Emeritus Professor Chris Saunders New Book - Communist Actors in African Decolonial Transitions
This exciting new book Communist Actors in African Decolonial Transitions (2025), edited by Helder Adegar Fonseca, Chris Saunders, and Lena Dallywater, is a landmark volume that reassesses how communist states, parties, and individuals shaped the political transitions that carried sub-Saharan African countries from colonial rule to independence.
Drawing on multilingual archival materials—including Russian, Czech, Portuguese, German, Polish, Chinese, and Korean sources—the book brings together a truly international set of scholars to illuminate a largely underexplored dimension of African decolonization.
Professor Saunders contributes to the volume both as co-editor and as author of a key comparative chapter. His chapter, “Communist Actors in Decolonization Processes: Namibia and South Africa Contrasted”, provides one of the book’s central analyses. It examines:
The differing relationships that SWAPO, the ANC, and the South African Communist Party developed with the Soviet Union, Cuba, and other communist states.
Why Namibia and South Africa followed distinct trajectories of armed struggle, diplomacy, and international engagement.
How global shifts in communist politics shaped the southern African liberation struggles in their final decades.
His work offers a nuanced understanding of the limits and possibilities of communist influence, complementing the wider comparative insights of the volume.
As co-editor, Professor Saunders also shapes the conceptual framework of the book, co-authoring the introductory and concluding chapters and guiding its overall scholarly direction.
