MALCOLM X: MAU MAU SELF-DEFENCE

In 2023, it is probably not hard to find people who understand and relate to Malcolm X's position on the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, popularly known as the Mau Mau. After all, it has become more commonly accepted that settler colonialism in Africa was brutal, racist and violent. It can be easy to forget that Western media depicted Mau Mau warriors as horrific blood-thirsty terrorists and savage criminals.

Malcolm X, like so many Pan-African freedom fighters, took the courageous position to defend the Mau Mau. Like Frantz Fanon, Kwame Ture, Josina Machel, Amilcar Cabral, Titina Silá and so many others in the struggle for African liberation, Malcolm X understood that the violence of the oppressed is fundamentally different from the violence of the oppressor. When Malcolm X spoke of African liberation 'by any means necessary,' what he meant was that the white-supremacist imperialist system that has come to control the world today was founded in violence, and fueled each and every day by violence. We cannot forget that when the oppressed launched an attack, it came after the Western imperialists had declared war on Africans and on other colonised peoples of the world, when they decided to build their wealth through conquest, plunder and our suffering.

Let us know what you think of Malcolm's remarks.