African Feminisms – a decolonial history: an interview with Rama Salla Dieng

November 19, 2021

In her new book African Feminisms – a decolonial history, the Senegalese scholar-activist Rama Salla Dieng interviews feminist activists about their work, struggles and lives. Interviewed by Coumba Kane, Dieng speaks about what it means to be a feminist in Africa today.

Coumba Kane: Your essay sketches a mosaic of feminisms across Africa and its diasporas. What do they have in common?

Rama Salla Dieng: The fight against patriarchy is obviously at the heart of their struggles, but many interviewees also attack state powers accused of perpetuating political violence inherited from colonialism. This struggle is embodied, for example, in the figure of Stella Nyanzi, a Ugandan anthropologist and feminist, imprisoned for several months in 2017 for having published a poem lambasting President Museveni in power for thirty-five years.

My interviewees not only seek to stand up against those in power, but rather to find forms of creativity to embody their struggles and realize their feminist aspirations. They are no longer trying to convince us of their humanity. Hence the importance they attach to art, solidarity, revolutionary love and the right to pleasure.

I have also been particularly struck by the emphasis on mental health. It is a central notion for these activists. Unlike the former generation, they politicize the question of ‘rest’, like the Egyptian Yara Sallam.

We should also be aware of the divisions that exist within African feminist movements. Where are they located, for example?

First of all, we must note the strong pan-African dimension of feminist organizations on the continent. In 2006, a hundred activists gathered in Accra, Ghana, drew up a Charter of Feminist Principles for African Feminists with the aim of converging their struggle against patriarchy. There are also transnational alliances that bring together different organizations, such as the African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) and the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) based in Ghana.

But it is clear that today various feminist currents are not at the same point and, sometimes, controversies erupt between them. A few years ago, a Kenyan feminist in an online post taunted activists in Francophone Africa on the grounds that they would limit their fights only to the domestic sphere and to male-female relations. This had sparked a lively controversy.

In Senegal, for example, traditional feminist movements are fighting for the revision of the Family Code [which regulates marriage, divorce, succession, and custody rights] and the recognition of equal rights between men and women, in accordance with the Constitution. Their fight is also focuses on the application of parity and the rights over their own bodies, including abortion.

On the other hand, in Ghana, Kenya and South Africa, feminists interviewed make sexuality and the right to pleasure a key issue today. This work that has been undertaken by the Ghanaian Nana Darkoa, author of The Sex Lives of African Women and the South African queer activist Tiffany Kagure Mugo who published in 2020 a guide to good sex, The Quirky Quick Guide to Having Great Sex.

You evoke a current of African feminism which essentializes the woman as mother. How did this emerge?

In 1995, when the Nigerian Catherine Acholonu theorized “motherhood ” it was about bringing out an “Afrocentric alternative ” to Western feminism. In this work, marriage appears as an ideal of conjugality. Catherine Acholonu moreover proclaimed herself openly homophobic.

These women do not campaign for gender equality, but for the “complementarity” between men and women in society. This reactionary feminism promotes the idea that parenthood is solely the business of women. It reinforces the mental burden that weighs on mothers in the home and in society. It is still a dominant idea on the continent. My own work on feminist parenting in Africa, conducted with André O’Reilly, demonstrates the urgency of repoliticizing this central issue in order to transform African societies and establish social justice.

Some countries are faced with the resurgence of religious fundamentalisms, Muslim or Christian, and the shrinking of civic spaces. At the same time, a new generation of feminists is emerging, often speaking up on social media. What is their room for manoeuvre in this conservative context?

It is narrow, but it exists thanks to social networks which constitute pockets of resistance. For example, in Senegal, feminists are at the forefront of the fight against Jamra, a powerful religious NGO that regularly attacks women’s clothing or television series deemed immoral.

In this ultra-patriarchal context, these activists managed to get around one of the most significant concepts of Senegalese society, the maslah, “respectability”. In their online campaigns, they use strong terms to say what cannot be said in the face. It is a way of discrediting a fundamentalist discourse, Christian or Muslim, which regularly goes on the offensive against the rights of women and sexual minorities.

Nevertheless, can this online activism concretely impact society? Isn’t it disconnected from the realities on the ground, particularly because of the profile of these urban activists, as highly educated and well connected?

Indeed, the older generation of feminists often reproaches the younger ones for falling into “clicktivism”. However, both forms of activism – on the ground and online – are effective.

In 2020, in Nigeria, feminists played a major role in the #EndSars movement against police violence, by mobilizing internet users to protest. Likewise in Senegal, earlier this year, feminists played a crucial role by disseminating the hashtag #FreeSenegal during the mobilization against the regime. Some of them occupy a central place in raising awareness of feminist issues via social networks, like the feminist association AWA.

Moreover, being active online does not necessary protect an activist against violence. Like the previous generation, these feminists pay the price for their commitment and suffer insults and harassment.

These feminist movements also campaign for the appointment of women to political office. In Senegal, parity has been imposed on the National Assembly since 2010. The massive presence of women in politics has, however, not made it possible to impose a feminist agenda. How do you explain it?

This is one of the Senegalese paradoxes studied by academics Aminata Diaw and Fatou Sow. These researchers found that when women join political parties, they are relegated to the background, tasked with mobilizing the female electorate and organizing political action for the benefit of men. This gendered work coupled with the feeling of illegitimacy and lack of financial means undoubtedly hampers women.

Among the few known African female figures, we often cite heroines or queens like Aline Sitoe Diatta, heroine of the Senegalese resistance to colonization, or Queen Nzinga in Angola, as if to prove that Africa has also produced powerful women.

Absolutely. But there is an urgent need to write an African feminist historiography which is interested in the “silences” of history and not only in the history of the powerful men and women. The history of resistance and African advances is also that of ordinary women. It is this feminism from below that must be revealed and told. Just as it is urgent to decompartmentalize knowledge and learn from the practices and thoughts of feminists who are active today.

Africa has also had its feminisms and it does not owe them to the West. It is this work of recognition that academics outside the continent are undertaking, to bring out of the shadows pioneers like Suzanne Césaire, Paulette Nardal or Andrée Blouin who have long been unrecognized despite their essential contribution to decolonial struggles.

You quote Françoise Moudouthe, a Cameroonian activist, who believes “that Afrofeminism carried out by black women outside the continent does not make enough efforts to connect with the African feminist movement”. How do you explain this?

Divisions in feminist movements are a constant. Some in Africa question the use of the term “afro” by those of the diaspora, as if, due to their geographic remoteness, they cannot claim a link with the continent.

In this sense, Afro-feminism can appear to be disconnected from African realities. However, it should be noted that the Afro-feminists, although delimiting their space of struggle to the Global North where they live, very often remain in solidarity with the struggles carried out by their African sisters. In the end, each feminist speaks from where she lives, finds her voice and develops her own struggles.

Rama Salla Dieng is the editor of the newly released Féminismes africains, une histoire décoloniale (Paris: Présence Africaine, 2021).

Rama Salla Dieng, is a Senegalese writer, academic and activist. She is currently a Lecturer in African and International Development at the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh. Rama is also a feminist activist who has collaborated with several feminist organisations on agrarian change, gender and development, and social reproduction. She is editor of the anthology on Re-thinking Feminist Parenting: Perspectives from Africa and Beyond (Onterio: Demeter Press, 2020.

A version of this interview was published in Le Monde as ‘L’Afrique a aussi eu ses féminismes et elle ne le doit pas à l’Occident’ on 7 November, 2021. Translated by Leo Zeilig.

The workers’ movement, revolution and counter-revolution in Egypt

ROAPE

November 17, 2021

Mostafa Bassiouny and Anne Alexander explain that discussions of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011 rarely mention the workers’ movement, focusing instead on the idea of a social media-fuelled youth rebellion. In a long-read they argue that any attempt to understand the course of the revolution must necessarily grapple with the role of the workers’ movement.

By Mostafa Bassiouny and Anne Alexander

Directly after the downfall of Mubarak on 11 February 2011, workers’ struggles appeared as an independent factor in the revolutionary process, distinct from the youth of Tahrir Square or social media activists or even the political forces opposing the regime. Despite the exit of protesters from Tahrir and increasing calls on Egyptians by prominent political figures for them to ‘return to work’, and ‘restart the wheel of production’, millions of workers transmitted the revolution into their workplaces.[1] Fierce battles against ‘the remnants of the regime’ spread throughout government institutions and across the public and private sectors.[2] These strikes and protests continued the wave of workers’ struggles which had begun before the fall of Mubarak, spreading to the subsidiaries of the Suez Canal Company, the Public Transport Authority in Cairo, Post Offices, government institutions, military production factories, media institutions belonging to the regime and other workplaces between 6 and 11 February.

The extension of the revolutionary struggle to the workplace challenged efforts by reformist forces, whether Islamist or liberal, to confine the meaning of ‘revolution’ within the limits of constitutional reform and the development of electoral mechanisms. Through their struggles to ‘cleanse the institutions’ workers discovered the impossibility of separating the political struggle against the former ruling party from the struggle for social justice.[3]

Sometimes this discovery led to radical results: for example, in Manshiyet al-Bakri Hospital in Cairo, workers threw out the director and elected a new one, and strove to put in place mechanisms of direct rather than representative democracy, thus improving patient care. Cairo Airport workers forced the recruitment of a civilian director for the first time (as opposed to one from the military), and local government workers in Alexandria sacked an unelected general from his post as leader of the neighbourhood council. Teachers organized one of the biggest strikes in Egyptian history in September 2011, not only to improve their own pay and conditions but also to reform the curriculum and to end the burden of private lessons falling on citizens.[4] These examples point to the importance of ‘reciprocal action’ between the economic and the political aspects of the class struggle, as Rosa Luxemburg outlined in The Mass Strike.

This blog-post argues that this process of reciprocal action played a pivotal role in the development of the revolutionary process in Egypt. It also argues that a way to understand the counter-revolution is to see it as reciprocal action in reverse, where the political aspect of the class struggle tends towards the reproduction of tyranny and the mechanisms of repression and exploitation, as could be seen in Egypt from the autumn of 2012 onwards.

The rise of a mass political movement and its roots

The beginning of the Egyptian movement in solidarity with the Second Palestinian Intifada (uprising) in 2000 may well be the appropriate point from which to trace the events which would culminate in the revolution in January 2011. This is for two reasons. Firstly, because the flowering of a solidarity movement with Palestine came after a long period of apathy in the Egyptian street, during which forms of social and political protest had noticeably retreated, while the regime used the rhetoric of ‘fighting terrorism’ to control the opposition and prevent demonstrations. The second reason is the geographical spread and timescale of the movement in support of the Palestinian Intifada, which involved universities, schools, political parties and professional associations, and which organized street protests across many provinces, expanding participation beyond the political elites to popular areas. The movement’s wide geographical spread and extended timespan over three years between September 2000 and March 2003 presented an excellent opportunity to develop organizational mechanisms, drawing new generations of young people into political activity.

The Palestine solidarity movement also paved the way for the movement opposing the American war on Iraq, through the connections built between political forces and the professional unions, which had interacted in order to support the Palestinian Intifada. The protest movement against the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a turning point in the development of political mobilization in the Egyptian street for two reasons. Firstly, it involved a very successful mass mobilization, especially at the outbreak of war on 20–21 March. The call by the Coalition Against the Invasion of Iraq for demonstrations at the beginning of the aggression was answered by very large numbers, with thousands demonstrating in Tahrir Square in Cairo at the first hours of the invasion. The demonstrations only ended when the security forces broke them up violently at night. On the following day, which was a Friday, demonstrations began after prayers at several mosques, the largest taking place at Al-Azhar. Although the security forces attempted to disperse them, some protesters managed to reach the outskirts of Tahrir Square, where the security forces again broke up the protest and arrested a large number of people. The regime’s response then reached new levels of violence: the security forces blocked the entrance to Al-Azhar on 21 March and flooded the courtyard with tear gas, arresting large numbers of worshippers who were trying to protest. This level of violence underlined the importance of a struggle for democracy and the opening of a public space for protest and political action.

Increasing signs that Gamal Mubarak would succeed his father as president during 2004 made the project of democratic reform all the more urgent and led to the formation of coalitions demanding democracy and rejecting the inheritance of power. The most significant of these was the Egyptian Movement for Change (Kifaya), which was formed in December 2004. In addition, other movements emerged, most importantly Youth for Change, Artists and Writers for Change and Journalists for Change.

Towards a new workers’ movement

At the end of 2006, the emergence of a new workers’ movement shifted the balance in the struggle for change in Egypt. A strike by textile workers at the public sector Misr Spinning plant in al-Mahalla al-Kubra in December 2006 can be considered the beginning of a new phase in the movement for change. Founded in the 1930s, Misr Spinning is one of the largest spinning and weaving companies in Egypt; the struggles of its workers had become a reference point for the Egyptian labour movement.

There had been continuous workers’ protests during the years preceding December 2006, including important strikes such as those in the cement industry, the textile sector, the railways and elsewhere. However, the strike by the Mahalla workers in December 2006 marked the onset of a different trajectory in workers’ struggles, brought about by qualitative changes which could be considered marking the rise of a new workers’ movement. The workers at Misr Spinning in al-Mahalla began their strike on 7 December 2006, demanding payment of their annual bonuses, as specified by law for public sector firms. The strike followed a week-long ‘pay strike’ where workers had refused to cash their pay cheques in protest at the company’s failure to add the annual bonus to their pay. This was the biggest workers’ protest in terms of numbers involved since the protests by workers in the Kafr al-Dawwar Spinning Company in al-Beheira governorate in September 1994, which had ended in a clash with security forces. The Misr Spinning strike continued from 7 December to 16 December and ended with negotiations that led to some of the workers’ demands being met. This was in itself a transformation in the way that the state dealt with workers’ protests.

The ending of the Misr Spinning strike without violence by the security forces, and the meeting of some of the workers’ demands, dispelled the fears that had been created by the experience of earlier protests, in which workers had been fired upon and killed, detained or lost their jobs. Workers’ understanding that the state’s response had changed triggered a wave of industrial action in a variety of sectors: going on strike became an everyday activity in Egypt. Strikes were also of a longer duration than they had previously been.

There are multiple reasons for this change in the behaviour of the security forces. The most important was the liberalization of the media which was taking place in this period, which allowed the news of the strike to spread more quickly. At the same time, the security forces were hesitant about direct attacks on protesters in the face of online solidarity campaigns and increased media coverage both inside and outside the country. The authorities were also divided on how to deal with strikes, as a result of contradictions and conflicts between the regime’s own labour organization, the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), and the Ministry of Labour.

The lengthening duration of workers’ protests during this period provided a new opportunity to develop organisationally. Workers had to protect equipment and buildings from sabotage and supply provisions during their protests. Likewise, negotiations required choosing representatives. This organizational development produced negotiations committees, organizing committees, protest leaders, provisions committees and security committees. These would lay the foundations for the future development of independent trade unions, beginning with the Property Tax Collectors’ Union, which was founded in December 2008.

The new workers’ movement was also characterized by the wide participation of women, to a much higher degree than in previous worker mobilizations. The 2006 strike at Misr Spinning was started by women, and the nursing sector, where large numbers of women work, played a major role. Women leaders also appeared in many other sectors to a much greater degree than had previously been the case.[5]

The period after the Misr Spinning strike in 2006 also saw the evolution of workers’ demands in parallel with this organizational advance. The Misr Spinning workers’ strikes provide an illustration of this qualitative shift. After the success of the 2006 strike, workers organized a further strike in September 2007 demanding the improvement of working conditions, the development of the company and action to hold corrupt elements to account. After a week of strike action, some of these demands were met. Just a few months later, in February 2008, Misr Spinning workers organized a street demonstration demanding a rise in the national minimum wage for all Egyptian workers. This was a major shift in consciousness as for the most part workers’ protests had previously only raised demands related to their own company. Moreover, they tended to focus on the ‘variable’ portion of the wage bill (composed of bonuses and allowances), as opposed to basic pay. Thereafter, the demand for a raise in the national minimum wage became a semi-permanent fixture in the list of demands of workers’ strikes in different workplaces.

The most important outcome of this strike wave was the emergence of new independent unions. In the ETUF elections of November 2006, just a few weeks before the Mahalla strike, the security apparatus and the government took the unprecedented step of excluding from office all of the major worker activists who had previously held elected positions. It was thus no surprise when ETUF stood side by side with management during the Mahalla strike in December. Workers responded by attacking the official union offices, throwing the ETUF officials out of the company and gathering signatures to a statement withdrawing confidence from the ETUF factory union committee.

The first attempts to found an independent union did not relate to Mahalla, however: they emerged out of the protests by property tax collectors which began in September 2007 and continued until December 2007, when their demands were met. This extended period of protests led to the formation of a committee to lead the movement and to negotiate in the name of the property tax collectors – effectively a trade union. Shortly after the end of the protests the tax collectors agreed to found a union as a natural extension of this committee.

It is important to note here that one of the factors which mobilized this new workers’ movement during this period was the neoliberal economic policies of the International Monetary Fund, which were initiated by the regime from 1991 onwards. The Egyptian state’s economic policies between 1952 and 1970 had been characterized by centralized planning, and even after the growth of the private sector and the economic changes which Anwar al-Sadat initiated, the state continued to play the central role in the economy, through its ownership of public sector projects and companies. The form of labour relations established during the Nasserist era continued to dominate the labour market in Egypt. Moreover, ETUF retained its importance for the regime as a tool of political mobilization during elections and in order to build support for important policies, ranging from the peace treaty with Israel to the policies of Structural Adjustment adopted after 1991.

These economic reforms led to the privatization of state-owned enterprises and the role of the state declined. The stable labour relations which workers had enjoyed during the previous era began to break down as market forces asserted their dominance. This development was reflected in changing practices by the workers’ movement that emerged after 2006. For a long time, workers in Egypt had relied on ‘work-ins’ as a means of protest, occupying their workplaces without stopping production. This tactic reflected the political culture of Nasserism, where production was considered a national goal, and the factory was seen as the property of the people. By contrast, after 2006, the majority of workers turned to strike action, reflecting the impact of Structural Adjustment and its direct subjection of the production process to market mechanisms rather than national development goals. The new workers’ movement can thus be considered a delayed reaction to the imposition of the neoliberal reform programme after 1991, and the retreat of the state from the Nasserist social contract, as well as the paralysis of ETUF.

The interaction between the workers’ movement and the mass political movement

The events relating to 6 April 2008 were a turning point in the development of the mass political movement in Egypt and illustrate the reciprocal action between the workers’ movement and political mobilization. The workers of al-Mahalla had announced their decision to strike on that day, demanding (among other things) a rise in the national minimum wage. Opposition political forces, headed by Kifaya (which united the majority of the forces pushing for change), then called for an Egypt-wide general strike on the same day. In the end, neither the general strike nor the al-Mahalla strike took place (the latter was aborted by the security forces); instead, a popular uprising exploded on 6 April against rising prices and poverty in al-Mahalla. In protests that lasted three days, crowds tore down pictures of Mubarak, and the Prime Minister was forced to visit the town and the factory in an attempt to calm the situation, offering concessions to the workers and local people.

Many of the characteristics of the workers’ movement would go on to influence the revolution in January 2011: occupying public squares, organizing committees for provisions, for negotiations and to protect facilities, and the wide participation of women. These practices were disseminated by the media and social media to the whole of society, moving organically from the domain of the workers’ movement to the wider domain of the revolution.

The role of workers during the 2011 uprising and the fall of Mubarak

By the time the revolution erupted in January 2011, the workers’ movement had made significant progress in organization and mobilization. Its impact on society was considerable: workplace sit-ins and workers’ street occupations had become part of contemporary protest culture and the movement was considered one of the principal factors that might bring about change in Egypt. Despite this progress, because of the absence of independent workers’ organizations with sufficient social weight or political experience, workers’ participation in the popular uprising at the beginning of the 2011 revolution took two principal forms. The first was the opening of a ‘second front’, with the eruption of a huge wave of strikes and sit-ins (which continued after the fall of Mubarak through battles to remove members of the ruling party from management). The second was through the battles between the security forces and protesters in the streets, squares and popular neighbourhoods, where many workers fell victim to the bullets of the security forces.

Workers were of course among the crowds on the streets on 25 January 2011 and thereafter, but there was no distinctive workers’ presence during this period. With the imposition of long hours of curfew, workers found it difficult to assemble at workplaces, which had mostly been closed by the authorities, who decreed a holiday. However, as soon as the curfew was relaxed, the workers’ movement began to make its mark on the revolution. In Suez, for example, workers from more than 10 companies called for a sit-in on 6 February, including at four subsidiaries of the Suez Canal Company, and at the Lafarge Cement and Glass Company. Workers at Telecom Egypt also announced a sit-in, while cleaning workers in Giza began a sit-in and strike, blocking one of the principal highways in the area, as did workers from Abu-al-Siba’i Spinning and Weaving Company in al-Mahalla.

This first substantial wave of workers’ protests lasted from 6 to 11 February and involved widespread action, with almost no sector of the economy unaffected. The strike by Telecom Egypt workers spread to employees in the public telephone exchanges, who organized numerous protests in Cairo and the provinces. Workers in the railway workshops and in the Cairo Public Transport Authority bus garages joined the strikes and protests. Postal workers converged in protest outside the Post Office in Ataba Square in central Cairo and their movement quickly spread to the provinces. Critical workplaces such as the airport and the military production factories were likewise affected, as were some of the oil companies and textile mills in Helwan, south of Cairo, and Kafr al-Dawwar in al-Beheira province. The health sector was similarly drawn in: nurses in hospitals in Assyout, Kafr al-Zayyat and Qasr al-Aini, and at the Heart Institute in Cairo, announced strikes. Printers and administrative staff in the state-owned magazine Rose el-Youssef refused to let the managing editor and chair of the board (both of them close to the regime) into the building. Meanwhile employees at the state’s ‘Workers’ University’, a training centre for the regime’s trade union cadres, had already declared a strike and locked up their boss, the deputy president of ETUF and a member of the ruling party.

Thus, during the days just before the fall of Mubarak, something which resembled a general strike, without a central organizing core, took place in Egypt. However, the workers’ movement as a whole did not declare its support for the revolution directly. Some workers did raise slogans supporting the revolution, and workers echoed chants against the regime, but their demands were mostly economic or trade union-related. Despite this, it is impossible to ignore the process of reciprocal action between the revolution and the workers’ movement. It is notable that in working class areas, where the workers’ movement had emerged before the revolution, such as Suez, al-Mahalla and Alexandria, the popular uprisings were more energetic and effective.

The number of workers who were killed during the uprising provides the greatest proof of the contribution of the working class to the revolution. The workers’ movement not only paved the way for revolution, it also played a crucial role in securing its victory. It is difficult to obtain data on all of the martyrs of the revolution, but statistics shed some light on this issue. According to the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, there were 841 martyrs. Unfortunately, data about their occupations is missing for most of these people, but a committee of the Egyptian Journalists’ Union collected data about 279 martyrs, and recorded the occupation of 120 of them. Of these 120, 74 were workers and the remainder were students or professionals. Available sources point to workers as forming a large proportion of those killed and injured: where the place of residence is indicated, most came from impoverished areas. The data concerning those injured during the revolution confirms the same pattern. According to the information gathered by the Association of the Heroes and Injured of the Revolution, of 4,500 people injured, 70 per cent were workers with no qualifications, and a further 12 per cent were workers with intermediate-level qualifications. School students (11 per cent) and those with higher-level qualifications (7 per cent) made up the remainder. It was workers and the poor who paid the heaviest price in blood during the Egyptian revolution, and it was their great sacrifice which made the downfall of Mubarak possible.

Organizational gains and political marginalization

The end of Mubarak’s rule marked a new phase in the workers’ movement. In its wake, workers’ protests accelerated and broadened, with the foundation of a large number of independent unions. In addition to demands for the improvement of wages and working conditions, workers’ protests called for more sweeping politicized changes, such as holding corrupt managers to account, the reopening of mothballed public companies, the renationalisation of enterprises privatised during the Mubarak era, a higher national minimum wage and the right to organise.

The wave of strikes and sit-ins during the first stage of the revolution represented a partial fusion of the social and political aspects of the revolutionary struggle. At the same time, it presented a serious threat to the forces of counter-revolution, and especially to the military and security apparatus at the heart of the old regime. These forces now worked anew to separate the political and economic aspects of the revolution. A clear paradox emerged: despite the impact of the workers’ movement on the revolution discussed previously, after Mubarak’s fall the workers’ movement did not continue to play the same role; it did not shape the trajectory of the revolution. On the contrary, as soon as Mubarak was out of the way, attacks on the workers’ movement began. One of the first decisions taken (on 24 March 2011) by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which took power after Mubarak’s removal, was to ban strikes and refer striking workers to the military courts. In addition, a broad-based campaign against the workers’ movement was launched across different media, labelling workers’ protests ‘sectional’, rather than part of the general trajectory of the revolution.

Many activists from reformist liberal and Islamist currents who had opposed the former regime took part in media campaigns against workers’ strikes and their ‘sectional’ demands. The only defenders of the workers’ movement were the revolutionary left and the nascent independent unions. The majority of the revolutionary youth concentrated on the struggle in the squares, unaware of the potential of workers’ struggles to deepen and expand the revolutionary process through confrontations with the regime inside the state institutions and companies in efforts to cleanse them of the remnants of the former ruling party.[6]

After the parliamentary elections in November 2011 and January 2012 (which led to an Islamist government), and the victory by the Muslim Brotherhood-backed candidate Mohamed Morsi in the presidential elections in June 2012, a state of political polarization emerged between Islamist and secular forces. The secular forces interpreted the deteriorating economic and social conditions as a sign of the Islamists’ failure to manage the country, and not as a result of policies which had been implemented since the Mubarak era and continued under Morsi. For its part, the Muslim Brotherhood interpreted deteriorating conditions as signs of a conspiracy by the state apparatus against Morsi, and not as a result of his adherence to the same economic policies as those applied by the old regime which had led to the eruption of the revolution.

With the creation of the National Salvation Front, and its leading role in the opposition to the Brotherhood, the retreat of social and economic issues accelerated. The Front was announced in November 2012 by a number of political forces, including reformists and elements close to the Mubarak regime, in order to resist the attempt by President Mohamed Morsi to amend the constitution. It concentrated on restoring the prestige of the state and the legitimacy of its institutions, such as the judiciary, the army and the police. Thus, despite the continuation of workers’ struggles during 2012 and at the beginning of 2013, the possibilities for coordination between the goals of the workers’ movement and political struggles in the streets and squares receded.

Events in the wake of the downfall of Mohamed Morsi on 30 June 2013 represented the most significant change in the revolution’s course.[7] The intensifying repression against the workers’ movement was an important transformation; however, much more dangerous was the announcement by a considerable section of the independent unions of their backing for the new regime, along with a moratorium on strikes, announced in a joint agreement by ETUF and the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions. The threat contained in this announcement was not that it halted workers’ protests – these continued, albeit at a slower pace – but rather that it represented a transformation of the role of the independent unions. From striving for liberation from the state’s domination of the trade union movement, they now embraced the new regime, undoing the most significant of the gains made by the workers’ movement since 2006.

This underscored the contradiction between the scale of workers’ movement and the depth of its impact before and during the popular uprising in January 2011, and its political weakness after the fall of Mubarak. In seeking to explain this contradiction it is not enough to talk just about the domination of reformist forces or the constraints imposed by the Islamist–secular polarization on the political scene, even though both of these played a role in creating it. Rather, the contradiction has to be understood through an analysis of the weaknesses within the workers’ movement itself, both in terms of its connections to the political domain, and in relation to questions of organization and the role of its leadership, which lacked experience and coherence.

It is important to note here the retreats which the workers’ movement suffered during the 1990s, and even into the early 2000s. This period witnessed the disappearance of many experienced activists from the workers’ movement and the trade unions, who were not replaced by a new generation. When the workers’ movement rose again after 2006, it had lost much of the experience it had gained during preceding periods. The workers’ leaders who were formed after 2006 were a new cadre which had not accumulated experience in trade union work (in the sense of engagement in the struggle for workers’ interests within the workplace) or in political work. This was different to the experience of the cadre which developed during the 1980s, who were in general connected with the parties and organizations of the left. This is precisely what led to the separation between the workers’ movement and politics at a general level, and in some cases generated hostility among activists in the workers’ movement towards political action.

At the same time, the left, which had historically contributed to building the workers’ movement, was in a state of weakness and incoherence. The organizations and parties of the traditional left had practically dissolved following the collapse of the Soviet Union, while the organizations of the new left were still at a nascent stage of development, in hostile circumstances. On the other hand, the independent unions were in the process of being established, and their organizational capacity remained underdeveloped. They had not even been able put down deep roots among rank-and-file workers.

Conclusion

The separation between the political and social aspects of the workers’ struggle appeared at two principal levels during the revolution. Firstly, the revolutionary forces failed to win over large numbers of activists in the ranks of the working class to a political vision which centred the role of the working class in the revolution and the importance of deepening and radicalizing the revolutionary process, especially in relation to confrontation with the state so as to open up space for the workers’ movement to develop its political impact. Secondly, the lack of organizational experience in the independent unions themselves created another obstacle. The model of organisation which dominated was not radical enough, and lacked democratic mechanisms rooted in the workplace and among wide sections of rank-and-file workers. This problem appeared despite the formation of the first independent unions in the midst of mass strikes, which provided important experiences in self-organization at the base of the workers’ movement.

The weakness in these experiences lay in the lack of a political practice rooted in principles of working-class self-organization, not just restricted to the domain of economics but also encompassing the capacity for workers to emancipate themselves in the political domain. This capacity can be built through engagement in political causes – such as solidarity with the Palestinian people, or support for women’s liberation, or struggles against religious sectarianism or to defend the environment. Crucially, it requires immersion in these political causes as workers, and not simply as citizens in the streets or voters at the ballot box.

During the first phase of the revolution, workers’ struggles began to break down the walls which separated the social aspect of the revolution from the political. Workers’ demands expanded from focusing on economic issues to confronting representatives of the regime in the workplace and in the institutions of the state. However, the spontaneous nature of this process was not sufficient to maintain the influence of organised workers over the trajectory of the revolutionary process, in the absence of an organic link to the revolutionary mobilizations which was rooted in the working class. This demonstrates the importance of political, rather than merely trade union, organization in order to ensure that the weight of the workers’ movement shapes the trajectory of change.

Anne Alexander is a researcher and writer based in Britain. She is a trade union activist and a member of the editorial board of International Socialism Journal. Mostafa Bassiouny is an Egyptian researcher and journalist. Translated from Arabic by Anne Alexander and copy-edited by Ashley Inglis.

A version of this blogpost forms part of a dossier of articles that is published in collaboration with the Transnational Institute (TNI) and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation – North Africa and the full dossier can be accessed here.

Featured Photograph: Workers at the Misr Insurance Company on strike in Cairo during the revolution. ‘We want change’ was their slogan.

Notes

[1] Gamal, W. (2011) “Al-Sha’ab yurid agalat intag akhir”, Al-Shuruq, 26 April (archived at: https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/23927)

[2] ‘Remnants of the regime’ (filoul al-nidham) became a widely used phrase in Egyptian political life in the wake of Mubarak’s fall. It generally referred to members of the ruling National Democratic Party who remained in positions of authority in public sector institutions and private companies.

[3] The Arabic phrase ‘tathir al-mu’assasat’, was used frequently to refer to the process of removing corrupt and unaccountable managers associated with the ruling party. The word ‘tathir’ also has connotations of ‘purification’. The process and the phrase echo the saneamento (literally ‘cleansing’ campaigns carried out by workers during the Portuguese Revolution of 1974). See Alexander, A. and Bassiouny, M. (2014) Bread, Freedom, Social Justice – Workers and the Egyptian Revolution. London: Zed Books for more details.

[4] School teachers in Egyptian state schools often provide supplementary private lessons for a fee to eke out their meagre pay. Parents are effectively blackmailed into paying for these lessons because the schools are so poorly resourced and overcrowded that it is the only way to pass exams, but they are a huge financial burden, especially for poorer families. Striking teachers argued that private lessons could be eliminated by improving teachers’ pay and providing state schools enough resources to provide a decent education for all. Alexander, A. and Bassiouny, M. (2014) Bread, Freedom, Social Justice – Workers and the Egyptian Revolution. London: Zed Books.

[5] Kassab, B. and Shahba, O. (2018) ‘Al-nisa’a fil haraka al-ummaliyya al-masriyya’, ed. Bassiouny, M. Cairo: Dar al-Miraya.

[6] The series of documentary films created by the Mosireen media collective illustrates some of the contradictions between the social impact of the workers’ movement and its organisational gains, and its political marginalisation.

[7] Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, then Minister of Defence in Morsi’s government, removed Morsi from office on 3 July 2013, following mass protests on 30 June 2013 calling for early presidential elections. In the wake of Morsi’s downfall, hundreds of his supporters lost their lives during the dispersal of their protest camps by the security forces, mostly famously at Raba’a al-Adawiyya Square in Cairo and al-Nahda Square in Giza.

Let a hundred socialist flowers bloom: a conversation with Issa Shivji

ROAPE

November 11, 2021

In this extensive interview, socialist activist and writer Issa Shivji discusses the peasantry, capitalist development and socialism. In a discussion with Freedom Mazwi he argues that those who predicted the end of history, have been proven woefully wrong. Capitalism and the planet are in deep crisis. For the first time in decades people in both the South and the North are openly using the ideas and slogans of socialism – even if they have divergent ideas. Shivji argues, we must let a hundred socialist flowers bloom.

***

Freedom Mazwi: The theme of our conversation today is the ‘Peasantry, Neoliberalism and Alternatives.’ As we might be aware, the peasantry is under massive attack not only in Africa but the Global South broadly. This is why we considered this to be an important conversation. We will discuss the peasantry and its challenges, with extended consideration of what the alternatives may be. Let me start by asking you to define the peasantry. We know that it is a debated concept. There are various views on the peasantry, its characteristics and why is it important.

Issa Shivji: Thank you Freedom. I think you have raised a very important issue. I would like to briefly start with the traditional Marxist take on the peasantry. Karl Marx himself, based on the European experience, thought that with the development of capitalism, the peasant – basically meaning the smallholder who survives on land, produces on land – will disappear, and a large mass of people will become the industrial proletariat. It was in this regard that when it came to politics, we have Marx on record calling peasants a ‘sack of potatoes’ because he did not see a lot of potential in the peasantry for revolutionary change. Although that was based on the European experience, Marx did talk about countries of the South, particularly those in Africa. He however talked about them in relation to primitive accumulation of capital. But that was, for him, the original condition in developing his model of capitalism. Since then, we have had some theoretical and political developments. In this regard we must mention Rosa Luxemburg who disagreed with Marx. She argued that capitalist accumulation is not simply self-contained. Her position was that for capitalism to continue reproducing itself, it always needs non-capitalist sectors on which to feed for accumulation. She saw many of our countries as feeding capitalism through primitive accumulation.

That was the initial argument during those debates. The second point that I think Rosa Luxemburg made, which is also very important for us, was that Marx’s formulae saw primitive accumulation as the original condition and once capitalism has developed, we get what is called capitalist accumulation. It is based on labour and capital. The former is exploited to produce the surplus value and part of that surplus value is accumulated for the second cycle of expanded reproduction. Rosa Luxembourg’s argument was that primitive accumulation does not actually come to an end with capitalist development, but rather continues because exploitation of the non-capitalist sector based on primitive accumulation is essential for capitalist reproduction.

Subsequently we had other developments starting with Lenin, going on to Mao and so on. And contrary to the predictions of the earlier Marxists, the socialist revolution happened not in the centre but in the semi-periphery, i.e. Russia.

Russia of the time still had pre-capitalist relations in the countryside and also a mass of peasantry. That is where Lenin politically located his thesis of worker–peasant alliance. Previously, the peasantry had been seen as a conservative force but for Lenin, the working class could rely on the peasantry and lead the peasantry for revolutionary transformations and changes. This thesis was developed much more in the periphery, particularly in China. The Chinese argument about the role of the peasantry makes a very important contribution to Marxist theory and politics. It has been pretty prominent in discussions of Marxism in many countries of the Global South. But Mao still worked within the Marxist paradigm, and we should not forget that, initially at least, he saw the revolution happening in stages. First the national democratic revolution and then the socialist revolution. Later on, Mao developed a thesis of some kind of continuous revolution thus more or less abandoning the stageist thesis. That is where I will end my introductory remarks.

Now let me come to the question you raised in the context of the debates in the South. More recently, I would say in the last two or three decades, we have developed a thesis in the South, particularly in Africa, that exploitation by and accumulation of capital, which is dominated by the capital from the centre, is primarily based on the extraction of surplus from the peasantry. The dominant producers of surplus are the peasantry. As a matter of fact, the history of capital destroying the peasantry by turning them into a proletariat has to be modified when applied to many countries in Africa. Here, capital preserves the peasant form – the form of petty commodity production – but integrates it in the web of world-wide capital circuits. The dominant form of accumulation is primitive accumulation in which the peasant producer cedes to capital a part of his/her necessary consumption. Within this context, exploitation cuts into the producer’s necessary consumption. In effect, therefore, labour subsidises capital by taking on the burden of reproduction.

This thesis has increasingly been debated among African intellectuals and more recently within our own Agrarian South Network (ASN). Dramatically, this has proven to be so under neoliberalism. My argument has been that many of the efforts that were made by independent governments essentially tried to move away from the dominant tendency of primitive accumulation of the colonial period. This was for the purposes of attempting to install some kind of capitalist accumulation by, for instance, abolishing migrant labour, raising wages and initiating some social services like education, health etc. This contributed to the social wage and the adoption of some or other form of industrialisation, albeit in many cases, import substitution industrialisation.

This was justified, rationalised and presented in a variety of nationalist and developmental ideologies. Regardless of what these countries called themselves, capitalist or socialist, the underlying driving force of their policies was to move away from primitive accumulation as the dominant tendency of accumulation. This was done to try and install some kind of expanded reproduction of capitalist accumulation. That project of capitalist development in the image of the historical European development, for various reasons which I am not going to get into, did not succeed. It failed. And neoliberalism, through which imperialism has now assumed an offensive, in my view, has brought back primitive accumulation as the dominant tendency.

Before I proceed, you asked me the question of how we define the peasantry. For me, when we say the peasantry, I am thinking of smallholder producers on land. This includes not only those who cultivate and produce crops but also pastoralists. I will include them because very often we forget that pastoralists are a section of small producers on land. Pastoralists and the peasantry, directly or indirectly, derive their subsistence and incomes from land. That is where the centre of the agrarian question lies. Now having defined it so, a number of our scholars and intellectuals have tried to understand small producers within the specific political economy of our concrete situations. I also wrote an article in the 1980s arguing that capital, in this case monopoly capital, does not only destroy the so-called pre-capitalist relations but also preserves them. The so-called pre-capitalist sector is in essence capitalist in the sense that it is integrated in the world-wide accumulation of capital. For this reason, the so-called pre-capitalist is only that in form.

Under neoliberalism, we are witnessing new forms of primitive accumulation that include the privatisation and commodification of the commons. This also includes privatisation and commodification of public goods such as education, water, health, energy, finance etc. In essence, this is an attack on the production of public goods whose production was not subjected wholly to the market. That does not mean that the classical type of primitive accumulation, such as enclosures, has not continued. More recently we have witnessed, for example, a new wave of land grabbing. An important point to keep in mind is that when the land grabs occur, the smallholders who are thrown off the land do not become the proletariat since the expansion of industrial production and manufacturing is not happening. What happens is that they become landless and unemployed slum dwellers in the ghettos, as well as street hawkers and vendors. Large numbers of our youth between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five buy goods from merchants and hawk them in African cities and towns. They practically subsidise merchant capital and thus are subjected to a kind of primitive accumulation.

In the countryside, the peasant is exploited. Based on this, I developed the thesis that the peasant is subjected to primitive accumulation in that the peasant producer cedes part of the necessary consumption to capital. Consequently, capital is subsidised because the reproduction of a peasant household/family is on the shoulders of the peasant household itself, largely women and children. The peasant, therefore, does not only produce surplus for capital, but also reproduces the peasant household by cutting into its own consumption and exerting super-human labour to be able to live sub-human lives. These are the processes which have intensified under neoliberalism. You will notice that all the programmes of land or agricultural reform put forward are meant to further entangle and integrate peasant production in the capitalist circuits and therefore reproduce the exploitative relationship I have talked about.

If you were to ask my opinion, using the Marxist method, the way Marx derived the revolutionary potential of the working class, similarly my analysis of the current financial capitalism which manifests itself as neoliberalism, I think we can derive revolutionary potential of the peasant, small producers, small entrepreneurs, street hawkers and a whole group of people including those sometimes known as the lower-middle class. I have tried to amalgamate these groups in the concept of ‘The Working People.’

Therefore, the agency of transformation is ‘The Working People.’ This has a different political nuance than the traditional ‘working class’ (proletariat) concept but is derived using the same method of Marxism. Of course, the concept of the ‘working people’ is still in its putative form and sounds somewhat abstract. We have to do a concrete analysis of each of our social formations and see what social classes and groups in our societies have a revolutionary potential of transforming our societies away from capitalism. Such analysis and empirical study should help us theorise the concept of ‘working people’ in a more rigorous fashion.

Many scholars like you, Samir Amin and Paris Yeros have taken the capitalist crisis into consideration and have indicated that we have reached a point where we can take this struggle from capitalism and progress towards a socialist future. In your view, what would it take to reach that socialist stage, and how many decades would it take? What should progressive activists do to ensure that we achieve that?

I think that is an interesting question. This is a kind of question you are frequently asked. When you give a response about socialism as a possible alternative, you are immediately confronted with a follow-up rhetorical question – where has socialism ever succeeded? All the countries which tried socialism failed. The problem is that our interrogators cannot even imagine what Samir Amin called the Long Road to Socialism. When we are talking about socialism, we are talking about an epochal change. We are not talking about years and decades because we are talking about overthrowing a system that has lasted for five centuries. So, to answer the second question about the failure of socialism, I would say this. The socialist revolutions that took place in countries like Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam etc. were what one might call ‘revolutionary advances’. No doubt, these countries did make revolutionary advances. That is undeniable. These, however, were only glimpses into the socialist future, not fully-fledged socialist societies. The fact that these advances failed in the countries that we described as socialist is nothing new in human history.

Take the analogy of the development of capitalism, and the transition from various pre-capitalist modes of production – like feudalism and other forms of tributary systems – to capitalism. Those places like Venice and Portugal etc. in which capitalism first appeared are not the countries where capitalism ultimately succeeded. It succeeded in Britain. So, long transitions with a zig-zag trajectory, from one epoch to another, are nothing new in human history. Compared to the development of capitalism, revolutionary socialist advances had a shorter period. The Soviet Union lasted for only seventy years. China, from which we can derive lessons, despite many internal changes and struggles that have taken place, cannot be fully described as capitalist. The jury is still out. We have seen a small country like Cuba surviving all these years, despite the ups and downs. We have also seen initiatives taken in Venezuela, as well as initiatives of major land reforms in countries like Zimbabwe, etc. We have also seen bitter struggles in South Africa on the question of land which remains unresolved, yet it was a central question of the liberation movements.

Based on these examples, I would say the era of revolutionary advances and struggles towards socialism is not over. It will, of course, take long, not just decades, yet we are witnessing major shifts and changes in the world. Those who predicted the end of history, and that capitalism was here to stay, have been proven woefully wrong. Capitalism is in deep crisis. Its very mode of existence is wars – from one war to another. Increasingly, and for the first time since the post-war period of the golden age of capitalism, people in both the South and the North are openly using the ideas and slogans of socialism, even though different people mean different things by socialism. Why not? Let hundred socialist flowers bloom!

The second point I would like to make in this regard is that in the last ten to fifteen years we have witnessed major crises of capitalism. Neoliberalism, for example, which made its entry in the 1970s, and became politically significant in the 1980s, is already discredited. Its triumphalism has been whittled down. It is almost in its last lag of existence. For how long did neoliberalism last, thirty years? We then witnessed a major crisis in 2008, which of course, took different forms in different countries. The crisis is not only economic. It is also a political one of political legitimacy in both the North and the South. One of the backlashes to neoliberalism is right-wing in the form of fascist tendencies that have been witnessed in countries like Brazil, India and some countries in Africa. But that is one tendency. Broadly, there also is a progressive left tendency. Youth all over the world are exploring and revisiting socialist ideas and developing new forms of struggle like the ‘Occupy movement’ or the upsurge of the Black Lives Matter movement or the farmers’ movement in India. All in all, there are rays of hope all over.

In Africa, we have progressive tendencies emerging. Our problem is that our progressive forces, particularly the Left, remain largely unorganised. Organisation is the foremost task before us. For many years we have been talking about World Social Forums at the international level and civil society organisations (CSOs) at the local level. The impact of the latter has been marginal at best, and diversionary at worst. Theoretically infected by the liberal virus, and socially constructed by the middle classes, CSOs have failed to make a breakthrough. They have failed to resonate with the hearts, minds and real-life struggles of the working people.

How do you organise the working people and how do working people get organised themselves? What kind of alternatives do you pose, what demands do you make and what are the sites of mass politics, for politics are where the masses are? In my view, those are the burning issues before the African Left.

More recently I have been arguing that one of the important demands of the working people that can be put forward, and around which the working masses could rally, is reclaiming the commons. Though not only the commons as traditionally understood to mean land and its resources, but commons in a new sense. By the new commons, I mean strategic sectors of the economy like education, health, finance, energy. These should also be considered the commons. They should be taken out of the realm of the law of value, that is, the market. These are the commons which we must struggle to reclaim. Why am I putting this forward? It is because it will sound feasible and doable by the working people. Thinking of land and its resources as the commons, not subject to private ownership, would not be new to many societies in Africa. The concept of ownership of land was introduced by colonialism.

Secondly, arguing for health, education, water, finance, and energy as commons not subject to private ownership, but essentially producing public goods, also cannot be considered new because privatisation of these sectors has caused devastation to the working people. It has polarised our societies into small classes of a few who are filthy rich, and large masses of the poor who cannot afford paid education, health, water, electricity, etc. This can be the basis of organising the working people and it could be a political demand to the existing states. That is where I think the struggle stands. As I said, this is only a suggestion which requires further discussion and theorising. It is only after theorising that we can develop ideologies based on those demands and also understand how we can then learn from the experiences of the people to mobilise and take the struggles forward.

Moving on to another question that is almost linked to the previous one on alternatives, I would like us to spotlight Tanzania’s Ujamaa, a collectivisation project that was implemented by Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. This project has been vilified by a number of people who have argued that they had previously expressed that the project does not work and therefore had discouraged developments that take that kind of path. As someone who went through this experience and followed it closely, what would you say was the major undoing of Ujamaa? I still think at some point people can try to relook and redefine it to make it work, but that can only be after a process of analysing its pitfalls. Did it really fail, and if so, why?

That indeed is an important initiative that we should table and discuss further. You will remember, Freedom, that Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy produced a special issue that looked at both a hundred years of the Russian revolution and fifty years of the Arusha Declaration. In the publication, we tried to revisit both issues. I would like to say, first and foremost, that Ujamaa was undoubtedly a very progressive initiative in Africa. Secondly, both in its conception and implementation, it was a nationalist project, not a socialist one. The architect of the project himself often said that for him nation-building was primary, socialism secondary. If I were to put it in some kind of Marxist language, in Ujamaa social emancipation and class emancipation were subordinated to national building, which in turn meant giving primacy to national unity.

The Social Question was subordinated to the National Question. The (national) unity of all classes trumped (social) class struggles and politically speaking, as we have argued in our biography of Mwalimu Nyerere, in Book 3, that partly explains the so-called undoing of Ujamaa, because it was not seen as a social question. The national question was privileged. Within Ujamaa and within the political class, we ended up accommodating all kinds of tendencies including rightist tendencies which had no interest whatsoever in Ujamaa, and even went as far as to sabotage it. When the crunch came, this proto-bourgeoisie turned against Ujamaa. That is the thesis of Book 3 of the biography. Of course, we can say a lot about the shortcomings at the policy level, referring to failures of implementation etc., but that discourse does not take us far. Inevitably, it becomes tautological. For example, although the Arusha Declaration talks a lot about workers and peasants as the movers of the project, the truth is it was a top-down project. The agency to carry out this project was the state bourgeoisie which developed on the heels of Ujamaa. Ironically, the Arusha Declaration ended up creating a new class in its wings, so to speak, a kind of bureaucratic state bourgeoisie. It was this class that was supposed to drive Ujamaa!

Secondly, although we kept declaring that agriculture was the backbone of our economy, we did not transform agriculture. It remained the same agriculture of peasants using the same age-old instruments and implements. It is also important to point out that the peasants continued to be exploited to the maximum and without any support going back to the farmers. This issue has been analysed in the context of the land question and the truth and reality is that we failed to transform agriculture and we failed to address the agrarian question. The peasant was sucked dry.

You are right when you say there was a time when Ujamaa was very much demonised as a ‘titanic failure’ (to use the late Mazrui’s hyperbole). The truth is, like many other African countries, whether capitalist or socialist, Tanzania found itself in deep a crisis in the late 1970s to the 1980s. All these countries had to submit to the so-called Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) to survive. I will not get deeper into this because we all know what happened. What I can say is that the consequences of adopting SAPs and neoliberal policies are now being dramatically seen and felt, and people (not only the masses but the so-called educated classes too) are revisiting the Arusha Declaration with nostalgia. If you read the Arusha Declaration today, you will realise that it was a pretty revolutionary document during its time, in spite of what happened in its implementation. There is a lot to learn from it.

That is a very interesting point. In the interest of time, let us move to another important issue which you and many others have raised. When we started this conversation, we talked about how an imperialist system disadvantages the South. In your writings you have gone further and postulated that that the solution is to delink. May you please provide clarity on this concept of delinking because some might interpret it to mean that we should not have any links with the outside world.

Firstly, delinking does not mean that there should not be any relations. Not only that it is impossible, but it is even undesirable. Delinking means subjecting your policies to the logic of national development not to the logic of imperialist and capitalist development. That is what you are delinking from. Simply put, you may say the kind of decisions you make and the policies you implement are meant to subject your development to the internal logic and not that of world capitalism. That is the meaning of delinking. How you do it is a different matter. Is it possible to do it? Yes, it is possible to do it and that is a political question. It does not happen mechanistically but depends on how well the popular classes are organised and mobilised to sustain the project of delinking.

We have the experiences of some emancipatory tendencies which were nipped in the bud. For example, Amílcar Cabral did not see national liberation as a stage but rather, a continuous process. If I may paraphrase him, he said ‘as long as imperialism exists, independence can only mean the national liberation movement in power’. This is a very profound statement. What are its implications? Take the example of South Africa and the stageist theory of some of its proponents. On the other hand, we had someone like Chris Hani who had a different vision of South Africa. He was killed. Amílcar Cabral was killed. These were strategic killings. Let us not forget them because in such struggles, individuals do matter. While we know that individuals do not make history, they do matter and play a critical role in certain circumstances. The turn that history takes does depend on the role of individual leaders. If you examine, and that is what we need to do, our history of national liberation, you’ll find that at very strategic moments, strategic people who had a different view of liberation were bumped off. Cabral and Chris Hani are examples. Would these countries have taken a different path had they lived, one cannot say.

There is a point of view which is arising now which totally rejects the ‘National Question.’ It views the National Question as the colonial question. That is also problematic. I do not think that the National Question has exhausted itself, but I will go along the line that in our present state of the struggle and politics of the left, the National Question needs to be subordinated to the Social Question. If we do not do that, we are likely to be identified with right-wing nationalisms and that is problematic.

Today in South Africa, for example, you cannot simply continue harping on the National Question. The question which is very much on the table is the social one. It never addressed the Social Question. Capital, ‘white-capital’, stayed with its privileges. In that situation, it is now important to discuss the Social Question and not simply stick to the National Question or pontificate on some woolly idea about all-inclusive democracy. So, the National Question exists, it has a role, yes, but where do we place it.

Before we end Freedom, I would like to make a couple of remarks. First, I want to suggest, I am of course thinking aloud, that we need to shift away from some of the dominant vocabulary. There is also an NGO vocabulary which many of us, unconsciously or unintentionally, tend to adopt. That is problematic. Here I am opening up myself to criticism. Is the term ‘alternatives’, for example, not very much part of the NGO discourse? I ask because in Marxist ideology, we talk of a ‘new world view’. In this ideology we do not talk about alternatives, but we talk about building a better world with a new world view. I know it sounds abstract and utopian, but the world’s history was made by utopias.

The second point I would like to make is this: maybe we cannot explore this a lot here, but it is relevant when we are discussing the land question. There is a lot of debate about private individual ownership versus communal ownership and many of us think that the latter is progressive. I would actually want to suggest that we should move away from the concept of ownership altogether. That is why I am trying to develop, and maybe we can debate it, the concept of the ‘commons’. The commons are not ‘communally owned’. They are only managed by the community through its democratic organs.

Finally, there is the question of the classes which I would want to address to my fellow comrades from the Marxist tradition. Many of us think that radical political economy and the analysis of classes is a Marxist method. It is not. Marxism was a critique of political economy, not its affirmation. The concept of class was developed by the classical political economists before Marx. What was specific to Marxism was the concept of historical materialism and the central problematic of historical materialism is class struggle. The question of class struggle has been discarded in our discussions. I would therefore like to suggest that we need to dig deeper in our work to understand better the question of historical materialism because, if we disregard it, we open ourselves to a very common criticism that Marxists are reductionists who only talk about economics and not politics. We also become susceptible to the criticism that Marxists talk about the ‘rule of capital’ but not ‘how capital rules’.

A version of this interview was originally published as ‘Freedom Mazwi in Conversation with Issa Shivji on the Peasantry, Neoliberalism and Alternatives’, CODESRIA Bulletin Online No. 24, October 2021.

Issa Shivji taught for years at the University of Dar es Salaam, Public Law Department, and has written more than twenty books on Pan-Africanism, political economy, socialism and radical change in Africa. He is a longstanding member of ROAPE.

Justice, equality, and struggle – an interview with Ray Bush

ROAPE

November 9, 2021

Reflecting on African studies, the neo-liberal university, decolonisation and resistance, Ray Bush discusses in an interview with Richard Borowski what it means to be a scholar-activist working on Africa, and how his teaching and research have been informed by a commitment to the radical transformation of the continent, and the world.

Richard Borowski: Could you give us a brief synopsis of your academic career – when and how did you enter academia, and how did you progress to where you are now?

Ray Bush: I suppose I am what used to be called a late developer. I left school at 16 with few qualifications, and it took me more than four years to realise that the work that I was doing after school was not what I really wanted to continue doing. So, the sooner I could get some qualifications, I realised, the better. I did qualifications part-time while I worked as a civil servant in the Church Commissioners, of all places, which is the institution that pays and manages the clergy and the clergy’s land, which of course is extensive. So, I left school early, I didn’t get very much, and went back to study part-time. I left work in the anticipation that I would finally be able to get A levels, which my mother thought was the biggest mistake of my life, in that I was in work and should stay in work!

The Admission Tutor at Kingston Polytechnic said to me, basically, just get your A levels, he didn’t set grades even, and I remain really grateful for that. I thought if only I could get into the institution, I’ll try and do my best, and I did. I was the first 1^st-class degree holder in Social Sciences at Kingston Polytechnic. The gamble paid off, the anticipation worked, and I was very lucky to have two fantastic mentors at Kingston. One was Bob Sutcliffe, who sadly passed away earlier in the year, and the other was Anne Showstack-Sassoon. Bob was an incredible Marxist scholar-activist, an engaged economist in development and the meaning and understanding of imperialism and labour studies. Anne was and remains a very important commentator on the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. She was then a PhD student supervised by Ralph Miliband, who was Head of Department at Leeds.

I came to Leeds from Kingston Poly in the hope that I would be the successful applicant for the ESRC grant to do the MA in Political Sociology, which I was, and I had a formidable interview panel to get the ESRC grant which was Ralph Miliband, David Coates and Hamza Alavi. Hamza was a Pakistani Marxist – the most amazing commentator, analyst and theoretician on rural development in India and Pakistan who authored a path-breaking article on The State in Postcolonial Societies – and much else besides. So that’s how I got to Leeds, with immense excitement and optimism, which was well, I guess 1978 – I kind of hung on in different reincarnations.

After I got the MA, I got the ESRC quota award to do a PhD in the old Department of Politics. I should be grateful to the late Justin Grossman, who also was Head of Department then, who has also just passed away – it’s terrible to reflect on the number of people that you knew and are now leaving us. I researched and wrote a PhD on African Historiography of the Gold Coast from the Fourteenth Century to 1930. I also had as a supervisor, Lionel Cliffe, who as you know certainly made the biggest impression and impact on my life, as a dear close friend, comrade and mentor. So that’s how I got to Leeds: as a migrant labourer from London – and I recognised that work in the semi-periphery of Yorkshire, God’s own County, wasn’t too bad after all.

Based on your experience, what are your key insights into teaching African studies at a UK university?

I’ve always thought that teaching has to be exciting. Teaching has to be engaging and you have to capture very early on the room that you’re teaching in. The job is made easy by teaching political economy and politics. Political economy in general, but basically the structures and processes of African underdevelopment, is very exciting and very dramatic. I found it relatively easy capturing the engagement of students. Sustaining it, of course, is then a challenge if they come with views that are somewhat historically grounded in prejudice and the ideology of Britain being the (ex-)colonial power and a notion often brought from the UK school system of ‘what was wrong with colonialism anyway?’ I’ve tried constantly in the teaching that I’ve done, and certainly in my writing and activist work, to try and go beyond this view of Africa as the child that needs to be cared for, or Africa as a continent of crooks that need to be policed. I have rejected this constantly and it’s got me into hot water at different times with some of my colleagues.

I’ve rejected the nonsense of Western views of ‘responsibility to protect’ and Tony Blair’s idea that the conscience of the world has to be revealed by how we deal with Africa. And I’ve also tried to go beyond the debate about governance and neoliberal tropes about liberal democracy and assumptions that African politics and society are corrupt. I’ve always been absolutely emboldened by students who recognise the importance of locating Africa in world historical sociology. They do see the importance and the relevance of race and racism, slavery and of course recently Black Lives Matter and how that’s located in struggles in and around Africa and different historically constructed states in Africa. There was a time in the early 1980s – at the height of Thatcherism in this country, after 1979 with Kohl in Germany and Reagan in the United States – when there was a very strong hegemonic driver for intervention in Africa. Western liberal values constructed by ideologues including people like Samuel Huntington, who was involved at the time of the Vietnam War advising the US government, or influential economists in the UK like Paul Collier, considered that there was a moral but mostly an economic duty of the West to intervene in African political economies.

During the apartheid years in South Africa the US and European states bolstered dictatorship in Zaire to hinder and frustrate national liberation in Angola and Mozambique and to inhibit the end of apartheid in South Africa. The 1980s was a decade of economic interference and disruption by Western and especially US policymakers seeking to shape development throughout Africa. Neoliberal economic intervention in Africa, the lost development decade and economic and political conditionality destroyed patterns of growth after World War 2. It also shaped African opportunities for struggles against imperialism.

Some students did kick back against continued Western intervention and recognised that you needed an historical view of the continent, especially when as a lecturer you interrogated the romanticisation of liberal frameworks. Instead, I have always highlighted how the post-colonial state was a terrain of struggle where the power of the wealthy was often aligned with Western interests but workers and peasants in Africa have constantly struggled against the drain of surplus from the continent of its capital, savings and raw materials resources.

The conundrum is of course that the West always talks about wanting to help and defend the poor against the powerful. Yet the historically constructed relationship is one that extracts the resources and the wealth of the continent to benefit the industrial North and has done so since the period of informal merchant colonialism in the 14th century. If you actually understand how the movement of resources from the continent to the North has been developed over long periods of time, and how that’s been moderated by different kinds of struggles on the continent, you develop a sense of not only the constraints on development but also how underdevelopment can be and is being contested. This then enables students to explore and engage with writings of African scholar-activists like those of Kwame Nkrumah, in Neo Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism (1965) and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1965) to get a feel and sense of the historical struggles in Africa for genuine sovereignty and to explore the relevance of African scholar-activism today.

So, students are fascinated by contentious debates regarding the hegemonic views of food security and famine prevention driven by the international agencies and the alternative food sovereignty. Food sovereignty is the idea and practice that drives an epistemic shift from the notion that food security is only sustained by trade, rather than local food production that is driven by sustainable local patterns of food production.

A student remarked at the end of my third-year module on this area that she could never have imagined how interesting agriculture could be! This was not a surprising comment for me, as most debate about food and agriculture in Africa is discussed without any reference to farmers – the men and women and children who produce food. I highlighted in my classes that African farmers not only feed themselves (of course sometimes with great difficulty because of land hunger and poverty) and their communities, but also engage with a wide array of political, economic and social practices that link the African countryside with the urban sprawl – notwithstanding high levels of social differentiation among farmers. The issue of food and agriculture cannot be separated from broader questions of development, the role of urbanisation – but with employment, not slums, and petty commodity production; industrialisation and if so producing what for whom at what cost, and with what kind of environmental hazard in the context of the Wests refusal to entertain reparations for African economies decimated by Northern industrialisation.

The debate about food sovereignty enables students to counter the hegemonic views of green revolution technology, genetically modified seeds and continued mining of African soil by agribusiness. Students are fascinated by the counter-narrative that small farmers are fighting back and need to be supported, not undermined; that diversity in farming techniques and cropping needs to be sustained and expanded, thereby rejecting trade specialisation and monocropping; and that an analysis of the gendered dimensions to food production needs to go beyond hand-wringing over the toughness and often everyday drudgery of family farming to raise questions about why food production is often difficult – not because of poor African farming techniques but because of poor and uneven access to resources, and the absence of land reform that can ensure land to the tiller. This necessarily requires students to explore issues of modern-day land enclosure or ‘grabs’, often by agribusiness companies producing high-value foodstuffs for export to European and US dinner tables, rather than the production of food for local consumption by African farmers.

Over many years, you’ve been part of, and contributed to, African Studies at Leeds, in the UK, and beyond. How have you seen the field develop? Which developments are you excited about, and which ones worry you?

There’s lots of reasons to be excited. I was privileged last year to be the Chair of the African Studies Association UK Book Prize, which is a biannual jury, and for that prize we received 85 books from 39 publishers, many of which were published from Africa. Many of the books were really exciting, dynamic, interesting and interdisciplinary. I think what’s crucial and most exciting about African Studies (whatever African Studies means, as I think that’s a contentious debate because African Studies itself is a title that emerges from colonial content and foreign offices of France, the UK and elsewhere.) But there’s lots going on in African Studies that’s exciting and vibrant, and I think that I would mention two things that I think are really important for me in relation to academic activism.

One is the publication Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, which is a journal of the Agrarian South Network, with contributors mostly from Southern activist academics. It is a journal that really pushes the envelope about local knowledge production and how it engages with struggles against imperialism. The other is www.roape.net, which I have a particular interest in, because ROAPE (Review of African Political Economy), as the website and blogging area of the journal, has really accelerated contributions from the continent rather than only from Western academics. Both these journals reflect serious engagement with African experiences of colonialism and imperialism, the importance of exploring local patterns of capital accumulation and the differential impact of the development of capitalism and what is the room for manoeuvre to transition to socialism.

I think that my anxiety is around the continued preoccupation with what has seemed to be timeless Western concerns with African governance, the promotion of liberal democracy and the study of elections – usually without any historical grounding or understanding of the countries concerned. As we’ve already mentioned, history is crucial in setting parameters of inquiry and the questions to ask, and the other is the worry about the generalisation of responsibility to protect – ‘R2P’ – which is very, very strong in terms of contributors at the University of Leeds. But I always ask the question why is it that Africans end up in the International Criminal Court and Israel doesn’t for its many crimes of occupation of Palestine. Why is Africa singled out? Is it because there is more brutality in Africa than there is elsewhere in the world? Or perhaps it’s because there is more Western leverage over many African states? The trope that there is more brutality in Africa needs to be quashed. I think one of the ways in which it’s quashed is to recognise that R2P has become a veil for intervention. That is not to say that African elites can be allowed to go without punishment for some of their actions, but that those actions can be punished by Africans in African states themselves and by the African Union. The irony of course about the African Union – it’s not an irony, it’s a paradox or contradiction – is that it’s funded mostly by the West, and so its agenda of action and its types of intervention are constrained by Western sources of funding.

But the worry of course is the continued spread and intervention of US militarisation and the role of AFRICOM in trying to establish US bases in Africa. A kind of a foil to that has been the role of China although it may be too soon to say whether it’s a positive or a negative role. China has nevertheless provided in a sense what the former Soviet Union did until the end of the Cold War. Whether one supported the former Soviet Union or not, for states and leaders and people, workers and farmers in Africa, the presence of an alternative to the US and Western intervention, the fact that there was the Soviet presence, created the conditions for helping develop and promote alternative visions in Africa. China in Africa has a similar effect because it advances a policy of non-intervention in terms of respecting African sovereignty. And that’s why Britain, the US and the EU find China so challenging. China works with states without insisting on economic and political conditionality or intervening on issues regarding human rights. But I think the debate about human rights is reified beyond an understanding of what the constraints are for existing development in states in Africa. It’s not to excuse or in any way minimise the consequences of human rights violations, but it should also not be an excuse for Western intervention in Africa.

Your scholarly work has been closely linked to Review of African Political Economy, the journal that you helped lead for decades. How do you look back at the ‘radical transformation’ that ROAPE aims to understand and enhance? What is the need and potential for further work in this area in our current era?

The journal started in 1974 and I joined in 1979. I think the important thing about ROAPE is that when it started with Lionel Cliffe, Ruth First, Gavin Williams, Peter Lawrence and others, it was seen as a journal that was certainly advancing understanding and themes of liberation and solidarity with National Liberation struggles at that time in Africa. The view was always that the journal would be moved to Africa and that it would be based there. But then something happened, neoliberalism, about the time I joined, and the lost development decade which we know now has been so dramatically documented.

The struggles on the continent during the 1980s and 1990s were ones that really changed the shape of what we felt a journal could do. In a sense, what the journal did in the 1980s and the 1990s was document and chart the consequences and the dynamics of neoliberalism and understandings of imperialism from the North. In so doing, partly the journal came under pressure to simply become another academic journal, and it lost a radical defining edge. I’m happy to say that in the last few years the initiatives we’ve taken in the journal have tried to counter the view of it just being another academic journal on Africa.

The good thing about being yet another academic journal on Africa is that it helped raise income for us to stabilise the journal and circulation and it’s also enabled us to develop something that we’ve called the Connections Workshops. This is basically to try and reconnect with the continent: to engage with an activist audience of scholars and younger people. We had workshops in Accra in November 2017, Dar es Salaam in April 2018 and Johannesburg in November 2018. These were workshops with agendas set by activists and academics and social movements in Africa. It’s a collaboration, and an agenda from the continent that has focused on popular protest, with the Nyerere Centre in Dar es Salaam, the Third World Network Africa in Accra, Centre for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg and SWOP at Wits University. These are collaborative ventures to try and show – and we hope actually to gradually move the journal to Africa again – a way that enables the process of producing a journal that is more closely aligned to struggles and activist interest in the continent directly.

So, we’re asking questions about how to reconnect with the continent debating politics and activism. That’s somewhat been held up by COVID-19 because at the time of lockdown we were on the verge of having an activist meeting in Windhoek in Namibia, but we have postponed that for all the obvious reasons. What we’ve tried to do with the Connections workshops, and what we’ve tried to do with roape.net, is to try and reduce the distance between academics and activists, recognise that the 21st century is different from the struggles of the late 20th century and that there is now an amazing range of struggles, highlighted of course by the uprisings and revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011 that toppled dictatorships.

Yet this is also highlighted by COVID, the struggles by states to quell resistance during COVID has been so violent and so extensive that we’ve been busy trying to highlight that with involvement in Kenya of the Mathare Social Justice Centre, in Zimbabwe with the Zimbabwe Labour Centre and also through our Africa Editor, Yao Graham, based in Accra. The journal I think has moved on: I hope in a sense it’s coming back to what it originally was founded to try and do, which was to offer much stronger activist interventions and to embed those interventions with the development of how workers and farmers and peasants can construct an alternative to post-COVID neoliberalism.

ROAPE has always had a section of the journal for briefings and debates, which Lionel Cliffe was the editor of, and which I’ve now taken on in my ‘retirement’. I think it’s an opportunity to seek out where struggles are taking place and to allow the social movements to have platforms and voices which they wouldn’t otherwise have because they’re written up only as academic discourse. The formatting of academic articles has a very set agenda which doesn’t always touch the main themes that activists want to promote and engage with.

There’s recently been much debate about ‘decolonisation’, of African Studies, and of higher education more generally. What are your thoughts about this?

I think at best the debates about coloniality highlight a potential link with Marxism that looks at an analysis of people in the continents of the colonial world, how knowledge is being produced and reproduced, and by whom, and the power dynamics that underpin them. That’s what decoloniality does I think at best. More descriptively, it’s basically sought to try and problematise the so-called age of discovery and put centre stage indigenous peoples and struggles over land – and struggles over land I think are quintessential to understanding the debate in the contemporary period.

Struggles over land go to the heart of capital accumulation that takes place prior to capitalist development in Europe and which remains persistent in Africa and elsewhere in the Global South. In short, accumulation by the dispossession of land requires an analysis of commodification of and privatisation of land, the expulsion of peasants and struggles to retain access to the commons – those areas of activity that have not yet been converted to exclusive private property, usually under the rhetoric of modernisation. Some of the most violent and contentious struggles in Africa take place around attempts to erode indigenous forms of production and consumption and the ways in which farmers and the dispossessed are able to respond to accumulation by dispossession.

I also think Black Lives Matter as a social movement, despite its very disparate and heterogeneous construction, has added to the view of the importance of understanding how knowledge is produced and how colonialism was built on an epistemology of domination. A theory of knowledge that effectively creates the ‘other’, of African peoples subordinated to other aspects of humanity. My own view is that within that debate about decolonisation I would not want to lose sight of, and what I have constantly reiterated in my own work, is an analysis that the late Samir Amin advanced. That is, the best way of understanding late capitalism is to look at how capitalism is organised around five monopolies. Monopolies that control technology, financial flows, access to resources, access to media and communications and access to weapons of mass destruction.

I think what that characterisation of how capitalism is sustained and reproduced – what that view of the five monopolies directs us to – forces us to ask is how it is possible for African states to begin to construct a new auto-centred view of development. A view of development that is not dependent upon a persistent international law of value that has been constructed historically to exploit resources from the continent. That, to me is how coloniality offers a relationship with Marxism that tries to look at different metrics of power, and I prefer, of course, to look at it through the view of those five monopolies. But what decoloniality has also done is basically to say look, there’s an illusion of modernity. Modernity is constructed as a palliative, it’s window dressing. This is what you could have if only you did this and you’re not doing this so therefore you won’t get it. It becomes a mechanism for exerting power. But it’s also directed as a quite concerted effort to look at the role of labour, labour migration, dynamics of energy and extractives and environmental destruction. So as a dimension of contemporary analysis, it’s important if for me it runs alongside, and is structured by a material analysis of how historical patterns of underdevelopment have been fashioned and what forms they take now.

To conclude, do you have any final thoughts, wishes, or words of wisdom to your students, colleagues, and comrades?

In terms of individuals working in the area of African Studies, and with students but especially of young academics, I think my view would be to try and avoid chasing money as a goal in itself. It’s now interestingly spoken about as ‘grant capture’, but effectively it is about how to sustain yourself within an organisation that is a university. But universities and higher education should themselves have agendas of research and scholarship that aren’t driven only by a financial Excel spreadsheet. So, colleagues must continue to think about innovative ways of navigating the neoliberal university and its commercialisation so we can continue to celebrate the important work of academic activists. As Lionel Cliffe once commented in one of the last pieces that he wrote: as academics, we need constantly to be aware of our vocation and be prepared to rebel and rebel because you make choices about your agenda and the approach that you take. The approach that you take means that you take sides, and you advance those sides because of the importance of justice, equality and international development.

A version of this interview was originally posted by Leeds African Studies Bulletin No. 82 (2021).

Ray Bush is Emeritus Professor of African Studies at the School of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the University of Leeds. He is also a leading member of the Review of African Political Economy’s Editorial Working Group.

Featured Photograph: Artwork on a street in Alexandria, Egypt shortly after the revolution of 2011 (22 October 2011).

Liberated Texts: The power of books as propaganda

ROAPE

November 4, 2021

Louis Allday writes how book publishing from the 1960s became an important weapon of strategic propaganda by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The new website Liberated Texts aims to provide a platform for reviews of works of ongoing relevance that have been suppressed or misinterpreted in the mainstream since their release. Allday argues that books remain powerful tools that have the ability to fundamentally transform one’s worldview.

By Louis Allday

‘Brecht said, “hungry man reach for the book.” Why? Because to get rid of hunger, you have to get rid of the system that produces hunger, and to get rid of that system you must understand it and you can only do that by reaching for the book.’

Prabhat Patnaik

In November 1965, the Deputy Director of the CIA was sent an in-house book review by the curator of the Agency’s Historical Intelligence Collection. Its subject was Kwame Nkrumah’s seminal work, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, first published in London earlier that year. The review largely focussed on “The Mechanisms of Neo-Colonialism”, the chapter in Nkrumah’s book that was said to have most “caught the eye of the press” and was “of greatest interest to the CIA”.

Within the book, Nkrumah analyses in detail the techniques through which modern imperialist powers achieved the objectives they had previously accomplished through overt colonialism and identifies the United States as the worst offender in this regard. In doing so, Nkrumah named names and drew attention to the neo-colonial role of, among others, the CIA, US Peace Corps, USIA and USAID. The tenor of the review is largely neutral, but the author’s concern with both the book’s contents and Nkrumah as a figure more broadly are not hard to discern beneath its superficially objective tone. It concludes by reporting that copies of the book had been sent to a number of CIA departments including the African Division of the Deputy Directorate for Plans (DDP), the Agency’s clandestine service and covert action arm, for study and “whatever action these components consider advisable”.

Only three months later, in February 1966, Nkrumah was deposed as President of Ghana in a coup that was engineered by the Agency. The late June Milne, Nkrumah’s editor, literary executor and long-time confidante, believed that because Neo-Colonialism had demonstrated the workings of international finance capital in Africa in such detail, the exposure its publication constituted was “just too much… the last straw” and led directly to the decision to depose Nkrumah in a coup.[1]

Milne’s speculation is well-founded, not only because of the undeniably explosive content of Nkrumah’s book, but because senior figures within the CIA were already well aware of the dangers of such material to US interests. In the words of its Covert Operations Director in 1961:

Books differ from all other propaganda media, primarily because one single book can significantly change the reader’s attitude and action to an extent unmatched by the impact of any other single medium… this is, of course, not true of all books at all times and with all readers – but it is true significantly often enough to make books the most important weapon of strategic (long-range) propaganda.[2]

As such, the Agency acted accordingly and developed an extraordinary level of control and influence within the publishing industry. Details of the extent of this reach were revealed to the public in 1975 by the Church Committee, a US Senate investigation into the activities of a number of US intelligence agencies, including the CIA. The most well-known revelations of this committee include details of the now infamous CIA-run programmes MKULTRA, COINTELPRO, Family Jewels and Operation Mockingbird. Less well known are the details it contains on the Agency’s clandestine control over book publishing and distribution which, as per the committee’s findings, enabled it to:

(a) Get books published or distributed abroad without revealing any U.S. influence, by covertly subsidizing foreign publications or booksellers.

(b) Get books published which should not be “contaminated” by any overt tie-in with the U.S. government, especially if the position of the author is “delicate.”

(c) Get books published for operational reasons, regardless of commercial viability.

(d) Initiate and subsidize indigenous national or international organizations for book publishing or distributing purposes.

(e) Stimulate the writing of politically significant books by unknown foreign authors-either by directly subsidizing the author, if covert contact is feasible, or indirectly, through literary agents or publishers.[3]

Utilising this immense influence, before the end of 1967, well over 1,000 books had been produced, subsidized or sponsored by the Agency. Of these works, 25 percent were written in English, with the remainder in a number of different languages published around the world. Sometimes these books were published by organisations backed by the CIA without the author’s knowledge, while others involved direct collaboration between the Agency and the writer.

Frequently, books were published in order to bolster the US imperialist narrative about enemy states, for example, the Agency produced a number of works about China that were intended specifically to combat the “sympathetic view of the emerging China as presented by Edgar Snow”.[4] As the committee’s official report stated, an American who read one of those books, purportedly authored by a Chinese defector, “would not know that his thoughts and opinions about China are possibly being shaped by an agency of the United States Government”.[5] The Agency’s concern extended to book reviews which it utilised to refute the attacks of critics and promote works that it had sponsored. On at least one occasion, a book produced by the CIA was then reviewed in the New York Times by another writer also contracted by the Agency.[6]

In the time that has passed since the revelations of the Church Committee, technological developments have transformed the way in which people consume information globally. The internet has become a new battle ground of propaganda and has been subject to comparable levels of infiltration and manipulation by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The idea that books remain the most important weapon of strategic propaganda, as determined by the CIA in 1961, would now be contested by many.

However, the terrain of contemporary publishing implies that US intelligence agencies have not ceased to be concerned with the power and influence of books as objects of propaganda. Take one example, since the US’ proxy war against Syria began a decade ago, a raft of books supporting the imperialist narrative have been published, many of them by ostensibly radical and leftist publishers. In many cases, these books are then endorsed and reviewed by an affiliated network of magazines and podcasts, while other works that go against the hegemonic narrative are reviewed negatively or simply ignored entirely.

It is with this historical context and lamentable present reality in mind that the website Liberated Texts was recently established. The site aims to provide a platform for reviews of works of ongoing relevance that have been forgotten, underappreciated, suppressed or misinterpreted in the cultural mainstream since their release. Of course, not all of the works reviewed on the site will have been subject to overt suppression or silencing by imperialist intelligence agencies – the reasons why books that go against prevailing ideas usually do not receive the attention and readership they deserve are countless – but all remain relevant and deserve a wider readership. The same is true of works that do not get translated into English for political reasons, such as the late Domenico Losurdo’s study of Stalin, which his English language publishers, Verso Books, have refused to translate and publish in spite of repeated requests for them to do so. [7]

The life stories of prominent revolutionaries and thinkers are littered with references to how reading individual books or authors changed the trajectory of their life, and notwithstanding the dramatic shift in the educational and media landscape that has taken place in the decades since the publication of Neo-Colonialism, books remain powerful tools that have the ability to fundamentally transform one’s worldview.

Liberated Texts seeks to provide a home for all those people who still believe that to be the case and want to write about books they feel passionate about and believe – whether they were published 100 years ago or in the last few years – remain relevant to the issues of the present moment and deserve to be read and discussed more widely.

Louis Allday is a historian who researches the British Government`s presence in the Persian Gulf, with an emphasis on its cultural propaganda. Allday is the founder of Liberated Texts.

Featured Photograph: The Harlem bookseller and activist Lewis H. Michaux. From 1932 to 1974 he was the owner of the African National Memorial Bookstore in Harlem, New York City.

Notes

[1] Doreatha Drummond Mbala, Kwame Nkrumah: The June Milne Interview, (2019), 67.

[2] The Church Committee (1975), 193.

[3] The Church Committee (1975), 193.

[4] The Church Committee (1975), 198.

[5] The Church Committee (1975), 199.

[6] The Church Committee (1975), 198.

[7] Domenico Losurdo, Stalin: History and Criticism of a Black Legend (2008)

On the road to Glasgow: South Africa’s green capitalism

ROAPE

November 2, 2021

As COP26 takes place in Scotland, this blogpost concentrates on South Africa’s interpretation of the green economy. Franziska Müller and Simone Claar scrutinize what South Africa has really achieved, whether this matches with its green ambitions, and how this translates to green capitalism’s wishful thinking.

By Franziska Müller and Simone Claar

Aspiring as a frontrunner in climate diplomacy has been one of South Africa’s global ambitions. Hosting international climate conferences and domestic ‘energy indabas’ seemed a popular strategy to demonstrate both responsibility for Pan-African interests and readiness for clean energy. While the gap between global climate governance, and a largely coal-powered energy mix has been frowned upon, recent political developments paint a slightly different picture. With carbon capitalism still alive and kicking, South Africa’s version of a green economy is materializing, yet at the price of downplaying questions of socio-ecological justice.

As COP26 takes place in Scotland, this blogpost first concentrates on South Africa’s interpretation of the green economy, by taking its energy auction instrument as an example for the arguments over green capitalism’s shape and structure. As COP 26 is dedicated to a stocktaking of domestic carbon reduction policies, we also scrutinize what South Africa has achieved, whether this matches with its green frontrunner ambitions, and how this translates to green capitalism’s wishful thinking.

South African Carbon Capitalism

South Africa has had its fair share of fossilist path dependencies. Pointedly labelled as the “minerals-energy complex” by Ben Fine and Zavareh Rustomjee, the settler-colonial amalgamation of the mining sector, heavy industry and national banking had developed already in the late 19^th century. Under the Apartheid regime the minerals-energy complex became a bulwark that granted energy autarky despite the global boycott and the divestment campaigns.

Ironically, after liberation, the moth-balled surplus coal power stations guaranteed nationwide access to energy and ended racialized segregation in the energy sector. With energy monopolist ESKOM in full (but next to bankrupt) control over grid infrastructure, any attempt to defossilize the energy mix was limited to baby-steps. Yet, South Africa’s carbon emissions are about as high as the emissions of all other sub-Saharan African countries put together, with the Kriel area in Mpumalanga identified as a worldwide hotspot for fine dust pollution. Indeed, energy justice has for most of the time mainly been understood as security of supply, whereas environmental or health concerns have only lately found wider attention.

Social movements such as Earth Life South Africa or Mfolozi Community Environmental Justice Organisation protest against coal power stations face much opposition as the symbolic and material power of coal as the root to progress and social security remains unbroken. Anti-coal activists have been facing death threats, and in 2020, Fikile Ntshangas, a long-time activist against open-pit mining at Tendele Coal Mine was murdered. International environmental NGOs have only loosely been connected to these grassroots movements and the opportunity to join forces with trade unionists such as NUMSA has proven unsuccessful.

In this context, – a ‘policy innovation’, that is, the implementation of a carefully curated energy auction instrument, was regarded as a chance to change South Africa’s political economy of energy and to pave the way towards South Africa’s version of green capitalism: transnationalized, socio-economically conditionalized and non-unionized.

Auctioning a just transition? Renewable Energy Auctions and Investment Patterns

The first substantial steps towards adopting the green economy paradigm were taken when South Africa introduced an energy auction instrument – the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme (REI4P) – in 2011 (for a broader discussion of REI4P see our article in ROAPE here). REI4P has added 5 GW renewable energy to the national grid, which is why the instrument, and its investment patterns, deserve a closer look. Indeed, REI4P stands for something bigger than just a policy innovation: it represents a shift towards a different political economy of energy, largely driven by transnational energy companies and green finance flows.

REI4P differs from other energy auctions by adding a socio-economic component to the cost-efficiency scoring. Bidders must fulfil both local content requirements and socio-economic requirements such as employment of Black personnel and there is a threshold for local ownership (minimum 2.5%, with a target of 5%). The target was overachieved to a significant degree, with local ownership of up to 40%. In addition, a minimum of 45% for solar and 40% for other technology project costs had to be spent in South Africa. As of June 2021, REI4P has so far awarded tenders to 112 renewable energy projects, of which 92 have reached financial closure. In terms of job creation this has resulted in 40,134 direct, full-time equivalent job years.

Over the timeframe of the successive bidding windows, pricing has dropped considerably, from 2.52 rand per kWh in the first bidding round to only 0.82 rand per kWh in the fourth round, which means that the affordability of renewable energy increases. This demonstrates that, overall, renewable energy is cost competitive with conventional power sources.

The geographic spread of projects across South Africa is however unequal, with most projects (59 out of 112) located in Northern and Western Cape provinces, but few in Limpopo (3), Mpumalanga (2), KwaZulu-Natal (1) and Gauteng (1). While this is mostly due to favourable resource conditions for wind and solar energy in the Northern, Eastern and Western Cape provinces, it also demonstrates a hesitation on the part of investors to implement projects in the more remote and poorer parts of South Africa and on former homelands. Moreover, the creation of eight Renewable Energy Development Zones (the so-called REDZs), where more favourable investment conditions apply, meets investors’ needs but will increase spatial polarization, as six out of eight are located in the Northern, Western and Eastern Cape. This will concentrate the energy value chain geographically by clustering large manufacturers, smaller enterprises and adjacent energy services. However, the new focus on REDZs also means that REI4P’s potential for job creation in precisely those regions which will be hit most by coal decommissioning has not been considered.

Green Investment Patterns

Zooming in on investors and on investment patterns such as ownership or the role of transnationalized capital reveals that REI4P is by and large a transnationally driven project, though with a considerable amount of energy cooperatives with high communal ownership.

The first pattern, transnational capital, is characterized by complex shareholder consortia and an exceptionally high share of inter- and transnational capital, ranging between 40% and 60%, with private equity playing an important role. This is complemented by a lower share of local capital and low involvement of local communities ranging between 2% and 5%. Overall, 31 out of 82 projects (37.8%) fall under this category. In most cases we find one transnational shareholder with a blocking minority who manages all the operative processes. Often companies with a long-standing history are now seeking to tap the potential of the renewable energy market, for instance Enel or Anisol, a subsidiary of the French oil company Total.

Transnational social entrepreneurship, the second investment pattern, is characterized by a high share of transnational investors, complemented by an almost equally high share of community trusts, ranging between 10% and 40% of community ownership. A typical example is the Prieska Solar Power Plant, involving Spanish company Gestamp (60% share), but also the South African strategic equity investor Mulilo, with a share of 40% divided equally between the company and a community trust. This pattern involves South African project developers, pension funds, life insurances and black equity investors, but also development aid agencies and international finance institutions. Socio-economic responsibility is often outsourced to specialised agencies, such as Sofisa Phillips or the University of Cape Town’s (UCT’s) start-up Knowledge Pele, that aim at business consultancy, socio-economic needs assessments and community development programmes. This pattern was found in 26 out of 82 projects (31.7%). Combining transnational investment, domestic black capital and community trusts, this pattern can also be considered a liberal success story building on the idea of African entrepreneurship, while opening up to transnational investors’ interests.

Localised renewable energy ownership, the third investment pattern applies for 25 out of 82 projects (30.5%). These consortia involve smaller, South Africa-based project developers or joint ventures which hold the controlling minority. In these cases, engineering and construction work is performed by domestic companies, thereby guaranteeing a higher rate of local content. The shareholder amount of community trusts is much higher than the 2.5% required by the REIPPPP directives, ranging between 15 and 40%. In contrast to the first and second models outlined above, projects within this pattern are more likely to be financed through debt from national and developmental banks than through equity. Several projects involve traditional leaders and communities on collectively owned land, for instance Tsitsikamma Community Wind Farm, Cookhouse Wind Farm, and Grassridge Wind Farm. In addition, socio-economic programmes are more likely to be designed according to public consultation, with college courses, entrepreneurial education or agricultural consultation as typical features.

Green Capitalism and the run-up to Cop26

This close-up on REI4P provides evidence of the socio-economic and socio-ecological transformations currently happening in South Africa. It shows how two different energy regimes have entered fierce competition: an aging monopolist one representing carbon capitalism, and a diversified, liberal and transnationalized energy regime with a stated aim of green capitalism. Yet this competition faces built-in distortions, some of which we can already pinpoint:

Transnational capital and green finance flows gain in importance: Their rising relevance means that renewable energy projects are designed according to criteria such as bankability, scalability, and return on investment, whereas criteria such as energy justice or social welfare may be of minor significance. This trend towards financialization resonates with South African aspirations to become a worldwide hub for green hydrogen, a source of energy which is even more prone to financialization.
Green transformation processes face political contestation: Trade unions accurately criticize that green jobs are healthier and argue that they offer lower wages and less social security. Job losses in the Mpumalanga and Limpopo provinces pose a danger to social stability, yet REI4P is not designed in a way that would consider these risks. At the same time, communal entities complain that they do not have enough voice to articulate their interests during the energy auctions.
Energy poverty is not yet resolved by renewables while fossilists seek to promote the carbon accumulation model. Indeed, with uneven distribution and supply chains being disrupted due to the pandemic, we can spot sudden energy demands, which are difficult to satisfy. Therefore the recent Karpowership deal – a 20-year contract granted to the Turkish Karadeniz group for placing two fossil powerships in front of Durban’s harbour – is so disturbing: a business model designed for late-stage carbon capitalism, aiming at quick-and-dirty energy solutions, offering overpriced energy and endangering marine ecosystems.

On the road to Glasgow, how do these points correspond with South Africa’s nationally determined contributions (NDC) for COP26? Indeed, South Africa has tightened its commitments and has finally agreed on a shift away from coal. The goal of decoupling of emissions and growth pervades the strategy, and echoes hopes and fears so typical for green capitalism.

On a global level South Africa rightfully demands that western nations enhance their pledges for the Green Climate Funds and sign a “just transition partnership”. This resonated with historic responsibilities and claims for climate justice. Furthermore, the NDC repeatedly refers to the “just transition” narrative, for instance for greening value production chains, decarbonizing heavy industry and for restructuring miners’ jobs.

A focus on climate vulnerability and early warning systems gives evidence that there is deep awareness for climate change-induced dangers in the near future. On the mitigation side policies proposed include a carbon tax, company-level carbon budgets and emission reduction, yet the language is weak and does not underscore a sense of strong commitment. While decommissioning of 35 GW coal power stations is a step towards decarbonisation, coal capacity additions of 7.2 GW are not at all in line with the Paris Agreement. Furthermore, REI4P is not expanded rapidly enough, which means targets such as 45% renewables by 2030 or 85% by 2040, seem beyond reach. Not surprisingly, this pace is still rated “insufficient” by the Climate Action Tracker.

In contrast, the discussion and activities surrounding the so-called Climate Justice Charter call for a more radical transformation. Being a product of intense civil society dialogue, the Climate Justice Charter tackles the connection between sustainability, livelihood, production chains, and global political economy. In the field of energy, the Charter calls for socially owned and community-based renewable energy. In practice, this means a rapid shift from carbon capitalism, including divestment from fossil fuels and a deep transformation of the current energy system. One significant difference to the current renewable energy programme is the focus on technology ownership and Pan-African clean tech. In addition, the call for a decentralization of renewable energy production “supported by participatory budgeting and incentives (such as feed in tariffs) for our workplaces, homes and communities” is remarkable.

Returning to our research findings on the different investment patterns in RE4IP, the consequences are to concentrate on localized structures and decentralized energy production. However, adopting the ideas of the Charter would be an opportunity to strengthen social justice to underpin a truly just transition.

Read Franziska Müller and Simone Claar’s full article in ROAPE until the end of November, ‘Auctioning a ‘just energy transition’? South Africa’s renewable energy procurement programme and its implications for transition strategies.’

Franziska Müller is Assistant Professor for Climate Governance at the University of Hamburg and is active in environmental justice movements for more than 20 years. Her research concentrates on energy justice, energy transitions, postcolonial studies, and international political economy, with a regional focus on South Africa, Zambia, and Ghana.

Simone Claar leads the research group ‘Glocalpower: Funds, tools, and networks for an African energy transition’ at the University of Kassel, and a long-standing trade unionist in Germany’s education union. Her research interests include international political economy focusing on state and capitalism in Africa, green economy and finance as well as renewable energies.

‘It hasn’t fallen yet, the rule is military still’: Lessons from the Sudanese revolution

ROAPE

October 27, 2021

In the context of the coup in Sudan, Muzan Alneel analyses the Sudanese revolution and the role of the transitionary government. She argues that the deep unpopularity of the now overthrown government sponsored by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, internationally financed, was an expression of both the economic and political counterrevolutions. This long read forms part of a dossier of articles that is published in collaboration with the Transnational Institute (TNI) and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation – North Africa.

By Muzan Alneel

In early December 2018, protests broke out throughout Sudan against the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir. One week into the sit-in that demanded his departure in April 2019, Omar al-Bashir was deposed – after almost 30 years of rule. However, Sudanese revolutionaries did not stop their sit-ins: they continued to rally before the General Command (headquarters of the Sudanese Armed Forces), affirming their commitment to keep protesting until all their demands were met and their desired changes were realized. On 3 June 2019, the 29th night of Ramadan, the Sudanese security forces brutally and simultaneously dispersed all the sit-ins, committing a massacre.

A ‘power-sharing’ agreement was subsequently signed between the Military Council (comprising al-Bashir’s former security council, which has led the country since al-Bashir’s fall) and the opposition coalition (the Forces of the Declaration of Freedom and Change – FFC). Under the agreement, the civilian-military government is to rule Sudan for a transitional period of three years.

Throughout the two years since the announcement of the transitional government, Sudan has experienced various political and economic changes, including signing peace agreements with different armed movements in the country, Sudan’s removal from the US list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, and the ratification of some laws and the amendment of others. At the same time, protests have never stopped: they have occurred at least twice a month during this period.

One chant which has been heard during the ongoing protests in Sudan, and which has become a prevalent part of daily life, is the call ‘It hasn’t fallen yet’: a phrase that follows the call of the December 2018 uprising ‘Just fall’ – referring to the dictatorial regime. The phrase ‘It hasn’t fallen yet’ is a clear expression of the protesters’ rejection of the current situation in the country, and of their will to continue protesting. Other chants include ‘Whether it’s fallen or not, we’re staying here’ and ‘It hasn’t fallen yet, the rule is military still’.

This blogpost seeks to enrich the international revolutionary conversation on the lessons that can be drawn from the Sudanese revolution. Learning these lessons can help us to achieve the revolution’s goals and can also enrich worldwide struggles for a more just world.

Why have the Sudanese risen up?

In early December 2018, angry protests broke out in different Sudanese cities. The bleak economic situation, with people forced to queue for bread and fuel, had ignited a general mood of anger. Atbara city was the site of the most important protest, organized by students at Atbara Industrial School protesting the fact that ta’amiya sandwiches (the most common breakfast consumed by impoverished Sudanese) had become unaffordable as a result of increased bread prices. The students marched all the way to the headquarters of the ruling party, the National Congress Party (NCP), and burned the building to the ground. [1] Pictures of the NCP headquarters on fire soon circulated among the Sudanese. The building looked identical to other NCP headquarters throughout the country, along with their lavish spending, coloured green and provocatively located amidst impoverished and underdeveloped surroundings. The picture ignited hope and the possibility of overthrowing the government suddenly appeared more realistic, despite the arsenal of the security services and their crackdown on protesters.

Although the protesters’ anger emerged in 2018, the economic problems that catalysed it went back much further, resulting from economic policies with a long history. Some of these policies had been implemented by the National Salvation regime of Omar al-Bashir, while some had been put in place under former regimes. Ever since the coup on 30 June 1989, the Salvation government had adopted policies of liberalization and privatization, including the withdrawal of public services. Since the ruling party’s Islamic background led it to adopt an oppositional stance towards the ‘major powers’ (principally the United States and the European Union), it implemented neoliberal economic policies without being able to benefit from the aid that the global financial institutions could have offered. Liberalization empowered the National Islamic Front – the ancestor of the Bashir’s NCP – whose cadres provided, and thus profited from, those public services that the state had abandoned, like education and healthcare. Accordingly, the regime was able to redirect revenues from the state treasury into the pockets of its party cadres.

The history of the Salvation government was marked by a series of failed economic policies and short-sighted decisions, including selling government assets, abandoning service provision, and opening the door to privatized healthcare and education. These policies provoked mass protests throughout the 1990s. Towards the end of that decade, driven by the 1998 US embargo on the country, the regime turned to Chinese companies to act as partners in oil drilling operations in the country. At the same time, the regime strove to re-join the global financial system. It entered into negotiations with a series of US administrations to lift the economic embargo. As part of this process, Sudan accepted to enter into negotiations with the Sudan’s People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) to end the civil war in South Sudan, the longest in the history of the continent.[2]

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the war initiated a period during which public funds and development grants were channelled into construction, contracting companies, oilfield services, and related projects, both Sudanese and foreign. Oil drilling increased in the South, with pipes pumping the resource to Port Sudan, on the Red Sea. An economic boom occurred, manifested in the stability of the currency and a proliferation of building and construction projects, including roads and infrastructure projects (always marred by corruption scandals and the disappearance of public funds). However, the boom was not accompanied by any development in basic service provision, public facilities, or developmental projects, and there were no serious attempts to establish developmental or service projects in the South, or to provide a national plan for economic and social justice.

This treatment of the Sudanese regions – whereby the government depleted their resources but refrained from engaging in development activities and service provision – was nothing new. Before independence in 1956, education and health services had always been centralized in Khartoum (the capital of the centralized administration) and its surroundings. Sudan’s road network reflected this centre of gravity: converging on the political capital, with virtually no intercity roads not passing through Khartoum. Electricity networks and other services were no different. Following independence, governments did not change the colonial approach that prioritized securing Egypt’s southern border, the sources of the Nile, and cheap agricultural exports from Sudan, while cutting public services to a minimum, limiting them to wealth-administering, rather than wealth-producing, regions.

It is not surprising, then, that the Southern population, or any other Sudanese population for that matter, would choose independence from Khartoum’s colonial authority. In January 2011, as the five-year transition period laid down by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement came to an end, the South Sudan population voted in favour of separation.

After South Sudan declared independence, it became clear that the government in Khartoum was unprepared for this new reality. Its loss of control over southern oil led to economic collapse. In 2012 the national currency depreciated by half within one year. In response, the government immediately turned to austerity measures and announced the lifting of fuel subsidies. Protests broke out against this decision, mainly in universities and higher education institutions. Inspired by the Arab Spring, weekly marches took place, coordinated through social media networks. The protests were met with violence and arrests and within two months they stopped. The following year, in 2013, seeking to prevent continued economic collapse, the government announced the lifting of fuel subsidies for a second time. This time, however, it did so only after school break was announced – to limit student protests. The demonstrations that broke out this time occurred on the periphery of the capital and were met with a different level of violence: live bullets were shot at protesters in the capital in September 2013, when more than 100 people were martyred within three days. The violence was perpetrated by the Janjaweed, the semi-governmental militia known for their genocidal massacres in Darfur, whose formation and continued existence had been partly assisted by the Sudanese generals and National Security Services. [3]

Facing these protests against its austerity policies, the government proceeded to look for political alliances to sustain its rule. In January 2014, in accordance with a proposal by Princeton Lyman, the former US Special Envoy to Sudan, al-Bashir called for a national dialogue. His proposal envisaged an alliance between the regime and the opposition, whereby the latter would give up its attempts to overthrow the regime in return for sharing power. In Sudanese politics, this approach is known as the ‘soft landing approach’.

Lyman’s proposal failed and economic collapse continued. In response, the government continued its turn towards Gulf capital, whose need for arable lands coincided with the Sudanese regime’s need for economic support. Sudan’s subordination to the Gulf governments led to the transfer of large areas of Sudanese lands, which were emptied of their indigenous populations, to Gulf capital, and extended to its involvement in the Emirati and Saudi war in Yemen.

Anti-government protests continued during this time. These included protests against land grabs, a two-day strike in 2016 against the lifting of subsidies on medicines, and a journalists’ strike in 2017 against the confiscation of newspapers from printshops, and many others.

The uprisings by the Sudanese against all forms of austerity measures in the 10 years that preceded the December 2018 uprising confirm that lack of economic justice was, and still is, the main driving force behind the Sudanese revolution. The Sudanese rose in revolt against privatizations, the withdrawal of state subsidies, the lack of services, and increased bread prices. It was these policies which, on 19 December 2018, drove the students of Atbara Industrial School to the streets.

How can Sudan’s current reality be read?

The Sudanese took to the streets in various Sudanese cities under the slogan ‘Just fall’ – a total rejection of any form of compromise with the existing regime. In July 2018, the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) was established as a trade union, being composed of parallel unions (mostly in white-collar sectors), proclaiming its opposition to the regime-controlled official unions. In August 2018, this assembly called for a march towards the parliament, planned to take place on 25 December 2018, to demand an increase in the minimum wage. As protests broke out in early December, and then intensified, the SPA changed the destination of its march to the presidential palace and adopted the call for overthrowing the regime.

In January 2019, in the Declaration of Freedom and Change, the SPA set out its demands, and urged the Sudanese people to adopt and employ various methods of peaceful struggle to achieve them. The demands included the immediate resignation of al-Bashir and his regime, along with the formation of a transitional government, to be charged with nine tasks encompassing economic, political, and legal reforms. The declaration was signed by the SPA and four other bodies representing major Sudanese opposition alliances. They then published the declaration and invited others to sign it too.

While the SPA was widely accepted among the protesters, who were eager for a new leadership, some of the other signatories to the declaration, including existing political parties, were less popular. The Sudanese people’s hostility towards the existing political parties was both logical and justified: throughout the country’s history, these parties have repeatedly compromised and allied themselves with the autocratic regimes they claimed to oppose, and they have repeatedly failed to realize any of their goals, despite justifying their compromises as the road to achieving them. At the same time, Sudan’s centralized and disproportionate development path has created a terrible gap between the country’s wealth-administration centres and the regions, in terms of education, political participation, and political power. The Sudanese parties thus represent the elites created by such a reality: they are agricapital and commercial parties, alongside educated effendi parties.[4] Although some parties, like the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP), have theoretically proposed approaches promoting the interests of the working classes, their effect has barely differed from that the capitalist parties and their elite political ways.

In this context it is clear why the protesters preferred other forms of organization, from neighbourhood resistance committees to professional organizations. The popularity of such organizations is the result of alienation from ideological organization, in favour of geographic or professional organization. This discourse naturally led to calls for the formation of a ‘technocratic’ government, distanced from politics (which the people now perceive as corrupt). The lack of a revolutionary vision among the protesters was the result of the absence of any revolutionary party capable of revolutionary theorization and of introducing a counter discourse.

Upon its publication, more than 20 trade union and factional bodies signed the Declaration of Freedom and Change, on 1 January 2019. More signatures were gathered over the following weeks, reaching more than 100 bodies. Nonetheless, the FFC’s decision-making remained tied to the votes of the first four bodies (the SPA and the major opposition party coalitions).[5] The SPA thus failed to play its expected revolutionary role of liberating political decision-making from the hands of the elite. Its composition and approach, being made up of white-collar individuals pursuing their dominant interests and class choices. Again, this was the result of the absence of an organized revolutionary party that could deliver sound analysis to the public.

The SPA called for the forming of neighbourhood resistance committees, drawing on the earlier experience of the grassroots committees that had been formed during the 2013 protests. The committees became the chief heroes of the uprising, conducting impressive work organizing protests on the ground. Just before announcing the one-day strike in March 2019, the SPA had called for the formation of strike committees, or resistance committees, within specific institutions. However, the scope of these committees’ actions remained limited to on-the-ground resistance: an implicit public consensus had been reached that committees should work at the street level to overthrow the regime, while the political leadership should devote itself to preparing a new government and arrangements for the aftermath of the fall of the al-Bashir regime.

On 6 April 2019 people across Sudan marched to the respective compounds of the Army General Command, where they announced the beginning of the General Command sit-ins, which led to al-Bashir’s fall on 13 April 2019. This signalled a new phase in the uprising. Meetings then took place between the FFC and al-Bashir’s security committee, which had deposed the former president in a coup and was now ruling the country, calling itself the Military Council. These meetings were supposed to discuss the handover of power by the Military Council, but in the days that followed, they quickly shifted into ‘negotiations’ meetings. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) supported the Military Council government through their media coverage and sought to whitewash the image of Council members. The Council brought into its camp Bashir’s leaders of the armed forces, security service chiefs, and minister of the interior, as well as the Rapid Support Forces (the new name given to the Janjaweed).

Unsurprisingly, the protesters rejected the Military Council’s rule, but negotiations continued between the FFC and the Military Council, with Gulf governments supporting the Military Council through grants and media coverage. Ambassadors from Western countries backed a ‘peaceful transition by negotiation’, which was promoted by European and American advisory centres. In parallel, the protesters attributed the power held by the FFC negotiators to their own commitment to the sit-ins and other forms of resistance and protest. They led marches within and through cities and shut down the streets any time the Military Council was slow to negotiate or insisted on conditions that they refused. However, during the period of the negotiations, the sit-ins faced repeated crackdowns by the security forces. On 13 May 2019, the eighth day of Ramadan, security forces attacked the General Command sit-in in Khartoum, in what would come to be known as the first massacre of the revolution.

The eighth of Ramadan massacre unleashed a wave of anger on the streets and kindled the protesters’ all-out rejection of the Military Council. Chants of ‘100% civil’ rose against negotiation proposals at the time that offered joint rule between the military and civil leaders. There were also calls for a general political strike, to force the military to hand over power. The political leadership of the FFC was slow to heed the calls for a strike, with some even publicly opposing the call. The street’s fear that the elitist parties would give in once more to their addiction to compromise and fear of radical change was thus borne out. This coincided with meetings between the leadership of the FFC parties and EU and US government representatives, and repeated visits to the UAE. The protesters’ refusal of these shady international manoeuvrings was reflected in their chants and songs, and their efforts to ensure accountability of the representatives of the political leadership through the sit-in squares and their platforms. At the time, thanks to its anti-negotiations position, the SCP managed to garner considerable public trust, at least in comparison with the rest of the FFC. However, the SCP could not escape its elitist essence and unrevolutionary policies, ultimately preferring to preserve the opposition alliance rather than side with the revolution and protect it from compromise.

The SPA call for a political strike was officially made following weeks during which grassroots organizations had been pushing for a strike. Once the strike was announced by the SPA, these organizations published statements of their readiness to strike, and they publicized the planned strike in their speeches in the sit-in squares. [6] The political strike represented an intensified confrontation between the protesters and the Military Council. The Council arrested strikers and threatened to fire and replace them, as Gulf financial and media backing for the Council increased. The strike ultimately took place on 28 and 29 May 2019, completely paralysing the country, including its airports, seaports, institutions, and markets.

A week later, in June 2019, the Military Council responded to the strike with a series of massacres. The security services simultaneously attacked the sit-ins across 14 Sudanese cities. Survivors’ testimonies document brutal scenes of rape, torture, and murder. In some cases, the bodies of the dead as well as the living were tied up, weighted down with stones, and thrown into the Nile. The massacres resulted in more than 100 martyrs and hundreds of wounded and rape victims, while the search for the disappeared is still ongoing.

The Military Council then announced its withdrawal from all negotiations, stating that it would hold elections in six months; it also shut down the internet throughout the country, to ensure a media blackout (though the Sudanese in the diaspora helped report the massacre). This did not stop the neighbourhood resistance committees and they organized a march in rejection of military rule. More than seven million Sudanese women and men took to the streets in displacement camps, cities, and villages on 30 June 2019, demanding civil rule. Thanks to the 30 June march and international popular support for the Sudanese revolution, the military retreated from its previously announced positions on holding elections and rejecting negotiations.

Nonetheless, the military continued to receive generous international backing. The Emirati and Saudi governments announced grants and loans to support the Military Council. Likewise, the African Union sent its own mediators to call for dialogue between the opposition leadership and the Military Council, which had led the massacre. Inter-state coordination of investments and interests emerged through the so-called ‘Friends of Sudan’ meetings, which began in Washington in May 2019. The attendees comprised the United States, Germany, the EU, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Ethiopia.[7] This group supported a power-sharing approach between the civil leadership and the Military Council. Their aim was to ensure a regime that preserved their ongoing investments and to use the moment of change to open up investment opportunities that had previously been closed either due to the US economic embargo on Sudan or as a result of al-Bashir’s failure to embark on full liberalization. In essence, these states’ positions on Sudan were no different from the similar positions they held on other movements for change in the region, whether in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, or others.

Official external pressure, then, was brought to bear to reinforce the very political and economic approaches against which the Sudanese had revolted. But without a revolutionary party, the guiding discourse on the street was reduced to justifying partnership with the military to spare blood and stop the violence. Likewise, public access to the details of negotiations and agreements was limited to occasional leaks, instead of official public statements, and the political leadership (the FFC) met with foreign ambassadors, delegates and mediators more than they addressed the public. The absence of a revolutionary leadership, then, resulted in wasting the fruit of the revolutionaries’ resilience in the face of the Military Council, and their defiance of the post-massacre oppression. Calls for forming a qualified technocratic government circulated, side-lining the treacherous political parties. Opportunistic actors among the parties making up the FFC promoted such discourses to obstruct analysis of their compromised positions or their international allies’ interests.

Unsurprisingly, this climate produced the current government, which is a military and civil partnership sponsored by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, internationally financed, and staffed by former employees of developmental organizations. This government is therefore an expression of both the economic and political counterrevolutions. In one of his first public speeches, the first transitional Minister of Finance mentioned that the economic objective of the Sudanese revolution was to bring Sudan out of its debt crisis.[8] This represents a complete shift and distortion of the objectives of the revolution, which were to provide economic justice for the impoverished majority of the Sudanese, and to overturn austerity measures. Debt repayment thus became the main justification for plans to further lift subsidies, float the currency, and introduce foreign investments, in a manner no different than al-Bashir’s policies in his later years. The only difference between the former and the latter is the international support given to the current government. The transitional government claimed that a return to the international market and the imagined material wellbeing this would bring were dependent upon such decisions.

The implications of the absence of a revolutionary party are again clear here: it has produced a vacuum as regards progressive discourse on internal and external political questions. It has also enabled the transitional government to present development grants and debt exemptions as revolutionary economic victories – despite the impact of their crushing neoliberal conditions on most Sudanese lives. While the SCP attempts to offer a discourse that rejects liberalization, it is incapable of influencing the masses. The latter have lost trust in the party as a result of its fluctuating positions and its insistence on coalescing with reactionary parties, whose positions the SCP simultaneously critiques in its statements. In the public imagination, this kind of strategy has rendered the party a disrupter that speaks much and resolves little, and lacks seriousness. In the meantime, through their coordinating committees and different alliances, neighbourhood resistance committees have released statements and views against liberalization, but they lack political experience and have prioritized the preservation of the transitional government. Slogans like ‘Yes to reforming the revolutionary path, no to overthrowing the civilian government’ have been voices by the resistance committees, which seek to ensure the military does not seek to ride the wave of protest – as happened in the Egyptian scenario. Nevertheless, as a result of its counterrevolutionary decisions in economic and other domains, support for the civilian government has been steadily declining.

Possible paths for the Sudanese revolution

The revolution must continue in order to halt the economic violence being practised against the impoverished Sudanese masses. This requires drawing lessons from the Sudanese revolution, both its successes and its limitations and failures.

Since August 2019 there have been (increasingly serious) attempts to form organized alliances between different groups of neighbourhood resistance committees, labour organizations, and factional bodies to pursue demands against the harmful transitional economic policies. These alliances would not have developed had it not been for the lessons learned from the recent history of elitist political leadership decisions and their predispositions. Alongside the internal organization of resistance, such alliances constitute the clearest road towards creating a principled front against counterrevolutionary policies. This could lead to the establishment of a revolutionary party, or an organization that partially plays that role.

However, such an auspicious scenario that foresees a sustained Sudanese revolution that continues until its goals are achieved must not distract from the dangers that underlie the counterrevolutionary global alliances. Overthrowing the cross-border global counterrevolutionary alliances cannot be achieved except through a cross-border global resistance. This requires consolidating global solidarity and channels of communication with communities that have been harmed by similar liberalization policies to those currently applied in Sudan. It also requires supporting all forms of resistance to autocratic regimes, especially those engaging in direct economic interventions in Sudan, with invested capitals in its resources, first among which are the Gulf countries – who are responsible for the lion’s share of counterrevolutionary interventions. At its core, cross-border solidarity is no different from ‘national’ solidarity campaigns: just as populations affected by goldmining in Sudan make alliances with those affected by oil drilling in the country, allied around their joint demand to protect their environment from the effects of extractive industries, so it is both possible and imperative to join forces with the common interests of miners in Morocco, for example, who demand safe working conditions, and with environmental activists fighting against the impacts of mining in South Africa.

The path to realizing the goals of the Sudanese revolution thus requires an organized Sudanese working class, which has the largest stake in achieving the revolution’s goals. It also requires forming a strategic alliance with anyone engaged in anti-imperialist resistance who shares similar goals, within Sudan’s borders and beyond. Only then shall it ‘Just fall’

Muzan Alneel is a is co-founder of the Innovation, Science and Technology Think-tank for People-Centered Development (ISTiNAD) in Sudan and is a non-resident Fellow of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP), focusing on a people-centric approach to economy, industry and the environment in Sudan.

A version of this blogpost forms part of a dossier of articles that is published in collaboration with the Transnational Institute (TNI) and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation – North Africa and the full dossier can be accessed here.

Featured Photograph: The strike on 28–29 May 2019 – Revolutionaries in the street lift strike signs before Rapid Support Forces cars in Khartoum, text on paper: “Are you on strike or are you Ummah #CivilianRule” (Ummah Party, one of the biggest parties, which announced its refusal to strike).

Notes

[1] The ruling regime established the NCP in 1998. Its members came from the National Islamic Front (NIF), which led the government that ruled Sudan from 30 June 1989 until President al-Bashir was deposed on 11 April 2019.

[2] The civil war in South Sudan pitted the ruling North against the southern Sudanese. Under the banner of the SPLM, the southerners demanded greater local governance. The first round of the war began in 1955, and lasted until 1972. War broke out again in 1983, and ended in 2005, upon the signing of the Comprehensive Peace (Naivasha) Agreement.

[3] The War in Darfur began in 2003. Insurgent movements that had risen up against the persecution and marginalization of the area’s population fought the Khartoum government. The government armed some Darfuri tribes to fight in its stead, later termed the Janjaweed militias. The United Nations has estimated that 80,000 to 500,000 people were murdered in the Darfur genocide, while President Omar al-Bashir stated that the death toll did not exceed 10,000.

[4] The term effendi, was used throughout the Ottoman Empire to address government officials. In Sudan, effendisrefers to the educated people who were employed by the state after the end of the Anglo-Egyptian colonization. These groups received privileges and opportunities, and constituted the bigger part of the upper middle class in Sudan. They were well-represented politically and were the recipients of favouritism from consecutive regimes.

[5] The opposition parties that signed the Declaration of Freedom and Change after its publication were the SPA, the National Consensus Forces, the Sudan Call Forces, and the Opposition Unionist Assembly.

[6] At this point in the Sudanese revolution (April–May 2019), ‘breaking the line’ became a cardinal sin. Grassroots organizations were therefore unable to propose any ideas that contradicted the hirak’s leadership, which, to the public, was the SPA. Accordingly, proponents of a strike used their statements to announce their readiness for a strike, whenever the ‘leadership’ called for it, and urged the SPA to make such a call.

[7] Despite its clear and constant involvement in counterrevolutionary politics in Sudan – including al-Burhan’s visit to Egypt right before the massacre – and its occasional attendance of Friends of Sudan meetings, Egypt is not an official member of that group. This can be viewed through the complex lens of the Egyptian–Ethiopian conflict over regional leadership, and Egypt’s wish to operate as the first Emirati arm in the region.

[8] Dr Ibrahim al-Badawi, Minister of Finance and Financial Planning, in a meeting promoting a shared vision of the private sector and the transitional government, organized by the Sudanese Businessmen and Employers Federation, held at Sadaqa Hall on 7 December 2019.

Ecological justice in Kenya: life and struggle in Nairobi’s informal settlements

ROAPE

October 26, 2021

ROAPE interviews the Kenya environmental activist and socialist, Irene Asuwa. She talks about the struggle for climate justice, and social and economic change. Introducing a short film on a major dumpsite in Nairobi, Lena Anyuolo explains the environmental waste and devastation caused by multinationals, facilitated by the Kenyan government.

Could you please tell roape.net readers a little about yourself, your background and activism?

Irene Asuwa: I co-convene Ecological Justice. A collective of community groups reclaiming, rehabilitating and transforming green spaces. I have been actively involved in amplifying community voices in climate justice online and offline for a while. I support outreach at Ukombozi library, a progressive library that supports organizers and communities in doing political outreach activities through dialogues, films, art and study sessions. I am also a member of Revolutionary Socialist League an organization that is organizing towards a socialist revolution.

If I can turn briefly now to you Lena, you have been involved in a short film on the Dandora dump and anti-capitalism in Kenya, can you explain your involvement in this film and the purpose of it?

Lena Anyuolo: The film was part of a series called Capitalism in my city. Capitalism in my city is collection of articles and videos about the reality of living the crisis of capitalism in informal settlements. It is not told in an academic tone as most analysis do. Rather to make it accessible, we wrote about our experiences as we live them. The dumpsite is a great injustice to our community as you can see in the film that the waste that affects us isn’t generated by us. The dumpsite affects us by causing health issues such as respiratory infections and cancers due to the toxic effluents that come out of it.

On Saturdays, when the trucks line up to deposit the waste from upper class neighborhoods, the stench and traffic leading to the site is unbearable. We are structurally neglected and denied social justice rights such as healthcare. There is only one level 5 hospital to serve the whole of Embakasi. Dandora is a large neighbourhood, requiring such amenities especially as we are subject to terrible living conditions.

In the film, we wanted to show how we live to rouse ourselves into action because we are not condemned to hopelessness. That is why in the film, and in the first video on the ecological crisis by Brian Mathenge, we are keen on reminding ourselves that no effort is too small. A better world is possible through constant study, praxis and solidarity. We shall win. We are angry about our conditions because they are unfair and unjust, and we are using anger constructively to change our conditions through avenues like this film and ecological justice.

The making of this film was not easy. We had limited technical skill. We sought the help of our comrade, Davis Tafari as the director of photography. Through him, we also gained access to the dumpsite – it is an area fraught with violence due to the scarcities created by capitalism. We then sought Susan Mute, a comrade who is part of another ecological organization called Haki na Mazingira, and others from Mathare’s green movement to enrich the discussions.

I was involved overall as co-editor of the Capitalism in my city series.

You are also a member of a Kenyan national grassroots’ Ecological Justice movement – ahead of the COP26 climate talks in the UK, would you explain to us the nature of the groups work and campaign? As a socialist, and a revolutionary, how do you see your intervention in the justice movement?

Irene Asuwa: Ecological Justice is a collective of community ecological groups in Nairobi and parts of Western Kenya. We organize in a number of ways. Much of our work is through political education. It is important that people understand the global economic and political system and the impact it has on the people. The ecological crisis is a direct natural consequence of the global hegemony of capitalism and imperialism. Through the climate triggered emergencies there are glaring crimes of capitalism against nature, and humanity as part of nature. Through study cells and community resource centers the groups have access to progressive literature and films. These help people to connect the environmental apartheid to the general militarization of the country and the region.

We also organize the ‘Young Eco Warriors Collective and Eco Schools’. There are groups that have children who are naturally enthusiastic about ecology. These children are groomed to understand and make interventions to mitigate the immediate impacts of the ecological crisis and grow up as ecologically conscious people. Most children spend a lot of their time in schools. We support them to have green spaces in the schools to help reduce pollution since most of the schools in urban areas are situated in heavily populated areas.

We are equally involved in ‘Art for Liberation’. There are a number of artists in the collective who use art to sensitize people on the importance of protecting the ecosystem through spoken word, graffiti, landscaping, acrobatics and other form of sports to mobilize and educate people.

We are stiving towards having people understand that humans are part of nature. That we have the obligation to change our production and consumption models that have become entirely unsustainable. We want to see the climate justice conversation coming from bottom up and interventions happening from within the communities. We also need to get people to understand the climate crisis can only be resolved by a systemic shift. That products of nature are public goods that should be accessible to everyone. It is our obligation as part of nature to be good custodians of natural resources for future generations.

Broadly speaking, what is the state of the ecological crisis in Kenya and East Africa generally?

Irene Asuwa: The genocide is worsening. People are being further alienated from nature and its projects. We are getting more and more pauperized to the extent that we can barely access very basic necessities like land which is the main means of production, water, food, decent housing and green spaces. There are things that nature provide for free, yet they are being privatized day by day. People use natural things like light and water as a bargaining chip to get people to pay more for bare minimum housing.

There are more punitive agricultural laws and policies being passed, particularly seed laws that are very retrogressive and repressive. These laws criminalize small holder farmers and makes them dependent on corporations. A lot of harmful synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that are carcinogenic and destroy the ecological system are still being dumped in the Kenyan market. Kenya is also considering legalizing GMOs.

There is an attack on green spaces. More parks, riparian land and community open spaces are being seized to put up concrete. There is an obsession of greying the country and the region at the expense of the ecological system. Public green spaces are being militarized through fencing, military and police presence. People are being charged to access them. There are “conservancies” mushrooming and taking up large chunks of community land in the guise of conserving wildlife and taking care of endangered species. As a result, communities have been displaced, evicted and lives have been lost in the conflicts that have escalated in those areas.

Corporations are mining unethically, leaving behind damaged land, death and making children vulnerable thanks to unethical extractive practices. Communities are subjected to the danger of open quarry mines, toxic waste, below survival wages in very inhumane working conditions and health risks that come from working in hazardous mines and factories.

An insatiable appetite for fossil fuel is also sweeping across the region – despite international claims to the contrary. Foreign banks are pouring investments into oil, gas and coal projects, for example, the proposed Lamu Coal Plant, Turkana Oil, East African Pipeline among others. These projects do not make any economic or social sense. As we know, fossil fuel is obsolete, any society that claims it is advanced should and must keep them in the ground.

There have been a series of calamities across the country, so witness the rise of Nam Lolwe, Lake Naivasha and Nakuru which has caused floods. There is a looming drought in Northern Kenya, as well. We are trying to recover from a recent locust invasion and there is a possibility of another wave.

The attack on green spaces is also worsening the state of our mental health as we have limited areas to unwind with the commodification of the environment. The crisis is here, but so also is the struggle against capitalism and its destruction of nature.

Irene Asuwa is a community organizer and the co-conveners of Ecological Justice, a collective of community group championing for climate justice.

Lena Grace Anyuolo is a writer, poet and social justice activist with Mathare Social Justice Centre and Ukombozi Library. Her writing has appeared in a range of publications, including Jalada’s 7th anthology themed After+Life, The Elephant and roape.net.

Featured Photograph: Dandora is the largest dumpsite in East Africa (11 March 2017).

Oil, capitalists and the wretched of Uganda – an interview with Yusuf Serunkuma

ROAPE

October 21, 2021

In an interview with Yusuf Serunkuma, ROAPE asks him about his forthcoming book on oil, capitalists, and livelihoods in western Uganda. The book is a co-edited volume with Eria Serwajja and brings together six junior Ugandan scholars and activists. Serunkuma details the struggles of rural people to confront and harmonise interests with oil explorers, with environmental destruction and compensation that has turned lives upside down

ROAPE: For roape.net readers can you pleased tell us something about your background and work?

Yusuf Serunkuma: I’m a scholar and activist based at Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR), Makerere University. I’m an anthropologist (eyes on Somalia/Somaliland), who also studied political economy/Agrarian studies. I wrote The Snake Farmers (2015), a play inspired by debates on foreign aid, and endless violent conflict, and media and secondary schools in East Africa found it useful. I write a column in the Ugandan weekly newspaper, The Observer. I have also written for Pambazuka, roape.net and a host of other publications.

You are publishing a new book on oil and Uganda; can you tell us about the book and how you came to write it?

We focused on the window between discovery and actual extraction, that is, before the pipes begin to flow (exploration, calculations, displacement, resettlement, compensation, waiting, speculation, anxiety, and all related aftermaths), and this is the first book-length publication on the subject that specifically speaks from the vantage of point of the displaced – and develops analyses from these voices without the noise in Kampala. Focus is given to items such as food, land, compensation itself, the environment, violence that displaced persons suffered, education as schools were closed for years, etc. Our focus is narrow but deep, and we ask questions about the extent of state involvement in the lives of ordinary folks, who tend to be “the first ‘extractions’ from the earth,” but are simply unwanted! We prioritised the view of uneducated and poor folks (by far the majority in rural areas, even when they received handsome compensation packages), children, rural country women, etc. How do they play in the larger view of things – and how did they end absolute impoverishment?

A camp in Kigyayo village where persons displaced to create space for Hoima Sugar Ltd settled themselves. This settlement is on church land, which was gracious enough to allow them to stay. Over 5000 people were violently displaced to create space for sugar farming.

The experience of Nigeria and the Niger Delta looms large, as do many other resource rich countries on the continent, and the manifest failure to harness wealth in the interests of development and the poor – what some academics have called the ‘resource curse’. What transformations have the arrival of the oil industry in the country prompted? Has it brought an economic boom, as many thousands were led to believe?

From the vantage point of the persons in western Uganda (specifically, Hoima and Buliisa), ever since the discovery – even with the sumptuous compensation packages to some people – it is difficult to point to tangible transformations by the time of our fieldwork. There are new roads in the area, but those have not translated into food and water for the people, nor have they translated into improved livelihoods. Maybe it is too early to tell, but also our fieldwork does not seek to speculate on the future benefits, but the state of affairs as they were then. Afterall, what sort of ‘development’ would hurt people for 15 years before making lives better? Part of our contention is to highlight the plight but also make visible the accumulation of discontent, which could possibly end in the so-called oil curse. The over-accumulation of neoliberal interests in the area is one of the undercurrents of our fieldwork.

Interestingly, and extremely relevant for a publication like ROAPE, you write powerfully about the compensation that was paid to those evicted to make way for the construction of the refinery in Hoima. Please tell us about this process and the impact this has had on communities and people in the affected areas.

What happened is that after lengthy negotiations involving local influential elders, and NGOs, such as Benon Tusingwire of NAVODA (Navigators of Development Association – a local NGO), and civil society activists, there are persons who actually received sumptuous compensation packages. These became our focus when by the time of fieldwork, which took place about two years after their compensation packages arrived, were considerably worse off than before. We found them disgruntled. It is easy to dismiss their disgruntlement as their own fault after they misused their monies. But that would miss the point and underplay their condition as poor, uneducated people who were turned into (Uganda shillings) millionaires overnight – and this new condition simply destroyed them.

What happened was that after being displaced by the state under state-citizen paternalistic arrangement, when compensation came, the relationship turned into a market arrangement, as if these people had sold their land on a willing seller, willing buyer arrangement. By switching the relationship (from a state-paternalistic one, in which the displacement happened, to a market-oriented relationship), which was easy and cheaper, the state abandoned its duty of ensuring that the displaced rebuilt their lives. The idea is to rigorously critique the supremacy of compensation; it should never have been reduced to just money. These people were never willing sellers.

**Activist Benon Tusingwire and researcher Kenneth Nkumire speak to children of displaced persons in Kigyayo camp during fieldwork in 2017.**

Ahead of COP26 in Glasgow, in the UK, there is an important aspect of your book that reflects on the environmental impact caused by oil and gas exploration. You write about how oil related activities have led to rivers drying up and surface and ground water becoming polluted. Please tell us about the environmental implications to the region’s ecology.

I think because Uganda is in sub-Saharan Africa, there are no robust campaigns to care for the environment, because people think with the rains, the climate impacts are less visible. But by the time of fieldwork, locals told us 13 rivers had dried up in Buliisa where most exploration has happened. This had never happened before. These rivers had been reclaimed or turned into landfills and because of their smallness, they could not survive. Only three were still flowing. Flaring was also happening within a five miles radius. No one was taking stock of waste disposal. None. Bungoma Forest was being cut down by Hoima Sugar Ltd, which was established under the premise that they’ll need to supply sugar to the city in the wake of the oil boom. Yet as the rains continue to fall all this gets forgotten.

Your book also brings in the question of gender and I wonder whether we can discuss this. You argue that the oil and gas industry in the country impacts on women in destructive and distinct ways – can you tell us what your research revealed?

It was a disaster for women and children. In most rural areas, women have tended to be the main breadwinners – farming on their husbands’ plots! This enables most women to enter into peasant relationships selling their small surplus and earning a little income. But while compensating for these plots, only the man was considered as owner and thus beneficiary. He was the sole signatory to the money. In the end, the woman received no money and most husbands failed to buy other pieces of land. Often men, in complete disregard for their wives, spent the money marrying more women, and living lives they had seen on TV. Then, with schools closed in the refinery area, for example, without new ones built, many children were denied education because the next schools were over ten miles away, and this is a rural area, with the only means of transport being on foot. It was a disaster.

**A victim of the dispossession shows up pictures of what happened to one of them during the violent eviction.**

Your attention to the voices of those directly impacted by this ‘new’ extractive industry in a model neoliberal country on the continent is particularly powerful. What were your hopes writing this book? What does the story of Uganda’s oil and gas bonanza tell us about the continent’s political economy and the continued struggles for autonomy and development?

Presently, the sector continues in a long and very secretive pause. Not much information is available to the public. Agreements remain hidden, and very little is known to the public (which is typical in neoliberal clandestine manoeuvring). In Kampala, a crude pipeline project was concluded (including Tanzania and Uganda, and Total), the Total executive Patrick Pouyanné was in Kampala and entered agreement with the government of Uganda. An airport is being constructed in western Uganda etc, but this is not our concern, or of any use to the people of the region – for the last 15 years since the evictions happened.

Capitalist exploitation tends to conspire with states to bamboozle the poor with big infrastructural investments (frequently useless and unnecessary) while the real devil is hidden in the fine print of agreements. Our intention is to make visible and permanent the lives of the poor in the oil conversation. Many lives are continuously being wasted in this period, which sends a signal to what will happen once the oil in the pipes begin to flow.

Researcher, Doreen Kobusingye taking notes with women affected by violent eviction in Rwamutonga, Hoima District. Another 200 people were violently displaced from 700 hectares to create space for “a waste management plant” by McAlester company owned by Americans, Chris Burden, Leonard Durst, Rochelle M. Gibbles.

Finally, what sort of resistance organised or otherwise has there been by the communities impacted, and are there any organisations helping to advocate or assist these communities?

There has been resistance and negotiations. At the peak of the conflict, residents resisted with protests in the areas, but were often violently suppressed and many ended up in jail. There have also been organisations at the forefront, leading resistance, but also negotiating, and pushing for better packages. Organisations such NAVODA negotiated compensation packages, negotiated native-settler wrangles; Global Rights Alert, and the National Association of Environmentalists (NAPE), who have utilised their “Community Radio” to report atrocities in record time, but also keep an eye on the wreckage to the environment.

Capitalist exploitation tends to be extremely violent, but these groups have tried to push back with limited success. You must appreciate that their capacity against the capitalist machine enabled by a Museveni secretive and comprador regime is surely miniscule. With a long pause in oil related activities, and a judicial system that takes ages, in the end people are broken, and crushed. Others fall into poverty, some die, while others are bought off or imprisoned. Prominent activists such as Benon Tusingwire, Richard Oribi, and journalist Robert Katemburura have received threats for being at the forefront of some of these campaigns.

Yusuf Serunkuma and Eria Serwajja’s edited book, Before the First Drop: Oil, capitalists and the wretches of western Uganda will be published on 1 December 2021 with Editor House Facility (EHF), Kampala and will be available in bookshops in Uganda and on Amazon. Roape.net will be publishing extracts of the book later in the year.

Yusuf Serunkuma is a columnist in Uganda’s newspapers, scholar and a playwright. In 2014, Fountain Publishers published his first play, The Snake Farmers which was received with critical acclaim in Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda.

African Socialism in Tanzania: Karim Hirji’s The Travails of a Tanzanian Teacher

ROAPE

October 19, 2021

Zeyad El Nabolsy writes about a fascinating first-hand account of how Tanzanian Marxists interpreted and criticized economic, social, cultural, and political developments in the country in the 1960s and 1970s. El Nabolsy celebrates Karim F. Hirji’s memoir, The Travails of a Tanzanian Teacher which provides a vital and critical Marxist account of Julius Nyerere’s reforms.

By Zeyad El Nabolsy

Tanzania in the 1960s and 1970s was a beacon of progressive politics on the African continent. The country served as a base for Southern African liberation movements as a key “front-line state”, and assumed the mantle of Pan-African leadership in the aftermath of the coup against President Nkrumah of Ghana in 1966. As such, it attracted radical scholars and activists from all across the African diaspora, including Walter Rodney, Malcolm X, and Kwame Ture.[1]

Under its first president, Julius K. Nyerere, it embarked on a program of development guided by the ideology of “African socialism”. Nyerere argued that traditionally Africans had “lived as families, with individuals supporting each other and helping each other on terms of equality” based on communal ownership of land.[2] Thus, “traditional African society was a socialist society”.[3] At times, Nyerere seemed to imply that there were no classes in Tanzania and consequently; it did not make sense to adopt a theory that emphasized the role of class struggle in bringing about social transformations.[4] To this extent, African socialism was advanced by its proponents as an indigenous version of socialism that was more suitable for African conditions than Marxism-Leninism.

A fascinating first-hand account of how Tanzanian Marxists interpreted and criticized economic, social, cultural, and political developments in the country during this period is provided by Karim F. Hirji’s memoir,The Travails of a Tanzanian Teacher (2018).[5] Hirji was involved in Marxist political organizations in Dar Es Salaam, and even though his Marxist orientation eventually led to his internal exile, he remained active as a Marxist scholar and activist in Tanzania, and he still contributes articles to progressive outlets on the African continent such as Pambazuka News.

Hirji’s book, somewhat overlooked since its release, offers a compelling analysis of the history and sociology of the sciences in Tanzania, with a focus on Hirji’s own field of statistics, from the post-independence period through to the 2010s. The first chapter provides an overview of Hirji’s career as a teacher. The second presents an account of Hirji’s experiences as a teacher under training, especially in light of the Arusha Declaration of 1967 and the turn towards building socialism in Tanzania, and the philosophy of education for self-reliance that Nyerere attempted to institutionalize. The next four chapters provide a detailed account of Hirji’s years as a teacher at the University of Dar Es Salaam (UDSM) from 1971 until his dismissal and internal-exile in 1974.

Of particular interest is chapter five, which provides a detailed account of the confrontation known as the “Akivaga Crisis,” which took place in July 1971.[6] This incident saw progressive students and faculty, in alliance with campus workers, face off with the UDSM’s governing body. Hirji also provides a critical literature review of what has been written on these events (Appendix B: Akivaga Crisis in History), which is an invaluable source for anyone who wants to acquire an understanding of their importance. The events in question derive their significance from the fact that they can be interpreted as showing the limits of TANU’s progressive politics.[7] In a confrontation between the party’s appointed university administration on the one hand (which by all accounts was not tremendously competent) and progressive students, faculty, and campus workers on the other hand, the party employed the coercive apparatus of the state to back its appointed men. Even when it appeared that the people whom the party was backing were further away from the ideals of African Socialism than the students whom they were confronting.

Hirji criticizes the exaggerated role which has been attributed to Walter Rodney by other socialist scholars, such as Haroub Othman and Issa Shivji.[8] Hirji asserts that, contrary to what is sometimes claimed, “Rodney kept a low profile during the crisis”.[9] Hirji thus provides a much-needed corrective to the one-sided accounts of intellectual and political life at UDSM during the early 1970s which tend to center on Rodney.

To be clear, Hirji does not aim to undermine Rodney’s significance as a scholar and activist. Hirji was a member of the University Students’ African Revolutionary Front (USARF), a student Marxist group which was active on campus and formulated criticisms of Nyerere’s policies from a Marxist perspective. It was as a member of USARF that Hirji first met Rodney at UDSM in 1969, after a lecture he delivered entitled The Cuban Revolution and its Relevance to Africa. Hirji then developed strong personal and working ties with him. In fact, Rodney’s attitude towards students, whom he considered his peers and comrades, is evidenced by the fact he asked Hirji, still an undergraduate at the time, to provide feedback on the manuscript of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. This assistance is acknowledged by Rodney in the preface of his seminal work: “special thanks must go to comrades Karim Hirji and Henry Mapolu of the University of Dar es Salaam, who read the manuscript in a spirit of constructive criticism”. Hirji has also recently defended Rodney against some common criticisms in his 2017 work, The Enduring Relevance of Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Hence, his criticism of the inflated role assigned to Rodney in other accounts of the Crisis is not motivated by any hostility towards him. Hirji clarifies that Rodney kept a low profile – not because he was afraid – but rather because he did not want to do anything that would feed into the university administration’s narrative of “foreign interference” as the cause of the Crisis.

Hirji’s tenure as assistant lecturer, during which time he was actively involved in attempts to develop courses that would breakdown disciplinary boundaries, is detailed in chapter six of the book. This involved the introduction of two new courses: East African Society and Environment (required for all social sciences students) and Development Studies (required for all non-social sciences students). The seventh chapter of the book discusses Hirji’s 18-month stint as a bureaucrat following his dismissal from UDSM in 1974. The reason for his dismissal was his critical stance towards some of Nyerere’s policies – specifically, his critique of the policy of “education for self-reliance” published in 1973. Hirji argued that the requirement for manual labour was imposed on teachers without any planning. This meant that most teachers were unenthusiastic about it. He also pointed out that despite “the idealistic rhetoric, white collar jobs paid much more than manual work” and it was unpopular with many African students who associated manual work with colonial education. In Hirji’s view, the kind of political education which would have made it clear to students that manual labour, as mandated by the policy of education for self-reliance, was different from what took place under colonialism was altogether absent. Instead, students were only taught political education in an “insipid, sloganeering style”.[10] For his trouble, Hirji was dismissed from UDSM and appointed as a bureaucrat in the Regional Planning Office of Rukwa region, with a posting in Sumbawanga, the regional capital. Sumbawanga was previously used by the British as a place of internal exile and Hirji clearly understood his appointment in such terms.

Hirji’s experiences as a cog in the machine of the Tanzanian bureaucracy were decidedly negative. No real work was done by his office, and his boss was simply not interested in deploying Hirji’s statistical knowledge (a planning office that does not care much for statistics does not inspire much confidence!) In fact, Hirji notes that he was not really expected to produce much, and that he could get away with spending the workday reading newspapers and other materials in the office, so long as he pretended to be doing something. It is noteworthy that Hirji’s appointment took place just two years after the Tanzanian government had unveiled its new regional administration system, which was purportedly aimed at increasing popular political participation through decentralization. Hirji notes that for all of Nyerere’s exhortation of self-reliance, this decentralization project “had been constructed for Tanzania with the expertise of the McKinsey Corporation, a global American consultancy firm that facilitates the smooth operations of the international capitalist order”^.[11]

In general, Hirji is rather harsh in his assessment of Tanzania’s development programs under Nyerere. He points out that despite the rhetoric of self-reliance; Tanzania was dependent on foreign donors, who drove the country’s educational policies even during the 1960s and 1970s. Moreover, while TANU deployed the rhetoric of “African socialism”, workers had no say in how the nationalised public-owned companies were managed.[12] Hirji is especially critical of the forced villagization program which was launched in the 1970s. While the aim of the villagization program was to concentrate rural inhabitants in villages so that services could be more easily provided, inadequate planning meant that farmers who were forced to move to the new villages often had to wait a year or more in order to get deep wells dug in them.[13]Hirji’s criticisms of the Ujamaa period are not directed at undermining the significance of the achievements of the independence struggle, but rather to take aim at excessively nostalgic treatments of the period.[14]

One striking feature of the book is Hirji’s sociologically self-conscious account of his role as an individual teacher and of teaching in general. During his time as a bureaucrat, he recounts his founding of a mathematics club at the local secondary school. Hirji did not separate his role as a teacher of mathematics from his role as a Marxist educator. He gave lectures to the students on mathematics, but also incorporated a Marxist account of the history of mathematics into his lectures: “the students are fascinated by the diversity of ways in which mathematics developed in ancient Babylon, India, China, Egypt, and Greece. I venture into the general history of those societies as well, and relate mathematics to the level of economic development”.^[15]This approach seems to have been pedagogically successful, since it allowed students to understand mathematics as a fundamentally human practice whose abstractions can, in the final analysis, be historically traced to human social activities.

Hirji’s sensitivity to sociological questions pertaining to science and mathematics education and research in Tanzania is evident throughout the book. One example points to the costs of what Paulin Hountondji describes as “extraversion” in scientific research and training on the African continent, i.e., externally oriented and directed practices of research and teaching.[16] Due to donor dependence, an approach to the teaching of mathematics that was shortly to be abandoned in the US was imported into Tanzania during the late 1960s with funding support from USAID. The approach in question, “Modern Maths” centered on a set of pedagogical techniques developed in the US in an attempt to catch up with Soviet advances in science and technology. It aimed to modernize the teaching of mathematics in the country by placing an emphasis on the introduction of general and abstract concepts at the beginning of instruction before moving onto concrete exercises. Students would begin by considering such questions as “‘What is a number?’ ‘What is a variable?” function?’ ‘What is an equation?’”[17] This approach to teaching mathematics was in place in the US from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. However, by the mid-1970s, it had clearly failed due to its over-emphasis on abstract elements. This makes it all the more remarkable that it was adopted as the primary teaching approach to mathematics in Tanzania in the late 1960s and 1970s. What this means is that Tanzanian students were subjected to a second-hand, cast-off curriculum that was on the way to being abandoned by its donors in their home country. A more devastating example of the long-term consequences of scientific dependency and extraversion at the level of both teaching and research would be hard to find.

Chapter eight provides an account of Hirji’s role as a teacher at the National Transport Institute, while the last three chapters of the book provide an assessment of the state of universities in Tanzania today – as well as Hirji’s own teaching philosophy. Hirji paints a grim image of the present condition of Tanzanian universities, especially since he situates his account within the context of the imposition of structural adjustment programs on Tanzania – Nyerere was eventually forced to enter into negotiations with the IMF between 1981 and 1985.[18] The salaries of professors were cut dramatically as part of the austerity program. Universities are now run on a business model with students occupying the role of customers. Naturally this places pressure on faculty to pass failing students and to lower academic standards. Moreover, because many academic institutions depend on foreign funding, their academic programs are sometimes guided by foreign academics and administrators who often do not know what they are talking about, but are tolerated because they provide funding.

However, Hirji is careful to point to internal problems as well. Hirji himself refuses to lay all the blame at the feet of international financial institutions. After all, it was TANU’s failure to restructure the Tanzanian economy that provided the opening for international financial institutions to swoop in. For example, while Hirji recognizes the significance of the expansion of university education under Nyerere — in 1971 Tanzania had one university with less than 3,000 students, by 2017 it had fifty universities with around 200,000 students — he also notes that there was a decline in the quality of the education that was provided. In the 1970s, degrees obtained at UDSM were recognized by other universities (e.g., in the United Kingdom), but this is no longer the case today. Understaffing is a serious problem with professors lacking adequate numbers of teaching assistants. In fact, Hirji had no teaching assistants during his time as a professor at Muhimili University of Health and Allied Sciences, MUHAS. The situation in Tanzanian universities became so dire that, in 2017, 19 universities were ordered not to enrol new students and a further 22 were prohibited from enrolling new students in 75 programs. Clearly this is a recipe for the perpetuation of dependency on foreign “experts” with all the connected negative consequences. Hirji provides us with an important account of the different factors which have contributed to the crisis of the university in Tanzania. Yet, he does not explicitly provide answers to the question, what is to be done? Nevertheless, readers who are interested in a Marxist account of the historical origins of the current plight of universities in Tanzania will find this book of tremendous use.

Overall, Hirji’s book is an excellent account of the dilemmas that Marxists faced during the Bandung-era. In countries like Tanzania, where a progressive nationalist government was in power, Marxists had to make difficult decisions in relation to the extent to which they should support their governments in their struggle against imperialism (the “national question”) while also pushing for the recognition of the importance of internal social transformations (the “social question”). Perhaps the primary failing in this respect is that Marxists in Tanzania (and in other places where similar conditions prevailed) were unable to convince those in power that an adequate resolution to the national question required internal social and economic transformations. This book shows how, absent the requisite internal structural transformations, the rhetoric of self-reliance can lead to a path that terminates in the most humiliating forms of dependency.

Karim F Hirji’s The Travails of a Tanzanian Teacher (2018) is available here.

Zeyad el Nabolsy is a PhD student in Africana Studies at Cornell University. He works on African philosophy of culture, African Marxism, the history and philosophy of science in the context of modern African intellectual history, and history and sociology of philosophy in the context of global intellectual history.

A version of this blogpost was originally published as ‘African Socialism in Retrospect: Karim Hirji’s The Travails of a Tanzanian Teacher’ on the new website Liberated Texts.

Featured Photograph: President Nyerere of Tanzania visited China and was received by Premier Zhou Enlai (18 June, 1968).

Notes

[1] Seth M. Markle, A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzania, Black Power, and the Uncertain Future of Pan-Africanism, 1964-1974 (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2017), 48.

[2] Julius K. Nyerere, “Principles and Development: June 1966.” In Freedom and Socialism [Uhuru na Ujamaa]: A Selection from Writings and Speeches, 1965-1967 (Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press, 1968), 198-99.

[3] Julius K. Nyerere, “Principles and Development: June 1966.” In Freedom and Socialism [Uhuru na Ujamaa]: A Selection from Writings and Speeches, 1965-1967 (Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press, 1968), 198-99.

[4] Nyerere, “Education for Self-Reliance: March 1967.” In Freedom and Socialism(1968), 276.

[5] This constitutes the third volume of Hirji’s memoirs. This first volume, Growing Up with Tanzania: Memory, Musings and Maths (2014) dealt with his childhood in Tanzania. The second volume, Cheche: Reminiscences of a Radical Magazine (2010), which was edited by Hirji and included contributions by others, provided an account of radical student movements at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) during the 1960s and 1970s.

[6] It is so-called in reference to the student leader Symonds Akivaga whose dismissal and deportation to his home country of Kenya became a key issue in the struggle between the students and the university’s governing body.

[7] TANU or Tanganyika African National Union was the ruling political party headed by Nyerere.

[8] Karim F. Hirji, The Travails of a Tanzanian Teacher, (Montreal: Daraja Press, 2018), 194-198.

[9] Hirji, 197.

[10] Hirji, 87.

[11] Hirji, 89.

[12] Hirji, 133.

[13] Hirji, 106.

[14] Such as Godfrey Mwakikagile, Tanzania Under Mwalimu Nyerere: Reflections on an African Statesman, (Dar es Salaam: New Africa Press, 2006).

[15] Hirji, 99-100.

[16] Paulin J. Hountondji, “Scientific Dependence in Africa Today.” Research in African Literatures 21.3 (1990), 5-15.

[17] UICSM Project Staff, “The University of Illinois School Mathematics Program.” The School Review 65.1(1957), 457-465.

[18] Mwakikagile, Tanzania Under Mwalimu Nyerere: Reflections on an African Statesman, 78-79.

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