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T R I B U T EVehicles belonging to pro-Gaddafi forces explode after an air strike by coalition forcesin March. The West’s interventions like the one in Libya are accompanied by ‘a politicohumanitariandiscourse which barely conceals its hegemonic interests’.Arab, the black. The enemy who isgenetically incapable of universal values,and thus an irredeemable barbarian,is de facto excluded from humanity.In this context the Dakar discourseremains an important stage.For theoreticians of a repackaged,modernised racism, the failure of independenceis not due to the poisonedlegacy of colonialism, nor the destructiveinfluences of the former metropolis,nor to the endurance of dictatorsto whom the former colonisers havegiven the keys of power, but to theincapacity of people frozen in theirown ‘archaicness’ to take control oftheir destiny. Fanon’s book BlackSkin, White Masks is a fundamentalmilestone in the anti-racist struggle:a decoding of these mechanisms ofsegregation and their political insults,analysing the impulses of colonialismand its impact on the dominated. Tohim, it was articulated in the fightagainst racism in a universal movementof dis-alienation for the victimsof racism and the racists themselves.Faced with these attacks, far frombeing paralysed, the people have continuedto advance and have not abdicatedthe struggle for dignity, justiceand a better life. Whatever may be thepublic face of syndicated struggles –whether freedom of the press or selfdetermination– throughout the continent,the voices of the people are gettingstronger: women and men engagedin the political struggle for citizens’emancipation and to reject theneoliberal model. The founding mythsof the struggles for independence arenot dead. It is from this angle that onemust understand the popular revoltsin the Arab world. To reduce thesemovements to an expression of socialmalaise or hunger-riots is a mystification.But the lost half-century for developmentand social progress hasbeen a half-century of settling andpolitical clarification. In effect, thedogmatic prisms have lost their instructivepower and the only analyticframeworks which still function arethose based firmly on the principle ofreality.Fanon’s ideas can be used to confrontthe reality in countries previouslyunder colonial domination, disentangledfrom ideological blinkersand liberated of all dogma. In this regard,contrary to those who wouldrather see him iconified and forgotten,Fanon is more pertinent than ever.He was at once a psychiatrist, an AlgerianMujahideen, pan-African revolutionary,itinerant ambassador andfreedom fighter for all – includingthose who believe themselves to belongto the dominant world.Let us recall the following passagefrom Black Skin, White Masks:‘Me, a man of colour, I only want onething, to never be the instrument ofdomination. To never see one man inservitude to another. That is to say,myself to another. That I might discoverand want man wherever hemight be.’Under Fanon’s liberty critique,systems of power are revealed as whatthey truly are: systems of oppressionand pillage at the origin of all economic,social and cultural obstacles.Independence hollowed of its democraticcontent is vulnerable: the gainsof the struggle for liberation are in noway irreversible. Freedom for the peopleswho rise up has been confiscatedby the powers that be, supported bythe former colonisers. Domination hasonly changed its appearance and liberationis yet to come.For Fanon, ‘the freedom of theindividual does not follow from nationalliberation. An authentic nationalliberation only exists to the extent thatindividual liberation has irreversiblyset in motion its own liberation.’ So,with rare exception, the societies freedfrom the colonial yoke are societieswithout citizens.The objective, at the dawn of independence’ssecond stage, is to bringback the political content of independence,to one recognisable to the populationand without which the shape ofindependence is just a caricature.Man’s liberation is a universal fightbased on the defence of private andpublic freedoms, the primacy of thegeneral interest, the reduction of inequality,accountability of the elected,and the sovereignty of right.Real liberation is that which pursuesprocesses engaged in by independencestruggles, which can onlybe envisioned in the context of institutionswhich are genuinely democratic,strong and representative.Democratic freedoms are the onlyway for these countries to escape theTHIRD WORLD RESURGENCE No 255/25670