African
Revolutionary Writers, Part 3a
Frantz Fanon
The extraordinary co-incidence of dates of both birth and
death as between Frantz Fanon and Patrice Lumumba, both born in 1925 and
both deceased in 1961, highlights the precociousness of Fanon’s critique of the
post-colonial regimes which had so recently, from his standpoint, come into
existence. Please download the essay “Pitfalls of National Consciousness” via
the link given below.
This essay was published in the book “The Wretched of the
Earth” in French in 1961 and in English translation in 1963. The title of the
book is a direct quotation from the song, the “Internationale”,
written by Eugene Pottier during the Paris Commune of 1871, the lyrics of which
in the original French begin: “Debout, Les Damnés de la Terre!” Les Damnés de
la Terre became the title of Fanon’s book and was well translated into English as
“The Wretched of the Earth” – a phrase since then embraced by generations of
militants.
Fanon is so intelligent and so witty that it is easy to be
charmed by him to such an extent that critical faculties are put aside. So much
of what he wrote nearly fifty years ago has come to pass, not once, but
repeatedly, and not in one, but in many countries, that one has to be
astonished.
No other writer on this topic has come close to the range and
the brilliance that Fanon exhibits with such apparent ease in this essay. To
find literary comparisons one has to go far back, to the likes of Voltaire
and Jonathan Swift.
Fanon is particularly emphatic here in his denunciation of
the national bourgeoisie in the circumstances of the newly independent country.
Is Fanon right? In South Africa, we certainly have problems
of “tenderpreneurs”, “narrow BEE”, corruption and many other manifestations of
the premature degeneration of the bourgeoisie, similar to Fanon’s descriptions.
But we also have a theory and practice of National Democratic
Revolution involving Unity-in-Action between classes, particularly between the
working class and the national bourgeoisie. We have found this class alliance
to be indispensible.
This document is a great classic and is typical of the best
of African Revolutionary Writing. But it is not a Bible.
Please download and read the entire text via
this link:
Frantz Fanon,
Pitfalls of National Consciousness, 1963 (18460 words)
Further reading:
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