Coup in Mali Exposes All Opportunists Which Feed Off African Resources

Public speculation has it that the reason for the overthrow was Touré’s incompetence. Captain Amadou Sanogo, a coup leader, argued that the ousted government had failed to provide the national army with adequate means to defeat the rebellion against the Taureg people in the north of Mali.

At no point have coup leaders spoken out against imperialism or neocolonialism. History has shown us that military coups are a quick way for elements of the military sector of the African petty bourgeoisie to seize power and secure large chunks of resources for themselves.

Touré himself came into power in a coup against the former neocolonial dictator, Moussa Traore, in March 1991.

Today, the constitution of Mali has been suspended, its borders closed, and several ministers arrested.

The deposed president is currently in hiding.

Neocolonialism benefits only the parasitic imperialists in Mali

The neocolonial state was created to repress the toiling masses, for the benefit of parasitic French rulers and black collaborators.

The country of Mali is a former French colony landlocked between Algeria, Guinea, Niger, Senegal, Côte D’ivoire, Burkina Faso and Mauritania — artificial borders created by white rulers at the 1884-85 Berlin Conference, with neither the consent nor the participation of African people.

Some observers feel there is evidence of a U.S.-led white imperialist scheme to carve up Africa and recolonize it at the expense of Africans.

Mali is vulnerable to severe drought conditions and hunger. Its most important mineral export is gold, but the reality is that Mali cannot develop economically within its present context, which is determined by imperial powers that are lining up to exploit its vast resources, including increasing U.S. influence.

The U.S. provides “military and economic aid of $70 million each year and another $70 million for food and other humanitarian needs.”

As a result of this U.S. intrusion, Mali has now been brought into a U.S.-led military program known as the Trans-Saharan Counter Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI).

Colonial borders represent the status quo: tear them down!

Despite the coup, power remains in the hands of the African petty bourgeois, class-enemy-from-within that rules at the expense the African working class and the poor peasantry.

The liberal democratic rights that we saw in Mali were actually a political space for sectors of the African petty bourgeoisie to compete for access to State power — not a space where imperialism could be fought.

We must turn our backs on both coup leaders and the deposed government.

We need a transformation of Mali — powered by the people — to satisfy the material needs and legitimate aspirations of the people of Mali.

Workers, peasants and honest progressive forces, including progressives in the armed forces in Mali, must fight for a people’s State.

The people’s State must be based on struggle for a revolutionary national democratic program that will sweep away all remnants of the neocolonial State, which is rotten to the core.

This type of State, created to repress the toiling masses for the benefit of parasitic French rulers and black collaborators, must go.

The democratization of Mali must mean that the people come to power anchored around a new revolutionary State, which must be born against parasitic capitalism and Berlin conference-created nationality, which does not serve the African working class in Mali or anywhere else.

Any news or “aid” coming from the African Union, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), United Nations or coup leaders represents the status quo.

There are those who say that it was a French coup. In fact, the Cameroon Voice states that, “Despite the pressure from the Ministry of the Interior or the French Government on the Malian State,” the latter refused to sign. It continues, “For Mali, the very low rate of regularization of its nationals present in France (and who risk deportation) is a sensitive issue: the reality is that, the amount of transfers of funds carried out by the Malians living in France is estimated to 295 million euro per year, or 11 percent of the Malian GDP.”

There are also those who say that this coup is a direct result of the fall of Gaddafi’s regime, who supported and controlled Tuareg forces in the region between Libya and Mali; the Tuareg’s armed rebellion has benefited from the transfer of sophisticated weaponry, brought by former Tuareg army officers and soldiers who served in the defeated army of Gaddafi.

Many Africans in Mali who supported the coup argue that the Malian government lost control of the North some time ago; the Malian State does not have the capacity to administrate the northern part of Mali, which is run by Tuareg and Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb (AQMI) rebels.

Tuaregs and the history of other conflicts

Tuaregs are Africans too, and the revolutionary national democratic program must also forward the legitimate grievances for freedom and economic development of the Tuareg people.

Since the advent of Mali’s nominal independence, the Tuareg have been demanding better integration and economic development for their region.

The Tuareg population, like the rest of the African population, has been divided by arbitrary colonial borders, which is why they are fragmented across the Sahara/Sahel Desert; they now live in Mali, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Burkina Faso, Niger and Tunisia.

The Tuareg are descendants of white populations who arrived in Africa after the fall of ancient Egypt and before the arrival of Arabs. They may look more homogenous in Algeria and Libya, but they are more mixed with indigenous African populations in places like Mali.

Their demands for autonomy have been met with repression. The current armed rebellion has touched the nervous system of the Malian neocolonial regime, now forced to face the reality that this conflict cannot be solved by repression alone because the Tuareg are, this time, demanding independence from Mali.

In addition to the Tuareg conflict, there is the conflict with the AQMI, an Islamist group that claims to be part of Al Qaeda and that operates also in the north and distinguishes itself by frequently kidnapping foreigners from Europe, the split of Sudan with the creation of South Sudan in January 2011, and the possible fragmentation of Libya.

The neocolonial crisis in Mali is the struggle of all oppressed African people against imperialism

There is only one African National Liberation Movement, which must be united and led by a single party of the African working class, in the form of the African Socialist International.

Our main goal is a single, continental, socialist State.

While we recognize and unite with the demands and aspirations for democratic rights for the Tuareg, all other minority populations in Mali and elsewhere in Africa, the African Socialist International’s position is that  we must all unite to defeat white imperialism in all its manifestations in Africa and in the African world.

Freedom for Tuaregs, Coptics, Arabs and other minorities in Africa must be fought within the context of liberation of the whole of Africa and the unification of the whole of African population that has been dispersed around the world.

This freedom can only happen at the expense of white imperialism and its allies, the African petty bourgeois collaborators. This is the era of power in the hands of poor people, who must be organized in their own organizations under the leadership of the ASI.

Fighting the Malian government without also demanding that Africa eliminate the borders that trap the Tuareg population, while protecting neocolonial governments and imperialism in the region, will only guarantee the status quo.

Only an all-African, revolutionary government can solve the problems of drought and underdevelopment that usurp our freedom and human dignity.

Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the ASI, states that the class struggle is concentrated in the colonial question, and this statement could not better have been proven more true than in the story of this conflict.

The crisis in Mali is a crisis of more than 500 years of imperialism stealing our resources in Africa while dividing us in all kinds of ways.

The starting point is to recognize and unite with the strategic interests of Africa and the masses of African people.

It is the mission of the black working class to defeat all neocolonial States in Africa and replace them with a single revolutionary State — to defeat white imperialism by cutting the umbilical cord that binds this monster to the Africa nation.

It is victory over imperialism on every front that will guarantee and consolidate the African nation and nationality, of which all minorities will be part, under the always-beautiful land of the rising sun of Africa.

Only a revolutionary State will be able to initiate massive programs for the social and economic transformation of Africa for the benefit of the majority of the toiling masses of Africa.