African Unification Front
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OVERVIEW OF POST INDEPENDENCE POLITICAL DISSENT IN AFRICA
AFRICAN RESISTENCE MOVEMENTS
The vast majority of the histories of movements of post-independence political dissent in Africa have been greatly ignored. This phenomenon is alarming and has major implications for political theory, as well as for the search for solutions to Africa's problems. It is regressive for Africans to react towards dissidence with the same myopic attitudes that characterized the colonial occupation. It is also clear that the all of the freedom fighters in these movements have legitimate concerns, and that the vast majority are disarticulted and displaced people, who have been disfrachised by neocolonial domination.
See Amazigh
See Bakweri
A handful of dissident groups have succeeded in the Post independence era, in forming the national governments of their own. They include:
-Alliance of Democratic Forces for Liberation (of Congo)
-African National Congress (ANC)
-Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front (EPLF)
-National Liberation Front of Chad (FROLINAT)
-Tigrey Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF)
-Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF)
-National Resistence Movement/Army [Uganda] (NRA)
-National Patriotic Front [Liberia] (NPFL)
-Polisario Front [Saharawi]
-South West Africa Peoples Organization (SWAPO)
-Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) (now defunct)
The vast majority of dissident organisations represent powerful forces that have a critical role in the political and social landscape of Africa. Understanding the role that dissident organizations play will lead to better management of crises in Africa, and bring an end to the methods of repression used by the international community of states in trying to suppress them. There is need to revisit and question the conventional dichotomy of "Legitimate State vs Dissident & Rebel". The way that states manage, and respond to, dissent movements has resulted in widespread violence that has made African politics extremely brutal.
Although many of these movements have military components, the vast majority are social movements composed of, and supported by, communities using paramilitary structures (even when they are non-violent) in order to demand basic rights, and in most cases the paramiliatary organisation id a survivall strategy for communities that take the last option avaible to them in order to prevent atomization and social collapse. Guerilla warfare and Asymmetrical warfare are defining features of Post-Independence Africa, and many of the social forces that have formed themselves into dissenting voices, are rooted in the pre-independence anti-colonial struggles.
Many of the social forces that were never incorporated into the new neocolonial states found expression in Human Rights organisations, Trade Unions, and Guerrilla forces, some seeking the reform, others the overthrow of government, and in some cases, seeking the creation of new states.
The three sided war between the most organized political forces in Algeria, represented by FIS, by a government dominated by a junta that is a successor of the Algerian National Front (FLN), and by the Armed Berber Movement, provides an example of unresolved issues rooted in the resistance to the imposition of foreign clerics and administrations. The FIS mission statement written in 1993 includes clauses that show the explicit rejection of neocolonialism. In the statement FIS demands "The recognition of Algerian nationhood by an official declaration abrogating all edicts, decrees, and laws by virtue of which Algeria was "French soil."
The Amazigh resistance goes even further in articulating the essence of the FIS and FLN positions by essentially rejecting all neocolonial impositions by dissociating Islamic spirituallity from Arab imperialism. The fact that these forces are defining the course of African struggle in these terms half-a-century since the overthrow of the French government is telling. The struggle against neocolonialism, still is at the core of all of the disputes and conflicts in the African Union.
Post-Independence Dissident and Underground Movements
ABM - Armed Berber Movement (North Africa)
ADF - Allied Democratic Forces - Uganda, Congo
FIS - Islamic Salvation Front - Algeria
MFDC - Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance
MJA - Movement pour La Justice en Africa - Senegal, Gambia
MWAKENYA - Kenya
NMLU - National Movement for the Liberation of Uganda
OLF - Oromo Liberation Front - Ethiopia, Somalia (Oromia)
ONLF - Ogaden National Liberation Front, (Ethiopia & Somalia)
RUF - Revolutionary United Front - Sierra Leone
SHIFTA - Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia
SPLA - Sudan Peoples Liberation Army
TRAF - Tuareg's Revolutionary Armed Forces of the Sahara
ULIMO - Sierra Leone
UNITA - Angola
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