Abdul Rahman Mohamed Babu

Abdul Rahman Mohamed Babu (1924-1996) was a politician, scholar and writer, but above all he was a revolutionary who for nearly forty years was at the frontline of struggles against oppression, always seeking to create a progressive politics of the future. He was a Pan Africanist and a Marxist, an anti-imperialist and a fighter for democracy and these categories were not separable in much of his work, because there was for him, an underlying dialectic between theory and active engagement. Analysis was therefore not simply an academic exercise but to help find a way forward. In the contemporary phase of aggressive US imperialism when the ideology of The World Bank and US-led globalization seeks to present itself as the new consensus, when colonialism is being glorified (1) and when Africa is facing new and ever harsher forms of attack and exploitation, his ideas are needed more than ever. The Epoch of Revolution Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu, or Babu as he was widely known, was born in 1924 in Zanzibar in East Africa and grew up there. Zanzibar at the time was a British protectorate. was ruled officially by a Sultan whose family had been the rulers of the island for generations. But under the British protectorate, the Sultan was only a constitutional monarch on a salary from the British. was the British who controlled the markets and trade routes and pocketed the profits from Zanzibar's famous products--cloves and coconuts. Its history of trade and maritime links across the world, which made Zanzibar a unique place to grow up in, as Babu wrote in a brief autobiographical sketch which was to have been the basis of his memoirs (1): It was for all practical purposes a British colony with all the complexities of a racially stratified society. Zanzibar had a rich and dynamic culture peculiar to its situation. During World War 2 many young Zanzibaris were drafted to fight in British armies, mostly in Africa and Asia...in the post-war period they returned from the war zones bringing back the reality and scale of imperialist violence. Their stories of meeting recruits from other colonies (especially those from the 'Gold Coast' now Ghana, in the Burma campaign) helped make us in Zanzibar aware of the possibilities of solidarity and revolution. Meanwhile, East Africa itself was entering the epoch of rebellion. The youth of Zanzibar were engulfed in the mood of that epoch. After his early years of schooling and his first job working as a clerk in the clove plantations Babu went to Britain in 1951 to study Philosophy and English Literature. He was exposed to a variety of political philosophies and was drawn first to Anarchism and then to Marxism. London was at the time a centre for anti-colonial movements and Babu played a key role as Secretary of the East and Central Africa Committee of the well-known left-led Movement for Colonial Freedom. was in London too that he and two colleagues, a Nigerian and a Sierra Leonean launched what was probably one of the earliest Pan-African monthlies--the African Outlook. was, as Babu recalled, an era of African-Asian liberation and revolution. 1949 saw the Chinese revolution, 1954 the Viet Minh victory against the French at Dien Bien Phu and then in 1956 came Nkrumah's victory in Ghana These events brought home to Babu and others of his generation, the crucial importance and effectiveness of the 'mass political party' in the struggle against colonialism. Zanzibar, the Struggle Against Colonialism and Pan Africanism An anti-colonial ferment was engulfing Africa and Babu returned to Zanzibar in 1957. He became the Secretary General of Zanzibar's first political party, the Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP). Under Babu's leadership the party organized urban workers, rural workers and seafaring workers and mobilized the urban petty bourgeoisie. The party developed a consistent anticolonialist political line; a grassroots organization of party branches at local level; and links with the worldwide, and especially African, anti-imperialist struggles

Ancient history · Colonialism · Democracy · Economic history · Marxist philosophy · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Protectorate · Salary · Sociology · African history and culture analysis · Gender Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law

• Revisiting the Politics of Zanzibar

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• Brother Malcolm, Comrade Babu

  Seth M Markle•Biography•2013

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