← New Books Network
New Books Network
Martha Biondi, "We Are Internationalists: Prexy Nesbitt and the Fight for African Liberation" (U California Press, 2025)
00:42:29
Loading summary
Transcript36 lines
- [00:00]
A
Go beyond the verses and achieve a deeper understanding of Scripture with the Rebind Study Bible App. An audio experience of the Bible interwoven with expert commentary. The Rebind Study Bible App reads Scripture to you, enriching your comprehension with insights from the world renowned New International commentary on the Old and the New Testament in an accessible podcast episode format. Be not therefore anxious for the morrow. Matthew, chapter six.
- [00:26]
B
Each day will have its troubles, but by God's grace they can be survived.
- [00:31]
A
Use the Rebind Study Bible App's chat function to ask questions and get answers in real time. That's thought provoking discussion and analysis rooted in decades of research and wisdom from more than 40 scholars at your fingertips. The Rebind Study Bible App is a new way to experience the Bible with enhanced depth, at your own pace, in the moments you have. Search the Apple App Store for Rebind Study Bible or go to rebind app.com newbooks network for a free seven day trial. Hello everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network and if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Production. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [02:08]
B
Dr. Biondi, welcome to the New Books Network. Thank you for sitting down to talk with us today. For readers who might be unfamiliar, listeners who might be unfamiliar with your work, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
- [02:19]
C
Sure. Well, thank you very much, Seb, for hosting this and for engaging in this conversation. I'm Excited again. My name is Martha Biondi. I'm trained as a historian and I'm a professor of black studies in history history at Northwestern University, where I've been for basically my whole career. I basically am a scholar of social movements and black political thought. This book that I've just, you know, that's just being published, we are internationalists. Prexine Esbit in the fight for African liberation in many ways follows up on many of the concerns of my earlier works, which have examined how anti racist social movements have sought to reshape US institutions and policies. And they've also looked at debates in the universe of kind of black radicalism and black political thought. My first book was on the 1940s and 1950s. My second one was the 1960s and 1970s. This is like the 1970s, 80s and 90s. So I'm moving forward.
- [03:24]
B
So it's interesting to me with this book you use the life of this activist, Prexi Nesbitt, to tell a larger story about internationalism on the left. What do you see are the advantages of using a single person's life, a biographical story, to try to drive this type of narrative?
- [03:42]
C
Well, thank you for that question. I actually loved this method of writing a social movement history and I'm planning to use it for my next book. Of course, you need a person who is or was a longtime activist or organizer and someone who deserves greater attention. Focusing on Prexy Nesbit helped me bring a whole chapter of the American left and the black freedom struggle and its aftermath into sharper focus. In many respects, the book is like my first two books in that there are numerous protagonists, many struggles, multiple issues. But focusing on Prexi gave me a strong organizational scheme or through line. So it was just very helpful in both organizing a kind of broad and messy and large social movement, but also humanizing it, telling it as a person's story and through their. NPREXI has a dense web, dense networks of comrades locally and globally. So there are a lot of, you know, Prexi's the through line, but it's really the story of a social movement.
- [04:49]
B
Okay, well, let's dive into the first chapter. In your first chapter, you look at Nesbit's childhood and formative years. So let's introduce him and then let's talk through what was his childhood like and how does it lay the groundwork for this legacy of internationalism?
- [05:06]
C
Well, Prexi's childhood was extraordinary. He grew up on the west side of Chicago in a building owned by his high achieving and progressive parents and his paternal uncles. And their families. As Prexy once put it, the building was more like an institution than a regular home, and it became a multiracial international community. Prexi also received a very progressive, innovative education, first at the Francis Parker school in Chicago, and later at Antioch College. Both of these institutions tended to attract both progressive and like minded students and faculty. He credits both institutions for really setting him on a particular life path. Prexi's adolescence also coincided with the southern civil rights movement and the black power era, and he deeply engaged both. He did his junior year abroad in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where he began his lifelong solidarity with African liberation struggles and developed deep respect and appreciation for African peoples and cultures.
- [06:18]
B
How does Chicago shape him? I'm curious. He's such a Chicago figure. What effect does it have on him?
- [06:25]
C
Well, Prexi, I think, truly embraced a commitment to both local and transnational or international organizing. So he just, he just embraced multiple struggles in Chicago. He was very, you know, he's not himself a religious person, but he understood that churches were an important base of community organizing. So he had strong ties with many different denominations. He was very committed to organized labor and the trade union movement. His father had worked in the union movement at various points. He was an educator, but at various times also was involved in the labor movement, as was one of his uncles. Prexy had various stints, you know, working as a red cap, for example, in Chicago, and got involved in unionization efforts. And then later in life as an adult, you know, head stints working for, you know, SEIU and other unions. So that was another facet of his immersion in the world of, of Chicago coalitions and progressive organizing. He also worked for mayor Hale Washington for a couple of years, kind of as a. As a neighborhood troubleshooter. And he helped, and he helped really, I think, convince the mayor to fully embrace the anti apartheid movement and the divestment movement, which coincided with Harold Washington's time as mayor, which was, you know, tragically cut short by his premature death. So Prexi had, you know, had a deep web of connections, you know, in, in Chicago as well as in southern Africa. And he took all of it very seriously. I think building these relationships, sustaining these relationships were key to his success as, as a organizer over the long haul, over the long term.
- [08:13]
B
And there's something really interesting I want to pick up on that you've just touched on, especially with sort of webs of relationships. His parents seemed deeply engaged in actually encouraging him to go out and foster these from an early age, you know, the social milieu. He Grows up in is interesting. Read back to me on the page. Can you talk a little bit just about the kinds of people he met as a child?
- [08:36]
C
Yes. Well, Prexi was raised. I would say that his, you know, in some ways he was raised in the world of the Northern civil rights movement. He was raised in the world of a black middle class that was radicalized by the Great Depression and became very committed to creating a social democratic state during the New Deal and then trying to push that sort of New Deal state towards civil rights and towards racial justice. And Prexy's elders were very immersed in that project. His grandparents were all. Were Southerners, and they were part of the great migration from the south to the North. His grandparents, his paternal grandparents settled in Urbana Champaign, and then they had five sons, including Prexi's father, Roselle Sr. Those five sons all went to college, all went to graduate school. You know, a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, very successful, very high achieving, but very, very committed to civil rights work, to social justice work, to this sense of giving back to the community, lifting up the community. That ethos really trickled down to the next generation. Prexi's father, both Prexi's parents were educators. His mother was, you know, worked in the many different positions in the field of public education in Chicago. She was also deeply involved in arts and culture. Prexi, in his childhood, Prexi met many kind of African American political and cultural luminaries. The poet Robert Hayden was like a member of the family. Mahalia Jackson was a close friend of his mother's. He met Paul Robeson because one of the, you know, one of the, you know, a member of his household was close to him and would bring Prexi down to union halls where he'd hear Paul Robeson speak. So he had, you know, and then again back to his parents and their. Their very cosmopolitan outlook that they encouraged Prexi to do it. International experience when he was in high school. So Prexie spent a summer in Sweden when he was in high school. The only Chicagoan to take part in that international program that summer. And that family, who he calls his Swedish family to this day, were important friends for the rest of his life.
- [11:06]
B
So then we've set the stage for his early life. Chapter two is in part, sort of an examination of two competing outlooks and worldviews that Prexi has to navigate. And one is sort of a debate between people who identify as Pan Africanists, and the other is between those who identify as internationalists. Can you stake out both of these positions for the listeners and then talk about how Prexi navigated them and ultimately where he fell.
- [11:35]
C
Sure. Well, that's a great question. So different streams of American activists found their way toward participation in the anti apartheid movement. Activists who identified as black nationalists or Pan Africanists, saw their organizing an advocacy on behalf of African liberation as a logical next focus in the aftermath of the black American liberation struggle. Their orientation toward that work stressed racial affinity and bonds. Another stream of activists coming out of the black freedom struggle and or the movement to end the US war in Vietnam identified as internationalists. This typically meant an identification with socialist experimentation, a strong critique of US imperialism and a determination to prevent UFO further US military intervention in the global South. They wanted to prevent another, you know, US war like in Vietnam. Prexi very much identified with the latter outlook and as a result he did sometimes clash with black nationalists who were suspicious of the left, including the African left, who happened to comprise the leadership of many liberation struggles and later nation states in southern Africa.
- [12:57]
B
And let's talk a little bit about the African left because I think this history is something that really needs to be recovered for listeners. He's aligning himself with southern African liberation movements. Could you outline some of those for us and then talk about his major influences there?
- [13:16]
C
Sure. Well, I mean, it's a very important question because I think for a lot of, a lot of, you know, the history of black internationalism or sort of Pan Africanism in, you know, in the United States and in the, in the diaspora in the Caribbean and South America in earlier years there was this effort in some ways of, you know, whether it's through WB Du Bois or Marcus Garvey of the, you know, of, of folks in the Caribbean, in the US the so called New World, seeing themselves as somehow, you know, in some ways on the vanguard of trying to sort of organize sort of to end the slave trade, to end colonialism in Africa. And I think, you know, and doing very important work of solidarity and trying to sort of, you know, build a global kind of black identity and strengthen global black ties. I think what you see in Prexi's era and his generation is somewhat of a shift where, where the influence is maybe going in the other direction. You see African liberation leaders, leaders of new nation states reaching out right to the diaspora for support, for allyship, for connection, in shaping, in our case in the United States, U.S. foreign policy, U.S. corporate behavior. As I mentioned earlier, Prexi's first introduction to living in Africa and meeting Africans was when he did a junior year abroad in college. That was in 1965. It was enormously influential in the rest of his life. He had, though, previously met Africans in the United States, including the man who became president of the Mozambique Liberation Front, known as Frelimo. Eduardo Molan, an extraordinary individual, became president of Fre Limo actually was a PhD student at Northwestern and was living in the Chicago region during the 1950s for a while and by happenstance, got to know Prexi's family because Mon lan was engaged to a white American woman, and they couldn't find a church in Chicagoland to marry them. That's, you know, what the north was like in the 1950s, right, where an interracial marriage was also seen as a taboo. That was not just a southern phenomena. So the pastor of Prexy Nesbitt's family's church on the west side of Chicago, a man named Ed Hawley, had known Eduardo Milan from Oberlin College, where they were roommates or good friends. So Reverend Holly offered his church, a UCC church, a United Church of Christ Church, to marry the couple. And so that forged a particular relationship between Prexi, Prexi's family and Fred and Monlan, you know, again, who headed Fray Limo, the leading national liberation organization fighting against Portuguese colonialism. Portugal was, you know, kind of the last traditional colonial power in Europe. They led a violent and ruthless struggle to, you know, to maintain their. Their hold on their African colonies until the 1970s, when it a coup in Lisbon toppled the fascist dictatorship there that had enabled this survival of Portuguese colonialism. So Prexi got to know when he was a student and living in Dar es Salaam, got to know, you know, build closer ties with Freo, got to understand the Frelimo struggle better because Dar. Dar es Salaam had become the kind of, you know, headquarters. The president of Tanzania was a committed internationalist. Julius Nyerere, open Dar es Salaam to the leaders of national liberation struggles from those nations that were still under white minority rule or colonial rule. So Fray Limo had an office there. The African National Congress, fighting against apartheid in South Africa, had an office there. Swapo, who was fighting to free Namibia from South African control, had an office there. The Angolans were there. So there was this whole ferment and vibrant culture of debate and strategizing how to win freedom in southern Africa that Prexi literally fell into as a student and then continued to cultivate those relationships and later work, later travel. I mean, he would travel to southern Africa for the rest of his life cementing and forging these ties. So many of the leaders of Free Limo, of the African National Congress, of SWAP of the MPLA in Angola were either socialist identified or sort of left leaning figures because you know, they had, they had witnessed earlier decolonization efforts, you know, in, in places like Ghana and other parts of Africa, you know, kind of look, look to the west for support and, and in many instances were rebuffed or, you know, or prevented from building the kind of post egalitarian, post colonial societies that leaders of free Limo, anc, SWAPO and the like were committed to doing. So in many ways they, you know, they developed a critique of what they called colonial capitalism, seeing colonialism as deeply part of Western capitalism and so very much in search of alternatives. And I think that it is, particularly in the 1970s, there was a strong tilt toward examining socialist models in what we call then the Third World, we call today the global South. Cuba became a beacon of inspiration to many freedom fighters in Southern Africa. Fidel Castro tried to, you know, to sort of document his internationalism in very material and concrete ways, including sending doctors and teachers and physicians, but also including, you know, sending soldiers to partner in waging wars of national liberation and freedom. So this whole internationalist constellation, this global network of solidarity that was very left leaning and very critical of US imperialism, very critical of the role that US and European corporations had played in propping up Portuguese colonialism and played in plundering the southern African region of labor and wealth, mineral wealth. All of this played a role, I think, in sort of the tilt towards socialism, if you will, among leaders of this generation across the continent, but also across the global South.
- [20:15]
B
And it's with this intellectual ferment that Prexy goes back to Chicago and back to the United States in the early 1970s and becomes engaged in liberation support movement and then opposition to apartheid in South Africa. So you sketch a different history of the anti apartheid movement than I think what you typically get from memoirs or sort of what's been written so far for the listener. Just sort of sketch out what was the trajectory of the movement up until about 1970 and what do we learn about it from Prexi's involvement.
- [20:48]
C
So I'm kind of going to give you an overview of I think what. How Prexi's life story, I think changes. What is the standard account of the US anti apartheid movement? And Prexi's view, which I largely agree with the standard account of the US anti apartheid movement is perhaps too narrow and too US centric. It portrays the movement as a predominantly liberal African American led effort led by Trans Africa, a Washington D.C. based African American lobbying group. And Trans Africa was was founded and led for many years by Randall Robinson, who was a leading figure in the US Anti apartheid movement. Prexi argues that this account, this standard account, serves to obscure the actual breadth and depth of the US Anti apartheid movement and cuts off the story of US activists from the powerful global struggle against apartheid, colonialism, and minority rule in Southern Africa. More broadly, Prexi's life story cast the US Anti apartheid movement as more globally conscious and in regular communication and coordination with African organizers and leaders and with other African advocates in Europe and Canada. Prexi's life story amplifies the neglected and underappreciated role of organized labor in the anti apartheid movement, something I've already mentioned. Moreover, Nesbit's story shows that the anti apartheid movement focused on the whole region of Southern Africa, not just the country of South Africa, and that it had an explicit anti imperialist cohort of leaders and that it was multiracial. And finally, and very importantly, Prexi's story reminds us that grassroots organizing against apartheid happened all over the country, not just on the west coast and east coast, and this included major cities in the Midwest, which would later play crucial roles in pushing Congress to overturn President Reagan's veto of a sanctions bill in 1986. Prexi's life story indeed reveals the multifaceted streams of organizing that made boycotts, divestment, and sanctions effective in promoting democratic regime change.
- [23:20]
A
The holidays are coming up and that means friends and family are going to be in your house. Is your house ready? I know mine wasn't, so I went to Wayfair to make sure that I had everything I needed to entertain and put these people up. During the holiday season, Wayfair is the place to shop for all things you need for your home, from sofas to spatulas. And listen to this. Starting October 30th, you can shop Wayfair's Can't Miss Black Friday deals all month long. You can get up to 70% off. Wayfair will ship your items fast and free. Now in my case, I need to do betting. My betting was shot. So what did I do? Well, I went to Wayfair and I bought some new sheets and pillowcases. I also bought a comforter simply because I thought it was beautiful. It was very easy to order them. The price was right, shipping was free and they came well before I needed them. So don't miss out on early Black Friday deals. Head to Wayfair.com now to shop Wayfair's Black Friday deals for up to 70% off. That's W A Y-F A I R.com sale ends December 7th.
- [24:22]
B
Now there's an organization I want to pay attention to here that I, that you discuss, the American Committee on Africa. And the American Committee on Africa comes into the picture in the early 1950s. What's Prexi's involvement with it and how does it shift in this period?
- [24:40]
C
Yeah, that's a great question. And I think it's one of the contributions of this book maybe to tell a different story of the American Committee on Africa. I think the standard account of the ACOA and this was confirmed for me in a recent post in the, in the, in the blog Black Perspectives on the Anti Apartheid Movement. I think the standard account of the ACOA is that it is a cold war, you know, a kind of cold war liberal organization and that that shaped the trajectory of all its work in advocating for African independence from you know, its origins in the, in the 1950s through till the 1980s. I think again, where Prexy is following Prexi's life tells a different story is Prexy was part of a generation of black leftists who got involved, whether as in some, you know, whether as staff, whether as temporary staff, whether as board members who got involved in the ACOA beginning in the 1970s, continuing into the 1980s, that sparked an ideological fight within the organization specifically around trying to pressure the longtime leader, George Hauser, the founder and longtime leader of the American Committee on Africa, George Hauser, away from some of the organizations, some of the kind of legacy of that anti communist history and push the organization away from, of supporting, you know, push the organization toward a greater willingness to engage with and to support these new socialist leaning African liberation struggles that I've already described, that I described earlier, you know, that were also were openly embracing armed struggle because they were pushed to that position because of the refusal of European colonizers to, you know, peacefully negotiate with them. So they were, they were pushing the ACOA to be more explicit in support of these organizations that were, that were defending and engaging in armed struggle and to be more open to the left leaning socialist currents that were percolating throughout the global South. So this new orientation by a younger, not just African American, but including African Americans, pushed that anti communist old guard in the ACOA to create more space for the organization's, I think, affiliations and political outlook to evolve and to grow. So that's a different story that Prexi's organizing and advocacy helped propel. Prexi was on the staff of the ACOA a couple of different times, I would say. The most important stint was in the 1970s when the ACOA and another organization, Clergy and Laity Concern. Clergy and Laity, I'm forgetting exactly the acronym.
- [27:51]
B
I think it's Clergy and Laity Concerned. But it's been a couple of years since I looked at it, you know.
- [27:55]
C
A progressive anti war Christian organization that they partnered to help create, you know, the Campaign against Bank Loans in South Africa that Prexi was one of the coordinators of for several years. And they did important work trying to end bank lending to South Africa and were critical in and raising consciousness just among a wide group of young Americans of people in the labor movement, of students around the whole question of apartheid and divestment. And so Prexi was doing that in the 1970s in New York City and across, across the nation. And that, that was a key moment, you know, when he was, you know, playing a role in reshaping the ACOA's political outlook.
- [28:36]
B
So then chapter four, chapter four might have been my favorite part in part because I, I think Mozambique, it's just this chapter that nobody has paid enough attention to. So I was so glad to see it get the do it deserves here. It's an understudied facet of southern African solidarity. Prexi is at the center of a lot of that in the United States. What form does his solidarity take? What's happening in Mozambique? And what lessons or takeaways does it offer?
- [29:04]
C
Okay, a big question, a great question. I'll try and give a, a short summary maybe and then we can dive into any details. But okay. When Mozambique finally won independence from Portugal, you know, I had mentioned earlier in 1974, it's, there's, it's game changing what happens in Lisbon, there's, you know, soldiers rebel against the fascist dictatorship and this sets, you know, sets Portuguese colonies on the path to independence. So when Mozambique finally won independence from Portugal, the new government aimed to transform what had been a deeply exploited, impoverished colony into a unified new nation founded on principles of equal rights, anti racism, international solidarity and a commitment to providing education and healthcare to all. Now that's ambitious, right? So you can imagine they're going to need outside solidarity and assistance. And then very quickly, neighboring Rhodesia and South Africa, whose white led governments violently subjugated and exploited African peoples, immediately tried to undermine and subvert independent Mozambique. They just saw this independent black ruled nation embracing internationalism as just a threat. Its sheer existence, you know, on the borders of these white led white supremacist nations was just a threat. So they immediately, you know, they began to Fund a violent counter insurgent organization. You know who's whose Portuguese acronym is Renamo. Over many years, though, international allies organized material aid campaigns and sent much needed professionals to Mozambique for periods of time. These internationalist professionals, known as co operants, were engineers, teachers, doctors, architects. They came from all over the world, literally all over the world, including the United States. Prexi mentored and encouraged many co operants who came from the United States, including many who came from the Chicago region. Mozambique even ultimately hired Prexi as a special consultant to help publicize their plight and organize pressure on the United States government not to finance this counterinsurgency. Backed by South Africa, Prexi and his circle also created the Mozambique Support Network, a very important nationwide organization with chapters across the US to help build support for the beleaguered young nation of Mozambique. They raised consciousness. They did educational programs, they organized material aid campaigns, they hosted visiting Mozambicans. A whole theme through all of Prexi's work, whether it's focused on South Africa, Namibia, Angola or Mozambique, was what he termed people to people diplomacy. Bringing southern Africans to Chicago, to the Midwest, to the United States, and then bringing Americans to southern Africa. And he personally led scores, dozens and dozens of those political and educational trips for years. But they were pivotal toward raising consciousness about Mozambique in the United States.
- [32:34]
B
So then the fifth chapter. And again, I really enjoyed this one because I think it complicates a narrative and I like a complicated narrative. It looks at the end of apartheid, which if you normally get to the end of a history book on the anti apartheid movement, this is a triumphalist moment. You complicate that and explain why and how and how we use Prexi's life to do so.
- [32:58]
C
Okay, sure. Another great question. After South Africa released future president Nelson Mandela from jail, I just want to say here, just as an aside, you know, Dick Cheney, who recently died, you know, voted against. There was a proposal in, in Congress, you know, in favor of releasing Nelson Mandela, you know, why? Internationally regarded, you know, unfairly incarcerated political prisoner who would become the future president of South Africa, Dick Cheney vote was against it. Okay, that tells you a little bit, a bit about the Ronald Reagan regime and you know, how hostile it was to Mandela and to the anc and, you know, they literally cozied up to their friends in Pretoria, you know, the apartheid state. All right, back to our story. After South Africa released Nelson Mandela from jail, you know, the government was forced to contemplate a post apartheid future. As a result, its security and business elites began scrambling to limit the horizons of the African National Congress. They used both violence and economic threats to pressure the ANC into making concessions that ultimately preserved white economic power even as the country moved toward a political democracy. Now, the timing of this transition was crucial. It happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union and after the fall of the socialist bloc internationally. That block was deeply flawed and had long become authoritarian. But it had also been an important source of support for the ANC and also provided it, I think, gave it the potential to imagine an alternative to free market capitalism. A second point about the timing of the fall of apartheid, it happened at the high watermark of neoliberalism in the US and in the West. This was a bipartisan project which valorized markets, assailed unions, pushed for the privatization of public services and defunded social welfare programs. It's basically capitalism on steroids that promotes the storyline, storyline and narrative that there's no alternative to this system. Neoliberalism sparked a sharp rise in income and wealth inequality across the world, and we are still living through the brutal economic and political consequences of the world neoliberalism made.
- [35:39]
B
And how do US activists respond to what they're seeing? First the triumph of Mandela walking out of prison in 1990, but then seeing where the negotiations go because it is a four year old negotiating process?
- [35:54]
C
Yeah, I mean, I think that the. And there were internal debates in the international community about, you know, how to be supportive, how to continue to sort of influence the negotiations and influence the anc, to sort of have resolve. Right. And to fight for its, its. Its agenda. There were a lot of mixed signals. You know, a lot of the, A lot of the, the pressure that business elites were putting on Mandela and his circles was often, it was off stage, it was behind the scenes, you know, and there were ANC cadre like Joe Slovo and, you know, living outside, living on the continent, but outside of South Africa that were still giving interviews, talking about their commitment to socialism. While that commitment was being negotiated away behind the scenes, at the same time, the IMF basically reached a deal with the transitional government even before the first multiparty elections in 1994. They reached a deal that in some ways locked the hands of the ANC before, again, before Mandela was even elected into power, locked them into, into, you know, a deal of austerity and, and, you know, a deal, you know, in some ways protecting private property in their negotiating room. So I think that, I think what people did in the United States and in other countries was to try and, you know, solidify in some ways the voices that were speaking for organized labor, speaking for ordinary communities in the negotiating process to strengthen the union voice here in the US and pressing the ANC to maintain that path of lifting all boats and of economic redistribution. So there was pressure over here to do that, but they were now facing the sort of US corporate lobbyists trying to end sanctions, trying to sort of imagine a role for themselves in a post apartheid South Africa that would be, you know, full throttle through, full throated capitalist. So there was an intense battle raged. And I think that, I think that, you know, in some ways Prexi side was, was, was outmatched and outmaneuvered in this period of ascendant neoliberalism, what Naomi Klein called the shock doctrine. I think this moment was a. Was a shock doctrine moment where this, both the organized violence inside South Africa and the economic coercion of business elites and of the imf, I think, cornered the ANC and its allies and they made many concessions.
- [38:26]
B
And the book ends really by talking about the legacy of the anti apartheid movement and Prexi's understanding of it. So how do we make sense of its successes, of its failures and sort of what is the lesson going forward from it?
- [38:42]
C
Well, I mean, as I mentioned in my previous answer, you know, this was a time of mixed feelings and mixed emotions, but there is absolutely no question that, you know, I mean, and Prexi and many, many, many Americans and many African Americans, especially from Chicago and the Midwest, went as election observers in 1994. They were thrilled to see the victory of the ANC. They celebrated, they savored the moment. They knew it was going to, you know, part of that victory meant the apartheid state was now not going to be in a position to wage wars, not only internally, but also in the region. So they knew that it foreshadowed, like a new period of peace in southern Africa. And they were thrilled and happy and excited to savor that. So they were thrilled to see the fall of apartheid and the end of the regional wars that South Africa waged against Angola, Namibia and Mozambique. But they also felt intense disappointment and anguish over the many concessions that were forced upon and demanded of leaders of African nations in the wake of years and years of economic and military assault. Prexi argues that we Americans need to learn a key lesson from this, that our duty is to undercut US war making and imperial ambitions from within. If we can pivot the US away from its support of institutions that promote privatization and austerity, such as the International Monetary Fund, or reduce the American global military footprint, that, he says, is our job. And if we can do that, we would be at once saving the planet and offering new possibilities for peaceful economic development. So in the end, if our goal is to advance peace and social justice in the world, we need to redouble our efforts to forge robust democracy here at home. And that's. Yeah, that's incredibly true. Now more than ever, I think that.
- [40:43]
B
Wraps up the book. So I just wanted to ask one final question, and I ask this of everybody having completed it, what are you thinking of working on next?
- [40:51]
C
Oh, well, I am imagining a story where I have an a key grassroots organizer in Chicago as a kind of through line to tell, to tell a broader story of the Chicago left in the 21st century. But that is still to be finalized and determined. One last point I'd like to make about the writing of this book. I started it during the pandemic when many archives, all archives were closed, physical archives. And I want to give a shout out to two digital archives that were critical and to my ability to write this book during the pandemic. You know, one is the African Activist Archive at msu, which was extraordinarily important. Another was the Chicago Anti Apartheid Movement Collection at Columbia, hosted by Columbia College Chicago that has digitized papers, digitized oral histories. I should have mentioned that the African Activist Heart Archive has digitized interviews, images, primary source documents, both extraordinary labor of love archives that grew out of collaborations between activists and curators and librarians. Zoom, of course, enabled me to interview people all over the world from my living room. So certain technological advances were critical to the completion of this book. So just a shout out to all the librarians and archivists and activists who digitized all these documents and made that possible.
- [42:19]
B
We will always shout out and support the archivists out there doing this work. It is impossible to even contemplate projects like this without their support. Thank you for making the time to do that and thank you for taking the time to talk to us today. I really appreciate it.
- [42:34]
C
Well, it's been my pleasure. Thank you. Zeb, Sam.