On his journey to a different approach, Mandela visited Algeria – a place where the revolutionary thinker Frantz Fanon also developed his ideas on armed struggle.

A grim revolutionary war started in Algeria in 1954 between the indigenous Arab population, mainly represented by the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), and the French on behalf of the white settlers. The casualties numbered around 300 000 with two million Algerians displaced and one million settlers returning to France.

The conflict came to an end in 1962 when French President Charles de Gaulle called out a referendum on whether Algeria should remain as part of France. The vote was overwhelmingly in favour of independence.

This revolution had a profound effect on both Mandela and Fanon’s thinking. It shaped a great deal of their respective understanding about colonisation, oppression and freedom.
 

Mandela in Algeria

Mandela was an ardent freedom fighter in the early days of South Africa’s liberation struggle – he co-founded the ANC’s military wing Umkhonto weSizwe in December 1961. He believed that violence was necessary in resisting the repressive and brutal apartheid regime. He was eventually imprisoned for attempting to overthrow South Africa’s apartheid regime. Mandela and seven of his comrades were convicted of sabotage in 1964.

Mandela visited troops of the FLN in Morocco earlier in 1961 during a tour of Africa designed to establish Umkhonto weSizwe as the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). Later that year he travelled to Algeria to participate in joint exercises between the ANC and the FLN.

Algeria also came to be the first country Mandela visited after he was released from prison in 1990. This was a symbolic gesture to acknowledge the inspiration he drew from the North African nation’s revolution and support for the struggle against apartheid.

The Algerian Revolution inspired Mandela. In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, he compares their situation as the closest to that of the ANC in South Africa. The rebels in Algeria also had to face a government representing a sizeable white community controlling most of the indigenous population who were not white.
 

Fanon in Algeria

The Algerian Revolution made a profound imprint on Fanon’s work, too. He hailed from the island of Martinique in the Caribbean, then studied psychiatry in France and ultimately ended up working in an Algerian hospital in the 1950s.

It was there that he became acutely aware of the damage oppression wages both on the colonised and the colonist. Fanon became a member of the FLN and was involved in the resistance against the French.

Fanon is considered by some as an advocate of violence because of the prominent role it plays in his work, which can be read from a certain angle as a kind of manifesto. But he did not glamorise violence. The point for him was rather that violence becomes a necessary response to oppression where the oppressor does not recognise the humanity of the oppressed.

There are only a few references to apartheid in Fanon’s famous work, The Wretched of the Earth, but he saw the situation in South Africa as an exemplification of the struggle for decolonisation. Fanon’s ideas played an important role in South African political thinker Steve Biko’s work on the ideology of Black Consciousness.
 

In conversation

Mandela and Fanon never met. By the time that Mandela visited Algeria, Fanon was on his death bed in Washington DC; he had leukaemia, and would die at the age of just 36. Fanon’s ideas didn’t feature in Mandela’s thinking, but one could imagine a conversation between them. There would be some points of agreement, and some areas in which they’d differ.

There would be agreement between Mandela and Fanon on the role of violence as a necessary foil to oppressive regimes. This was Mandela’s train of thought during his visit to Algeria when he emphasised armed struggle.

Mandela’s thinking about the role of violence changed during his 27 years in jail. He realised that violence was necessary to counter and undo the institutions of apartheid. Violence has its place in purifying society of institutional oppression, racism and hate but it cannot continue indefinitely. Once apartheid was undone, Mandela reasoned, violence would only become a destructive force.

Mandela opted for reconciliation with the old oppressors, which had mixed results in retrospect.

What might Fanon say about Mandela’s eventual change of mind? He would probably praise the South African’s acknowledgement of the damage which oppression does to both the oppressor and the oppressed. Reconciliation – or what Fanon called mutual recognition – becomes a remedy, absolving both sides of culpability for the violence which they exercised.

Fanon might criticise Mandela regarding the decision to embrace neo-liberal capitalism, which has led economic injustice to persist on a massive scale.

There is one major achievement in Mandela’s compromise which Fanon would acknowledge: his decision to include oppressor and oppressed as part of the post-apartheid dispensation has brought about the promise of something like the new humanity that Fanon envisioned beyond decolonisation.
 

Charles Villet, Independent Researcher (PhD, Monash), Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Photo credit: Two Circles

On August 10, 2018, The All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat (AIMMM), UP in association with like-minded social activist and NGOs organised a seminar on “Discriminatory provisions of para 3 of Constitution (SCs) Order 1950” at Ambedkar Mahasabha, Hazratganj. Lucknow.

 As per Para 3 of Constitution (SCs) Order 1950 any non-Hindu cannot be regarded as a scheduled caste. However, in 1956, this order was amended to include Sikhs, and again in 1990 to include the Buddhists among the scheduled castes. So now after these amendments, para 3 says that nobody who is not a Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist can be a scheduled caste.
 Thus, Para 3 of the constitutional order (SC) excludes Dalit Christians and Muslims from the benefits of reservation in the fields of education and employment given to the members of SCs under Article 341 of the Indian Constitution.

Dr Anis Ansari led the delegation of All India Muslim Majlis e Mushawarat UP to Sri Ram Nath Kovind, President of India at Raj Bhavan, Lucknow and submitted a memorandum for the abolition of religious discrimination against Muslim & Christian Dalits under para 3 of Presidential order  Constitution (SCs) Order 1950.

The president assured that he said he would get the memorandum examined as this issue is dealt with by the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment.

“If there is no response from the Govt of India, we will continue our struggle till this discrimination against Muslim & Christian Dalits is ended. We demand para 3 of President’s Constitution (SCs) Order 1950 to be abolished & the benefits of reservation under Art 341 of Constitution to be extended to Muslim & Christian Dalits also” said Dr Ansari, President, UP Unit, AIMMM.

 The delegation included Maulana Zaheer Ahmad Siddiqui Nadawi Vice President AIMMM UP, Sri Mohd Khalid Vice President AIMMM UP,  Sri Tariq Siddiqui Secretary General AIMMM U.P. & Bhai Tej Singh National President Ambedkar Samaj Party.

This story was first published on Two Circles. Read the original here.

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An executive summary of the report had been published by Communalism Combat in April 2010. This summary can be viewed at  https://sabrangindia.in/sabrangthemes/looking-ahead
 
In the chapter on ‘Demands for Amending the Constitution (SCs) Order, 1950’, the Commission had concluded:
“Inclusion of castes in the old Government of India (Scheduled Castes) Order 1936 was based on general impressions and not on any actual survey of the caste situation in the country. The same can be said about the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order 1950 which was based on the old SC Order of 1936; inclusion of additional castes from time [to time] to the lists under the present order of 1950 is also not based on a scientific survey of the actual caste situation in the country. (1)

“ By all available evidence we find the caste system to be an all-pervading social phenomenon of India shared by almost all Indian communities irrespective of religious persuasions. (2)

By all available evidence we find the caste system to be an all-pervading social phenomenon of India shared by almost all Indian communities irrespective of religious persuasions

“ It is claimed and agreed to by almost all sections of society in India, in various contexts and especially in respect of the issue of reservations that no special benefits can be given to any community or group on the basis of religion. At the same time however, it is generally insisted upon that the class of scheduled castes must remain religion-based. This seems to be illogical and unreasonable. (3)
 
As articulated by us in our editorial at the time, “While opposition from the Hindu Right to any affirmative action favouring the minorities is only to be expected, the Ranganath Misra Commission’s recommendations are also facing resistance from several other quarters. Sections of the SCs are opposed to the extension of reservation benefits to Muslim and Christian Dalits, for it will take away a slice from their share of the cake. OBC Muslims are opposed to an across-the-board 15 per cent reservation in education and government employment for minorities, as they fear that the ashraf (upper-caste) Muslims will corner most of the benefits. The upper-caste Muslims meanwhile are enthusiastic supporters. OBC leaders of the likes of Mulayam, Laloo and Sharad Yadav seem to be in a bind. Endorsing the recommendations will mean “conceding” apportioning a part of the OBC share exclusively to minorities. On the other hand, opposing it will make them unpopular with a constituency whose votes they eagerly seek. It is precisely in this OBC zone of discomfort that the Congress had seen for itself an opportunity to ingratiate itself with Muslims, opposition from the backward sections within the community notwithstanding.
 
Electoral calculations being paramount, are the articulations of the minister geared towards the powerful OBC block?
 
 

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