Forced Labour in Colonial Africa : A. T. Nzula I. I. Potekhin and A. Z. Zusmanovich (Routledge Revivals)

Originally published for the first time in English in 1979 this book represents one of the earliest Marxist analyses of the impact that colonialism had on Africa during the first half century that followed the Scramble. Nzula’s co-authored book, together with all his writings in the Negro Worker, are assembled here. The political experience of its African co-author resulted in a book which is alight with commitment to the liberation of the Continent, yet always tempered by an explicit theoretical understanding of capitalism in its imperialist phase. The book opens with an outline of Africa’s role in the world economic system. Successive chapters reveal how Western capitalism conjured up a brutally exploited working class and dispossessed peasantry throughout the African continent. Each major region of Black Africa is analysed. Meticulous information as to the facts of oppression and many of the early urban and rural struggles against colonialism before the Second World War is set out. Robin Cohen’s introduction is a valuable summation of Nzula’s life and of the background to this book. The appendices bring together many of Nzula’s little known writings.