The-African responses to the social, economic and political crisis in southern Africa: a peculiar record of collaboration and important rage, and a challenge to revolutionary action

Abstract

The focus of this paper is on the implications of the economic, social and. political problems of Southern Africa for the so-called independent states of Africa, especially since the unfolding of the much vaunted "Decade of Africa" - the period of the 1960s when the European colonial powers, pre-eminently Britain, Prance and Belgium, scrambled out of Africa, politically, with almost the same frenetic and bumbling haste as they scrambled for Africa's territories in the last quarter of the 19th century. It is generally recognized in Africa that the way in which the problems of Southern Africa are resolved is central to the outcome of the overall African struggle for survival in a world dominated substantially, but by no means exclusively, by the gargantuan forces of world imperialism.