African liberation and China: in memory of Comrade Tongogara.

Speech to the meeting commemorating Comrade Tongogara called by the Free Mumia Abu Jamal Campaign UK. Brixton, London. 17 May 2025.

 

It is an honour for me to be invited by the Free Mumia Abu Jamal Campaign UK to give this first Tongogara Memorial Talk, just over two years since he joined the ancestors. I hope it will be the first of many and that this will in some small way help to keep his memory alive in the way he would surely have wanted – enabling others to be inspired by his life and work, to learn from his example and to carry on the cause to which he devoted the great majority of his years.

Let me take this opportunity, on behalf of Friends of Socialist China, to congratulate the Free Mumia Campaign for all the steadfast and unflinching work you have done over years, work in which Tongogara was at the heart, to ensure that this unyielding revolutionary and internationalist is not forgotten in the hell hole of the US prison system.

As Mumia himself has said: “Know this: throughout it all. I have never felt alone. To the eye, I was alone in solitary confinement, on death row, but the eye cannot really see all that is, for behind brick and steel, I felt our love, sometimes like a wave, sometimes like a whisper, but always there, ever present.”

Why should I be giving this talk today? Perhaps it’s for the organisers rather than me to say. But I’m the co-editor of Friends of Socialist China, a platform established four years ago to support the People’s Republic of China and promote understanding of Chinese socialism and the Chinese revolution.

The Chinese revolution and its impact on the world has fascinated me since my early teens. And that’s essentially how I came to know Tongogara. Anyone who knew him, would appreciate that for Tongogara, the Chinese revolution and the teachings of Mao Zedong were central to his outlook on life – a veritable political compass, alongside his unshakeable commitment to the liberation of African people worldwide. At home and abroad, to borrow Marcus Garvey’s expression.

I can’t remember exactly when I first met him, but we certainly knew each other by the summer of 1976, just before my 18th birthday. Danny Morrell, as he was then known, was at that time a member of a small communist organisation, which was going to start producing a factory newspaper for the engineering factory in north London where he and a couple of other comrades had taken jobs.

Obviously, it would have marked the end of their employment, and hence of the political project in which they were engaged, had they openly distributed the paper themselves. That was my job and the night before I stayed at Danny’s bedsit to be there for the early morning shift.

That night we talked – obviously – and that’s when I started to really get to know him. I was touched by the loving photos of family back in Jamaica, which held pride of place alongside the posters produced by the Youth Forces for National Liberation (YFNL), a vibrant Marxist-Leninist organisation in Jamaica at that time.  One of them commemorated the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865.

The YFNL also produced an excellent pamphlet on the Morant Bay Rebellion, detailing, not least, the unspeakable cruelty and evil of British colonialism, that had sparked the rebellion and that especially marked its suppression.

And it was that cruelty and that evil, replicated across the four corners of the earth, from Jamaica to South Africa, from Ireland to Tasmania, that produced the wealth, the immense super profits, that built the City of London and which sustains decadent and parasitic British imperialism to this day.

It was the understanding of this inseparable connection that underpinned Tongogara’s belief that communism – the liberation of working and oppressed people everywhere – and African liberation, or black power, formed parts of an indivisible whole.

It was natural, therefore, particularly in the time of his politically formative years, that he should gravitate towards the Chinese revolution, in particular, as a necessary antidote or corrective to the Eurocentrism of white, Western Marxism.

In his April 16, 1968, statement following the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr., Chairman Mao wrote:

“In 1963, in the ‘Statement Supporting the Afro-Americans in Their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by US Imperialism,’ I said that the ‘the evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Black people and the trade in Black people, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the Black people.’ I still maintain this view.”

He added: “The struggle of the Black people in the United States for emancipation is a component part of the general struggle of all the people of the world against US imperialism, a component part of the contemporary world revolution.”

It was this political understanding that Tongogara lived by.

Not surprisingly, given all the twists and turns that the revolutionary movement in this part of the world has gone through, Tongogara found himself in various organisations over the years. But he never gave up or regretted his life’s choice.

In his encyclopaedic 2022 work, ‘African and Caribbean People in Britain – A History’, the distinguished historian Professor Hakim Adi acknowledges Tongogara’s part in the formation of the Black Unity and Freedom Party (BUFP). He writes:

“In July 1970, the majority of UCPA’s [the Universal Coloured People’s Association] remaining membership, led by George Joseph, Ricky Cambridge, Danny Morrell and Sonia Chang, reconstituted themselves as the Black Unity and Freedom Party (BUFP) with a publication entitled Black Voice, launched in September 1970.”

He adds that: “Like other organisations at the time, the BUFP declared that it was guided by ‘Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung Thought’, although in practice this indicated that it was inspired by the example of the Black Panthers in the US, as well as by the revolutions in China and Cuba.”

For what is an extremely thorough and rigorous work, it seems a somewhat perfunctory reference. Further, the qualification “although in practice” seems to me slightly incongruous. Guidance by Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought needn’t in any way preclude drawing inspiration from the example of the Black Panthers and the Chinese and Cuban revolutions. In fact, rather the contrary.

This is, of course, a minor quibble – or perhaps a necessary clarification. This book and others by the same author, such as his ‘Pan-Africanism and Communism’, should be required reading. I am a tremendous admirer of Professor Adi’s work, who I’ve known since we were students together at SOAS in the late 1970s. He has long since established himself as the pre-eminent scholar in his field, his work making a significant contribution not merely to academia but also, in my view, to revolutionary theory.

But strange to say, on this issue, one so central to the life and work of Tongogara, a book emanating from the class enemy is actually much more illuminating.

‘The Black Man in Search of Power’ was written by The Times News Team and published in 1968. Evidently women didn’t even qualify to make it into the title back then.

Although by no means entirely free from sensationalism, and whilst certainly not sympathetic to the revolutionary quest for power, the book is surprisingly full of fascinating information. All I can say is that the quality of gutter journalism has evidently sunk dramatically over the years, doubtlessly compounding the recent problem of sewage in our lakes and rivers.

The book’s chapter, ‘Britain: The outside influences’, takes up 18 pages, much of it devoted to China. It offers this observation:

“The ominous lesson of CARD [the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination] is that, given the right target, the right leadership, the right moment, the right fervency from immigrant militants and some popular support, the mixture of pro-Chinese communism and American-style Black Power on the immigrant scene can be devastating.”

One can well imagine the gleam in Tongogara’s eye burning more brightly and more mischievously than ever at the thought of such devastation!

If anyone is still doubting the connection between Tongogara, African liberation and China, then I’d refer to an old saying, ‘the clue is in the name’ – specifically the name he chose to adopt, that of Josiah Tongogara, the legendary commander of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA).

A December 2017 article in Zimbabwe’s Business Weekly, published under the auspices of The Herald, Zimbabwe’s leading newspaper, stated:

“In an interview published in 2012, President Mnangagwa [Zimbabwe’s current head of state] stated his belief that Tongogara joined the military, partially because of his admiration for the first five ZANLA fighters to train in China (who were led by President Mnangagwa), who had stayed with him in Zambia upon their return. Joining the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) in March 1965, he went for training at Itumbi Camp at Chunya in Tanzania. In early 1966 Tongogara lead a group of 11 cadres, including William Ndangana (leader of the Crocodile Gang), to Nanking [now Nanjing] Academy in China. There they had training in guerrilla war strategy, gathering military intelligence, mass mobilisation techniques and related topics. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that the lessons that Tongogara and others learned at Nanking became the foundation of the sustained armed struggle in the 1970s. When he returned from China in November 1966, Tongogara was assigned by the Revolutionary Council to the department of security and intelligence whose main task was reconnaissance.”

An article published in The Herald in December 2018, honouring Tongogara on the 39th anniversary of his untimely death, noted:

“He was a tough, clear-thinking man with positive ideas on political development. He greatly admired Patrice Lumumba and Mao Tse-tung.

“Tongogara was very compliant to technology and current affairs. He would not miss any news so he made it a point to travel with a radio so that wherever he went he wouldn’t miss important news items from Beijing and other communist stations.”

The article also claimed that: “Tongogara was a close friend of Mozambique’s President Samora Machel, with whom he underwent military training in China.”

However, this latter claim is disputed by other sources, who insist that Machel’s military training was confined to Algeria and Tanzania. It is, though, definitely the case that, as early as 1963, as many as five delegations from Mozambique’s FRELIMO visited China, including one led by its founding leader Eduardo Mondlane. Machel certainly did visit China in 1971 (meeting Huey P. Newton who was leading a delegation of the Black Panther Party to China at the same time) and in 1975, just before his country’s independence. He returned as head of state in 1978 and 1984.

But whatever the exact details regarding Machel, both Zimbabwe’s current President Mnangagwa and General Tongogara were certainly among those who studied in Nanjing.

Indeed, while Socialist China trained African revolutionaries for decades, in various locations in China, as well as, when circumstances allowed, in friendly African countries such as Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana or Julius Nyerere’s Tanzania, any thorough study of this history would have to devote at least a chapter to the Nanjing Military Academy. Not all roads led there but quite a few did.

President Mnangagwa is not the only serving African head of state to have trained as a freedom fighter in Nanjing. Eritrean President Issaias Afwerki arrived in Nanjing as a 20-year-old revolutionary in 1967, spending two years in military and political training with his comrades. On recent visits to China, he has recalled this, both in meetings with Chinese leaders and in media interviews. President Xi Jinping has described it as his “special bond” with China.

A 2023 article, by the writer Michela Wrong, in 1843, a magazine published under the auspices of The Economist, shares common features with ‘The Black Man in Search of Power’, that I referenced a little earlier, in that, stripped of its sensationalist tone and pejorative turns of phrase, it nevertheless provides interesting, even perceptive, insights.

Wrong writes: “In 1967, at the height of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, a group of young Eritrean students posed for a photo on the outskirts of Nanjing. The Eritreans, whose tiny country had been annexed by Ethiopia five years previously, were training to be guerrilla fighters in order to win it back. Looking at the photo, it’s not hard to guess which student would eventually emerge as a leader. Standing at the back, Issaias Afwerki towers over his comrades and their Chinese tutors, who loyally clutch copies of the Little Red Book. Arms crossed, he looks straight at the camera with a quizzical expression.

“At Nanjing Military College, recalls Mesfin Hagos, a fellow guerrilla, lectures ranged from the theoretical – ‘how to mobilise the people, how to form a vanguard party to lead the struggle, how to create a people’s army’ – to the intensely practical. Recruits learned, among other things, ‘how to manufacture explosives using exclusively local materials, how to lay a landmine, how to blow up a bridge’.

“There was time for some revolutionary tourism, too. Carefully monitored by their hosts, the Eritrean recruits were taken to see Mao’s birthplace, the site of his historic swim across the Yangzi river, and the Great Wall of China. ‘All of those who went to China were very marked by it,’ says Mesfin. ‘We were very young, so it left a deep impression. It was not just how our Chinese tutors handled us, it was the expectations they had of us, what they thought we would go on to do.’

“The experience left Issaias with a lifelong affinity for China, a taste for moutai, a local hooch, and a useful playbook for eliminating opponents. He is said to be an obsessive reader of books by and about Mao.

“’I have a picture of him taken in an underground bunker…and behind him you can see a bookcase full of Chinese volumes and books published by Progress Press in Moscow,’ says Dan Connell [a US journalist once sympathetic to the Eritrean revolution]. ‘But it was Mao’s military writings that had the greatest impact.’”

Later, future President of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Joseph Kabila also trained in Nanjing. But his father, Laurent- Désiré Kabila’s connection to China goes back much further. Facilitated by Che Guevara, who had spent time with Kabila and his guerilla forces in Congo, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai met with the senior Kabila in Tanzania in January 1965. Writing in New Left Review, Richard Gott describes China as the biggest international backer of the Congolese revolutionaries at that time.

When the founding father of the DRC, the Pan-Africanist and revolutionary socialist Patrice Lumumba, was murdered by the imperialists and their local stooges in 1961, millions of people across China gathered to express their militant solidarity with the Congolese people and mourn for their slain leader. Premier Zhou Enlai presided over one such gathering of 100,000 people in Beijing’s Workers’ Stadium.

On November 29, 1964, when the US and other imperialist powers escalated their overt intervention in the Congo in response to the tenacious resistance of the Congolese people, millions of Chinese again mobilised in solidarity. Mao Zedong, joined by other senior Chinese leaders, including Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, Deng Xiaoping, Peng Zhen, Dong Biwu and Guo Moro, presided over a mass rally of 700,000 people in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Similar gatherings took place in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xi’an, Kunming and across the country.

The previous day, Chairman Mao had issued a statement in support of the Congolese people and against US aggression. US imperialism, the Chinese leader noted, had “murdered the Congolese national hero Lumumba, and subverted the lawful Congolese government. It imposed the puppet Tshombe on the Congolese people, and dispatched mercenary troops to suppress the Congolese national liberation movement. And now, in collusion with Belgium and Britain, it is carrying out direct armed intervention in the Congo. In doing this, the purpose of US imperialism is not only to control the Congo, but to also once again enmesh the whole of Africa, particularly the newly independent African countries, in the grip of US neo-colonialism. US aggression has encountered heroic resistance from the Congolese people and aroused the indignation of the people of Africa and the whole world.”

Mao’s statement continued:

“Congolese people, you are not alone in your just struggle. All the Chinese people are with you. All people throughout the world who oppose imperialism are with you… By strengthening national unity and persevering in protracted struggle, the Congolese people will certainly be victorious and US imperialism will certainly be defeated.”

China’s solidarity with the Congolese people’s struggle was not confined to words and gestures. Throughout the 1960s, China rendered significant moral and material support to the armed struggle of the Congolese people against imperialism and neo-colonialism waged by such historic leaders as Laurent-Désiré Kabila and Antoine Gizenga.

China’s contacts with the Guinea Bissau liberation movement, the PAIGC, date back to 1960, three years before it launched its armed struggle. In early August of that year, China invited two liberation movements, the PAIGC and Angola’s MPLA,  for a “study and solidarity visit.” Amilcar Cabral led the PAIGC delegation and the MPLA delegation was led by Viriato da Cruz. They stayed in China for a month and, on their return to Africa, Cabral said: “We have more friends, and we are stronger for the march, on the path of liberation of our people.”

According to the US-based academic Abel Djassi Amado: “China revealed its willingness to support the organisation materially, morally and politically, by offering military training to a small group of PAIGC members in the Nanjing Military Academy. The level of commitment in supporting the cause of the PAIGC became evident when these PAIGC cadres met the supreme leader of the country, Mao Zedong. This situation contrasts with the case of the Soviet Union, where the PAIGC could not attract any attention from the top echelon of the Communist Party… China was the first state to respond to the appeals made by the PAIGC, providing financial assistance and needed military training to the cadres of the PAIGC.”

In an article written for Friends of Socialist China, Dr. Sahidi Bilan, Senior Advisor of the  Collectif de la Nigérienne Diaspora (Collective of the Nigérien Diaspora – CND), and Rob Lemkin, award-winning filmmaker, whose BBC2/BFI African Apocalypse documents the 1899 French invasion of Niger, wrote about the history of China’s support for the armed struggle of Niger’s progressive, socialist-oriented Sawaba Party, led by Djibo Bakary.

They explain: “Sawaba’s connection with the People’s Republic of China and the Communist Party of China had begun in 1954 when Abdoulaye Mamani, an organiser from Zinder who later became a celebrated novelist and poet, visited Beijing.

“PRC funding was substantial – French intelligence estimated £1.5 million [a significant sum at the time] was donated in 1964.” Historian Klaas van Walraven, who wrote the definitive history of Sawaba, estimates that over 40 party cadres went to China for training.

Bilan and Lemkin write: “The experience of Hassane Djibo, an agricultural clerk from Kollo near Niamey, may have been typical. Djibo’s route to Beijing was via Cairo, Karachi and Rangoon. On arrival he spent a month familiarising himself with guided tours of schools, factories and even the Peking Opera. Then it was off to Nanjing by train for six months of guerrilla training with combat drill. The camp, which was 15 kilometres outside the city, included an exercise ground, living quarters and a building referred to as the ‘School of the Chinese Revolution’. The recruits were taught in French.

“Hassane Djibo’s notebook including notes from 42 political-military tutorials at Nanjing later fell into the hand of French and Nigerien intelligence. Mao’s principles of People’s War are paramount. There is much on the co-ordination between secret and open operations, and between rural and urban struggle. Practical aspects also included weapon-making, first aid, protection against gas. Other courses that may have been especially tailored included guerrilla warfare in desert conditions and preparations for coup d’etat. Evenings, as one might expect, were set aside for self-criticism sessions.”

Independent Online, a major South African media, published an article for the 2022 95th anniversary of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). It is notable for being co-authored by Mbuelo Musi and Cedric Masters, who were respectively members of uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC), and the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA, formerly known as Poqo), the armed wing of the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC). Such collaboration is not only noteworthy in itself – it also enables a more comprehensive account of the totality of China’s long-term commitment to South African liberation.

The authors note that China’s support for the armed struggle in South Africa dates back more than six decades, to October 1961, following the Sharpeville Massacre, when the apartheid regime killed 65 peaceful protestors, injured many more, and banned the organisations of the liberation movement.

The first group of MK trainees stayed in China from November 1961 to December 1962, in which time they met Chairman Mao Zedong on two occasions. The article notes the significance of the links between the Chinese and South African communist parties in facilitating this relationship. China’s support for MK from its inception was first discussed by Chairman Mao and visiting SACP leaders Yusuf Dadoo and Vella Pillay.

The article also highlights the training received by APLA cadres in the 1970s, which was notable for the evident degree of attention given by the Chinese instructors to the actual conditions and circumstances of South Africa. It also notes that the training provided in China itself, “constituted only a small portion of the PLA’s support”, it being complemented, for example, by training in African countries, including Ghana and Congo (Brazzaville).

Raymond Mhlaba recalls secretly leaving South Africa for China in October 1961:

“‘On arrival in Beijing, the Chairman of the Communist Party of China, Mao Zedong, welcomed us. We were trained in guerrilla warfare which took place before MK was officially launched on 16 December, 1961. Our training included the use of small firearms, hit and run techniques and the use of radio communication. It was very interesting and useful training that prepared us for the military missions we were intending to carry out in SA.

“When we arrived in China other members of the South African Communist Party like Wilton Mkwayi, Peter Mthembu, Steven Naidoo and Joe Gqabi were already there. We did our military science training at the Nanjing Military Academy, in the south of China. The training lasted for about 10 months.”

Later, as an example from the PAC side, three groups of 26 young people drawn mainly from the ranks of high school and university students who were at the forefront of the 1976 nationwide uprising, were trained by the PLA between March 1977 and the first quarter of 1978. The first group led by Zebulon Mokoena, a veteran of the Vila Peri battle with the Portuguese colonists in Mozambique and the white settler regime in South Africa, were trained at the Nanjing Military Academy.

The groups were empowered for engaging the enemy through training in the use of small arms from a pistol to a recoilless rifle, the preparation and use of home-made explosives, exercises and training in unarmed, knife and bayonet close combat techniques as well as the use of hand grenades. The accompanying skills of navigation and terrain orientation through the use of purpose-made technology such as maps and compasses, as well as heuristic (rule of thumb) methods were taught.

Strong emphasis was placed on such heuristic methods, reflecting, the writers note, “the PLA’s grasp of our future operational conditions which would likely be poorly resourced. And thus, the operatives should by design be self-contained and where replenishment would be needed the relationship with the people would be critical for their support. With regards to the self-sustainment aspect the training also covered bush craft and survival skills.

“The PLA’s training of these groups was a massive boost to the struggle of the South African populace, but it constituted only a small portion of the PLA’s support. For more than one and a half decades before 1977, the PLA had been training Task Force members as well as other African freedom fighters on African soil. Notable among this training was that of the multinational fighters who were trained in Ghana in the early sixties, which included South Africans.”

Examples could be cited from many other African liberation struggles, from Algeria to Namibia, but these are indicative and typical.

And China’s support for African liberation was multi-faceted. For example, the first Chinese medical teams were sent to newly independent Algeria in April 1963 and subsequently to a total of 48 countries on the continent.

Between 1970-1975, when it was still a very poor country, China built the TAZARA railway, enabling land-locked Zambia to export its copper via Tanzania and therefore without being blockaded or held to ransom by the countries then still under white racist and colonial rule to its south. While fulfilling an eminently political function, this megaproject also presaged a later phase of China-Africa relations, where emphasis shifted from colonial liberation to economic relations.

Of course, support is always mutual. As Chairman Mao observed, it was “our African brothers who carried us into the United Nations” in 1971.

Such is a glimpse of the political world that made our comrade Tongogara and to which he also made his contribution, had an impact and made a difference.