Course on
Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace, Part 9
Democracy is Ours
This part is the second last in the present series on
Anti-Imperialism, Peace, and Socialism. This part is designed to invite
comrades to reflect upon the place of the anti-Imperialist struggle within the
entirety of world history.
That is why Issa Shivji’s address on The Struggle for Democracy and Culture (linked below) is used. It
explicitly and correctly claims, on behalf of the national-liberation and
anti-colonial struggle, that for the time being this struggle carries the
banner of progress for the whole world.
For a long time past, and into the future, until such time
as the struggle for socialism itself becomes once again the principal one, the
National Democratic Revolutions taken together constitute the main vehicle for
human progress, bearing and rescuing all that is noble and fine in humanity.
The bourgeoisie is a thieving class and it will steal the
clothes of the revolutionaries without any hesitation if it sees the smallest,
or the most temporary, advantage in doing so. The Imperialist bourgeoisie
wishes to reverse the appearance of its shameful past and of its hopeless
future. It wishes to claim the moral superiority that the liberation movement
has, and steal it.
Issa Shivji, the revolutionary Dar-es-Salaam intellectual,
shows very clearly how the monstrous fraud is attempted. The constant droning
about “good governance” is the extreme of hypocrisy, coming as it does from the
worst oppressors in history, the force that has taken oppression to the ends of
the earth – Imperialism. Read Shivji. He tells it well. But also note the
hypocritical machinations of our present South African anti-communists,
including but not limited to the DA. If you did not know better, you could
start to believe from what you read that it was liberal whites who liberated
South Africa from the old regime.
The struggle for democracy is ours, not theirs. The struggle
for freedom is ours. We are the humanists now. We, the liberationists, are the
principal creators of human history and we have been for many decades past. The
20th Century was the liberation century and the first anti-Imperial century.
That was when we overtook the others in politics, in morality, and in
philosophy - but we were only starting.
In the 21st Century we will finish the job, and finish with
Imperialism altogether.
- The above is to introduce the original reading-text: The Struggle for Democracy and Culture, 2003, Shivji.
- To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.
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