away French troops. It is not merely a military question. And more importantly it cannot be resolved behind the backs of the working masses.
To repeat the Sankara error of reducing the working masses to spectators will only worsen the tragedy. War in whatever form it takes is generally a smokescreen for the boots of capital to continue to ride roughshod over human existence – for some few individuals to wield the power of life and death, while at the same time accumulating profit. War itself is an industry that enriches and feeds the greed for super profits by merchants of the arms trade. It is another means for capital to make inroads and impose its order on the population. This is why nearly all the wars are all directly connected to a question of power. Weapons are transformed into the dominant tool of power.
Militarism and Class Rule
Marxists however continue to insist that power is merely a means of sustaining class rule. And arms could directly play a role in attaining it. Militarism is therefore a central component of capitalism. No one can seek to truly oppose it without fully coming out against the class rule of the bourgeoisie and its continued domination and monopoly of the wealth and resources of society.
Anything short of an organized open class war with merchants of capital, both locally and internationally, will not fundamentally swing the pendulum to the side of the working masses.
Mass Displacement
Forty million Africans have been displaced from their homes as result of the many conflicts this past decade. The figure for displaced people in Nigeria alone is close to four million. This is a disaster of huge proportions. The number of dead is now 350,000 from the Boko Haram insurgency in Northern Nigeria. Of course, mention must also be made of the 1967-70 civil war, which led to the deaths of 100,000 military personnel and of two million civilians on the side of the Biafra enclave.
So from country to country the wars have not fundamentally solved or resolved the pre-existing conditions. All this fails to include the undocumented millions of victims in each of the 54 countries in Africa that are done away with by the “peaceful means” of the exploitative drive for profit, extraction of mineral resources, corruption, poverty, homelessness, slavery wages and mass unemployment. These are all the consequences of the undeveloped means of production – a product of the blind drive of local and foreign capital for profit at the expense of the wellbeing of the working masses.
Capitalism’s Murderous Foundations in Slavery
Capitalism in the guarantee and cover it gives to a minority to dominate the wealth of society is the root cause of the wars in Africa both through its physical and “peaceful war” of shortchanging human life by exploitation. The whole history of capitalism from its early inroad into Africa through the European slave trade has been one of outright war, pillage and murder.
The Zong ship incident, which involved the massacre in 1781 of over 130 Africans who were thrown overboard by the crew of the Zong Ship, with a Liverpool based slave trading enterprise winning a court judgement allowing them to claim compensation from insurance for the loss of “cargo,” represented a ruling from the courts of England that “the murder of enslaved Africans was legal”. (“The story of the Zong slave ship: a mass murder masquerading as an insurance claim,” The Guardian, January 19, 2021)
In some ways, this is the very principle on which capitalism is founded. The misnamed “legitimate trade” in cash crop became the very means by which colonialism itself was imposed on the Africans. When, as in the case of Niger Delta, Africans resisted that Europeans were to define and determine the terms of trade and who they must sell to, guns were brought in to compel Africans to submit. This ultimately led to conquest to allow Europeans to fully dictate the terms of trade to the advantage of the colonialists. (Michael Crowder, The Story of Nigeria, 4thedition, London, 1978)
Of course, as already pointed out above, so-called flag independence amounted to nothing more than a guise for the same exploitation to continue. Bourgeois democracy and its “constitutional rule” has served no other purpose than to provide for tiny numbers of Africans to be fully welcomed into the upper class. This pattern is clearly repeated in South Africa, with the ANC losing its majority in parliament with practically no improvement in the living conditions of the Black majority of the working masses outside the fact that a few have been accommodated into the class above. Capitalism and its crude neocolonial brand – alongside its smokescreen of bourgeois democracy – fails to meet the needs of the working masses. This is the very root cause of war; the mass deprivation that capitalism brings about at one pole of the society to enable some few to exclusively monopolize the wealth of society for themselves.
Role of the Working Masses
Only the organized force of the working masses can successfully take on capitalism and end its rule. Indeed, only this force, organized in a mass struggle for socialist change, can end the wars and commence an investment of the resources of society to meet the healthy needs of all. Only this force can organize production in a way to safeguard the planet as opposed to piling up arms to be able to dominate over another group of humans.
Humanity has not learned anything from the first and second world wars. And as capitalism hits its lowest rung, the crisis of stagflation and tariff wars internationally re-propel it back to its regular beat and rhythm of making profit through a re-division of areas of influence. For the emerging new power blocs of Chinese imperialism, the reemerging Russia and the U.S. led NATO axis, war currently in its proxy form is on the agenda. Indeed for U.S. imperialism, militarism provides it with an advantage over China, its main economic rival, to assert its world dominance. Africa will no doubt serve as a field for this to be demonstrated.
The working masses can however draw inspiration from the Russian revolution of 1917, with the Bolsheviks providing the necessary leadership to turn an imperialist war into a class war to overthrow the Tsarist monarchy. War against war can only be posed from the point of view of class. A class war to end capitalism, the working masses must look only to themselves. This means workers breaking away from relying on any wing of the ruling class or imperialism, and independently organizing politically to wrestle the power with which to democratically govern society through the organ of a workers’ and poor farmers’ government. This must vest power in itself in parliament based on elected representatives of the working masses, placed on the average wage of a skilled worker and subject to immediate recall. Without smashing the existing bourgeois state structure, capitalism cannot be smashed.
Traoré
This explains the cautionary approach, even with all of the rhetoric and the weakened state of French imperialism in the former colonies of French West Africa. Currently, no practical step is taken to diffuse power back and directly to the working masses. Ibrahim Traoré (ruler of Burkina Faso since 2022) and co continue to base themselves on the same bourgeois state structure – albeit the military complex. While commending the seemingly progressive steps, examples abound of individuals who have even gone further than he has, indeed Sankara serves as a good example here. Only the organized force of the working masses, seeking to struggle for political power, can fully take on capitalism and overthrow it.
The overall lessons and collapse of Stalinism must every step of the way be taken into consideration. Marxists call for the nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy, under the democratic control of the working masses. This must be combined, however, with seeking to organize internationally, starting with a call for solidarity across Africa, but also going beyond that.
More than ever before, the need for a working class party to consistently put forward the above program of the Movement for a Socialist Alternative manifesto – for a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and landlordism – exists from one country to another. Countries like South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Senegal, Cote D’Ivoire, Kenya etc., must provide the lead in this direction given the huge potential of the working masses, which has repeatedly been demonstrated in strikes, protests and other class-based actions against the ruling class. There have been big struggles against capitalist policies of deregulation and privatization. But nor can we leave out small countries, as the examples in the Sahel region and the increased anti-French Imperialist sentiment demonstrates the possibility that the “chain” of capitalism and imperialism can be broken at its “weakest link.”
However, the task for the revolutionary transformation of society cannot be left to a clique of so-called “Radical Officers.” It is directly that of the working masses in their organized numbers. In the same vein, it is not a task that can be accomplished within the bourgeois entrapment, or merely within the confines of trade union struggles and agitations. Such movements must be organized despite and in spite of the dominance of compromised bureaucratic leaderships of the trade unions, whose majority are dyed in the wood lackeys of the ruling elites. Socialists, working-class activists, and rank and file active members of the working class must take up this task as well.
It is only a matter of time. The working masses, even on their own timescale, will draw the lessons from their struggles against the unending attacks of capitalism. With the help of the active intervention of organized Marxist forces, workers will arrive at the necessary socialist consciousness with which to organize against capitalism. This is why Marxists, working-class activists, and rank-and-file members of the working class must persist in providing the lead in agitations for the building of a revolutionary party.
Photo: Jason Patinkin
