fugitive notes

The Orientalist image, once mobilized among other tropes to promote European colonization in favor of the suppression of the Arab slave trade, used to this day apologetically to play down the atrocities committed, equally misrepresents Africa, Islam, and their fundamental connection. In his two volume book series Beyond Bilal, Mustafa Briggs traces and emphasizes the pivotal roles played by Africa and Black Muslims, and corrects the historically inaccurate images of Arabs and traditional Islam that both arabized peoples and americanized Hollywood portrayals perpetuate. From the skin color of the very first man and woman, Adam and Hawa, to the ethnic background of Africans and Arabs populating the Arabian peninsula, among them many other saints and companions of Muhammad ﷺ, as well as words originating from various North-East African languages directly mentioned in the Qur’an, and the ancient homeland of King Najashi, who gave refuge to the first Hijrah of the Muslims and thus made Axum and the Africa continent the first place where Islam could be practiced freely—there is no history of Islam without Africa. Deeply embedded in the intellectually and spiritually steadfast West African Islamic tradition, Briggs skillfully leverages his proficiency in Arabic to reveal observations documented in the Tarikh al-Fattash and other contemporary sources about the recognition that African Muslims gained internationally.

The popularity that his lectures and books quickly gained, speak nonetheless with a feeling that many Black Muslims share, especially in the West. Although Islamic history should point in the opposite direction, anti-Blackness is deeply entrenched in countries like Turkey, Lebanon, the UAE, and of course North Africa, and many Black African Muslims have faced everything from prejudices to hostility from Muslims of other races.

As a concept, the colonial idea of L’Islam Noir, that Africans either don’t understand Islam and only emulate it, or intuitively mix it with their own belief-systems, has lead to the view that Black people can’t be real Muslims—even though, like so many other things, they’ve been shaping the faith from day one, only to be overlooked, marginalized and have their authenticity questioned.

Most importantly, while Africans were prominently present in pre-Islamic Arabia, even when enslaved or conquered, Arabs themselves were much closer to our modern idea of Blackness than a regular Hollywood actor, and even long before the advent of monotheism, Ancient Egypt had left trade posts along the shore of today’s Palestine. Even before modernity, cultures and civilizations would not develop in isolation. The first military campaigns of Muslims were thus directed towards other Arabs, and in Northern and Eastern Africa, the religion was at first spreading peacefully.

Connected through the Silk Road and links of the Indian Ocean trade, Islam spread early on as far down to Mozambique and the Comoros, but also further East. The Indian Ocean routes were used to transport slaves since antiquity, with the specific enslavement of East Africans predating Islam by centuries as well. Nonetheless, Islam intensified the mobility of peoples traversing the seas to study and trade. In addition to the earlier presence of Black traders and slaves in today’s India and Pakistan, East African Muslims were also part of military campaigns against Hindu armies. During some periods, tens of thousands of Africans thus migrated to Asia yearly. As Briggs explains, even the name of the contemporary Siddi community can be traced back to the honorific title Sayyid, that captains took on. In contrast to their marginalized position today, the 14th century saw the short-lived reign of an Abyssinian sultanate in the historical region Bengal, when East African slaves that had risen in rank within Jalaluddin Shah’s army revolted and took control of his empire.

In West Africa, Islam arrived mainly through trade, and even states where rulers would not convert often warranted the protection religious freedom, and recruited Muslims for the state administration. Consequentially, another crucial pillar of West African Islam was education. The universities of Qarrawiyyin and Timbuktu would not only teach the Arabic language and the memorization of the Qur’an, but also expand to a wide range of sciences in addition to the practical translation of scientific works, in turn enabling students to be in service to their communities. Testimony to the peaceful adoption of Islam in West Africa is given as well by African scholars like Uthman dan Fodio, who based his assessment on the writings of the medieval Amazigh anti-slavery theologian Sheikh Ahmad Baba. Al-Hajj Salim Suwari, a central figure of the clerical caste of Jahanke and Dyula traders further codified this tradition when he advocated for a steady devotion to seeking knowledge, discouraged open attempts of conversion and instead argued Muslims should lead by example through good character.

Nonetheless, prevalent anti-Blackness prompted many to rectify the image of Black Muslims. In the 11th and 14th century, Ibn Jawzi and Suyuti highlighted the importance of Black Sahaba. Their experiences emphasize the role played by the social and economic structure of the Arab peninsula in pre-Islamic times in consolidating early forms of anti-Blackness, and how Muhammad ﷺ countered any instance of discrimination based on race and ethnicity. The Black scholar Al-Jahiz, living in what is today Iraq, even bluntly titled his work The Superiority of the Blacks to the Whites, gathering evidence from historical events and relgious texts—ironically predating similar arguments found in the contemporary theology of the Nation of Islam.

In the following centuries, Islam spread from West and North Africa to Europe and eventually to the Caribbean and the Americas, as Muslims of any social status were captured and sold as slaves. When many of the colonies became aware of the abolitionist potential of plantation populations who despite different ethnicity and languages could at least rudimentary communicate in Arabic, had traditionally opposed slavery, in states like Fouta Toro or the Sokoto caliphate, and hence were also involved in many slave rebellions in the Americas, colonial powers advocated for a stricter suppression of Islam among slaves. While there exist narratives such as the writings of Omar ibn Said that reveal Christianity as a surface-level disguise beneath which Islam was still practiced, generations after generations many of the traditions were eventually lost. The revival would come through the inspiration of pan-African intellectuals such as Edward Wilmot Blyden of Liberia, in whose view Islam was more progressive and aligned with African traditions than colonial Christianity, or Sudanese-Egyptian journalist Dusé Mohamed Ali, who significantly influenced the young Marcus Garvey.

In addition to orthodox Islamic clerics like Sudanese Satti Majid who influenced Shaykh Dawood Faisal, who in turn established a mosque with his wife Khadija in their home in Harlem, Muhammad Sadiq of the Ahmadiyya began tailoring his sermons to African American people, reminding them of their African Islamic heritage and criticizing American racism. Sadiq was notably in contact with both the Nation of Islam and its precursor, the Moorish Temple of Science, both of which he supplied with religious texts.

Warith Deen Muhammad, son of the late NOI leader Elijah Muhammad, eventually lead about 100.000 members of his organisation to embrace orthodox Islam—establishing the largest Islamic institution in the Americas. While the NOI gained many of its early followers especially due to the efforts and popularity of Malik Shabazz (Malcolm X), Briggs demonstrates the depth and variety of American Islamic discourse outside of its mainstream representation.

Today, a bridge between African American Muslims and the West African tradition exists in form of the African-American Islamic Institute, established by Briggs’s mentor Sheikh Hassan Cisse, a grandson of Ibrahim Niasse, leader of the West African Tijaniyya. The institute, home to a school in Medina Baye, Senegal, welcomes African American children and families to immerse themselves in West African religious tradition and Senegalese culture.

This traditon has historically enabled the emergence of leading female scholars, who taught thousands and thousands of students, regardless of gender. Among them the founder of Qarrawiyyin, Fatima al-Fihriya, Khadija bint Muhammad al-Daymaniya, who taught the Imam of Fouta Toro, Abdul-Qadir Kane, and Usman dan Fodio’s daughter Nana Asma’u dan Fodio, a polyglot scholar and writer who expanded networks of female education and scholarship.

Mustafa Briggs skillfully balances his own engagement of scholars such as Rudolph Ware and Oumar Ousmane Kane, and his close reading of Arabic sources. Beyond Bilal is both a vital addition to discussions about Blackness in Islam, and Islam in Africa. Only a minor inconvenience but maybe a consequence of the lack of an established publisher, the visual appearance of the first volume’s first edition unfortunately displays a few small issues. The transliteration, is not always consistent, something that has been thoroughly worked on in the second volume as it seems, and at least in one case a paragraph breaks the page and runs over the page number.

Still, the work to publish these books on his own, supported by a small team, and the critical acclaim with which they were quickly met, speak to the importance and appeal of the topic. Most importantly, Briggs is open and honest when he feels that someone else might be better suited to answer certain questions, as is the case with the history of Islam in East Africa. Overall, readers could choose different paths to engage more deeply with specific histories, the interest in which should have been awakened by now.

The works of the already mentioned Oumar Ousmane Kane and Rudolph Ware, and scholars like Abdullah Hakim Quick, Fallou Ngom, Amina Wadud, Chanfi Ahmed, Abdul Sheriff or Shareef Muhammad would make valuable additions to any African or Islamic Studies collection.

Once, a Saudi Arabian scholar challenged Ibrahim Niasse and demanded him to instruct his followers to stop the practices of the Tariqa Tijaniyya. Shaykh Niasse simply asked him, if he knew, what the Sufi practice actually was, and to whom a greater authority should be given to speak on a matter: someone who knows of it, or someone who doesn’t?

Reviewed Works:

• Briggs, Mustafa (2022). Beyond Bilal: Black History in Islam.
• Briggs, Mustafa (2023). Beyond Bilal: Black Muslims in the East.

Als Feld jenseits zeitlicher, disziplinärer oder thematischer Einschränkungen stellen Black Studies eine herausfordernde und äußerst gewinnbringende und politisch relevante Arena intellektueller Aktivität dar. ISD und Adefra bilden mit ihrer 40-jährigen Bewegungsgeschichte einen zentralen Anker für die Verbindung schwarzer Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft – in Deutschland und weit darüber hinaus – und arbeiten kontinuierlich an der Aktualisierung eines diasporischen, afropolitanen Identitätsverständnisses. Daneben existiert die unermesslich wertvolle Dokumentation der Kämpfe rund um den Oranienplatz und Gruppen wie International Women Space und Women in Exile in Berlin und Brandenburg, sowie der Gruppe Refugee Struggle for Freedom.

Innerhalb des wissenschaftlichen Diskurses werden die Diskriminierungserfahrungen von Schwarzen Menschen im Rahmen der Arbeit von EOTO, von ReachOut und von zahlreichen abolitionistischen Initiativen zugänglich. Neben dem anfänglichen Fokus auf die Beteiligung in Kultur und Akademie gibt es zudem inzwischen eine stärkere Auseinandersetzung mit der Lebensrealität Schwarzer Arbeiter:innen. Viele von ihnen prägen sozial- und gesundheitspolitisch äußerst bedeutende Arbeitskämpfe und treten online bewusst kämpferisch auf.

Neben der allgemein größeren Rolle von Social Media und dem Zugang, den digitale Räume für die Bildung von Communities spielen, um ihrer teilweisen räumlichen Fragmentierung in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz entgegenzuwirken, steht diese Entwicklung vor allem im Zusammenhang mit der Rezeption der globalen #BlackLivesMatter-Proteste nach der Ermordung George Floyds 2020 und der sich unafhaltsam vollziehenden Verwertung Schwarzer Kultur(en).

Die Abwesenheit von Schwarzen Menschen im öffentlichen Diskurs ist zumindest anfänglich und vorsichtig infragegestellt worden. Mit der Repräsentation, die oft nicht über Tokenism hinauskommt, geht jedoch eine Homogenisierung und Verflachung der Vielfalt Schwarzer Lebensrealitäten einher, die zudem oft analytisch von einer ökonomischen und nicht nur kulturellen Erfahrung von Klasse getrennt werden.

Im Rahmen dieser Dynamik finden sich ebenfalls mehr und mehr Argumentationsmuster und Verwerfungen innerhalb der Communities, die durch die Verstärkung digitaler Resonanzen in den deutschsprachigen Raum aufgenommen und modifiziert werden. Beispiele hierfür sind besonders die Diskurse um Schwarzen Kapitalismus, Black Excellence und financial literacy, wie auch der kulturell orientierte Afrozentrismus.

Dies als simple übernahme von Erfahrungen und Konzepten aus anderen sozialen Realitäten zu betrachten, greift jedoch zu kurz. Schwarzen Erfahrungen in Deutschland sind selbst seit Beginn stark international und diasporisch geprägt. Schwarze Kämpfe aus den USA haben Aktivist:innen in Deutschland ein neues Vokabular gegeben, dies ist jedoch zu großen Teilen durch engen transkontinentalen Austausch und der afrodiasporischen Mobilität geprägt und unterstrichen worden. Daneben können auch die familiären Bezüge zu us-amerikanischen, lateinamerikanischen oder karibischen Elternteilen nicht ignoriert werden. Auch der Rekurs auf afrikanische Namen, Religionen und Symbolik ist nicht per se als Adaption des konservativen Afrozentrismus zu verstehen, sondern ein eigener Ausdruck des Bewusstseinsprozesses Schwarzer Identität.

Damit im Zusammenhang stehen auch die Interventionen Schwarzer Aktivist:innen in antirassistische, feministische und klimapolitische Diskurse und Bewegungen. Da sie aus historisch und geographisch ausgedehnten Archiven schöpfen können, sind Schwarze politische Bewegungen in der Lage, die Grenzen und immanenten Widersprüche eurozentrischer Weltsichten innerhalb progressiver Bewegungen aufzuzeigen und zu kritisieren.

Eine besondere Rolle dabei spielen Community-Zentren, Bibliotheken und Buchläden, die diesen umfangreichen Wissenskatalog zugänglich machen und zugleich für die Dokumentation, Aufbewahrung und Aufarbeitung der eigenen Geschichte zentral sind. Diese Bestände ermöglichen uns außerdem, die umfassende Schwarze Kultur- und Mediengeschichte zu erforschen, die sich jenseits von Institutionalisierung behauptet.

Zugleich öffnet sich der Raum für die notwendige Auseinandersetzung mit politischer Repräsentation und (Selbst)organisation. Zumindest auf kommunaler und Landesebene sind Schwarze Politiker:innen an Regierungen beteiligt, als Wissenschaftler:innen beraten und als Diplomat:innen vertreten sie Deutschland und treten auf der Ebene der EU oder UN auf. Als Teilnehmende klimapolitischer Proteste, der Massenbewegung für Palästina, der beginnenden Mobilisierung gegen die deutsche Aufrüstung, als von Rassismus betroffene, aber auch als aktive und organisierte Antirassist:innen und Antifaschist:innen erkämpfen sich Schwarze Menschen Gehör für ihre Positionen.

Neben panafrikanischen Organisationen finden Aufklärungsarbeit und politisch wichtige Aktionen vor allem durch Exilgemeinden statt. In den letzten Jahren gab es, teilweise außerhalb des öffentlichen Bewusstseins, Proteste gegen die exzessive Polizeigewalt in Nigeria, gegen die Diktatur Paul Biyas in Kamerun, den Krieg in Tigray, die Genozide in Kongo und Sudan, sowie homo- und transfeindliche Gesetze in einer Reihe von weiteren Ländern. Wir teilen uns Räume mit Menschen, die Streiks organisiert, an Stadtteilkomitees und Widerstandsräten beteiligt, oder vor ihrer Flucht im Untergrund waren und deren Erfahrungen im Angesicht des rechten Aufstiegs unersetzbar sind und uns dabei helfen können, den Legalismus und Bürokratismus innerhalb der deutschen Arbeiter:innenbewegung zu überwinden.

Insofern können die Black Studies in Deutschland an die Lebensgeschichten und Positionen von Menschen wie Anton Wilhelm Amo, Joseph Ekwe Bilé, Regina Bruce, Hilarius Gilges, Fasia Jansen und May Ayim anknüpfen, die die Geschichte, Gegenwart und Zukunft Schwarzer Menschen in Deutschland und darüber hinaus entscheidend geprägt haben.

Dhoruba bin Wahad (2025): Revolution in These Times

Neunzehn Jahre verbrachte der ehemalige Black Panther und Black Liberation Army-Veteran Dhoruba bin Wahad im Gefängnis, nachdem er und andere bekannte Gesichter Schwarzer Befreiungsbewegungen wie der Black Panthers und der Republic of New Afrika zum Ziel von COINTELPRO wurden. Der FBI-Direktor J. Edgar Hoover war von der Gefahr einer Schwarzen Revolution überzeugt und ließ daher bereits Marcus Garvey und später Malcolm X überwachen. Während des Vietnamkrieges gehörten besonders kommunistische und radikale Schwarze Organisationen zu den Feindbildern. 1971 brachen weiße Aktivist:innen, Mitglieder der Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, in ein FBI-Büro in Media, Pennsylvania ein und entwendeten entscheidende Dokumente, die Hoovers Programm offenlegten. In den folgenden Jahren und Jahrzehnten konnten Dhoruba bin Wahad und seine Anwält:innen durch hunderttausende Akten mit Bezug zu ihm und anderen Panthers Infiltration und Intrigen nachvollziehen, mit denen das FBI die Solidarität revolutionärer Organisationen untergraben, Konflikte anheizen und die Mitglieder psychisch aufreiben wollte. Im Fall der Panther 21 in New York, zu denen auch bin Wahad gehörte, führte COINTELPRO zu einer Reihe von Festnahmen unter falschen Beschuldigungen und fingierten Beweisen, und in Chicago zu der Ermordung von Fred Hampton.

Während visuelle Repräsentationen der Black Panther Party heute besonders durch popkulturelle Referenzen wie Beyoncés Super Bowl Halftime Show 2016, die Ästhetik Schwarzer Lederjacken und Baretts oder das Bild des symbolischen, zum Angriff bereiten Schwarzen Panthers von Ruth Howard und Dorothy Zellner bekannt sind, scheitern viele Narrative daran, die Aktivitäten der Partei und deren Bedeutung zu greifen. Revolution in These Times, herausgegeben von Kalonji Jama Changa bei Common Notions, mit einem Vorwort von Joy James, dokumentiert eine Reihe von Gesprächen von Dhoruba bin Wahad mit Changa, Jared Ball und Kamau Franklin von Black Power Media. Im letzten Kapitel kommen auch die seitdem verstorbenen Veteranen Sekou Odinga und Thomas “Blood” McCreary zu Wort und werfen Licht auf ihre Zeit im Untergrund und die Konfliktlinien innerhalb der Partei.

Mit der Gesamtheit der geteilten Erfahrungen ist dieses Buch ein grundlegendes historisches Dokument und eine präzise Intervention in zeitgenössische Diskussionen über Abolitionismus, Gegenmacht und internationale Solidarität.

Ein Ziel und ein Resultat von COINTELPRO, wird in den Gesprächen immer wieder klar, war die Unterbrechung der intergenerationalen Kontinuität revolutionärer Tradition und Wissensvermittlung, weswegen neue Bewegungen nicht auf bisherigen Erfahrungen aufbauen und einfacher zu vereinnahmen sind. Deutlich wird dies an der Entkontextualisierung und der Individualisierung revolutionärer Positionen, für die sowohl Angela Davis als auch Assata Shakur stehen. Angela Davis wird oft mit der BPP assoziiert, war jedoch aktiv im Che-Lumumba Club der KPUSA und begann ihr Engagement zur Unterstützung von George Jackson und den Soledad Brothers vor diesem Hintergrund. Nachdem sie auf legalem Weg Waffen erworben hatte, die bei einer Schießerei im Marin County Court zum Einsatz kamen, ging Davis in den Untergrund. Sie wurde schließlich zusammen Da die KP die mit Ruchell Magee, der den Großteil seines Lebens hinter Gittern verbracht hatte, der Verschwörung zum Mord an einem Richter angeklagt. Wie bin Wahad schildert, war Magee der Ansicht, dass er als Schwarzer Mann in den USA, der im Gefängnis so gut wie versklavt war, jedes Recht auf Flucht hatte. Die KP lehnte diese Haltung ab und konzentrierte sich auf die Verteidigung von Angela Davis, die ihren Prozess gewann. Es geht an dieser Stelle nicht um eine Kritik an Davis; bin Wahad sieht vielmehr in der Weigerung der KP, die Black Panther Party oder die Black Liberation Army nach bewaffneten Konflikten mit dem Staat juristisch zu unterstützen und ihr Recht auf Selbstbestimmung und Selbstverteidigung zu verteidigen den Grund für das weitere Schicksal der politischen Gefangenen seiner Generation. Seine Diskussion von Assata Shakurs Schicksal unterstreicht diese Sichtweise ebenfalls. Shakur organisierte nach ihrer Ausbildung durch die Partei Untergrundkliniken, in denen im Kampf verwundete Kader behandelt werden konnten, ohne dass dabei der Polizei Schusswunden gemeldet werden mussten. Bei einer Kontrolle auf dem Highway geriet sie selbst in eine solche Auseinandersetzung, als die New Jersey State Troopers das Auto anhielten, in dem sie, Zayd Shakur und Sundiata Acoli saßen. Für bin Wahad ist entscheidend, dass die BLA sich zu dieser Zeit im Krieg befand und die Frage von Schuld oder Unschuld diesen Kontext verschleiert. Die Unterstützung von Shakur und anderen politischen Gefangenen darf sich also nicht auf ihre vermeintliche Unschuld verlassen, sondern muss sich auf deren politische Positionen, ihre Mitgliedschaft in einer revolutionären Organisation und das Recht auf Widerstand gegen rassistische Unterdrückung stützen. Umso tragischer, von den vielen Gefangenen zu lesen, die erst krank und in hohem Alter aus der Haft entlassen werden, damit sie nicht auch noch im Gefängnis sterben. So müsste auf der Rückseite eines “Assata taught me!”-Shirts “Sundiata I forgot” stehen, kommentiert bin Wahad mit einigem berechtigten Zynismus. Auch hier bezieht sich die Frustration mehr auf vergangene und aktuelle Bewegungen, Shakur und bin Wahad selbst hatten ein kameradschaftliches Verhältnis, schließlich kommen sie aus der gleichen Zelle der Partei.

New York und die East Coast kannten im Gegenzug zu Oakland und vielen anderen Teilen der West Coast lange eigenständige Traditionen des Schwarzen Nationalismus, viele waren dort bereits vor ihrer Zeit bei den Panthers aktiv und gestandene und in ihren Communities bekannte Personen. Am City College, das auch Assata Shakur besuchte, lehrten afrozentrische Wissenschaftler wie Leonard Jeffries und Yosef Ben-Jochannan und das Tragen von afrikanischen Namen war auch bei linken Aktivist:innen weit verbreitet. Bin Wahad bemerkt, dass es an der West Coast wenig Vertrautheit mit diesen radikalen Traditionen gab, und man diese Praxis stattdessen mit dem reaktionären kulturellen Nationalismus von Maulana Karenga assoziierte.

Sekou Odinga, ebenfalls ein BLA-Veteran, schildert weitere Konflikte mit der Führung der Panthers. So habe bei den ehemaligen Mitgliedern von Malcolm X Organization of Afro-American Unity Einigkeit über die Bedeutung der Forderung nach Land bestanden. Einige organisierten sich daher ebenfalls bei der Republic of New Afrika, die Eldridge Cleaver bei einem Besuch in New York als unvereinbar mit den Panthers erklärte.

Besonders die Unterstützung aus der Community wird von bin Wahad und “Blood” McCreary hervorgehoben. Die Militanten hätten immer Wohnungen, Waffen und Pflege bei Verwundungen erhalten, auch wenn einige ihre Unterstützung nicht offen bekunden wollten. Als Aktivist:innen waren sie schon vor ihrer Zeit im Untergrund in ihren Vierteln verankert. Und auch, wenn die Wiederaneignung des Mehrproduktes ihrer Arbeit von Banken und anderen Finanzinstitutionen – mittels “unauthorisiertem Geldabheben” – eine Rolle gespielt habe, sei der Großteil der Ressourcen aus der Community geflossen. Daneben habe sich die Vergesellschaftung von Profiten aus Drogenhandel und anderen kriminellen Aktivitäten auch als gutes Training für neue Mitglieder im Untergrund herausgestellt, erklärt bin Wahad.

Der Band verdeutlicht eindrücklich die Freundschaft, die jegliche Intrigen von Staat und Sicherheitsbehörden überstanden haben. Angesichts der drängenden Aufgaben unserer Zeit bieten die Erfahrungen der Black Liberation Army eine Quelle unermesslichen praktischen Wissens, das sich nicht in neoliberales oder staatstragendes Denken einhegen lässt.

Vor ihrer gemeinsamen Festnahme soll Assata Shakur über Sundiata Acoli gesagt haben, dass er wie jemandes Großvater aussehe – eine Erscheinung, die ihm Bewegungsfreiheit trotz des allgegenwärtigen Verdachts ermöglichte. Heute beschreibt dieses Bild das Verhältnis der ehemals meistgesuchten Revolutionär:innen der USA zu ihren eigenen Communities. Noch erzählen sie ihre Geschichten und können allen, die zuhören, wertvolle Lektionen über Genossenschaft, Liebe und das Überleben mitgeben.

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Dhoruba braucht aktuell finanzielle Unterstützung:

This is an attempt to provide analysis and contextualization and expresses my opinion in addition to grievances from communities I am close to. I am not affiliated with or involved in the “Justice for Nelson” campaign.

Black women and Queer siblings have been at the front line of feminist struggles, abolitionism and transformative justice, but the defense and inclusion of abusers in political work and campaigning is unfortunately still a common thread in some communities. As a tragic result of this practice, a man convicted for the killing of his ex-girlfriend has become one of the faces of the “Justice for Nelson” campaign, and is also being platformed by another person, Glenda Obermuller, founder of the Theodor Wonja Michael Bibliothek in Cologne.

It had been known in Berlin that someone with a history of violence against women was involved in the campaign, which led other organizers to feel that this was not a safe or even remotely open space for them. But the full extent has only now been exposed, after the suspect in question, Mzee Maat Mzizi Mweusi Onyango, took to social media, to air out his frustration with a supposed campaign to “smear” his name, and to threaten Phyllis Quartey, the Black women activist and mother, who quietly, but determined, warned other people about him.

Far from taking accountability for anything, his actions or lack of transparency in regards thereof, or clarifying any possible misunderstandings, he lashes out in a post about “enemies in the own camp.” Mind you, a Black woman was warning others of a convicted murderer with a history of violence against his partners. In his view, all of this can be explained by her ill will, caused by ‘internalized racism’ and ‘self-hatred.’ His accusations go as far as suggesting Quartey did the work of White Supremacy, which uses people like her as ‘spies’ and ‘mercenaries’ to undermine Black liberation.

But this is neither a smear campaign not the attempt to impair someone’s reputation, as Onyango tries to make it look like. Even more absurd, someone who is supposedly leading an abolitionist campaign against police violence is at the same time threatening another activist—a Black woman and mother–with legal consequences. Black or not, one who threatens people like this should be given no place in any movement of this kind, lacking an understanding of the police and the power he wields as a man. Or he understands this, and that is exactly why and how he tries to silence criticism.

In this, he is part of a marginal but still influential and dangerous manosphere-adjacent caricature of Black revolutionary movements, the often ridiculed ‘Hotep.’ This current of Black reaction is composed of elements of both the patriarchal and culturally nationalist views popularized by the Nation of Islam, especially in its Zombie form resurrected by Louis Farrakhan, and Maulana Karenga’s US Organization, the antagonistic male-led front against the Black Panther Party. There is an overwhelming amount of material to show how Black Studies courses, fought for by working class and Marxist Black activists, have been institutionalized under either liberal integrationist scholars like Henry Louis Gates or conservative scholars like Karenga. Karenga, not least to mention, was even himself convicted for the kidnapping and torture of two Black women, and there are ample testimonial accounts by John Henrik Clarke on how degrading Karenga treated Black women in general.

The path to rehabilitation leads through accountability, and someone who wants to carry a name that conveys wisdom and justice should act accordingly, otherwise they are just abusing Swahili and the principles of Maat. Leadership has to be democratic and accountable, which is impossible without transparency. We don’t believe in the law of punishment, or the reformative capacities of prisons. But we do believe that the community can only make an informed decision about its political representation and leadership, if the necessary information is disclosed. No one can simply decide if someone is safe to be around for women, our youth and our children.

This decision is ours to make collectively on the basis of facts.

Imani Perry (2025): Black in Blues

There is a certain poetry with which Black life and experience have become identified, to the point of entanglement.
Feeling blue, having the blues, the dissonant harmonies, build-up and release of tension, and the dance of rhythms that have been carried over the deep, dark blue of the middle passage. Imani Perry captures them all in an impressive cultural history of the color blue and how it, and the feelings and sensations associated with it, came to color Blackness. And even though Perry carefully notes the American imprint on her own life, the amount of skill and care for detail devoted to the narrative surpass this fact by far. North and South of the Mason-Dixon line, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa become the canvas for this search for meaning. At the same time, it is an autobiography of sorts, setting out from the blue interior of her grandmother’s home. The stories Perry explores add emotional and spiritual depth the understanding of Blackness behind Curtis Mayfield’s “people who are darker than blue,” or simply Amiri Baraka’s “blues people.” From the West African admiration and prowess in creating shades of blue to the blue notes of traditional African scales, the dignity that came with it could not be suppressed, even when the global market began to trade the producers of blue in exchange for it. The images printed in the book portray everyday and artistic receptions of the color and its deeper meanings. Perry reminds of the inherent cosmopolitanism in Blackness, without losing sight of its particular micro-histories.

Kevin Ochieng Okoth (2023): Red Africa

Red Africa is a thoughtfully composed and valuable introduction to the history of Marxism in Africa. Even though it is written with contemporary politics in mind, readers will get an overview of the most important events concerning African liberation. The contemporary perspective is at the same time the book’s main weakness: Okoth sets out to criticize Afropessimism and the spectres of post- and decolonial studies, but fails to fully grasp the actual origin and arguments implied by Afropessimism. The foci are therefore its being derived from the specific experience of Black Americans, and its vocal anti-political stance. Wilderson has repeatedly shown, in the South African context of his biographical works, as well as in public conversations, how anti-Blackness is a truly global phenomenon, still lingering in the late Soviet Union, Cuba, Palestine, and the African continent itself. What appears as a criticism or supposed impossibility of solidarity is nothing more than the understanding that various historical and present liberation movements fall short of Black liberation, while Black liberation would take the form of universal liberation.

Read in this way, the tradition that Okoth calls Red Africa, comprising of genuinely Marxist thinkers like Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney, A. M. Babu, Maryse Condé, and Andrée Blouin, is both characterized by a sharp analysis of the global African predicament (relentlessly so), and an emblematic internationalism that could be at the same time be at home in Dar es Salaam, Algiers, Kinshasa, Dakar, Haiti, Guyana, Paris, or Harlem.

His discussion of Afropessimism and the different historical slave economies, sparking resistance in the form of maroonage and rebellions is impressive in that it compares histories of slavery in a global perspective and shifts the focus away from the US. Likewise, Okoth poignantly recounts the radical critique of Nègritude as a philosophical concept of Blackness and African cultures, and points to the contradictions of a regime like Senghor’s, and the demands of the opposition and the student movement—a similar confrontation like the standoff between Nyerere and Marxist students in Tanzaniam, who wanted to go beyond the hollow promises of African Socialism.

Alas, both the moderate and the radical wings of African liberation were brought to a halt by Western intrigues and conspiration by the new nations’ traditional or emerging elites. Fanon and other thinkers had warned about “the pitfalls of national consciousness,” and the dangers of orienting Africa toward the West. Examples of the liberated zones created by FRELIMO in Mozambique and by the PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau during their armed struggle stand out as promising attempts to organize education, labor and political participation differently than the way they actually manifested after decolonization.

Okoth notes the importance of the women involved, even while structurally and individually hampered by the players of patriarchy. In this regard he remarks Andrée Blouin’s criticism of Patrice Lumumba, who, facing the decision to leave behind his family or his country, chose his family and lost the opportunity to get away to safety, while he was still instrumental for the Congolese people.

The kind of activism she would have advocated for, it seems, would at the same time be of greater care and consequence, carefully but consciously balancing individual and collective freedom, while trying to save both.

Red Africa is a comparatively short book and makes for a brief read. It provides a strongly opinionated overview of central figures and their development without providing the depths of comparison and historical discussion a more comprehensive study would merit.

Even though I have some reservations about its discussion of Afropessimism, I would nonetheless recommend this book to everyone who is looking for a serious engagement with Marxism in Africa.

I often think of Lewis R. Gordon’s passing his university campus, and the white people that saw too many Black people this day. They saw him, on his arrival, and on his way back, already constituting a multitude, an invasion. Blackness, void of character or individuality. Outside of the class character that structures its experience, that is. The Black professor, business man, member of parliament, approached as the janitor, gardener, cleaner, ‘boy,’ in humiliating, degrading tone. Liberal anti-racism often stops short at this point, amplifying the grievances—rightfully—and the aspirations—much less so—of the Black middle class, mistaking its partial makeup for the whole community. “We can be of property, too,” or “we, too, uphold the rule of law and order,” is the essence of this kind of protest, no matter, which form it takes. All of the concepts that are intertwined with the ascent and eventual betrayal of the Black bourgeoisie, are myths and legends, though not from ancient history, but from the scheming offices of white capital. As Prof. Jared Ball doesn’t get tired to remind us, even the upper echelons of Black gazillionaires are much less selling any product, than that they are selling their access to the gates of our community. Brand ambassadors for capitalism, if you will, selling the American Dream over breakbeats and samples.

As such, the Black bourgeoisie are shareholders in the economic sense, as much as in the political: Black capitalists are invested in White Supremacy, even if it throws a Black fist. We are being marketed to, and yet we are falling for it every time. African culture, history, and labor become even greater sources for resource extraction by a kind of people that use their ancestors’ blood as currency to be admitted to the rank of ‘American.’ Even the Black Panther could ascend to US cultural representation, woven into the history of empire, while the actual Panthers were forgotten behind bars, and the human remains of the martyrs of MOVE joined their ancestors behind museum vitrines.

Dhoruba bin Wahad’s note on Assata Shakur’s role in the movement is essential to understand what is meant if one were really to be taught by Assata, as the popular t-shirt claims. Operating underground clinics to get essential treatment to wounded soldiers under the radar of state surveillance is no minor task. A political party has no insignificant wing: the legal, the illegal, breakfast and education programs, petitions, rallies, guns, and care work are complementary. This is the true essence of applying self-determination and community care. This is why all sorts of caricatures that roam the streets with guns and Black berets still don’t resemble the real Panthers or the Black Liberation Army in any way. There is no political analysis, no alliances, no internationalism. This is the reason why so much of (Black) activism turns into gangsterism or careerism so easily, both are different means to the same end.

The tragedy of once has without so much of an attempt to convince us otherwise, already arrived as a farce in the present. Rather, in Germany, the ever weaker copy of a farce. Hoteps, Black capitalists, politicians, all kinds of grifters and scammers are trying to gain advantage of the momentum that was initiated by refugees and non-citizens more than a decade ago. A certain type of people was and is still notably absent from grassroots struggles, even though they significantly influenced the contemporary language of progressive politics. Others, that were and are there, often never got the recognition that their work would have deserved, or were ignored in favor of a more palatable face or voice. I am the last person to downplay the importance of digital communities, as much as I am a product and actor of those networks, but the era of the activist-influencer has dangerously flattened political discourse and meaning. Some of this might be specific to Berlin, where politics can be a lifestyle rather than a conviction based on embodied values and lived practices, and the radical youth leaves school ready to volunteer in the Global South, study political science, and after spending a few years in the Black Bloc finally unmasks for a secure job in an NGO, university, or party office.

Blackness used to be much less visible in public life, less advertisements, less pop culture, more neglect. Yet still, Black African people of all walks of life can still vanish without traces in this city, in this country, in this world. The darkest of us, the ones without a German passport, Black women and Queers are not considered worthy of care, neither in life nor death. I think of Rita Awour Ojungé, who the state did not care to search for after she went missing from her remote and isolated ‘shelter,’ and did not take seriously the concerns of her friends and family, I think of Juliet H., who was stabbed 50 times by her former husband, from whom she had escaped, and who had also abused their four children, I think of Yolanda Fulephu and her son Amani, who must have been in the water of Weißensee for several weeks, and I think of Yulady Lasso, who was innocently detained and separated from her son Mathias for 217 days.

This country harbors a hatred in people that walk around fantasizing about the annihilation of Blackness. Every time Black people gather to find their voices amid this horror, our faces disappear, as this country forms an amorphous mass out of our bodies. Living in the wilderness of Central Europe, Afropessimism is just being honest—and realistic.

Seth Siegelaub (2022): Prefaces to Communication and Class Struggle Volume 1 and 2

At the root of labor lies communication—the act and process by which it is facilitated and organized after its initial inception. In Siegelaub’s words, communication is “the articulation of the social relations between people.” Analog to the mode of production, Siegelaub historicizes the mode of communication, the way communication takes place, derived from the circumstances that led to its establishment. While in today’s perception information and data appear as separate from their material base and bodies—thanks to ‘AI’ and ‘Cloud Computing’–historically, to transmit information has meant to physically move people as carriers and conveyors of information. The essential quality of communication is movement—of people, goods, information, and capital. How and by which means this movement can take place, depends on each society’s technological development in relation to its superstructure: the scroll, the book, the telegraph, the radio all allow for, and necessitate specific forms of information. In contrast to other media theories, Siegelaub places a much more pronounced emphasis on the production of the medium itself and its corresponding message, opposed to only examining the way in which information is disseminated.

Language

This concept of communication being connected to labor reaches back to the development of language. With the advent of labor people “had something to say to each other”, as he quotes Engels. Written at the end of the 1970s, Siegelaub already notices how speech has become both “extended in space via the telephone,” but also “reduced to a one-way monologue” by radio and television, and how imperialism aims at the destruction of “subaltern speech and languages.”

Writing

With the invention of language, communication becomes structured by class—knowledge of the written script is the domain for the few who oversee and administer power and property. Accounting thus precedes written history. Herein lie the foundation of both the division of manual and intellectual labor, and intellectual property. The scribe who was responsible in keeping record of the state apparatus finds their contemporary equivalent in the bourgeois journalist.

Localizing the Work: Books to Bookshops

In a self-reflective notion, Siegelaub looks at the gap between the conditions under which academic Marxist communication theories are produced, and those under which activists, union and party groups produce their bodies of work, and notes the lack of conversation between these groups. A crucial place for the eventual distribution of left thought is the progressive or community bookshop, that will immediately stock important works and writers, disregarding trends and popularity. In this context, Siegelaub stresses the adverse effect of advertising on virtually all other forms of communication. Today’s rise of the Content Creator and its pressure journalists and other media professionals alike only further emphasizes this point. In one of the most illuminating sections of the preface, Siegelaub breaks down the economic makeup of the production of the book and the market dynamics of a progressive publication in a mainstream dominion.

Dissecting Culture and Politics

In the preface of the second volume, Siegelaub takes on the concept of the popular, and looks more deeply at culture, communication, the social and the political. If the word were true to its etymology, “popular culture” would simply be another way to express working class culture, i.e. the way of life of the majority of the population, the people’s culture. But today’s popular culture does not stem from the people, nor does it really depend on their views or experiences for its constitution. Rather it is the product of a cultural industry in which different media reference each other and lopsidedly shape the contours of what is regarded and respected as popular by way of being first simply known, and then known to be agreed upon as a point of reference.
Siegelaub employs the metaphor of the supermarket to visualize the false notion of freedom when it comes to leisure and entertainment: people can decide between different packaging and promotion, yet the sphere of production or even the working conditions inside the market remain out of reach. But the working class is nonetheless the only class that significantly produces what is called material culture, which is then in turn appropriated and used by the ruling class. The task at hand for the workers is to overcome the separation of manual and intellectual labor and create a new form of self-conscious culture beyond alienation. His conception of cultural anthropology as “the history of the generalized development” of the worker’s personality under different forms of exploitation could bear the possibility to undermine the abuse of culture for the construction of grand narratives en route to the establishment of empires.

Likewise, communication, for Siegelaub, is exchange, be it of goods, or ideas and information. Eventually, we can appreciate not only politic’s dependence on communication as a means to convey messages, but as a process of communication within or between different groups and classes.

What’s Left of Media Theory?

The importance of this perspective is highlighted again by Jack Henrie Fisher’s postscript. Within these pages lies an important foundation for a critical theory of media and communication—one that is on par with far more recent ones, like Armond R. Towns’ On Black Media Philosophy, but doesn’t shy away from its Marxist origins.

Bankole Awoonor-Renner (1946): West African Soviet Union

Nearly one hundred years before the ascension of Ibrahim Traoré and the Alliance of Sahel States, Bankole Awoonor-Renner¹ wrote in a little red book about the West African Soviet Union, a federation spanning from Madeira to Congo. In this very timely collection of letters from the year 1937 onward, Awoonor-Renner explains the foundation for a liberated West Africa and calls on the youth to disregard artificial colonial borders. Crucially, he views the the differences between the various peoples insignificant enough to be of no hindrance to a common political entity. He also proposes a common language, Hausa, given its wide use across the region. Awoonor-Renner thus also argues for compulsory teaching of Hausa in an educational system that is free for all—from elementary school to universities and research institutions. And even though he maintains that organized Christianity has served as a vessel for the political and economic exploitation of West Africa, religion is not seen as a barrier for political cooperation. Asked about the differing roles of women in African tradition and Islamic societies, he responds that the oppression of women does not belong to the religion, and has as such not been adopted in West Africa. Furthermore, he references Article 123 of the Soviet Constitution, that states the equality of all citizens before the law. The fundamental economic task ahead, poses Awoonor-Renner, is the industrialization and the establishment of facilities to process raw materials, with land and main industries nationalized in the hands of the people and the state. Noting the one-sided nature of the present agreements between West African and imperial nations, he states the need for their immediate cessation, and propose mutual recognition with the Soviet Union, and progressively governed democratic states. While remarking the importance of West Africans for the liberation of Europe from fascism, Awoonor-Renner also recognizes that Europe itself will never be free as long as Africa is subjugated, economically, or otherwise. In some sort of ironical twist of history, the little book ends with the US Declaration of independence, delivering a plea and reasoning why West Africa as well must break away from Britain. Awoonor-Renner saw through the imperial play to trap Africans in ‘tribal’ denotations and respective geographical homelands.

Considering the famous words by Nkrumah, who was deeply influenced by this book, when Ghana eventually obtained its independence eleven years after its publication, one has to expand its conclusion. There was a time when Africans thought of a future way beyond West Africa, before the project of nation-building and modernization collapsed under its own weight in the face of the absence of a true working class leadership.

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1. A brief biography can be found here: https://encyclopaediaafricana.com/awoonor-renner-bankole. ↩︎