International News and Anarcho Quiz - Black Flag #216
Some of the short international new items from Black Flag #216. And the quiz.
Jomo Kenyatta, post-war Labour Party, strikes and the pass system - Makhan Singh
Annotated excerpt from Makhan Singh's History of Kenya's Trade Union Movement to 1952, describing Jomo Kenyatta's comments on the kipande pass system and strike action shortly after he was elected leader of the Kenya African Union (KAU).
Kenya - reading guide
Reading guide on Kenya.
An African “Homeland” for the Jewish Refugees? - CLR James
Written in 1938 while he was still a Trotskyist, CLR James writes about the plan to create a Jewish colony in Kenya. This was not a brand new idea in relation to the rise of Nazism, but had been supported by Theodor Herzl and Joseph Chamberlain (known as the Uganda Scheme).
1964: British troops put down mutinies in post-colonial Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda
Just one month following Kenya's official independence, Jomo Kenyatta invited British troops to put down a mutiny of soldiers who were conducting a sit-down protest against the continued presence of British officers in the army and low pay. In the same week, the British also put down mutinies with similar demands in Julius Nyerere's Tanzania and Milton Obote's Uganda, also at invitation. All three armies had originated in the King's African Rifles.
Reflections on the Kisumu Massacre, 1969
In October 1969 Jomo Kenyatta visited the Russia-built Nyanza Provincial General Hospital in Kisumu. During a protest against the visit, the presidential escort and paramilitary forces opened fire on the crowd, killing more than 11 and injuring hundreds. The piece was written following several police killings in the wake of the 2017 Kenyan presidential elections.
Wartime strikes in Kenya - Makhan Singh
Makhan Singh on wartime strikes in Kenya, including struggles against conscript labour, railway strikes, and a general strike in Uganda in January 1945.
Singh, Makhan (1913 – 1973)
Biography of Makhan Singh, who translated Marx's Capital while in detention in India, was a central figure in Kenya's early trade union movement in the 1940s, was imprisoned for 16 years, then sidelined by Jomo Kenyatta's post-colonial government.
The post-war strike wave in East, West, and Southern Africa
Submitted by Mike Harman on Mar 2 2018 20:20
From the end of the Second World War until the mid-'60s there was a wave of strikes in British East and West Africa, French West Africa, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The history of this class struggle has been neglected by both mainstream historians and most revolutionary tendencies based in Europe and the US.
The Nairobi General Strike, 1950: From Protest to Insurgency
The Nairobi General Strike [1950] was the culmination of Kenya’s post war strike wave and urban upheaval. An unprecedented upsurge occurred with the general strikes in Mombasa [1947] led by the African Workers Federation [A.W.F.] and in Nairobi by the East African Trades Union Congress [E.A.T.U.C.]. While this has been termed and treated as a city wide strike, there is enough evidence to suggest a movement that went some way beyond Nairobi. The extent of the cohesion and reciprocal impacts amongst urban and rural Africans involved in the strike were underplayed by the colonial government and the media that followed it.
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