Baize-table negotiations commence to pave the way for the enfranchisement of the oppressed. In the struggle for liberation, the occupying power selects a collaborator from two or three nationalist parties. The liberation of the native is good, for it is concomitant with the ruination of the foreigner. What is good for “us” is that which is bad for “them”. There is no good and evil in the colonial context. All those saints who turned the other cheek while they were spat on and abused must be cast aside, for they were held up as examples to pacify the oppressed and call them to the ways of the oppressor, and not the ways of God.
The native is an oppressed person whose permanent dream is to become the persecutor, so the violence ahead has already been rehearsed. If the coloniser’s work is to make even dreams of liberation impossible for the colonised, then the latter is duty-bound to imagine all possible ways of destroying him. Put another way: the sole purpose of these groups is to work towards the death of a settler. Fanon suggests that natives form groups of 200-500, each with the task of eliminating a settler. Fanon’s warcry is bread and the land, for he believes these to be the only worthwhile pursuits: how can the people eat every day, and obtain the land that was stolen from them? Perhaps in repossessing the latter, they can meet the former need. Therefore, there can be no green-table discussions during decolonisation, for violence is the only language that the coloniser understands. There was no constructive dialogue when the machinery of colonialism ground natives into dust, and mingled them with the land that was stolen from them. He concludes that a friendly understanding cannot be reached between the coloniser and the oppressed regarding terms of decolonisation. Through struggle, Africans must self-actualise, and walk the continent as whole people.įanon’s staunch recommendation of violence is a result of colonialism. It is not enough for the African to be like the European, for the latter has failed to birth a fully formed human. Fanon calls for the unity of the African continent, for he recognises tribalism to be a vestige of the division sown by the coloniser. They prove to be the middlemen between the coloniser and the oppressed, upholding his values and emulating his successes regardless of the human cost. Fanon’s revolution is socialist, because the emergence of a national bourgeoisie is merely an extension of imperialism in his eyes. The intended reader of the text is the colonial subject, who is encouraged to take up arms in pursuit of national independence. Frantz Fanon draws on his experience as a psychiatrist to diagnose the maladies afflicting the oppressed as a result of colonisation.
The Wretched of the Earth is widely regarded as the pre-eminent anti-colonial treatise.
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