Guerrilla Incursions Into The Capitalist Mindset
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Guerrilla Incursions into the Capitalist Mindset
Author: Shiraz Durrani
language: en
Publisher: African Books Collective
Release Date: 2024-01-23
Guerrilla Incursions into the Capitalist Mindset is an unprecedented collection of over 60 essays, interviews, petitions and letters as well as poems and short stories flowing from the pen of Shiraz Durrani. It is a treasure trove of truths that has so far been obscured by the information vacuum created by capitalism and its sister, imperialism. By reprinting out-of-print material, and bringing to light limited access information, this book supplies a new language for understanding and articulating our realities. This collection not only recovers and recollects the remnants of previous displaced history but also makes alternative ideas and experiences available. Remarkably, it sets the record straight by establishing a historical link between the arrival of the trade union movement from India through Makhan Singh, who began calling for independence in 1950, to the Mau Mau war of independence in Kenya led by Dedan Kimaathi, and the subsequent clash between socialism and neo-colonialism, which claimed the life of its champion, Pio Gama Pinto.
Trade Union Studies in the UK and Kenya
Author: Nigel Flanagan
language: en
Publisher: African Books Collective
Release Date: 2024-07-02
Nigel Flanagan brings a distinct perspective to the problems of trade union organising. In this account he draws on his own experiences as an activist, shop steward, strike organiser and working for the global union UNI. The book has be very well received and after six impressions this revised and enlarged edition is also being published in a Kenyan version with our partners, Vita Books - Nick Wright. Nigel Flanagan's Our Trade Unions: What Comes Next? was first published in Britain in early 2023 at the height of the country's inflationary crisis, when basic food costs were increasing by up to 20 per cent and energy by far more. Workers were fighting, through their trade unions, to protect their living standards and local services from the biggest attack for a century. This new Kenyan edition of Flanagan's book is, therefore, doubly welcome because it provides real life substance to these links. The chapters from Shiraz Durrani, himself a veteran of these struggles, reveal how far the movements of resistance to colonial rule were rooted in, and largely sprang from, the trade union movement in the 1920s and 30s. The importance of the contribution from Shiraz Durrani is that he places this resistance squarely in the special circumstances required for capitalist exploitation to take place in Kenya... Resistance demands mass-based political trade unions. This is why Kenya's experience and that of other African nations is of relevance not just to workers in Africa but those who wish to rebuild the workers' movement internationally. But this process must be political. It cannot be simply that of 'organising'. As Shiraz Durrani stresses, 'without a vision of achieving equality and justice, unions remain merely to make capitalism more acceptable to workers'- John Foster
The Struggle has started
Author: Shiraz Durrani
language: en
Publisher: African Books Collective
Release Date: 2025-03-06
This is the second book published by Vita Books on Makhan Singh (1913-1973). The first one was Makhan Singh, A Revolutionary Trade Unionist published in 2015. That a second book is considered necessary is an indication that the full history and contribution of Makhan Singh to the working class struggles in India and Kenya still need more publications to be written and placed in the public domain. Of course, the Makhan Singh Archives at the University of Nairobi and Unquiet: The Life and Times of Makhan Singh by Zarina Patel remain key resources on him. As Kwamchetsi Makokha says in the Introduction of this book, "Fewer tasks can be as challenging as constructing the larger than life profile of Makhan Singh: a man who saw through and instantly rejected the tokenistic colonial assignment of Indians to a class above Africans; deconstructed the hierarchical colour bar by organising trade union activities that brought the two communities together; and brought a penetrating ideological clarity to the fight for self-determination by making a demand for Kenya's independence in 1950". While the name of Makhan Singh may well be more known in Kenya today than in the years after his death, little or not attempts have been made by trade unionists or politicians to understand and follow his ideological stand and to resist capitalism and imperialism as he did It is for this reason that the experience and the record of Makhan Singh needs urgent attention in Kenya, indeed in Africa, today. Kwamchetsi Makokha concludes: "Although it is regrettable that for over 50 years after Makhan Singh's death, knowledge of his full contribution to the making of modern Kenya has been officially suppressed, and access to it denied to a significant proportion of the population, the publication of The Struggle Has Started secures this hero's place in collective memory. Shiraz Durrani, the Editor of the book, points to the central issue that Makhan Singh fought against: "Makhan Singh saw class divisions and class struggles as the primary aspects of resistance to colonialism and to ensuring that the interests of workers, peasants and people of Kenya were in the forefront of an independent country. This was a turning point in the struggle for liberation in Kenya. Colonialism had succeeded in previous periods to divide people's struggles along tribal' or racial or regional levels, thereby dividing forces of resistance. Makhan Singh was able to see through such divisive tactics. He saw the struggle as a class struggle and emphasised the need to politicise the working class, unite them with other progressive classes and wage a struggle that would remove the causes of poverty and injustice from the country." That struggle has not been won. That is why Makhan Singh's teaching and experience is relevant today. The book carries a reproduction of the excellent exhibition on Makhan Singh by Khalsa Lakhvir-Singh which was first exhibited at the MacMillan Library in early 2024. They provide an overall context of the life and time of Makhan Singh