Investigating Hidden Voices in the Struggle for Independence in Northern Rhodesia, 1958-64, with particular focus on the Cha Cha Cha Uprisig of July-October 1961 Religion, Performance and Queer Artists of Colour in South Africa: Interview with Dr Megan Robertson In connection with the publication of her book Who Killed Hammarskjold, Susan was interviewed on Newshour, BBC World Service.

Presentation to MSc students for the Department of Chemistry andChemical Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. Since I don’t feel comfortable tanking the rating of this book just because I couldn’t get into it, (which is a shame, I was really interested in this subject!) I’m going to leave it alone, but I probably would have given it one or two stars. In 2016 Williams published Spies in the Congo: The Race for the Ore that Built the Atomic Bomb. The focus was on Shinkolobwe, the world’s biggest uranium mine, in the Congolese Katanga province. Of crucial geostrategic importance, in the 1940s it supplied the Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bombs, which devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Shinkolobwe remained the main resource in the American nuclear arming of the 1950s. White Malice Her book Who Killed Hammarskjold? (2011), [7] [8] [9] about the death in 1961 of the then- United Nations Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld, triggered a new UN investigation in 2015. [ citation needed] Who Killed Hammarskjold? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa, 2nd edn with an additional chapter co-authored with Henning Melber and David WardropBefore long, Lumumba’s enemies closed in: on 5 September, Kasavubu illegally dismissed Lumumba as prime minister, citing his decision to involve the Soviets in Katanga. Gizenga, too, was dismissed. When Lumumba was later arrested, Andrew Djin, Nkrumah’s envoy to the DRC, intervened to secure his release but the damage was already done. On 14 September, Mobutu announced that the army had seized power and suspended civilian rule; Kasavubu hurriedly signed a decree to legalise Mobutu’s military dictatorship. The Soviet and Czech embassies were closed and their diplomats expelled. White Malice] offers an alternative story of national liberation, told from the perspective of ‘minor’ characters. … What emerges from these testimonies is not a picture of tragedy, romance or against-the-odds heroism, but a sober assessment of the tough and sometimes impossible choices facing left-wing anti-colonial activists who were under pressure from foreign enemies and foreign allies alike.’ — London Review of Books I mean all those Bildungsromane of the late 18th and early 19th century. Russian classical writers...

The second half of The White Pill is mainly about the last few decades of politics in Great Britain and America. I’m not quite sure what the theme is here, but it appears to be a big cheer for libertarian-conservative politics. Yay, Maggie Thatcher! (Cursed in the press a few years earlier as Milk Snatcher, when as Education Secretary she axed free milk at school for 11-year-olds.) Go, Ronald Reagan! Malice seems to like Thatcher more, and disapproves of the American invasion of Grenada in 1983. Grenada was a member of the British Commonwealth, but America clearly had a more vested interest there even if (as I vaguely recall) the Americans were mainly medical students who couldn’t get into a med school at home. This sensational book is a gripping read, a revelation even to those … who never had any illusions about the crimes committed by the CIA in the name of “freedom and democracy.”’ — Morning Star

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Congo was therefore at the centre of the U.S. neocolonialisation strategy, in which it wasn’t necessary to maintain an explicitly colonial regime to reap the benefits of being a colonial power. As Nkrumah explained, in this neocolonialist reality, ‘the state which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside’ (p.363). The U.S. was not the only aspiring practitioner of neocolonialism. Former colonial powers, after all, commonly expected to be able to maintain their interests in their former colonies. For example, the Belgian settlement for Congo expected Belgian companies to be able to go on exploiting Congolese resources as they had always done. The resources that the U.S. put into this were, however, extensive. Susan served in this capacity for the release of the government documents relating to the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936 and its impact on the Commonwealth. Napoleon Bonaparte killed so many White men that the French are shorter today than they should be. (... A key finding of the research relates to the role of the US globally: that although the US has insisted that democracy is the superior method of government for any society, it subverted and prevented democracy in many nations in Africa in which it had geopolitical, strategic and business interests. It is difficult to know how great an impact the CIA truly had on the Congolese civil war, as it is difficult to know whether its plot to assassinate Lumumba ultimately had any success. According to the Congressional Church Committee, which began to investigate CIA malfeasance in the 1970s, the CIA did not kill him. But Williams distrusts the committee's findings. She focuses a full chapter on justifying her belief that American intelligence had a clandestine hand in Patrice Lumumba's death. Although she cannot prove this point — her argument hinges, ultimately, on a CIA asset's gas-reimbursement paperwork, a finding too small to be conclusive — she effectively calls the Church Committee's findings into question.

This book has one of the most misleading titles of all time. It seems like it’s going to be a sweeping geopolitical history of post WW2 Africa in relation to the Breton-Woods institutions, US state department, and CIA. Something along the lines of William Blum’s Killing Hope, but with a somewhat narrower focus. Williams does a nice line in intrigue. There is a John le Carré quality to many of the episodes [in White Malice]. CIA operatives turn up as journalists, interpreters, businessmen and private secretaries, sometimes bearing suitcases of cash. … [An] entertaining narrative.’ — Financial Times This deeply symbolic novel is dedicated: “To all Kenyans struggling against the neocolonial stage of imperialism.” It was written on toilet paper in prison, when Ngũgĩ was detained without trial. Here, the devil represents the international financiers and bankers, in collaboration with Kenya’s elite. One of the devil’s disciples advocates extreme versions of privatisation, including the sale of bottled air. “We could even import some air from abroad, imported air, which we could then sell to the people at special prices!” The story ends with a thrilling act of resistance by its heroine, Jacinta Wariinga. The form of the novel is itself an act of resistance: it was originally written in Gikuyu, not English, to foster a national literature in one of the Kenyan languages. New Spiritualities of Survival among Refugees in Northern Nigeria: Interview with Dr Matthew Michael This does not appear to be the behaviour of a power concerned solely to prevent the USSR from gaining more influence in Africa. In fact, it is clear from Williams’ account that the U.S. would have behaved in a similar fashion if there had been no Cold War and no Russian menace at all. The problem from the U.S. point of view was not the USSR, but the threat posed to U.S. interests by movements which weren’t going to be satisfied with neocolonialism but which wanted genuine independence. Racism and imperialism

Susan's book The People's King was the basis for this Blakeway/BBC documentary, which highlights the role of the Commonwealth and the Dominions. Susan worked as the historical consultant and is the central Talking Head. Her previous book (2016) was Spies in the Congo: The Race for the Ore that Built the Atomic Bomb (the sub-title in the USA is America’s Atomic Mission in World War II),which looks at espionage in the Belgian Congo during the Second World War, in the context of global power struggles, the European colonial presence in Africa, and the competition for strategic raw materials. A webinar co-organised with Mandy Banton (ICwS) and David Wardrop (UNA Westminster). Chaired by Lord Boateng; speakers included Senator Sydney Sekeramayi, Zimbabwe’s Independent Appointee to the ongoing UN Hammarskjöld enquiry. This is a turning point in the history of Africa,” Nkrumah told Ghana’s National Assembly during a visit from Congolese prime minister Lumumba a few weeks into the Congo’s self-rule. “If we allow the independence of the Congo to be compromised in any way by the imperialist and capitalist forces, we shall expose the sovereignty and independence of all Africa to grave risk.” The White Pill has the look and feel of a young adult non-fiction read (“YA” literature being books actually aimed 12-year-olds). It is, however, not dumbed down in any way. What it’s largely about is the politics of terror, as utilized by the Bolsheviki. I emphasize this because a few years ago I was reading James Burnham’s The Struggle for the World (1947), and therein Burnham identifies and skewers that aspect of Communism. Terror is not some expedient, short-term solution to simplify operations; no, it’s the whole deal. And Communism is not some theory of economics — or, Lord knows, an idealized “humanist” plan to give people free healthcare and borscht.