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Synthesizing Anti-Colonial Ideologies: Biko, Fanon, Che Guevara, Said, Ho Chi & Lumumba

By Abdusamaad (Sam) Karani

 “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor  is the mind of the oppressed.”

Steve Biko

Post-colonially, much is to be learnt from essential anti-colonial thinkers to help navigate a future free from the inhumane legacy of European colonialism. History shows that the past is not easily forgotten. However, pressing issues such as poverty and the lingering effects of colonialism do not always occupy people’s minds. For many, the demands of daily life take precedence, causing the impact of colonialism to be overlooked. Yet, people are occasionally jolted from their comfort zones, mainly when a significant world event occurs that floods the media. Such moments often highlight the historical context behind these shocking issues, reminding us that nothing happens in isolation.

A living example of colonialism’s grievous impact is the Genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where already over 44,000 have been killed by the Israel genocidaire. It is a brutal reminder that genocides are not restricted to the history books. Karani (2023) indicated in “Genocide 2023” that this evil of wanton killings has more to do with Europeans conquering colonialism’s legacy of appropriating land from the Indigenous and “giving” to Jews for an Israeli state through the Balfour Declaration (explained further in the box below):

This was giving away land (charitably):

  1. Fromthe first party  (the Indigenous people),
  2. by asecond party (without the moral or legal authority),
  3. to athird party (a politically chosen group for misguided political reasons.)

This criminal act of arbitrarily giving land away to its politically chosen group is unmatched in supremacy, theft, and vain arrogance of European Western colonialism. Nothing illustrates criminal theft and impunity more unjustly! There is no earthly accountability of human justice for the Balfour Act Declaration, an arbitrary act of awarding land away from powerless Indigenous people. This criminal act consequently created problems for generations, if not centuries.

The Balfour Declaration’s political significance is its moral and legal impunity that military power allowed European domination to make arbitral decisions about other people’s lands. The moral imperative was never a consideration.

The criminal impunity of colonials, as the thesis of this essay, was given perspective by noted anticolonial writers and ideologues who advocated resistance against colonizers. They emphasized that the struggle would come at a high human cost but must be undertaken as the alternative is to accept criminality and live in servitude to a greater military power. Resistance is an act guided by revanchism.

The Balfour Declaration

The Balfour Declaration, issued by the British Government in 1917, was a public statement made during the First World War. In this declaration, the British expressed their support for the establishment of a “national home” for the Jewish people in Palestine, which was then an Ottoman region with a tiny Jewish population. Parenthetically, no European nation offered them a home after centuries of repression. This declaration of intent involved safeguarding Palestinian rights, but it was without guarantees. As history proved to the contrary, this so-called “guarantee” was simply misleading, nefarious with malintent, and blatant lying to the world to secure political credibility for the Europeans portrayed as “fair” people.

The Balfour Declaration was a letter of intent sent on November 2, 1917, by Arthur James Balfour, the Foreign Secretary at the time. The letter was addressed to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the Jewish community in England. Ironically, Rothschild was not an elected leader and had no legal authority or official portfolio in this matter. He was ultimately a community member, an unofficial, wealthy and entitled representative of the Zionist Jewish community (a British banker, politician and a Zionist leader). It is concerning that the Foreign Secretary of the British government believed it was appropriate to address a significant colonization issue in a letter to a private ethnic community member.

Post Colonial Legacy

Post-colonial nations continue to illustrate this legacy of systemic racism in the consequential dialectics of power relations and the long-term effects of European dominion over the colonized. Moreover, the United States of America (US) is the most prominent post-colonial nation.

Karani (2023) alluded that military movements such as Hamas and Hezbollah are expressions of political resistance to Israeli Zionist domination. Moreover, their right to political and military resistance against an occupier is legitimate as a universal right of any Indigenous to fight to take their land back (revanchism). It is common for freedom fighters to be termed and maligned as terrorists, disregarding their inherent right to revanchism and self-determination.

Differential Use of Words “Settlers” versus “Conquerors”

Karani (2023, p. 19) indicated that the language used by historians projected the embedded mindset of primarily white writers who have successfully sanitized this conquering aspect and “plaintively” painted the issue as vulnerable white settlers only wanting to settle for a better future, that is, immigration versus domination. The success of this sanitization can be judged as almost all writers, including not white writers, in the post-colonial era continued use of the word “settlers.” Hence, the term “settler colonist” became embedded as a mindset despite it being a gross misnomer diverting from an alternate truth. Regardless, the European colonials had little intention of “settling” in harmony with the Indigenous wherever they were globally encountered.

To reiterate, this wrongful use of the term “settlers” has deeply taken root in the predominant literature on colonialism as an embedded mindset, including right-thinking anticolonial writers. This is entirely due to the success of white supremacy and its media sanitizing theft through the power of words that aimed to distract the impact of its criminality and make it akin to regular migration.

Anti-colonial ideologues

This arbitrary act of grouping people as separate and “distinct” groups that cannot and should not share common social space and “never the twain will meet”  gained great favour with the conquering colonists. For instance, Apartheid South Africa successfully separated the world ethos and experiences of the diverse groups of people in South Africa. It became cemented in both the mind and political spaces, literally and figuratively. The black people were invisible human beings as an intent of the Apartheid ideology based on Eugenics. (Eugenics was the study of arranging reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of desirable, heritable characteristics regarded as desirable and the creation of a superior person group  – white Europeans). This field of Eugenics was primarily developed by Sir Francis Galton (a British and the inventor of behavioural eugenics during the Victorian era as a method of  “improving” the human race and subsequently widely discredited during the 20th century.) Moreover, it was adopted as a doctrine by the Nazis, Zionists, and the Apartheid “prophet” Hendrick Verwoerd in South African style. Karani (2023) indicated that Verwoerd proclaimed his ideological beliefs as a social Darwinist and Eugenicist, which he imbibed as a white supremacist ideology when studying at the University of Berlin.

In Apartheid South Africa, the daily social spaces did not make an amicable meeting ground for everyday social discourse. The unfortunate net result was that people got used to this abnormal separation of people as a social norm of living. The Eugenics doctrine made it possible to justify their inhuman and genocidal treatment of the “wretched of the earth.”

Brief Synthesis: Anti-Colonial Writers And Ideologues

As a historical truth, anti-colonial ideologues believed that no colonial power would willingly relinquish any conquered territory and that they would resort to military oppression against resistance movements. As a result, violence became a common element for both the conquering colonists and the conquered.

It is impossible to adequately analyze and explain the ideas of the chosen anti-colonial Ideologies in one essay. They are noteworthy subjects for an academic treatise. This essay attempts an introductory and brief synthesis of the anti-colonial ideas: How to overcome the long-lasting violent legacy of conquering colonists and the oppressive colonization of the mind.

The ideologues chosen (not white or European) are exceptionally well known for their works and ideas: Stephen Bantu Biko (South African), Frantz Fanon (French Afro-Caribbean), Ernesto “Che” Guevara (Argentinian), Edward Wadie Said (Palestinian), Ho Chi Minh (Vietnamese), and Patrice Lumumba (Congolese).

Stephen Bantu Biko 

Biko was born in King William’s Town, South Africa, on December 18, 1946, and tragically died at the incredibly early age of 30 years. He was murdered while in police custody, sustaining severe brain injuries due to torture and beating by the security police in collaboration with two white physicians who were negligent in protecting their patient.

Biko focused on colonialism’s profound impact on the mindset and behaviours of the conquered and the continuation of this impact. A common Biko quote is, “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” (Note the use of the word “weapon” .)

The colonized’s task was to liberate themselves as free and independent people, and the process was implicitly understood as confronting the violent oppressor. However, overcoming colonialism’s insidious impact required freeing the mind (decolonization). Post-colonially, it is more than a revolutionary struggle to be rid of the conqueror. Biko postulated that the decolonization of the mind is intrinsic to BCM’s doctrine of liberation and freedom. It meant freedom from the colonized way of thinking, freedom from being entrapped as “non-whites,” and becoming proud as “black people.” Moreover, liberation meant reversion to their previous selves and culture and retaining their previous civilization before becoming infected with the colonial pestilence. Therefore, as a priority, the mind needs liberation to mitigate its enslavement of the self  (Karani, 2023, p. 9).

With the advent of Biko and BCM, there was a rethinking of what it meant to be white and the dialectics of power relations between white-empowered people and “non-white.” Words have a power of their own, such as the term “settler colonialists.” While publicly repudiating violence and law-breaking, Biko probably accepted that armed resistance had a role.

Franz Fanon

Frantz Omar Fanon (born in 1925 in the French colony of Martinique) died from double pneumonia on 6 December 1961 at the early age of thirty-six. A psychiatrist and political philosopher, Fanon became influential in the struggle against post-colonialism and was the most critical writer in an age of anti-colonial liberation struggle for the sake of revanchism.

Fanon believed that colonialism must be destroyed. He joined the Algerian rebels, with whom he shared neither a language nor a religion and wrote a series on the necessity of revolt. Fanon’s basic assumption was that colonialism was a machine of “naked violence” and could only be overcome when confronted with greater violence. Moreover, Fanon resolved that Blackness was the “other” as a forced identity.

Fanon is arguably the best-known of all anti-colonial ideologues and writers. Moreover, he has wildly succeeded in changing the narrative of the devasting influence of colonialism and that the oppressed (“wretched of the earth”) only choice was to resist the post-colonial legacy. Of note is that initially, Fanon misguidedly fought as a soldier of the French colonial army, realized the significance of his error, and then partook on the side of the Algerian military revolution against the French. Hence, the only revolutionary on both sides of colonial violence.

Patrice Lumumba

Patrice Émery Lumumba was born Isaïe Tasumbu Tawosa on July 2, 1925, and died on January 17, 1961, also at 36 years (coincidentally the same age as Fanon). He was a Congolese politician and independence leader who served as the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo following the May 1960 election.

Lumumba’s death was due to his association and virulent anti-colonialism ideology when captured en route by state authorities of President Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, with the help of Belgian partisans, tortured and executed by the separatist Katanga authorities of Moïse Tshombe. He was seen as a martyr for the pan-African movement.

Lumumba was not only a vocal critic of colonialism but sought to unite his country against foreign exploitation and colonialism and the need for revolutionary change. In 1958, he met nationalists from across the African continent in Accra. He asked the independent African states to meet in Léopoldville to unite their efforts. His moves alarmed many, particularly the Western powers. Lumumba made enemies that proved mortal to him.

Edward Wadie Said

Said was born on November 1, 1935, in Jerusalem, September 25, 2003, and died at the age of 67 years.

Said was a prominent Palestinian American Literary critic, philosopher, political activist, and founder of postcolonial studies. He examined literature that considered social and cultural politics and was an outspoken proponent of the political rights of the Palestinian people and the creation of an independent Palestinian state. He was especially critical of U.S. and Israeli policy in the region, and this led him into numerous, often bitter, polemics with supporters of those two countries. Said became highly critical of the Oslo peace process between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel in the early 1990s.

Said argued that by minimizing the rich diversity of Southwest Asian and North African peoples, Orientalists turn them into a “contrasting image” against which the West is culturally superior. The people of the Middle East are often portrayed as weak, barbaric, and irrational.

Said argued very strongly for changing the embedded mindset and decolonizing the mind to completely reframe the narrative of how the “other people” are portrayed by the West.

Ho Chi Minh 

Ho Chi Minh (born May 19, 1890, Hoang Tru, Vietnam, French Indochina—died September 2, 1969, Hanoi, North Vietnam) was the founder of the Indochina Communist Party (1930) and its successor, the Viet-Minh (1941), and president from 1945 to 1969 of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). As the leader of the Vietnamese nationalist movement for nearly three decades, Ho was one of the prime movers of the post-World War II anti-colonial movement in Asia and one of the most influential communist leaders of the 20th century.

Ho Chi Minh led a long and ultimately successful military campaign to make Vietnam independent. His seminal role is reflected in the fact that Vietnam’s largest city is named after him. He fought first against the Japanese, then the French colonial power and then the US-backed South Vietnamese. Therefore, as learnt from the failed USA war in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh’s military struggle became a template for war against colonials and the value of underground tunnelling to protect against aerial bombing.

Che Guevara

(Parenthetically, the Che Guevara t-shirt with his famous visage is a worldwide phenomenon, with people adopting it to identify with the struggle against colonialism.)

Che Guevara (born June 14, 1928, in Rosario, Argentina) died at the early age of 39. He was a theoretician and tactician of guerrilla warfare, a prominent communist figure in the Cuban Revolution (1956–59), and a guerrilla leader in South America. After his execution by the Bolivian army, he was regarded as a martyred hero by generations of “leftists” worldwide, and his visage became an icon of leftist radicalism and anti-imperialism.

Moreover, Che Guevara completed his medical studies in 1953. (Both Biko and Guevara  had medical backgrounds and were therefore familiar with the value of differential diagnosis of the problem and the “excision” of the cancer on the body.)  He spent many years travelling in Latin America, and his observations of the great poverty of the masses contributed to his eventual conclusion that the only solution lay in a violent revolution. He came to look upon Latin America not as a collection of separate nations but as Pan South America as a cultural and economic entity, the liberation of which would require an intercontinental strategy.

Conclusion

The history of complex issues is complicated; no issue is more complicated than the post-colonial legacy. Nonetheless, the main lessons are that conquering colonists and colonialism personify violence that begets violence for the previously oppressed. Decolonizing the mind is intrinsic to freedom, which will encounter violence in the act of resistance. Moreover, no greater criminality exists as a collective of European colonialists and its continued legacy. The conquering colonists’ moral and legal impunity continues.

Most of the chosen anti-colonial writers and minds died young (Biko at 30, Fanon and Lumumba at 36, and Guevara at 39). The longest-lived were Said (67) and Ho Chi (79). Moreover, they all focused on colonialism’s profound impact on the mindset and behaviours of the conquered and the continuation of this impact. Furthermore, military resistance is implicit against the post-colonial legacy, and the architect of resistance was  Ho Chi Minh’s military struggle, which served as a template for war against colonials and the value of underground tunnelling to protect against aerial bombing.

Frantz Fanon (1961), Che Guevara (2022), Patrice Lumumba (2022), Ben Ahmed Bella (2022), and others illustrated this violent process of revolutions. Furthermore, Fanon, Biko, and others postulated that the decolonization of the mind is intrinsic to their doctrine of liberation and freedom.

The resistance process to the post-colonial legacy is the decolonization of the mind and resistance by force with the implicit understanding that it will be met with preplanned greater violence. This preplanned violence is clearly understood by Jassat (2024) who explained that “… As if on cue, while celebratory fireworks (freedom from the Assad regime) lit up the skyline in Damascus, the (Israeli) Zionist regime added its own nightmarish glows via thunderous bombing sprees with the collusion of its violent oppressors (US “partnered with Israel, Gulf monarchies, Turkey, and other NATO states to wage a regime change campaign targeting Assad.”) Hence, there is no straightforward way forward!

Karani, (Sam) Abdusamaad (2023): Essay “Genocide 2023”. Israel: Greatest Modern Day Genocidaire. Palestinian Genocide is Evil Personified. Published by Media Review Network (2024). March 2024.https://mediareviewnet.com/2024/03/abdusamaad-sam-karani-genocide-2023-israel-greatest-modern-day-genocidaire-palestinian-genocide-is-evil-personified/ Essay is freely downloadable from www.samkarani.com

Ibid

Karani, (Sam) Abdusamaad (2023): “The Rats Had Never Left: Conquering Colonists & Systemic Racism. Decolonize Your Mind.” Friesen Press, 2023.

Ibid

Said, E. (1978): “Orientalism”. Dewey Decimal

Jassat, I (2024): “Invasion and Occupation of Syria Poses Challenge to Country’s Sovereignty under HTS.”  Media Review Network, https://mediareviewnet.com/2024/12/invasion-and-occupation-of-syria-poses-challenge-to-countrys-sovereignty-under-hts/

SAM KARANI
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