The Forge mourns the passing of Congolese militant intellectual Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba, who left us on 15 July 2020.

Professor Wamba Dia Wamba was a dedicated and outstanding political thinker and organiser, militant educator, theorist and committed Pan-Africanist and working class internationalist.

His most well-known work, Experiences of Democracy in Africa: Reflections on Practices of Communalist Palaver as a Method of Resolving Contradictions was an important meditation on popular practices and struggles to a politics of emancipation in the Democratic republic of the Congo and beyond.

As Abahlali base Mjondolo have expressed “Baba Wamba understood that the oppressed have to organise themselves for their own liberation, and he understood that, as well as being open to the whole world, we also have powerful tools within our own culture and history to draw on in the struggle”.

This week, the Forge hopes to memorialise Professor Wamba Dia Wamba with a memorial lecture which will be delivered by his friends and comrades Professor Michael Neocosmos and Professor Firoze Manji on the contributions of Wamba Dia Wamba and their importance to Pan African praxis and thought.