ABSTRACT
This chapter explores social movements that challenge continuing conflict and persistent violence in the public and private spheres in Africa in both historical and modern times. The negotiations of social movements, their antagonism to capital, encompass much of the overt social struggle of the last 20 years: whether campaigns for women's welfare, or gay rights or indigenous peoples, lobbies to save the environment or rallies to end the use of nuclear power and nuclear weapons, these struggles have become class movements. The international struggles to abolish the slave trade and slavery were the world's first broadly based peaceful reform movements to achieve their goals. The history of struggles against incorporation, repression and co-optation the history of anti-slavery, anti-colonialism, labour movements and women's movements is the heart of the pursuit of social justice in Africa. Social justice is a condition of the egalitarian distribution of power and resources and the absence of structural violence.
