Local Community Resistance in Africa

Abstract

In general, historians and political scientists (not to mention military experts) tend to sometimes underestimate the significance of self-organized resistance activities of local communities, even though active community militant behavior, which is built from the bottom up and in many cases develops into a popular resistance movement, has been able to achieve very remarkable results for centuries. Starting from the Gallic tribes uniting against the Roman legions, through the peasant uprisings of the 15th–16th centuries, to the Vietnamese, Burmese, or even Salvadoran uprisings that achieved complete social transformation in the modern era, it can be said that each of them was based on a real, deep-rooted collaboration, which took its first form at the level of villages and small communities. This was no different in Africa, where the fight against the colonialists, the path to independence, started from the resistance of local, small communities and reached an independence movement that established a strong political and military system. However, it is important to make a distinction: we are not talking about rebel groups fighting for political, economic, or ideal goals, with a certain military structure, hierarchy, or possible financial background (at least not initially), but about the self-organized struggle of ordinary citizens in defense of the community - for example, when young people in villages, armed with sticks and chains, try to drive away military formations, rebel groups, and criminals raiding their neighborhoods. Nothing proves the power of "civilian" self-organization like the fact that their actions and activities continue to have an impact on the territory and society of a given region or country many years after their creation, even though they have already disappeared from the political and military palette.