EUSKADI / SENEGAL Senegalese revolutionaries form new organization THE founding congress of the And Jeff/African Party for Socialism and Democracy (AJ/PADS) took place last December 14-15. Two thousand people, 1,100 of them delegates, participated in the congress.
The founding of this organization is quite significant because it defines itself as socialist and anti-imperialist. It enjoys the support of several thousand members and sympathizers. It is clear that it will enjoy significant influence among students and the independent trade union movement. The new organization hopes to contribute to the emergence of a new revolutionary Pan-Africanism.
The AJ/PADS is the product of a fusion of several far-left organizations and, because of the exemplary manner in which the fusion was carried out, it can hope to draw even more forces together.
This is quite significant in Africa where no organization of this type has ever before existed. CLAUDE GABRIEL
T HE new party is the result of three years of debates between four organizations. The largest of these was the And Jeff/ Revolutionary Movement for National Democracy (AJ, an organization of Maoist origin which was built in conditions of clandestinity during the 1970's, particularly through cultural activities in the poor neighborhoods. AJ has progressively developed beyond its original positions. It approached the fusion process with the attitude that many questions had to be dispassionately re-discussed.
The three other organizations that participated in the founding of the PADS are the Union for Popular Democracy (UDP), the Socialist Workers Organization (OST), and the Suxxuba Circles. The UDP was the product of a split in the AJ and was therefore also of Maoist origins. The OST was a revolutionary Marxist organization and part of the Fourth International. The Suxxuba Circles came out of a split from the Lambertist current.
During the last three years these organizations found themselves converging politically through common work in community campaigns, in the union movement, in university struggles, in the positions they took against the Gulf war, and against the repressive policies of the government in the southern part of the country, the Casamance.
The proof that this fusion was an authentic one lies in the fact that the leaderships worked for months debating the program, the tasks, and the organizational principles of the future organization. This does not of course mean that the founding congress was able to clarify all programmatic and political questions. The idea of socialism has been so muddled in the African continent that the PADS needs time to develop a coherent alternative to the current crisis in Black Africa. This continent has never lacked either "Socialists" or "Marxists" to manage its neocolonial states! The system of nationalizations has been so widespread because the speculators who shared power needed to tap a certain sum of money from the collective purse to further develop their private wealth. In other words, it is necessary that a genuine anti-imperialist project clarify the question of social property, identify the social aspects of democracy, and finally offer a vision of another society.
A true break with the current system of dependence involves clarity on the nature of the existing states and the role of various social classes and layers in future struggles. This is without doubt the key challenge for the PADS and much will be revealed in the coming months. Many 1. Following a decision of the conference, the members of the ex-OST will remain individual members of the Fourth International, and those elected to bodies of the Fourth inemational will sabith relations of political 23 International will continue as such. The PADS and the Fourth Interational will establish relations of political solidarity.
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132 81 submission... This is why the essential pedagogical principle of this alternative is [for women] to rely on their own forces beginning with self-organization, selfdevelopment and self-defense. These are the mechanisms which will restore and reinforce the confidence of women in themselves, make them capable of occupying the important place that they will assume in the fight for an independent, democratic and prosperous Senegal where men and women will freely develop without any discrimination whatsoever."
It is hoped that women in the PADS will continue this fight in their own party and that the party as a whole will lead this struggle throughout Senegalese society. This would be a considerable gain for a movement that wants to change society, and will win it the support of the women of the country. There will not be true democracy in Africa as long as women are excluded from the current debates on constitutional reform. What could be more hypocritical than these national conferences that are taking place throughout Africa where there is much talk about the people, development and democracy, but where women are practically excluded?
Women of neighbourhoods and villages
If the PADS fully meets this challenge it will gain for itself the considerable social force of the women of the neighborhoods and villages. The first stage in this process was that of electing leadership bodies. Eleven women were elected to the fortyfive member Executive Secretariat (the equivalent of a Central Committee).
The PADS conference also provided the opportunity to bring together for the first time a number of independent and oppositional African organizations in order to discuss the renewal of Pan-Africanism. This was only a beginning as several invited organizations could not come. The next stage of these discussions will therefore be important.
Two options remain open along these lines: that of a broad coming together in which heterogeneity would become a paralyzing factor, or that of an anti-imperialist African left capable of taking several initial initiatives and debating strategic problems. The debate around the renewal of Pan-Africanism has only just begun. Hopefully, the continuity with the past, particularly the rich but contradictory experiences of the 1950's and 1960's, will not be broken. But these must be enriched by new generations brought up under new social conditions. PanAfricanism can take either the form of a "regional" super-nationalism, a simple formal revolt against dependence and alienation, or of a revolutionary PanAfricanism that would be the African link in a new internationalism capable of contributing to the renewal of a universal socialist project. * questions have been left open. There was at the congress a clear trend towards "refounding" a political project. As elsewhere, the pressure of world events has nourished a discussion which starts from a radical critique of capitalism, shorn of the dead weight of Stalinism and the various reformist and nationalist illusions that it engendered.
Apart from these analytical questions the new party will be confronted with the problem of organizing the hundreds of people who will be attracted to it hoping to find something different from what the traditionally corrupt clientelist parties have offered.
A party built at the base
The stakes are enormous because the political project outlined at the December congress can only be realized with a party built at the base, capable of carrying out militant political initiatives in the neighborhoods, regions and villages. Thousands of men and women in this country are waiting to be heard and are ready to act on the condition that there is an organization that will allow them to participate in discussions that will help them understand the world. In this sense the founding congress was an enthusiastic and moving gathering because the partici pants had the impression that they were charting new territory in their country.
The other challenge will be on the electoral plane. The pressure of the national and international relationships of forces can derail the best of initial intentions. A small organization has less of a risk of falling prey to electoralism than a party already able to modify the political situation in a country. Electoral strategies are therefore a new problem for Senegalese 24 the task of combining electoral cam- 24 militants. They will have to grapple with - the task of combining electoral campaigns with long term revolutionary projects, as well as dealing with the relationship between state institutions and the patient accumulation of militants for the formation of a powerful revolutionary movement.
The PADS must not remain alone and isolated. Its first activities underline the urgent need for solidarity. Such is the case in its first campaign against corruption, in which it has targeted the "fat debtors", that is, the men and women in power who have taken out huge loans without paying them back. This is an excellent example of making the connec tions between social mobilizations and the demand for social control over foreign aid on the one hand, and the international campaign for the cancellation of the debt on the other. While imperialism loudly clamors for democracy in Africa it remains silent on the secret bank accounts of African dictators and all the corrupt politicians whose booty inevitably winds up in Western banks. This is their contribution to democracy!
Solidarity is also needed since a motion was passed at the PADS congress demanding that French troops leave Senegalese territory and that no other foreign troops be stationed in the country. This would a good project for the French anti-militarist movement.
But the greatest gain made at this congress was without doubt the role envisioned for women. The battle was joined to make the PADS the first mass party in Black Africa where feminism is part of the consciousness and practice of the party. The motion passed by the congress on this theme ended thus: "If productive labor is the necessary condition [for emancipation] it is not by itself sufficient because economic autonomy does not immediately and irredeemably eliminate ideology and incapacity, dependence and
International Viewpoint #221 • February 3, 1992