This year, we are celebrating the centennial of the birth of Frantz Fanon, the great revolutionary psychiatrist, philosopher, and anti-colonial French author from Martinique. His work explored the psychological effects of colonization and the struggles of decolonization, and inspired liberation movements across Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and even the United States. To date, his works,  Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961) remain essential reading in postcolonial studies and political philosophy. He died quite young at the age of 36, but he left his imprints everywhere, particularly on the African continent, and in particularly Algeria where he lived and fought for the liberation of the Algerian people.

Fanon saw Congo, then Belgian Congo, clearly, as the center for pan-african solidarity, and believed that the assassination of its prime minister, Patrice Emery Lumumba, was a blow not just to Congo, but to the entire African liberation movement. When Lumumba was alive, he had invited Fanon to attend the inter-African Conference in 1960, thus showing his active engagement in Congo’s political future.   He wrote on Congo, Lumumba’s death: Could we (Africans) have acted differently? Like Amilcar Cabral, he warned of the presence of “traitors from within” seeing that the greatest threat to African independence was not just Western imperialism, but also African elites who had internalized colonial values and acted against their own people; like Moise Tshombe who played a great role in Lumumba’s demise.

Please join the Frantz Fanon Foundation in celebrating Fanon’s life and impacts on African liberation. There will be events throughout the year. Below are some excerpts from Fanon’s article, Lumumba’s death: Could we (Africans) have acted differently? For more, check it out. His words still ring true!

The great success of the enemies of Africa is to have corrupted the Africans themselves.  It is true that these Africans had vested interest in the murder of Lumumba.  Heads of puppet governments, in a fake independence, faced everyday by massive opposition from their peoples, it did not take long to convince themselves that the real independence of the Congo would put them personally at risk.

… And first by Lumumba when he sought the intervention of the UN.  He should have never called on the United Nations.  The UN has never been able to properly solve problems brought to man’s consciousness by colonialism, and whenever it has intervened, it was to actually come to the aid of the colonial power to the oppressed country [see … think about MONUSCO].

In reality the UN is the legal card used by imperialist interests when brute force has failed.  The sharing, the mixed controlled joint committees, under guardianship are international means of torture to break the will of the people, cultivating anarchy, banditry and misery.

… Lumumba’s fault was then initially to believe in the impartiality of the UN. He forgot that the UN, particularly in the current state, is only a reserve assembly established by the Greats to continue, between two armed conflicts, the “peaceful struggle” for the balkanization of the world.

… Africans should remember this lesson.  If outside help is necessary to us, let us call on our friends.  Only they can truly and fully help us achieve our goals precisely because the friendship between us is a friendship of struggles. [The AES should remember this].