anti-colonialism
She Who Struggles: Revolutionary Women Who Shaped the World – review
In She Who Struggles, Marral Shamshiri and Sorcha Thomson compile a selection of essays about women’s (often overlooked) contributions to revolutionary causes around the world, with particular focus on the Global South. According to Lydia Hiraide, the book is an accessible and stimulating read exploring the role of women and feminist thought in building transnational and anti-colonial and social movements.
As the title of Marral Shamshiri and Sorcha Thomson’s edited collection affirms, revolutionary women have shaped our world in various ways. This collection of thirteen chapters pays homage to the militant efforts of women revolutionaries whose efforts are often underacknowledged in the dominant narratives of historical and contemporary revolutionary movements. Each chapter is dedicated to one or more women and/or the movements in which they participated, providing space for their stories to be told and for scholars, activists, and students to learn from them.
Each chapter illuminates an example of radical grassroots politics with a fiery militant edge, focusing particularly on the Global South.
This book strikes a tone which departs from the various forms of ‘Lean In’ liberal feminisms, which remain common across the Global North. Each chapter illuminates an example of radical grassroots politics with a fiery militant edge, focusing particularly on the Global South. The movements and histories that the contributors celebrate highlight women’s leadership and deep personal sacrifice in revolutionary movements, paying tribute to women who have lost their lives and loved ones in the struggle for liberation. Maurice J. Casey’s chapter focuses on Mary Mooney, a working-class Irish woman whose campaign for the liberation of political prisoners sprang from the imprisonment of her son, trade unionist Tom Mooney. What started as a personal experience of state violence for Mooney grew into a transnational campaign across the African and Irish diaspora, joining up with the campaigners and mothers of the Scottsboro boys. These stories remind us that the personal losses of women can spur the genesis of transnational solidarity.
In relation to violence, women are not only its victims; they have also been its agents.
But, in relation to violence, women are not only its victims; they have also been its agents. Jeremy Randall’s chapter on Japanese communist Shigenobu Fusako and the Japanese Red Army (JRA) invites us to reflect on women’s capacity for violence in revolutionary settings. Shigenobu, who started out as a student activist, was militant in her commitment to the liberation of all peoples – and particularly, the people of Palestine. She and the JRA in fact relocated to Palestine as a key site from which to foment revolution, in collaboration with organisations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Under Shigenobu’s leadership, the JRA exploited “violence as a revolutionary tactic” (83). This is, of course, an approach which invites fundamental questions around the legitimacy of violence in the face of violence. Scholarship on the lives and work of figures like Shigenobu Fusako thus grapple with some of the key problematics at the heart of revolutionary political thought and practice. Such is the essence of the burning questions raised by other thinkers and activists, like Frantz Fanon, whose work and life addressed such themes in the context of colonial Algeria.
Chapters explore, for example, the active solidarity of figures like Madame Bình and Madame Nhu in Vietnam, Palestine and Iran as well as Shigenobu Fusako and the JRA across North Korea, Palestine, and Japan. These women’s histories remain startlingly relevant in today’s world
Though each chapter focuses on a different woman or women in their respective geographical and temporal contexts, several clear themes emerge throughout the book. Firstly, the exploration of women revolutionaries, past and present, affirms the central, rather than tangential, importance of women’s politics to nurturing and developing a revolutionary Left politics. Secondly, the book speaks back to dominant narratives which erase the names of women revolutionaries. More than recognising the role of women in general in revolutionary struggle, it names specific women and recounts their contributions. By doing so, it reminds us that these women were “all autonomous people with histories, feelings, dreams, desires and families” (152), while taking their work as serious sites from which to generate political thought and emancipatory action. Thirdly, a striking majority of the chapters emphasise the power of radical transnationalism in the revolutionary efforts of women worldwide. Chapters explore, for example, the active solidarity of figures like Madame Bình and Madame Nhu in Vietnam, Palestine and Iran as well as Shigenobu Fusako and the JRA across North Korea, Palestine, and Japan. These women’s histories remain startlingly relevant in today’s world, as we witness the unfolding of tragedy, resistance and waves of solidarity with Palestinian struggles, many led by women. In this regard, Jehan Helou’s chapter, “TESTIMONY: The Power of Women’s International Solidarity with the Palestinian Revolution” demands the recognition of women’s efforts as an important force in the struggle for Palestinian liberation.
Additionally, the book offers an interesting and welcome engagement with the arts as an important medium of resistance, in particular, poetry. The chapter by Marral Shamshiri offers an articulate exploration of Marzieh Ahmadi Osku’i’s poetry across the contexts of Iran, Afghanistan and India. Shamshiri examines poetry’s permanence in the context of life’s precarity and impermanence: the words of women poets live on in revolution, even when they themselves do not. This chapter is one of several that reminds us that “[f]or women, poetry is not a luxury,” but rather, “a vital necessity for our existence” and resistance. Kebotlhale Motseothata’s chapter “Lindiwe Mabuza: Culture as a Weapon of Resistance in South Africa” likewise deals with poetry and the arts as crucial instruments used in the struggle against Apartheid. Motseothata affirms the creative, visionary ways in which women have articulated the pain, struggle, and politics they face in living and resisting the intersections of racial capitalism and patriarchy.
This important book undertakes the vital work of recording and examining the contributions of women revolutionaries, whose stories are too often obscured in the mainstream imaginary
Overall, this is an exciting, informative and timely book. The chapters are relatively short and self-contained, making them ideal materials to assign in politics or history courses exploring ideas around revolution, feminism, anti-colonialism and transnational social movement organising. They are written clearly and dynamically, allowing complex themes and histories to be explored in an intellectually stimulating and accessible way. This important book undertakes the vital work of recording and examining the contributions of women revolutionaries, whose stories are too often obscured in the mainstream imaginary.
Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: thomas koch on Shutterstock
A Tale of Two Genocides: Namibia’s Stand Against Israeli Aggression
The distance between Gaza and Namibia is measured in the thousands of kilometers. But the historical distance is much closer. This is precisely why Namibia was one of the first countries to take a strong stance against the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Namibia was colonized by the Germans in 1884, while the British colonized Palestine in the 1920s, handing the territory to the Zionist colonizers in 1948.
Though the ethnic and religious fabric of Palestine and Namibia differ, the historical experiences are similar.
It is easy, however, to assume that the history that unifies many countries in the Global South is only that of Western exploitation and victimization. It is also a history of collective struggle and resistance.
Namibia has been inhabited since prehistoric times. This long-rooted history has allowed Namibians, over thousands of years, to establish a sense of belonging to the land and to one another, something that the Germans did not understand or appreciate.
When the Germans colonized Namibia, giving it the name of ‘German Southwest Africa,’’ they did what all other Western colonialists have done, from Palestine to South Africa to Algeria, to virtually all Global South countries. They attempted to divide the people, exploited their resources and butchered those who resisted.
Although a country with a small population, Namibians resisted their colonizers, resulting in the German decision to simply exterminate the natives, literally killing the majority of the population.
Since the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Namibia answered the call of solidarity with the Palestinians, along with many African and South American countries, including Colombia, Nicaragua, Cuba, South Africa, Brazil, China and many others.
Namibia rejects Germany’s Support of the Genocidal Intent of the Racist Israeli State against Innocent Civilians in Gaza
On Namibian soil, #Germany committed the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904-1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most… pic.twitter.com/ZxwWxLv8yt
— Namibian Presidency (@NamPresidency) January 13, 2024
Though intersectionality is a much-celebrated notion in Western academia, no academic theory is needed for oppressed, colonized nations in the Global South to exhibit solidarity with one another.
So when Namibia took a strong stance against Israel’s largest military supporter in Europe – Germany – it did so based on Namibia’s total awareness of its history.
The German genocide of the Nama and Herero people (1904-1907) is known as the “first genocide of the 20th century”. The ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza is the first genocide of the 21st century. The unity between Palestine and Namibia is now cemented through mutual suffering.
However, Namibia did not launch a legal case against Germany at the International Court of Justice (ICJ); it was Nicaragua, a Central American country thousands of miles away from Palestine and Namibia.
The Nicaraguan case accuses Germany of violating the ‘Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.’ It rightly sees Germany as a partner in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians.
This accusation alone should terrify the German people, in fact, the whole world, as Germany has been affiliated with genocides from its early days as a colonial power. The horrific crime of the Holocaust and other mass killings carried out by the German government against Jews and other minority groups in Europe during WWII is a continuation of other German crimes committed against Africans decades earlier.
The typical analysis of why Germany continues to support Israel is explained based on German guilt over the Holocaust. This explanation, however, is partly illogical and partly erroneous.
It is illogical because if Germany has, indeed, internalized any guilt from its previous mass killings, it would make no sense for Berlin to add yet more guilt by allowing Palestinians to be butchered en masse. If guilt indeed exists, it is not genuine. It is erroneous because it completely overlooks the German genocide in Namibia. It took the German government until 2021 to acknowledge the horrific butchery in that poor African country, ultimately agreeing to pay merely one billion euros in ‘community aid,’ which will be allocated over three decades.
The German government’s support of the Israeli war on Gaza is not motivated by guilt but by a power paradigm that governs the relations among colonial countries. Many countries in the Global South understand this logic very well, thus the growing solidarity with Palestine.
A photo titled “Captured Hereros,” taken circa 1904 by German colonists in Namibia. Photo | German Historical Museum
The Israeli brutality in Gaza, but also the Palestinian sumud, resilience and resistance, are inspiring the Global South to reclaim its centrality in anti-colonial liberation struggles.
The revolution in the Global South’s outlook—culminating in South Africa’s case at the ICJ and the Nicaraguan lawsuit against Germany—indicates that change is not the outcome of a collective emotional reaction. Instead, it is part and parcel of the shifting relationship between the Global South and the Global North.
Africa has been undergoing a process of geopolitical restructuring for years. The anti-French rebellions in West Africa, demanding true independence from the continent’s former colonial masters, and the intense geopolitical competition involving Russia, China and others are all signs of changing times. And with this rapid rearrangement, a new political discourse and popular rhetoric are emerging, often expressed in the revolutionary language emanating from Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and others.
But the shift is not happening only on the rhetorical front. The rise of BRICS as a powerful new platform for economic integration between Asia and the rest of the Global South has opened up the possibility of alternatives to Western financial and political institutions.
In 2023, it was revealed that BRICS countries hold 32 percent of the world’s total GDP, compared to 30 percent held by the G7 countries. This has much political value, as four of the five original founders of BRICS are strong and unapologetic supporters of the Palestinians.
While South Africa has been championing the legal front against Israel, Russia and China are battling the US at the UN Security Council to institute a ceasefire. Beijing’s Ambassador to The Hague defended the Palestinian armed struggle as legitimate under international law.
Now that global dynamics are working in favor of Palestinians, it is time for the Palestinian struggle to return to the embrace of the Global South, where shared histories will always serve as a foundation for meaningful solidarity.
Feature photo | Hon. Yvonne Dausab, Minister of Justice of Namibia, joined representatives of over 50 nations in presenting testimony to the International Court of Justice on the legality of the Israeli occupation. Photo | International Court of Justice
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out.’ His other books include ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth.’ Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
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