Forking Paths

Western narratives, whether progressive or reactionary, perpetuate a vision of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that reduces the country to a passive recipient of foreign policies, erasing its political agency and reinforcing justifications for interventionism under the guise of stability and development. This simplification obscures the complexities of Congolese politics, resource struggles, and conflicts, ultimately serving to uphold neocolonial power structures.

“… Notions of peace and peacebuilding are tainted by Western military adventures in countries such as Afghanistan or Iraq. The term ‘instability’ is often used in an essentialist way, to define a problematic Other. Yet, under what premises can we consider the governance of countries such as Belgium, a state characterized by strong political inertia, or recent political developments in the United States as examples of ‘stability,’ unless ‘instability’ is simply defined as anything that differs from the reality of the so-called ‘Northern’ countries?”

South Africa’s role in BRICS reflects both its historical struggle against injustice and its pursuit of a more multipolar world order that challenges Western hegemony. Despite ideological differences among BRICS member countries, their shared goal of reshaping global power dynamics through trade, mutual respect, and economic cooperation unites them in seeking an alternative to the dominance of the Global North.

“And I think the more that the West kicks back at change, doesn’t want to change, the more countries that have been left on the peripheries want to push for change. So that’s why there’s a queue going out the door and down the street of countries that want to join BRICS.”

Bogues reflects on the legacy of Jamaican political leader Michael Manley, highlighting his role in Jamaica’s labor movement, efforts to decolonize the economy, and advocacy on global issues like the US embargo on Cuba and the IMF. He emphasizes the generational responsibility to reimagine democratic socialism in Jamaica, while expressing hope for a unified Caribbean.

“Manley realized that even though countries like Jamaica had gained constitutional independence, they remained wedded to a world economy structured by colonialism—what people like Kwame Nkrumah would call “neo-colonialism.” Transforming the world economy depended on altering price setting mechanisms and developing technological and energy independence. We grow the commodities, but we don’t set the prices and we rely on importing machinery and oil to process them. Because he was deeply invested in political and economic democracy, Manley was also very concerned with the rise of multinational corporations.”

The philosophy of Gillian Rose’s urges the Left to confront its seemingly endless failures by accepting the setbacks but never final defeat. Rose emphasized that acknowledging mistakes is essential for meaningful progress. By critically reinterpreting Marx and Hegel, she argues that political and philosophical thought must grapple with contradictions without retreating into dogma or abstraction, fostering a more resilient and self-aware pursuit of social justice. “Keep your mind in hell,” she once wrote, “and despair not.”

“Our time is one of disappointment and disarray — and this is why Gillian Rose may be the philosopher the Left needs. If her thought could be summed up in a phrase, it might be: concede the difficulty, but not final defeat. Or, in the words of the epigraph to her 1995 memoir Love’s Work: ‘Keep your mind in hell, and despair not.’ Whether in politics, philosophy, love, or life itself, when things go wrong or get tough it may be tempting to give up, escape, or else simply deny the problem. For Rose, however, it is only by confronting difficulty and failure head-on and learning from it — by keeping your mind in hell — that moving forward might be possible. In the words of the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, her most consistent ally: ‘The fear of error is the error itself.’”